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[Sermon] Recentered in the Light

Pastor Hector Garfias-Toledo



The Transfiguration is not simply a miraculous spectacle—it is a spiritual compass. In a world that constantly tugs at our identity and fractures our focus, faith requires intentional recentering in the presence of Christ. Pastor Hector explores how Jesus draws the disciples up the mountain not to stay, but to be re-grounded before descending again. Like hikers checking a compass, we must pause to remember our direction. When we lose sight of who we are, the voice from the cloud calls us back: “Beloved.” Recentered in that truth, we walk back into the world transformed.


Sermon Transcript

From YouTube's automatic captions, lightly edited by AI for readability.


Grace to you and peace from God our father, mother, creator, our parent, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shined on the top of the mountain—our savior, our lord, our friend. And we said, Amen.

 

I have mentioned this several times through the course of the time that I have been serving with you, but to preach about the Transfiguration always brings me, uh, PTSD, because this was the first sermon that I had to preach for the preaching class in the seminary—in English. [laughter] So to try to explain something that nobody can explain in their own language, to try to explain it in a different language in front of the preaching professor in the chapel of the Episcopal seminary—well, it still brings me some memories. And if you see me nervous today, it is maybe because I’m having some flashbacks.

 

As I was listening to the story, and Jade and I were kind of just preparing the sermons—because she’s also preaching today on this passage—it’s like, one more year of the Transfiguration. What can we say about the Transfiguration? And then here in Trinity we chose only one other scripture. She had two more scriptures, so she had more choices. I have only the Old Testament and the New Testament. So I said, “Where do I go with this?”

 

Well, as I was start reading the scriptures, both Old and New Testament, I can see that this story that we hear today is a story that has been building up through the season of Epiphany. We started with John and Jesus, their baptism, the calling of all the disciples, the Beatitudes. We were talking about Jesus reminding people of their blessedness. And then last Sunday we were talking about Jesus explaining why the disciples are here: you will be salt and light. And then, in the Gospel of Matthew, the evangelist takes us to the peak, to the top of the mountain, to show us and to tell us about the mother of all Epiphany stories.

 

Oh yes, it’s Jesus with Moses and with Elijah showing up in front of the disciples and hearing the voice that reminds them that Jesus is God’s beloved Son. But then the question is: why was it important for the early church, for the disciples, for the early church, and for us—this story? Why is it so relevant for us in the Christian church to hear this story at this time of the year?

 

And I think that in order to answer that question, we need to engage—deeply engage—and to allow ourselves to be part of the story. As Pastor Ken is saying, it is not just a matter of intellectual or rational understanding of this story. It is not just a matter of skepticism or a matter of how theologically correct it is. This story is fueled with symbolisms that convey the whole message of the relationship of a God who becomes flesh to be with us—one of us, one with us, one for us, and one in us.

 

So, as I said earlier in the Epiphany season, it seems like we are just fast-forwarding the story and the life of Jesus, right? Jesus is born. Suddenly his story. Then he’s doing miracles, then he’s teaching the disciples, and now he’s going to the cross. That was a quick story about Jesus. But now this is a story that helps us to make a pause and actually rewind a little bit. So rewind with me. Ready?

 

Chapter 14 and 15—Matthew. We see that Jesus is caring for the crowds, crowds. He’s caring for people, feeding people. We move to chapter 16, and then he talks to the Twelve. Don’t get distracted—the Twelve disciples, not the twelve who were yelling last Sunday, okay?

 

He talks to the Twelve disciples and he says, “By the way, you are going to be persecuted. People will chase you. People will mistreat you. People will probably kill you. Come follow me.”

 

And Peter—our good friend Peter—says, “No way. This is not going to happen, Jesus, because I’m going to stop this.” And Jesus then shows us, through Peter, in many ways how sometimes we become an obstacle for the unfolding good news of God in Jesus. “Stay away from me, Satan,” he said.

 

And then in chapter 17—now the chapter that we are studying—we see that he goes from the crowds to the Twelve to three, to three disciples that are taken to experience the identity of the one who is Jesus. So: crowds, Twelve, three. Jesus takes these three, and with these three on the mountain he is basically asking, “With everything that you have seen and heard, who is ready to follow?”

 

You and I, in our lives, many times need to make those pauses—this type of pause in our lives—to reevaluate and to reassess who we are, why we are here, and where we are going.

 

He took them to the mountain. He asked them who is ready. We are taken to this mountain, where we are gathered here today in the presence of Jesus, and we ask the question today: who is ready? Come and be reentered in order to be the one who I call you to be in an ordinary world. Come—[snorts]—be transformed with me, says Jesus.

 

As I look at the story, as I reflect on our own journeys, I have come to believe that this story of the Transfiguration is basically a portrait of our spiritual journey. It’s a portrait of the rhythms of our own lives.

 

Every day when we wake up, we are with our loved one next to us. And we go into the larger family, and from the larger family we go into the crowds to face the reality of the world. And at the end of the day, from the crowds—where we were living and staying and working and interacting—we come to the family, the fewer, and then we come to the one—[snorts]—who walks with us, our partner. And it is in that interaction that you and I find life, meaning, maybe more questions for life.

