In the Chrysalis (Transfiguration)

This sermon was first preached at Augustana Lutheran Church in Portland, OR on February 15, 2026.

​The full livestream of the service may be viewed here (sermon begins at 35:45). The sermon with captions may be viewed here or below . 

Scripture texts:  
Exodus  24:12-18
Matthew  17:1-9

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Good morning, Augustana! And welcome to the end of the beginning, or perhaps the beginning of the end. Today is the culmination of the season of Epiphany, the celebration of the manifestation of God in Christ. And a curious end it is. After spending six weeks reveling in the magnificent vulgarity of God transgressing the boundaries of eternity to become flesh and blood in the birth of baby Jesus, a sacred transfusion of holiness into the humdrum of humanity; today we come to the mountaintop, alongside Peter, James, and John, to witness God transcend the boundaries of flesh and blood and earth and matter, to reveal Their blinding majesty in the transfigured Christ. 

I, for one, love that every single year on Transfiguration Sunday we have occasion to read The Very Hungry Caterpillar in worship and wonder for a moment at the similarly magnificent transmogrification of a caterpillar into a beautiful butterfly. That story skips over the vulgarity of the process, even as it shows us in vivid color what a caterpillar must do to Become with a capital B. But we, friends, will not skip over it today, because it’s incredible and illuminating.

See, in nature, metamorphosis -- which is the English translation of the Greek word MetamorPHOo, which our Scriptures translate as “transfiguration” -- is an extraordinary process of utter, total, disgusting un- and re-becoming, of death and resurrection, of transfiguring from one kind of being and body to another one entirely, through a four-stage process from egg to larva to pupa and, finally, winged adult. According to Wonderopolous, an educational hub created and designed for kids but is also perfect for my own grown-up imagination, it is “during this Pupa stage that the caterpillar’s old body dies and a new body forms inside a protective shell known as a chrysalis…. There the caterpillar's body digests itself from the inside out: The same juices our Very Hungry Caterpillar once used to digest all that delicious food as a larva, it now uses to break down its own body…into imaginal cells. These Imaginal -- or, imagined -- cells are undifferentiated, which means they can become any type of cell which come together to form the new body” from the sludge. 

What’s striking to me about that whole process -- aside from the fact that it’s magical and gross -- is that 80% of all animal species do it. Not in the exact same way, but they do go through metamorphosis. It also strikes me that biologically speaking, humans don’t -- at least not according to what we know so far. Except….we know it can happen. Because it has happened, and way more than once. ​

After all, before Jesus’s metamorphosis on the mountain today, Jesus was the metamorphosis of God: The Intangible Infinitude of Eternal Being Itself transfigured into the flesh and blood and bone of Mary’s infant.

Not only that, but in the short time since Jesus called his first three disciples who now join him on the mountain today, Peter, James, and John have themselves already witnessed Jesus heal countless people, cast out countless demons, and even, on at least one occasion, transform a dead girl back into a living one. 

So I guess it shouldn’t surprise us that none of them seem especially amazed by Jesus’s transfiguration into glowing face and body of light, or particularly startled by Moses and Elijah showing up for conversation with the Ancient of Days. Indeed, it would appear that they are, at most, starstruck and honored to be standing in the presence of such towering figures. Which is why Peter doesn’t yet fall to his knees but instead says, “Lord, it is so good to be here,” and then does precisely what Jesus taught them to do, which is to offer hospitality, with the hope of prolonging the mystical affair. My old professor Matt Skinner might be right, that Peter just figured they may have a lot to talk about and perhaps they’d like to sit down for a while? 

I don’t know, but in my holy imagination this whole moment feels a lot like walking into a party you didn’t know was happening, whose guests are all way more famous and important than you, and, realizing you have been brought into something even bigger than you already knew, you offer up the only thing you’ve got: A cheap bottle of wine you hope they’ll appreciate enough to drink a couple glasses; to linger long enough for you to stay a fly on the wall of a holy house. 

And, look, I love them for this: I love that these three guys who have already seen and have probably, themselves, already done some impossible things, are, in this moment, absolutely just trying to be cool and stay casual in the presence of their long-dead heroes as Peter, their spokesman, asks, “Would you like a tent, sirs?” 

We don’t know how long the six were up on that mountain before Peter did ask -- perhaps it was immediate, or maybe they’d all been there for long enough that Peter offered the tents, the way you might offer a seat once you realize the quick chat with someone who just popped by to say hello has turned into something more or deeper.

Regardless, as Peter is offering hospitality, a blindingly bright cloud moves over them all and a Voice speaks from within it, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!” 

And this, friends, is where the disciples don’t just falter, but fall: facedown on the ground, the text says, utterly terrified and awe-struck. And not just because none of them were there at Jesus’s baptism to hear God declare how deeply they Love and delight in Their Son, nor even because of what the Voice tells them. 

