Strengthening Touch

Transfiguration Sunday A: Exodus 24:12-18; Psalm 99

2 Peter 1:16-21; Matthew 17:1-9

The Rev'd Cameron Partridge

February 15, 2026

https://vimeo.com/1165862747

Good Morning, St. Aidan’s. Welcome to one of my favorite Sundays in the Church Year, Transfiguration Sunday. Each year this Sunday forms the capstone of the season of Epiphany. Like the Magi, whose visit to the Christ Child bridged into this season from Christmastide, we have traveled far and seen much. Again and again these days have invited to behold. We observed the Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River, seeing the Holy Spirit alighting upon him in dove-like form, and hearing the voice of God the Parent proclaim, “this is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). We saw John the Baptist declaring of the newly baptized Jesus, “here is the Lamb of God,” and two disciples remaining with Jesus even as Jesus had come to abide with them (John 1:29-39). We beheld Jesus calling fisherfolk to come from the sea and follow him, fishing for people (Matthew 4:19). We were blessed by the beatitudes and reminded that we are to be salt of the earth and light of the world (Matthew 5:1-12, 13-16). Now we carry these stories with us to accompany and inform our vision of an iconic mountain scene. Taking it in together, we are strengthened for the days ahead.

The scene is iconic, a window onto the working of the divine in our midst. Just prior to our passage Jesus had said, “truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they the Son of Humanity coming in his kingdom” (Matthew 16:28). Now, six days later, Jesus gave just such a vision to three disciples, Peter, James, and John. The four of them stood on the mountain. Then, out of nowhere, it seems, Jesus was “transfigured before them.” The Greek verb is μετεμορφώθη. He metamorphosed, we might say. How? Matthew tells us, his clothing became dazzlingly white, and his face shone like the sun (Matthew 17:2). This change is reminiscent of how Moses had appeared after his encounter with God on Mount Sinai (Exodus 34:29).^[1] Our assigned passage from Exodus this morning comes before this effect, describing the appearance of cloud and devouring fire into which Moses had ascended. It was after this encounter that Moses had glowed. And now, as Matthew shows us, Jesus glows. He stands fully in the tradition of Moses and in the prophetic lineage of Elijah. So much so that suddenly these two towering figures stand with Jesus before the astonished disciples. Icons of this scene usually place Jesus between the ancient forbears, layering them with light from above.  

There is much to take in here – so much as to be overwhelming. In fact, the reaction of the disciples to the scene, and Jesus’ response, is key to how the Gospel of Matthew uniquely tells it. Once Moses and Elijah have joined Jesus, they talk with him. The version of this story in the Luke’s Gospel shares something of their conversation’s content, while Matthew does not. Instead, the story jumps to Peter declaring that it was good for all of them to be there and then continuing, “if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” The idea of building booths here is not as strange as it may sound. The term translated as booths, σκηνάς, can be rendered tents or tabernacles, and it evokes the special dwellings that the Israelites created to house the ark of the covenant as they made their way through the wilderness.^[2] Peter clearly recognizes the holiness of this encounter, yet even as he is making this suggestion, the rapid unfolding of the moment overtakes him. A “bright cloud” covers all of them, impeding their vision, yet with light, not darkness. And out of this cloud they hear a voice repeating the declaration at Jesus’ baptism: “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased.” And then an additional phrase: “listen to him!” (17:5)

At this, Peter James and John are overcome with fear. So much so that they fall to the ground, Matthew tells us (17:6). This kind of reaction is not out of keeping with theophanies – revelations of the divine. There is a dimension of fear here that expresses awe. Awe or wonder are in many ways watchwords of the season of Epiphany, and especially appropriate to its apex today. But fear, as I read it in this scene and as it is conveyed to us in this moment in the Church Year, is not only an expression of awe. It is also fear in the sense of anxiety, of unknowing, of concern about what is to come. All of the three gospel versions of this story place it in between what biblical scholars call Jesus’ “Passion Predictions.” They are those moments when Jesus declares that he would suffer and die and be raised again. A few verses before our story, Jesus had said just this, and when Peter had taken Jesus aside and told him not to say such things, Jesus had in turn rebuked him, saying “get behind me Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things” (16:23). A rather startling thing to be told by the one Peter had just recognized as the Messiah (16:16). To make matters more foreboding, Jesus had then told all of them that following him required them to deny themselves and take up their cross and follow him. That, paradoxically, in losing their lives they could save them. Our mountain top scene is placed between this whole interchange and Jesus’ turn towards Jerusalem. After our story, they will descend the mountain and head into the sequence of events that ultimately leads to the cross and the empty tomb.^[3] This is in fact why we hear this story today, as Epiphany comes to a close and Lent begins on Wednesday.^[4] So when the disciples fall to the ground at the thunderous divine voice declaring Jesus’ divine belovedness that echoes the baptismal revelation, that tells them furthermore to listen to him rather than telling him to stop saying what they don’t want to hear, they are not only in awe. They are also afraid. Very understandably so. This is where Matthew’s version of this story is so (literally) touching. Because that is what Jesus does. He stoops down to the disciples splayed on the ground. He touches them. And then he tells them to get up and not be afraid (17:7).

