Transfiguration | Sermon | Bishop Kevin Robertson

Welcome to Trinity Sermons. Here at Trinity Church, Streetsville, we want to share sermons

with you as we journey together to love Jesus, live like Jesus, and lead others to Jesus.

Today we read about the Transfiguration in the Gospel of Mark, and we had guest preacher,

Bishop Kevin Robertson with us today, and he talked to us about revisiting our baptismal

promises to reorient us towards doing God's work. Thanks for listening and we hope you enjoy. God bless.

A reading from the Gospel of Mark, chapter 9, verses 2 through 9. After six days, Jesus took

Mark 9:2–9

Peter, James, and John with him, and led them up a high mountain where they were all alone.

There he was transfigured before them. His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the

world could bleach them. And there appeared before them Elijah and Moses, who were talking with Jesus.

Peter said to Jesus, Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters, one for you,

one for Moses, and one for Elijah. He did not know what to say. They were so frightened. Then a cloud

appeared and covered them, and a voice came from the cloud. This is my son, whom I love, listen to him.

Suddenly when they looked around, they no longer saw anyone with them except Jesus. As they were

coming down the mountain, Jesus gave them orders not to tell anyone what they had seen until the

son of man had risen from the dead. This is the word of the Lord. Thank you, Rob. What a lovely

introduction. Thank you. And so good to be with all of you here at Trinity this morning for

confirmation and for those who are being welcomed or received into the Anglican Church. I'm aware

that some of you may not maybe have met a bishop before if you've come to Trinity from a different

tradition besides the Anglican Church. So if you want to know more about bishops, you can flip open

the pages of the Bible and read some of the things that bishops do and are about in 1st Timothy.

So it's my real joy to be here today. Thank you for welcoming me. This is not my first visit to

Trinity, but it's my first visit here as a bishop. And whenever young people or whenever people

generally stand and confirm their faith in Jesus Christ, that's a great day. And the fact that all

of you are doing that today, that all of you have been praying about this and preparing for this day

is not just a great thing for you and for your families, but also for this church. What a sign

of growth and vitality that we have people committing and recommitting themselves to Jesus

Christ. Before I say a few words about the reading that we just heard, Transfiguration Sunday, we

often call this and we just heard the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus from Mark's Gospel,

from the 9th chapter of Mark's Gospel. But before I say a few words about that,

may I just say how blessed you are to have Rob Hirkman as your pastor?

I did have the joy and privilege of welcoming Rob into the diocese a few years ago when he was at

his previous appointment at St. Paul's Blur Street. And I didn't know Rob very well. I knew of him

through connections in the Diocese of Niagara. But as I came to know him and his gifts and saw

how he carried out and exercised those gifts at St. Paul's, I thought, you know, we have really

stolen a good one from the Diocese of Niagara. And the fact that he's been serving here with

such faithfulness and passion and enthusiasm for the last three years, I mean, I only need to look

out at the congregation today and see the fruit of that labor. Of course, it's not all on Rob's

shoulders. All of us are ministers of the gospel. All of us are called to live into our vocation

as disciples of Jesus. But leadership matters. And Rob, I'm so grateful to you that you have

accepted this call from God to serve in this community of faith. Thank you.

About 12 years ago now, maybe 10, no 12,

I had the opportunity to be in Western Canada in Banff National Park. And if you've been,

how many of you have been to Banff? Lots of you? Yeah, yeah. Such a beautiful part of our country.

And just outside the town of Canmore, there is a relatively small mountain called Ha-Ling Peak.

And you can hike up Ha-Ling Peak. And when I was there with my spouse 12 years ago,

we decided that we would hike up there for kids. And so we decided to go into Canmore,

get the trail map, and figure out how to get to the top of this mountain. We were told that we

could climb up and back in a day. And that seemed reasonable. We didn't have any camping

equipment or anything like that. So we went into the office and it was September. And they were

showing us how to, you know, how to get to the base of the trail, how to make our way up. And

just as we were about to leave the office, one of the guys who worked there said, oh, by the way,

do you have any bear spray? Like, what? Why would I need bear spray? And they said, well,

it's September. And this is the time of year when bears are preparing to hibernate,

and they're hungry, and they're going to be looking for food wherever they can get it.