They already listen to Jesus, and enjoy the Epiphany of God in Christ, the revelation of the infinite in flesh. They have testified to Christ’s miracles, received his authority to do the same, delighted in Jesus’s friendship and feasted on his wisdom. 

In fact, in the days immediately preceding this mountaintop experience, Peter even recognizes and confesses that Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah. But none of it has yet transmogrified their inner being -- a truth made utterly clear when Peter responds to Jesus’ revelation that to be the Messiah is to suffer and die, by rebuking him for even suggesting such a preposterous thing. 

Jesus, of course, rebukes Peter right back, saying, “get behind me Satan! You’re still thinking like a man who expects a soldier king, and I am not that.” And continues to uncover over the next six days leading right up to this mountain, that true discipleship is cross-bearing self-denial, meaning that following him will cost them their whole selves -- even as it rewards them with new life. 

This is what all they’ve been told but have not yet heard; what they have consumed but not yet digested when they ascend the mountain with Jesus and find themselves in the midst of a wholly different kind of apocalypse: 

This one is made not of words, but of the Voice that births creation from them. One where time simultaneously collapses into the hitch of breath and expands into eternity as the veil between Right Now and Forever becomes literal mist, and everything they cannot yet rationalize in their minds or resolve in their brains, finally begins to rattle their bones, dragging them to the dust, and transfiguring them from ones “who have heard it said” to direct hearers of Creation’s Own Voice. 

If you’ve ever stood in front of a speaker as your favorite musician plays your favorite songs, you know that Sound is more than mere noise, Voice is more than mere vocalization, and that Melody can so fully permeate your being that your veins meander to its mood and your blood and oxygen bend to its rhythms, as your very pulse turns into that Psalm, and brings you to your knees in abject wonder. And you know that you return home a different person than when you left. 

That is where Peter, James, and John are atop that mountain, only amplified times eternity. It is the chrysalis moment for them, when all they’ve been devouring and digesting, which has given them such vibrant, fullness of life, dissolves into the stuff that begins to devour them in ways they cannot possibly imagine. What they do know is they’re no longer interlopers of the discourse between the three holy men. 

For the same Voice that called to Moses from a burning bush; that whispered to Elijah with a still small voice; that claimed Jesus as Their Beloved over the waters of the Jordan, has come to them and directly entrusted to them Creator’s affirmation of Christ’s singularity, and their obligation to listen to him -- not just with their ears but from their bones.  

As they descend the mountain, Jesus offers no explanation, and they do not ask for one. Truth be told, none could suffice because experiences of God’s immediacy and eternity do not lend themselves to language. What they do is translate whatever has been said or heard or taught into a dangerously concrete and unsearchably mysterious reality which they will never understand but to which they are now indelibly bound. They have become and begun something new. 

Nothing has materially changed on the ground: Jesus may have turned into Light up on that mountain, and God’s voice may still be pounding in their literal hearts, but little boys are still suffering grand mal seizures that throw them into fires and water alike, and their dads are still desperately hunting for their healing. There will be more sermons and parables and lessons to give, more hungry mouths to feed and more sick people to heal, all under the watchful, increasingly threatened eye of Empire. Things will not get better but they will continue to be uncovered, until we come to another Mountain where instead of blinding light, darkness will rue the day. Instead of Moses and Elijah, two thieves will hang at Jesus' sides. And instead of reveling under the Father’s unbound Love, Jesus will suffer and die with the weight of His absence. 

As one of my former professors once preached, Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration is the God we want; but Jesus on the mount of Golgotha is the God we get. What stretches out between here and there, now and then — how we choose to move from one mountain to the next — is our chrysalis:

Where the question is not if we’ve been to the mountain, but whether we are seeing the Transfigured Christ moving all around us right down here -- in Trans and Queer and Migrant and Black and Brown and Native and Fat and Disabled and Old and Young and Rich and Poor and Neurospicy Bodies, and reveling in the radiance of their glow? Are we listening for the Voice of God in Christ who calls to us from the earth and sky, in water and fire, and always, always from the mouths of children -- are we rejoicing in their counsel? Are we ready to be brought low in awe of God’s delicious bounty that hovers, hangs, and hums in everyone and everything around us; and fall to our knees in anguish for Christ when he is crushed under the heel of white body supremacy, patriarchy, christian nationalism, and xenophobia? 

I pray, Beloved, such wonder will define us in the days ahead: That we will delight in and defend how all of us, each and every one of us, is a transfiguration of God, a divine apocalypse, bearing in our own flesh and blood the meticulous mastery and mystery of Creation’s Voice. Let us revel in it all and make a fat feast of it on Tuesday, that we may enter our Lenten Odyssey, ready to begin and Become. 

Amen, Ashe, aho, Oh God let it be so.


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