February 15, 2026 First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA
Exodus 24:12-24 — 12 The Lord said to Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain and wait there; I will give you the tablets of stone, with the law and the commandment, which I have written for their instruction.” 13 So Moses set out with his assistant Joshua, and Moses went up onto the mountain of God. 14 To the elders he had said, “Wait here for us, until we come back to you. Look, Aaron and Hur are with you; whoever has a dispute may go to them.”
15 Then Moses went up on the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain. 16 The glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days; on the seventh day he called to Moses out of the cloud. 17 Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the Israelites. 18 Moses entered the cloud and went up on the mountain. Moses was on the mountain for forty days and forty nights.
2 Peter 1:16-21 — 16 For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. 17 For he received honor and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” 18 We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain.
19 So we have the prophetic message more fully confirmed. You will 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. 20 First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, 21 because no prophecy ever came by human will, but men and women moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.,*
Matthew 17:1-9 — Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. 2 And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became bright as light. 3 Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. 4 Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will set up three tents here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” 5 While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” 6 When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. 7 But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.” 8 And when they raised their eyes, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone. 9 As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, “Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
What is the purpose of a football game? What is the purpose of the super bowl? Is it to determine the best professional football team in America? Or is it to make money? Lots of money?
The cheapest tickets, according to Google, were about $3200. Average tickets were more like $7000, and those fancy ones in the suites… if you have to ask, you can’t afford them goes the joke, but I read that they ran to about $40K each. A 30 second commercial cost between 8 and 10 million dollars. The ad itself might take another 10 to 15 million to make. Tom Brady doesn’t show up in your Dunkins commercial for free, even if that was the most dreadful wig I’ve ever seen.
A can of Bud (or its equivalent) was about $18, water was $8 a bottle.
Ask again, what was the purpose of the Super Bowl… determining a championship or making money?
It’s money that matters at the Super Bowl. Winners and losers matter to you and me, but for the people who put it on, it’s the money that matters. Glitz and air force fly-bys keep us happy, but it’s our money that matters to the people in charge. If there’s one thing they know, it’s the power of glitz to distract us from what’s really happening.
Distracting glitz isn’t just something that Super Bowl promoters are good at. It’s just something that humans often do in order to move attention away from one thing to another. And it’s not that glitz is a bad thing; it’s not, but it’s so easy to focus on the glitz and miss what’s really there.
Which gets us to today’s lessons, about the Transfiguration of Christ. And here you thought the sermon was going to be a critique of Super Bowls…. Haha
But really, the story of the Transfiguration is often told as a story of Peter, James and John getting distracted by the glitz of bright lights, mysterious tents, and all-around excitement. We get lost in the descriptions, focusing on whether or not it “really” happened the way it’s described, and we miss the whole point of the story.
Jesus is changed by the presence of God….and we are all changed too.
We are, all together now, all changed by being in the presence of God. We are all transfigured, made into something new, and bright, something that is able to transform all it touches into God’s new creation.
Here’s what that new thing looks like, a picture of what God’s world is to be: it’s in the Belhar Confession, a document written by South African Christians, which states their beliefs as seen through the lens of racism. It’s a glitz-removal device, if you think of glitz as anything that distracts us from what’s really happening.
Their transfiguration, their change, led by people like Archbishop Tutu and Nelson Mandela, turned South Africa from a place where white South Africans believed God had given them the country, and given them the work of native Africans, Black people, to be their servants and laborers. That privilege allowed them to feel ok about cheating and stealing from Black people.
It allowed them to feel good about creating a world where Black, Colored (that is, mixed race people) and White people were totally separated by law. They felt ok about the idea that a man like the comedian Trevor Noah’s existence was illegal, because his mom was Black and his dad was white and it was against the law for them to create a child together.
Out of a growing understanding of the ways they’d gone wrong, the Belhar was written by one of the Protestant churches in South Africa, turning it into a glitz-removal device for their church, their country and all the world, a set of worlds to help them see rightly in a world ruled by distraction.
It’s hard these days to know who’s right, who’s wrong. And it’s way too easy for glitz to distract, for soft, easy answers to keep us from seeing where God is calling us to go. It’s the modern equivalent of fire on the mountain, or visions of Moses and Elijah. That makes it time to remember that in 2 Peter, it’s written that the message on the mountain wasn’t the fire, or the glitz, but it was a lamp shining in a dark place, to help us see what needs to be done.
We aren’t much for creeds in our church, at least if you define them as words you have to believe in, but we do use them as something like road maps. We may each be at different points on the road, but we are all on the same road together. This Belhar Confession is one such road map, one that reminds us that Jesus called us to a ministry of mutual love and respect.
It reminds us that we’re called to figure out what is right and do it… not sit by the side of the road until the wrong is gone.
It reminds us that it is the people who have the least who need the most protection. Rich folks may worry about their electric bills, but they have enough money to pay the bills. Poor people freeze to death in their cars, because they can’t even afford an apartment, much less electricity. Jesus calls us to care, to act, for the best interests of the people on the streets.
It reminds us that, “in a world full of injustice and [contempt],” we are to keep our eyes open, to care for not just the poor, but also the wronged. That’s why it was our Christian responsibility to be upset at that video of the Obamas in an ape suit. There are no circumstances when it’s acceptable to mock Black people with pictures of apes. It’s never funny and all good Christians know that.
That’s why we reject any thing that makes it seem that it’s ok to mock people for their background, or treat them with contempt because they’re not smart, or because they come from some other country. We reject any actions which make a mockery of the laws of our country, which treat some people as less acceptable than others – for any reason, but most especially because of the color of their skin.
Even in this story today of the Transfiguration, there’s enough glitz to distract us, to entice us to the lights in the sky, to open our ears to the sound of angels. Thank heavens, we have Jesus to remind us that the point of the story is not the light show, but the way it marks the way the world has been turned upside down. The French poet Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote in The Little Prince, “One sees clearly only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye.”
God loves everyone. There is no more foundational truth. No matter how we differ on our political aims and goals, we are – each of us – called to live out those aims and goals with love, respect, and mercy, today and always.
Amen.
© 2026, Virginia H. Child
To Believe is to Care. . . To Care is to Do 