So I said, well, I don't think we want to take our chances of climbing up there without any

bear spray. So we bought an $80 canister of bear spray. I think it was. And I kind of got freaked

out. I have to tell you, when we left the office that day, there was a little holster for it.

And I remember putting on this holster. And as we started to climb Ha-Ling Peak,

I kept my finger on the trigger, just in case. And we get into hike and hike and hike and hike.

And we get into hike and hike and every little sound in the bushes behind is that a bear? Is

that a bear? Is that a bear? Anyway, by the time we got to the top of Ha-Ling Peak, I had not seen

a single bear. All those noises were squirrels and chipmunks and that kind of thing. And I realized

that I had been so distracted by the possibility of being lunged at by a bear from the bushes,

that I had failed to really appreciate this amazing place where we found ourselves. The

beauty of the other mountains all around us. The beauty of nature, of trees and rocks and the view

looking back down into the valley. And so once we got to the top and didn't see a bear, I was a lot

more relaxed on the way back down. I took my hand off the trigger and hoped for the best.

I tell you that story today. And I've been thinking about that because I don't do a whole

lot of mountain climbing. But the story that we hear today from Mark's gospel is one of those

cases in the Bible where there's a mountain. Now, mountains, if you've been to the Holy Land,

the land of the Holy One, as I like to call it, you will know that the mountains there are not

like the Rockies. They're smaller, right? I mean, Mount Sinai, it's pretty big. But the Mount of

the Beatitudes that we hear about in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter five, and in fact,

the Mount of Transfiguration, as it's called, where this story takes place, are not really high

mountains. They're not like Ha-Ling Peak. And yet, they're far enough away for Jesus and Peter and

James and John to get away. And I think that's the purpose of them going up to a high mountain,

is to get away from all of the pressures that exist down below. We know from the pages of the

Gospels that Jesus was often pursued. In last Sunday's reading, at least in the church where I

was, it said the disciples at one time were hunting for him. That's a pretty strong word,

right? And so for Jesus to be able to get away with his closest followers, with his closest disciples,

that inner circle, Peter, James, and John, he took them up to this peak. And there, something quite

amazing happened, right? We know this story because it appears in three of the four Gospels,

that as they get up to the top, Jesus' clothes become dazzling white. Some of the other Gospel

writers say, his face shone like the sun. This moment of unprecedented and uninterrupted

glory for Peter and James and John. And so what do they try to do in this moment? They try to hang

on to it, right? Like we've never experienced this before. Maybe we're never going to experience it

again. So let's just hang on and keep Jesus all to ourselves. Just the three of us, we're going to

hang on to him and Moses and Elijah, the law and the prophets appearing there with Jesus on either

side. Well, let's build not one shelter, not two, but three. And we'll keep Jesus and Moses and

Elijah all to ourselves. We won't share them. We'll just hang out up here at the top of the mountain

where life feels so good. But of course, we know that that's not what happened. A voice

boomed from the heavens, reminding us of that story of Jesus' own baptism, right? By John,

this is my son. Listen to him. And when they looked up again, Moses and Elijah were gone.

There was no more dazzling white clothing, just Jesus there by himself. And they come back down

the mountain and Jesus asks them, orders them not to tell anybody what they have seen and heard

until after the son of man has been raised from the dead. I think preachers often look at this

story and say, one of the lessons here is that we cannot simply glory in the four walls of our

temples. That as Peter and James and John wanted to be just with Jesus, just in the beautiful light

to bask in the glory, their mission, in fact, was to go back down the mountain, to go out into the

world and to do the work of Jesus, the work of healing and reconciliation, the good news of

proclaiming the goodness of God and the coming of the kingdom of God. They were of no use to anybody

at the top of that mountain. Where they were called to be was down with the people doing the

work of the kingdom of God. I think there is some truth that, you know, we, and today I'm really

reminded of it with this amazing singing and this incredible community of people who clearly love

each other, that it would be very easy for us to just hang out in here, right? Like, this is a great

church and you've got great music and you've probably got great coffee and it could be just

a fun place to simply be with one another, to bask in the glory of one another's fellowship

and the knowledge that we are loved by God and Jesus Christ. But our call is to be out in the

world. Our call is to proclaim by our lives and our words the good news of God and Christ and

his saving work, not only for us, but indeed for the whole world. Now, those of you who are being

