Page last updated

 

 
Transfiguration Sunday (cycle b)

 Valentines Day

 HumorPeace & JusticeNexGen Worship | Clergy Finance Tips
Lent Devotional | Ash Wednesday

 

Texts & Discussion:

2 Kings 2:1-12
Psalm 50:1-6
2 Corinthians 4:3-6
Mark 9:2-9  

Other Resources:

Commentary:

Matthew Henry,    Wesley

Word Study:
Robertson

This Week's Themes:

Transfiguration of the Lord
God's Transformative Power
Divine Mystery and Revelation


 


click on the building blocks to review this week's resources

 Texts in Context | Imagining the Texts -- First LessonEpistleGospel |
Prayer&Litanies
|  Hymns & Songs | Children's Sermons | Sermons based on Texts    

 


Sermons:

____________________________________________________________

Another Step on the Journey?
a sermon based on Mark 9:1-9
by Rev. Brian T. Flory
 

One Saturday morning, shortly after my wife Kimberly and I moved into the church parsonage in Ambler two and a half years ago, we were working outside in the yard and garden when a neighbor rushed by and yelled to us that there were peacocks in a tree down the street and around the corner. Kimberly and I looked at one another skeptically. Peacocks, there’s no way that peacocks could be in our neighborhood. After all, Ambler is a suburb of Philadelphia, a place where one does not expect to find rare, exotic birds.

Still, even though we believed our neighbor to be mistaken, curiosity won us over as Kimberly walked up the street to verify the claim while I dashed into the house to find a camera. When I arrived at the scene shortly thereafter, a small crowd of people stood there marveling at two large shapes up in a tree. Sure enough, there were two peacocks on branches about twenty feet off the ground. They were large, beautiful creatures that seemed aware of the group gathered below, but desired to act ignorant of our presence.

Kimberly and I remained there for a few minutes, trying to find the best angle for the picture that would clearly show the peacocks. Then, we went home, completed our outside work, and went inside the house. Twenty minutes later, however, I was inside my office at the house when I looked out the window towards the parking lot and spied the same two beautiful peacocks perched on the fence. Imagine my surprise. Again, that is something one does not expect to see everyday.

I called out to Kimberly and immediately grabbed the camera to get another set of pictures. By the time I got outside, however, the small crowd of people who had been up the street looking at the peacocks had also flocked to our yard to get a better glimpse of them. Needless to say, our yard and parking lot transformed into a virtual circus for the next hour as Kimberly and I tried to keep the peacocks from reaching Bethlehem Pike and tried to keep some overzealous children and adults from touching the peacocks.

Of course, my favorite part of the whole scenario happened when I called the Elmwood Park Zoo in Norristown, where I learned the peacocks came from, and the voice on the answering machine picked up with the greeting, “You have reached the Elmwood Park Zoo, the zoo in your own backyard.” Fortunately for us, zoo officials eventually tracked down and captured the peacocks. Yet it is still difficult to describe the full image of this chaotic scene. Part of the reason why we took the pictures, in addition to the obvious, was because we guessed that no one would believe our story to be true without them. Even to me, it still seems so out of the ordinary that I have a difficult time imagining it.

I can imagine that Peter, James, and John felt the same way at the Transfiguration of Jesus. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to compare the revelation of God’s voice accompanying the persons of Jesus, Moses, and Elijah standing together with the unexpected visit of two lost peacocks. No peacocks, no matter how beautiful they are, could measure up to that comparison. What I am comparing, however, is the feeling of unbelieving incredulity that I felt upon seeing something so totally out of the ordinary realm of normal thought with the same feelings expressed by the three disciples. [continue]