I’m going to speak to you today of the power of the Gospel, and specifically of the Gospel just proclaimed. I’m going to tell you not to discount the Transfiguration story just because it sounds mystical at best and maybe utterly unreal. I’m going to ask you to embrace the transforming faith urged by the apostle Peter in today’s Epistle. As Peter says, “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.” The Gospel -- indeed, the Bible -- is about transfiguration. Transfiguration -- not just the one that Peter, James and John witnessed on the mountain, but the transfiguration of you and me because of a beauty in the bosom of Christ born across the sea.

But first, a little personal history, so you know where I’m coming from. During World War II, my father was in the Army Air Corps -- stateside, or I might never have been, since bombers over Europe were going down by the scores. My mother followed my father to various bases in the American South -- one being Albany, Georgia. When he was on leave, my father and mother would leave the base to go into town. And of all the things they ever remembered and shared with me when I was a child and youth, they talked about how the “Negroes” would -- when Dad and Mom drew near them on the sidewalks -- step off into the gutter and tip their hats and bow. In 1943, when my parents were age 24 and 22 and little traveled, these gestures bewildered and embarrassed them, and their feelings infected me. They told me these stories -- they spoke of these bewildering and embarrassing incidents -- in 1963, when I was sixteen. And when a man named Martin Luther King, Jr. was thirty-four.

I remember the jokes at school at that time. I might have laughed, I don’t know. But I do know there came a transfiguring moment -- a moment when such jokes were no longer cause for laughter. Maybe it wasn’t a precise moment, but more a gradual dawning of the day. There needed to be and was about to be a national -- a societal -- transfiguration. Black people -- “Negroes” as we used to call them -- were to be dressed in clothes “dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them.”

Many years later, in 1989, now rector of St. Paul’s, Louisville, I was called upon by Jackie, a Black parishioner, to do her wedding. My goodness! Even though I had been in Louisville for four years, this was still going to be new. Especially since her groom, Tony, was a member Watson Memorial Baptist Church, an all-Black congregation, and she wanted his ministers to participate in the ceremony.

I’ll never forget it -- such an embarrassing but hilarious moment. Tony and his (Black) pastor and groomsmen came into the sacristy, where we kept our robes. The pastor asked whether he should robe, and in complete naiveté, I handed him a white alb like our Lay Eucharistic Minister wear, only with a hood on it. He put it on, pulled the hood up over his head, and turned to me, the groom, and the groomsmen. “Look!” he exclaimed. “I’ve been accepted into the Ku Klux Klan!” It was another transfiguring moment.

That was 1989. Fast forward two years to 1991. (Some of you have heard this story before, but in a different context.) My parish had once been housed in a grand Victorian Gothic building in Old Louisville. And into this building moved West End Baptist Church, an all-Black congregation pastored by the Rev. Dartanya Hill. Dartanya was a social worker and only part-time pastor, and I don’t know what possessed him and his flock to move into this big old heat-inefficient building. But with a vision of his own, he phoned me and asked if I and St. Paul’s Episcopal would somehow get them established in our former building. To discuss it, he and I lunched several times in the Old Grill at the Brown Hotel, once a bastion of white Louisville. We agreed to convene ad hoc committees from our churches, and we and the committees met once before a volatile interruption named Rodney King. This King, a Black man and reckless driver, had been ruthlessly beaten by white policemen in Los Angeles.

What to do? You may remember that riots were breaking out -- or threatening to break out -- in every city in the nation with a Black populace. Not the least, Louisville. What to do? The ad hoc committees, Dartanya, and I, decided to hold a joint Service in witness to a vision of Black and White solidarity. And this we did.

Fox News 41 came. WAVE 3 NBC came. Television cameras all around. West End’s choir rocked with a rhythm beyond St. Paul’s choir, which sang an arrangement of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, “Mine eyes have seen the glory…” I preached with reference to General Robert E. Lee’s going forward to a communion rail in Grace Episcopal Church, Lexington, Virginia, to kneel beside Blacks whom others thought were presumptuous to include themselves as equals among the People of God. For an hour-and-a-half, it was another transfiguring moment. Whether we managed to pour sufficient oil on Louisville’s tumultuous waters, I don’t know. But the city passed through the Rodney King crisis without violence.

These episodes seem small in retrospect. Dartanya Hill and I are no longer in touch these fifteen years later. But I remember this Black Baptist Pastor with gratitude. I recall him with gratitude as one who, like my parents years before, “led me up a high mountain apart…” And I believe it is because of Dartanya that I will always remember and treasure the truth and power of the Mount of Transfiguration.

And now to that mountain -- Mount Hermon or Mount Tabor, it matters not -- but to that mountain of a vision. “And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them.” Then, they came down from the mountain…

Dartanya’s hero, and one of mine, was Martin Luther King, Jr. On April2, 1968, the night before he was shot on a motel balcony in Memphis, the Rev. King spoke to a crowd that was to protest in behalf of sanitation workers. His speech resonated with transfiguring images. Here’s what he said:

It's all right to talk about "long white robes over yonder," in all of its symbolism. But ultimately people want some suits and dresses and shoes to wear down here. It's all right to talk about "streets flowing with milk and honey," but God has commanded us to be concerned about the slums down here, and his children who can't eat three square meals a day. It's all right to talk about the new Jerusalem, but one day, God's preachers must talk about the New York, the new Atlanta, the new Philadelphia, the new Los Angeles, the new Memphis, Tennessee. This is what we have to do…

Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

“…and from the cloud there came a voice, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!’” And Peter, James, John, and Martin ultimately did listen. (I presume to call him Martin; I am 58, and he was only 39.) I can hear Martin saying with Peter, “We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain. So we have the prophetic message more fully confirmed.”

The Gospel -- indeed, the Bible -- is about transfiguration. The transfiguration not just of Jesus, but more importantly, the transfiguration of you and me.