Last Sunday after Epiphany A [i]
15 February 2026
Saint Helen’s Anglican Church
Vancouver BC
When my children were in preschool and the early grades of elementary school, one of my favourite class activities involved butterflies. In the spring the children would anxiously await the arrival of boxes of caterpillars by preparing the terrariums in their school for their new inhabitants. Then the caterpillars would arrive and be placed in the terrariums. Each day the children would make observations and take notes on the caterpillar’s activities.
Then would come the day when the caterpillars began the next stage in their life’s journey by weaving their cocoons and going into a period of hibernation. The children would watch each day for the signs that this hibernation was coming to an end. I can still remember when my children would come home to tell Paula and me excitedly, ‘They’re beginning to wriggle!’ This was the sure sign of the promise of butterflies soon emerging. Once they emerged and were ready for the world, the children and their teachers would gather outside, open the terrariums and let the butterflies fly free. It was always a day filled with both sadness but wonder.
The life-cycles of butterflies and other members of the insect world always fascinate me. It’s not easy to square a butterfly’s final appearance with the caterpillar and its cocoon. But what we cannot deny is that the essence of what it means to be a butterfly is contained within the caterpillar. On the one hand, we say that they change. But on the other hand, we have to acknowledge that every caterpillar is, even its slinkiness, is destined to fly into the sky. The caterpillar is and is not the end product of its life-cycle.
There is a theological word for this: Transfiguration. Transfigurations are different than transformations. Transformations are what the ancient alchemists attempted by trying to change base metals into precious metals. No matter how hard you try, iron cannot become gold – at least with the scientific and technological knowledge we currently have. But iron has the potential to become steel. It can be transfigured to become harder or more flexible or durable. It’s not always an easy process, but iron will reveal its potential in the hands of the right person.
When Peter, James and John accompanied Jesus to the top of the mountain, they were travelling with their rabbi, their teacher who had seized their imaginations and opened their hearts to the meaning of the Law and the Prophets. As they climbed the mountain, they were not expecting what would soon happen. After all, Jesus frequently found quiet places where he could pray. But this time would be different. The Jesus with whom they climbed the mountain was revealed to be ‘more than (they) could ask or imagine.’
The transfiguration of Jesus is not about any change in Jesus’ identity. It is about seeing Jesus in his fundamental identity as the Beloved of God, the Logos through whom creation owes its own identity. Whatever clouded the perception of Peter, James and John was lifted, and they could now clearly see that they were in the presence of God embodied in this Jesus from Nazareth.
Some would say that Peter, James and John, and eventually, the rest of the Twelve, were transformed by this experience and by the experience of the resurrection. But let me say to you that I believe that they – and we – were and are transfigured by our experience of the transfigured and risen Jesus. Through our relationship with Jesus, the Holy Spirit empowers us to become who we truly are. This is not an overnight process; it is a lifetime filled with what one scholar of liturgy calls baptismal moments filled with baptismal meanings. [ii] Each time we renew our baptismal covenant by confessing our faith in the holy and undivided Trinity and by making commitments that give flesh and blood to that faith, we are participating in the process of transformation.
I mentioned last week my frustration during a radio interview I gave years ago on CBC Radio One. My frustration was that the host could not or would not understand my emphasis on Lent as a time for transfiguration rather than a trivial effort to please God by insignificant actions. As a Christian community we take transfiguration so seriously that we devote not just the forty days of Lent but the fifty days of Easter as seasons of preparation and celebration of God’s work of transfiguration in our personal and communal lives and relationships.
One of the ways that we can be more active participants in the transfiguration that God is so eager to accomplish in our lives is by engaging in some self-reflection. Here are a few questions I invite you to consider as we enter into Lent:
· Who am I when I am most fully and honestly with God?
· How do I pray?
· How have I grown in relationship with God through worship in community?
· What seems to me to be the most urgent work God is trying to do in the world?
· What is my part in that work?
· What strengths do I bring to that work? [iii]
And, after spending some time with these questions, then ask this question: What is preventing me from fulfilling my part in God’s urgent work? How I answer that question shapes what I am being called to do this Lent, or at least to begin to do this Lent, as part of my vocation to become more fully who I am and to participate more fully in God’s urgent work of justice, steadfast love and humility.
The good news is that you and I have been hard-wired to become more Christ-like. We have, in our baptism, been made partners with God in the on-going work of re-creation, reconciliation and renewal. It’s hard work that requires long-term thinking and commitment – but it is who we are and who we are to become. No doubt we feel like slinky caterpillars more often than not in our lives, but just like Peter, James and John, just like the rest of the early disciples of Jesus, just like millions over the centuries, just like you and me, there is a butterfly waiting to be set free to proclaim the glory of God and the promise of fullness of life.
[i] Exodus 24.12-18; Psalm 99; 2 Peter 1.16-21; Matthew 17.1-9.
[ii] Daniel B. Stevick, Baptismal Moments: Baptismal Meanings (New York, NY: The Church Hymnal Corporation, 1987).
[iii] Adapted from Kathleen Henderson Staudt, “ ‘Annunciations in Most Lives’: Vocational Discernment and the Work of the Church”, Sewanee Theological Review 43:2 (Easter 2000), 140-141.
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