Epiphany
February 7, 2016

Scripture Reading: Luke 9:28-36

Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, ‘Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah’—not knowing what he said. While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said, ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’ When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen. –Luke 9:33-36

Have you ever had one of those moments when you made a life-changing decision that was way out of your comfort zone, but about which you were totally comfortable? I think that is what the Transfiguration was for Jesus, and, no doubt, in retrospect for the disciples who were with him as well.

The world is too much with me right now and so last night I watched a movie made in 1990, which I did not know had ever been made: The Long Walk Home. I found it by searching Netflix’s. It is the story of an upper middleclass white woman in Montgomery, Alabama and her black maid during the days following Rosa Parks’ famous stand or, seat might be a better descriptor, on a bus. Here actions were followed by a bus boycott by the black community. By refusing to take the bus the maid was forced to walk a long distance to get to her job. The white woman, without her husband’s knowledge, started driving her maid to work two days a week. The movie is about both women and their struggles to decide their responses. The white woman eventually ended up being a part of a brigade of both blacks and whites who drove blacks to and from work every day during the boycott. In a final showdown when a group of white men, including the white woman’s husband and brother-in-law, intervened to put an end to the white driver’s actions, the white woman reached that point of becoming totally comfortable with the totally uncomfortable and joined the line of black women standing and singing a hymn in the face of the angry mob.

Jesus set the example for this type of courage as he turned his face toward Jerusalem and his final confrontation with the principalities and powers that stood against everything God intended for God’s people. He was blessed with the encouragement of his ancestors in faith Moses and Elijah. We, too, are blessed with such a great cloud of witnesses led by Jesus Christ. With God’s strength we can face whatever forces try to break us from the love of God as we follow his Son’s lead.

Prayer: Lord, keep our eyes on the goal of your love overcoming the world and guide us in our Long Walk Home to your Kingdom. Amen.

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized 
Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council 
of Churches of Christ in the United States of American. Used by permission. All rights 
reserved.