Now, when Jesus says not to be afraid, I do not hear this as some sort of simple denial of their reality. He is not telling them they are silly for being fearful. He is strengthening them. As I read this moment, he knows what lies ahead, for him and for them. He is with them – as the Gospel of John emphasizes, he remained with them – and he wants them to abide with him and with one another as well. They would need each other as they made their way into this paradox of loss and gain, of dying and rising. His touch is healing, encouraging, filled with presence and strength.

This week on the sanctoral calendar of the Episcopal Church commemorated the anniversary of the consecration of Barbara Clementine Harris as a Bishop on February 11, 1989. Bishop Barbara, who had long been involved in racial, economic, and gender justice efforts in and through the Episcopal Church, was the first woman to become a bishop in the worldwide Anglican Communion. Her election in Massachusetts in September 1988, sent shock waves and fresh winds of the Holy Spirit through the Church. The Spirit was very much with her and the gathered community of 8500 people thirty-seven years ago. There came a point in the service, as is always the case in ordinations, when the Presiding Bishop asked if there was any reason why they could not proceed. In her memoir Hallelujah Anyhow, Bishop Barbara wrote, “I was well aware that some detractors were almost violent in their opposition.” Even as they turned out not to take issue with her personally but with the canonical validity of the consecration of women to the episcopate, she grew increasingly anxious as they spoke for several minutes. She began to worry particularly about “the woman sitting across the aisle from [her] – my mother.” Her mother, she explained, “had originally been opposed to the ordination of women but had been convinced of its correctness over the years, at least partially by the fact of the numbers of her friends who showed up for my ordination to as a deacon” years earlier.

All these images were pressing on my mind that day in the Hynes Auditorium. I was hoping my mother would not attack my objectors. Suddenly I was aware that someone was standing beside me. It was, in fact, my mother. She took my wrist in her hand, looked straight into my face and said quietly to me, ‘Have no fear. God is on our side. Everything is going to be all right.’ Then she stared into my eyes and said, ‘This is your momma.’ She turned and went back to her seat.^[5]

In that moment, Bishop Harris’ mother was the presence of the divine. She was Jesus stooping down and touching her, reassuring her in strength and power. She was God the divine parent saying, behold: This is your momma. You are not alone. You are beloved. Moments later when the Presiding Bishop declared that the arguments had all been well vented and asked, “is it your will that we ordain Barbara a bishop?” The response, “that is our will!” was so thunderous – it “shook the rafters” – that he couldn’t help but pause and “burst into joyous laughter” with the whole gathered assembly. Glory, glory, glory to God.^[6]

Friends, there are many reasons that we, like the disciples splayed on the ground before the transfigured Jesus, like Bishop Barbara seated in Hynes auditorium, may be filled with fear. Fear in all its ambiguity is rightly with us as we make our way in a world full of injustice, hatred, division and uncertainty. Our neighborhood, many of us learned late Friday, has seen the presence of immigration enforcement in a mere taste of what other neighborhoods of our city and other cities around the country have been navigating over the last year and more.^[7] Even as we do not know what is to come, in the fear that we and people in our midst experience, Jesus the transfigured one comes to us. He reaches out to us in reassurance and strength, in en-couragement, holding our hands, pulling us upright, calling us to get up, to go out, to be salt of the earth and light of the world. Even as we do not know exactly what that will look like, we carry with us divine belovedness, a power so fiercely transformative that its ripple effects exceed our comprehension. Glory, glory, glory to God. We “would do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts” (2 Peter 1:19).

^[1] Anna Case-Winters, Matthew: A Theological Commentary (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2015), 212-213.

^[2] Case-Winters, 213

^[3] Case-Winters, 209

^[4] The Episcopal Church followed the Lutheran tradition in relocating Transfiguration Sunday from the Second Sunday of Lent to the Last Sunday after the Epiphany. Philip Pfatteicher, Commentary on the Lutheran Book of Worship (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1990), 221. Reginald Fuller has written of this lectionary shift in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer: “Adopting this proposal changed at a stroke the whole character of the season and imparted an epiphanic character to other readings falling between the first and last Sundays after Epiphany.” Reginald Fuller, “Epiphany Season” in Carl P. Daw, Jr. (ed.), Breaking the Word (New York: Church Publishing, 1994), 59. Thank you to Carl Daw for first alerting me to these sources!

^[5] Barbara C. Harris, Hallelujah Anyhow: A Memoir (New York: Church Publishing, 2018), 75.

^[6] Quoting the refrain from Thomas Troger in Borrowed Light: Hymn Texts, Prayers, and Poems (Oxford University Press, 1994), 56-57, which we have used throughout this Epiphany season.

^[7] Aldo Toledo, “Reported ICE arrest of San Francisco nanny draws response from Mayor Lurie,” San Francisco Chronicle, February 13, 2026:https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/ice-kidnaps-nanny-21353241.php