The stunning picture of Trinity Church, Newport was taken by friend and parishioner Pieter Roos. Apparently the scene attracted a group of people with iPhones and cameras memorializing the view. This is what church should be… a place of transformation attracting others to stop and look and wonder. “Communities of miraculous expectation and glorious transformation” (Bp. Claude Payton).

At the end of the sermon audio listen for the infant voice proclaiming “alleloolooia” – precious. Truly a moment of transformation

Click below for sermon audio:

Sermon Preached at Trinity Church, Newport, Rhode Island
Sunday February 7 2016, The Reverend Alan Neale, “Sacred Metamorphosis”

Professor C.S. Lewis was an Oxford Don, a Reluctant Convert, and a Vigorous Apologist for the Christian Faith. By his own narrative he was converted on the top of an Oxford omnibus, “the most dejected and reluctant convert in all of England”. He converted to Christianity in 1929 but did not surrender to Christ until 1931! Some years later doubtless with pipe in one hand and pint of bitter/beer in the other he was told, “Mr. Lewis, you are not much of an advertisement for Christianity”. To which he replied, “Madam, you should have seen me before I became a Christian”.

By that vibrant bon mot Lewis declared his conviction that the Christian life is one of transformation; a constant process with advances, with relapses but always in process of transformation.

Today’s readings from Hebrew and Christian Scriptures present to us the necessary presence and the unequivocal power of transformation.

When we resist transformation, we embrace decay – in our lives, in our relationships, in communities and above all in churches. When we resist transformation, we embrace decay.

It IS said of many a church, “Nothing keeps this place going like inertia”. In such communities the experience of transformation is unsought, unnecessary, ignored and disdained. And so the funeral liturgy for a church begins long before the final amen, long before “Ichabod” (Glory has departed) is inscribed above the doors.
Transformation is crucial to the human psyche and is warp and woof of the divine character; so, how’s it going for you?

The setting for transformation. When we spend time with God, when we spend time engaged in the business of God then we inevitably are being transformed. Exodus 34:29-30 “When Moses had been speaking with God, when he carried down the two Tablets of testimony, the skin of his face glowed” though he did not know it. So pervasive, so intensive was the inner transformation that it could not but be evidenced in his appearance. Paul alerts us to the way in which religion can stifle, throttle, and quench transformation. Listen (2 Corinthians 3:17) “When God is personally present… the old constricting legislation is obsolete. We’re free of it! All of us! We recognize that God is a living presence, not a piece of chiseled stone.” And thus it is also on the mountain (whether it be Tabor or Hermon), as Jesus is starkly engaged with the Father’s presence, as Jesus prepares for his work of “departure, his exodus” so he is transformed.
And note the setting is not prescribed geographically, literally but spiritually, eternally – Peter’s desire to begin a construction company on the mountain top was gently, but firmly, ignored. Maybe here we find the origins of the “edifice complex”?

The experience of transformation. Your God, my God, our God aches to overwhelm us with waters of transformation; to propel us decisively into these waters until we surrender to the waters and move in the direction they would have us go.
(man falling of cliff story…?)
In today’s Gospel, Luke presents Peter as the incorrigible, resolute victim of “foot in mouth” disease – yet again! Not for him Peter the wise counsel of Bill Wilson, “Nothing pays off like restraint of pen and tongue.” Not knowing what to say, unfettered by considered reflection Peter blurts, bursts out, “I know, let’s build three booths here” so we can stay. The experience of transformation cannot be categorized, labeled and filed away – it is for the moment and there will be more, far more, to come. St. Paul suggests (is that ever a Pauline attitude?), Paul suggests that Moses kept the veil over his face because he did not want the people to know that the transformation was fading – 2 Corinthians 3:13 “Moses wore a veil so the children of Israel would not notice that the glory was fading away”. Seems Moses and Peter were members of the same HOGALAP society (Hold Onto Glory As Long As Long As Possible). How sad, how very sad indeed.

The consequence of transformation. Simply put, though not simply attained, the consequence of being transformed is that we become agents of transformation. Moses was sent down the mountain in order to transform the people from a whining and idolatrous rabble to a grateful and devout society of friends. Paul and Corinthian Christians were sent from moments of transformation to live with courage, to behave with integrity and to be transparent in all their deeds and thus to be agents of transformation.
And when Jesus descends the mountain with his trio of ‘best buddies’, they land in the worst of imbroglios but become agents of transformation as reputations are rebuilt, evil is confronted and exorcised, freedom is gained and relationships are renewed. Is not this the transformation of which we yearn, pray, crave to be agents?

Yesterday I listened to Dr. King preaching that most evocative and glorious speech “I’ve been to the mountain top.” He goes on to say “And I have seen the promised land”. Experiencing transformation, Dr. King and those with him ‘went down the mountain to a place of pain, suffering and inequality’… but they were agents of transformation and the transformation continues even today.

Click: Dr. King “I’ve been to the moutaintop”

Yesterday I was sent a most glorious photograph of Trinity Church, it was simply aglow, resplendent, transfigured, transformed by the sun that shone upon it. Thank you Pieter Roos.

Let us be transformed as God in Christ shines, no beams, upon us. And as people gathered to use iPhone and camera to memorialize the scene, may the church draw the awe-filled attention of those who stop and wonder and commit.

This must be the nature of church. Bishop Claude Payton described authentic church as “a community of miraculous expectation and glorious transformation”. Do I hear an Amen?

This is ours for the taking by the grace of God. Do I hear an Alleluia?