confirmed today, you're going to take on some promises and some of those promises are anchored

here in these four walls. Some of them have to do with staying with Jesus in worship and praise and

thanksgiving, but some of those promises will send you out, will send us out. And I want to just

quickly go through those six promises because it's not just those of you who are being confirmed that

will recite them. In fact, it's all of us in the church today, whether we have been baptized and

confirmed, received into the Anglican church or not, all of us are going to be asked to say that we

will do these things with God's help. The first promise is this. Will you continue in the Apostles'

teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in the prayers? That's one of those mountain

top moments, right? We get to do that right here. We get to come back here every Sunday or perhaps

to a different church and we get to bask in the glory of the Word broken open and the bread broken

at the table. Will you continue in the Apostles' teaching and fellowship, that is grounding ourselves

in 2,000 years of what it means to be a follower of Jesus? Second, will you persevere in resisting evil

and whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord? So this baptismal promise, this

confirmation promise is the one where we recognize that we all fall short of who God has called and

intended us to be. We are all broken. We all have broken relationships. We all screw up, some of us

more than others. But we come back here to make our peace with one another and perhaps more

importantly to make our peace with God, to ask forgiveness and to be absolved of that sin and

that brokenness and to begin again through the power of Jesus Christ. Third, and this is getting

us from the top of the mountain and out into the world, will you proclaim by word and example the

good news of God in Christ? That is, when you leave this church today, will you find ways in your own

unique context at school or at work, in your family life, among your friends, to proclaim

in your words and in your deeds the good news of God in Christ? That Jesus has come into the world

to save the world and that is our hope. Fourth, will you seek and serve Christ in all persons,

loving yourself? The baptismal life, the confirmation life, is not just about that

mountaintop. It's about serving others. It's about reclaiming or reclaiming that ministry that

Jesus models the one who came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.

Your call, our call, is one of service. Fifth, will you strive for justice and peace among all

people and respect the dignity of every human being? This is the promise that you're going to

make today to say that your faith means something, that your faith needs to be put into action,

that when we look around this church and we look around our communities and our world,

every single person deserves to be treated with respect and dignity because each one of us is made

in the loving image of God. Not one of us is beyond that. And so the gospel call is to respect the

dignity of every human being and to seek justice and peace. And then the sixth promise, and this

is the final one, will you strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and respect, sustain,

and renew the life of the earth? This is the promise that is grounded in our creation as a

part of this planet, sharing with all of the other beautiful creatures that God has created

and our recognition that this is our home, this earth, at least in this life, this fragile earth,

our island home. We have to take care of the planet. All of the work that's being done around

climate change and creation care reminds us as followers of Jesus that this is actually a sacred

responsibility, that we have something to pass along to future generations, that this earth

matters, and that God loves this world. Now those questions set a pretty high bar, right? Like,

that's a lot to do. That's a lot to commit to today for those of you who are being confirmed.

For those of us who have been walking the way of Jesus for a while, it's a pretty stark reminder

that this is not an easy call. And yet it is the call of Jesus to come down from the mountain,

to go out into the world, to be beacons of God's saving grace in every interaction,

at every opportunity, around every corner. Of course, we don't do that alone, right?

God the Holy Spirit leads us and empowers us for all of this wonderful work that lies ahead,

and so does the community of the church. Each one of us has a responsibility to the other to help

support them in their life of faith. I hope you have been and will continue to pray for those who

are being confirmed and received today. It is our sacred vocation to uphold one another in prayer

and to help empower one another for the work of the gospel in the world.

So here we are, ready to celebrate confirmation in just a few moments time, ready to hear these

courageous and bold promises that are being made by a number of young people. In so doing, may we

be reminded of God's call on each one of us to be a faithful follower, a disciple of Jesus Christ,

and an instrument for the coming of God's kingdom here on earth. Amen.

Thank you so much for joining us today, and we hope that as you come down from the mountain today,

you found the Bishop's Sermon 1 that you will carry with you all week.

And if you enjoyed the show, please take a minute to rate and review our podcast so that we can

continue to spread the good news with others. And please come back again next week as we begin a

brand new sermon series, Famous Last Words, where we will be looking at Jesus' final moments.

Today's sermon was taken from the February 11th, 2024 service at Trinity Church,

Streetsville in Mississauga, Ontario.