 

Here at church, every Sunday, I try to remind ourselves that we are the scattered church. Here, in this building all together, is the gathering of the scattered church. We live a rhythm—a spiritual rhythm—as church, too. We go from the crowds of daily life, and we are gathered here to be with the One who comes to us to transform us, so that you and I go from the One to the fewer to the crowds in the world. It is this in and out that brings life and meaning to who we are as Christians.

 

This experience of the Transfiguration, to me, again, is a portrait of our spiritual journey. It is, in some way, an itinerary of this spiritual journey, where you and I encounter the current forces and conditions and environments that pull, push, and crush us in many directions.

 

It is this itinerary of our spiritual lives where you and I find that our hearts and our minds are sometimes all over the place with everything that is going on around the world.

 

In a world that is crazy, and that sometimes expects things from us that make us believe that we need to fix it or that we need to maybe find ways to be relevant, it is a world in which you and I also get torn apart, split into many personalities. We become—or we lose sight of—the One because we want to fit in a world that has expectations for each one of us.

 

I think that sometimes the epiphanies of God in our lives are scary for us—not necessarily because we do not understand them, or maybe because they are too bright and we cannot see them, but because the epiphanies of God in our lives are different from the daily and overwhelming lies of this world. Because the epiphanies come to offer us something that is completely different from what this world offers us.

 

Epiphany offers us life, hope, and joy. And that can be scary, because we have become so used to what this world offers, which is division, hate, separation, and division. Epiphanies are life-giving experiences in this world. Unfortunately, most of the time it is life-sucking, and we are not used to hearing the possibilities, the trust, and the hope, because every morning we hear how unbelievable we are, how different you and I are, how much we need to be ashamed for who we are.

 

But the Transfiguration—the epiphany of God in our lives—is different. It is about telling us that Jesus, yes, takes us where Jesus finds us, but that Jesus will never leave us where Jesus finds us; that we, with Jesus, are transformed to be able to be reentered and sent back into the ordinary world to bring the message of the Epiphany of God into this world.

 

In our lives, you and I are constantly recentering ourselves, re-grounding ourselves. We know how important it is. If you hike, you know that every few miles you need to check your compass or your phone to find where you are—to reenter yourself. But not only to have a sense of location; sometimes it is also to change our mindset, to encourage ourselves to continue, and to find the strength to go on in the journey.

 

The disciples were going to be pulled and pushed and crushed. They had to reenter themselves to be re-grounded in the source of strength and hope. So this spiritual journey is also a spiritual time of growth that is not planned as a faith tour or a travel. It is maybe more like a roller coaster. In our spiritual journey, there will be highs and lows, and there will be times that will be very painful in our lives. But even in the midst of that painfulness, we find life and transformation.

 

We see that in our current situation now. We can see that the suffering that has been inflicted in communities has had the power to bring people together. Death and suffering move hearts and agitate our spirits. But when the power is not centered in the source of life, healing, and transformation—whose name is Jesus—then our efforts can degenerate into a self-destructive force that brings more pain and suffering in a downward spiral that eventually leads us to death and destruction.

 

But when we reenter our lives in Jesus—God made flesh—Jesus in whom we hear that we belong, we encounter and we experience the transforming power of the living, life-giving divine love of compassion, so that you and I can be more centered in our lives as we grow spiritually for our journeys. Our lives become more centered and grounded in the Lord, in the Lord Jesus, to face this world.

 

And Jesus knew that, because at the end of the passage we hear—and this is one of the sentences that probably I will spend more time on next time, because I started thinking about this too—when Jesus, after they have this wonderful experience and they maybe kind of understand what is going on, then Jesus tells them, “Well, let’s go down. Don’t tell anyone what you have seen until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”

 

So after all these mother-of-all epiphanies in the stories, Jesus says, “Don’t tell anybody.”

 

As I said, I don’t fully understand, but I think that what Jesus is saying is that this cannot just become one more story that we tell, but an experience that we share.

 

And maybe that’s the invitation for us today, in our spiritual journey that we are walking today. It is one or more of those opportunities—perhaps being here—to be on the top of the mountain, to experience the transforming power and life-giving presence of the Lord in our lives today.

 

Maybe we are feeling like the disciples. What are we coming with in our hearts today? What needs to be transformed in your life today? How are we going to go down the hill again into the ordinary world after this mountain experience of the gathering of the scattered church in this place?

 

We will have to go back, my siblings in Christ—back down to the ordinary world, where all looks so ordinary and in need. And we need to live a life that reflects this light that we have seen in Jesus and in one another—as we share bread, as we pray for one another, as we share peace, as we encourage one another.

 

These are the ways that the Epiphany becomes an experience for each one of us—an experience that we are called to share as we go on in this spiritual journey.

 

May the Lord give us the strength, the will, and the joy of knowing that we have seen the light of Jesus in this gathering of the church.

 

Thanks be to God. Amen.

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