<html><body><p style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 13.33px; margin: 0px;">After last week, I'm splitting this draft for Sunday into three parts to see if it'll get through.</span></p><p style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 13.33px; margin: 0px;"><br></span></p><p style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 13.33px; margin: 0px;">Last week's second part never did make it! 8-(</span></p><p style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 13.33px; margin: 0px;"><br></span></p><p style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 13.33px; margin: 0px;">Bob</span></p><p style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 13.33px; margin: 0px;"><br></span></p><p style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 13.33px; margin: 0px;"><br></span></p><p style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 13.33px; margin: 0px;"><br></span></p><p style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 13.33px; margin: 0px;">THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>THE LAST SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY b</span></p><span style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal;"></span><p style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 13.33px; margin: 0px;">2 KINGS 2:1-12<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>11<sup>th</sup> FEBRUARY, 2018</span></p><span style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal;"></span><p style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 13.33px; margin: 0px;">2 CORINTHIANS 4:3-6<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>PSALM 50:1-6</span></p><span style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal;"></span><p style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 13.33px; margin: 0px;">MARK 9:2-9</span></p><span style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal;"></span><p style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 13.33px; margin: 0px;"> </span></p><span style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal;"></span><p style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 13.33px; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Notice the illustration of the Transfiguration of Jesus on the announcement page of this morning’s bulletin. <sup>1</sup> Giovanni Bellini shows Jesus, with Moses and Elijah, and Peter, James and John, on a grassy high place. Curiously enough, however, where Jesus is transfigured in the imagination of the painter isn’t that far from a village. A cowherd is taking an animal out to pasture – or possibly home for milking, we can’t tell. But he’s quite oblivious to what’s happening not that far away. Nor, for that matter, do those around Jesus seem to be paying any attention to anyone but Him. Were I there with Him, I’m pretty sure I’d be doing the same.</span></p><span style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal;"></span><p style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 13.33px; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Now Bellini <b><span style="text-decoration-line: underline;">DOES</span></b> show both artistic licence <b><span style="text-decoration-line: underline;">AND</span></b> imagination in his representation of what the Gospel describes, and yet you might say, quite justifiably, that all that he was doing was tweaking the perspective. I believe he was inspired to show Jesus and the cowherd in this juxtaposition. It makes the point of Jesus’ connectedness to the world.</span></p><span style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal;"></span><p style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 13.33px; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>What strikes me about this painting is that Jesus, in all His majesty, could almost reach out to touch that cowherd, and the cow too, for that matter.</span></p><span style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal;"></span><p style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 13.33px; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I wonder why I haven’t seen any representation quite like this before. I wonder why it hasn’t crossed my mind. Usually, our thoughts go to Jesus in some incredibly remote area, as if, somehow, He were untouchable, unreachable. But Bellini, in what I consider a stroke of genius, presents us with the glorified Jesus on the doorstep of the smell of a byre, of the muddy, hoof-trodden pathways of life. After all, John, in the fourth Gospel, said, “We saw His Glory.” Glory and common dirt are reunited once again, pointing us forward to next Wednesday when we’ll hear the words, “Remember, O woman; remember O man, that you are dust and to dust you shall return”, with the extra words implied today, “before you too will come into glory.”</span></p><span style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal;"></span><p style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 13.33px; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I’m sure that Jesus needed reassurance that He was on the right track towards the end of His shortened ministry. I’m sure Jesus was fearful of what would happen in the days to come. I’m sure He knew that this transfiguration was for His benefit as much as for Peter’s, and James’, and John’s. Whether He was calm, as most illustrators depict, or anguished as He stood surrounded by the Glory of God, what happened that day was for Jesus, to assure Him that He would be surrounded, covered in glory as He went to Jerusalem and His eventual execution.</span></p><span style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal;"></span><p style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 13.33px; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Yet that could have been told to Jesus by Himself, as had happened so often when He went out by Himself in the very early hours of the morning, before even the birds were up. Not this day, though. John, James and Peter were there representing not just the other disciples; not just the hundreds of people who’d been touched in one way or another by what Jesus had said and done;<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>John, James and Peter represented us right here, and every single person who’ll come after us, showing <b><span style="text-decoration-line: underline;">US</span></b> the glory that is to come, to reassure <b><span style="text-decoration-line: underline;">US</span></b> that, no matter what pain, what loneliness, what discouragement, what abuse we may be experiencing right now, nothing can take from us the Glory of God.</span></p><span style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal;"></span><p style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 13.33px; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>So Bellini, guided by the Spirit, draws us to see just how close is Jesus’ contact with the world, and how present is the Glory of God. As the writer of the second letter to the Corinthian Christians put it, in the midst of the pain, the persecution, the shaming that was going on the life of early Christians – from among their own friends as well as from unbelievers – in the midst of everything that hurts, God’s Glory is not beyond our grasp. “If our Gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing.” <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Somehow, they are <b><span style="text-decoration-line: underline;">SO</span></b> unenlightened. It’s not that they don’t understand – few, if any, of us can say that we understand. But some people, even those around us, cannot accept that God’s Son has come close to us and has stayed close to us. There are those in the first century as well as the twenty-first century who have erected walls to keep out from our hearts, and minds, and lives the loving embrace of Jesus which calls us to follow Him.</span></p><span style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal;"></span><p style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 13.33px; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The first letter to the Corinthians could not be called a successful document, at least it was far from wholly successful. “… if Paul hoped to have no more trouble from the Corinthian church he was to be grievously disappointed, though it is fair to remark that the cause of the new troubles seems to have entered Corinth from without.” <sup>2</sup></span></p><span style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal;"></span><p style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; line-height: normal; text-indent: 48px;"><span style="font-size: 13.33px; margin: 0px;">So it is, two thousand years on. I wonder what it is that makes us so susceptible to doubt, and to those people or ideas that would prey on us.</span></p><span style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal;"></span><p style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; line-height: normal; text-indent: 48px;"><span style="font-size: 13.33px; margin: 0px;">There are many around us who are cynical about faith and have become distrustful of the Church because they’ve been brought to think that Jesus is, somehow, as far removed in both experience and concern about everyday life as a Person could possibly be. Many have come to think something along the lines of “pie in the sky when you die”. They’ve become unable to think of Jesus with His hands dirty. They’ve been pitied or ridiculed, possibly, for committing to a belief system which others say is out of touch with reality. So this celebration today, this Transfiguration of Jesus, serves to bring the Glory of God into the lives of those who wear less than immaculate clothes, or struggle to find enough food, or whose lives seem devoid of things to bring them joy.</span></p><span style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal;"></span><p style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; line-height: normal; text-indent: 48px;"><br></p><p style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; line-height: normal; text-indent: 48px;"><br></p><p style="font-size: 16px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; line-height: normal; text-indent: 48px;"><br></p></body></html>