Mtr Kelli Joyce

Dear friends in Christ,

Happy Feast of the Transfiguration! I hope you’ll join us tonight at 5:30pm for a Eucharist in honor of this feast, followed by a feast of hamburgers and hotdogs in the Murphy’s Gallery!

Throughout his ministry, people wondered who Jesus was, and what his ministry and teaching might mean. Even his closest friends didn’t fully understand the significance of what they were a part of, and who they were sharing their meals with. And then Jesus takes them with him as he goes to pray on a mountaintop. And suddenly, they see their friend transformed before their eyes. On that mountain, for a few moments, they get to see the glory of Christ’s divinity shining through. He is truly human in the incarnation, and yet, they now begin to realize that he is a human unlike any other who has ever lived. He converses with Moses and Elijah - the Word made flesh converses with the men who gave God’s word through holy laws and prophecies. It truly must have been a shocking sight for Peter, James, and John.

We, too, sometimes struggle to make sense of who Jesus is, and what his life, death, and resurrection mean. We, too, may wonder how the Gospel of Christ relates to what we read in the law and the prophets. The Transfiguration is for us as much as it was for the first disciples, to show us that Jesus is more than a good teacher or example - he is God, God’s only Son, and he is the fulfillment of the law and the prophets. He is more than we can comprehend, and we aren’t always able to recognize the full glory of his presence when we see it, whether it’s in the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist, or in the faces of the poor and the outcast and the stranger. But the Transfiguration invites us to look and see what we so often cannot. What seems ordinary and familiar to our eyes - Christ, and his Church - may actually be full of dazzling and sacred and life-changing splendor.

In peace,
Mtr. Kelli