Church of the Incarnation

Remember when you were young and naïve - when you believed that people were basically honest and trustworthy,when you believed people wanted to be helpful and kind and generous? But then you gained experience with people, and you decided that there were some telltale signs that a person wasn't going to be kind or helpful. You may have decided, for example, that if the person answering the computer help line speaks with an Indian accent, he'll never be able to help you. Or you may have decided that if a person's skin isn't the same color as yours he's likely to be lazy and looking for a handout. I'll admit that I've decided that a person coming to the office for help who smells of cigarettes or alcohol is probably not going to tell me the whole truth about why she needs help with her bills.

It's like in the movie "Remember the Titans." It's 1971, and Denzel Washington's character Herman Boone is hired as the new football coach at newly-integrated T. C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia. The Titans team consists of the returning players, all of whom are white, and an equal number of new players, most of whom are African American. Most of these boys have never really met a person of another race, but they've decided they can't trust someone whose skin isn't the same color as their own. When it's time to go to training camp, there are two buses at the school. The boys naturally decide to separate themselves, with the white players filling one bus and the black players getting into the other bus. But Coach Boone knows that they'll never be able to see beyond the color of one another's skin unless they get to know one another, so he forces them all off the buses. He then sends defensive players - black and white - onto one bus and offensive players onto the other. When they arrive at camp, the players discover they'll each be rooming with a player of a different race for the entire week. Furthermore, Coach Boone requires that each player sit down with every player of the opposite race and get to know some things about him. At mealtimes, Coach will have them report what they've learned.

Things don't change overnight - they don't even change over the course of the week-long camp. But as the season progresses and the boys get to know one another as people and not just as white or black people, they begin to see the beauty in one another. They become able to see the character shining through the color of their skin.

The white offensive team captain is injured in a car wreck, and the black defensive team captain comes to see him in the hospital. The nurse doesn't want to let the black boy in, saying only family can visit, but his white friend tells her, "he's my brother - can't you see the family resemblance?" Once they were able to get past the color of one another's skin, they discovered one another's true character.

Jesus takes Peter, John, and James with him up onto the mountain to pray. They've been together a while now, and these three have, I'm sure, spent special time like this with Jesus before. They've seen him heal the sick and cast demons out of the possessed. They've heard him teach the crowds and miraculously feed them. Just eight days before today's event, Peter declared Jesus to be the Christ. They've had plenty of time to see beyond the surface of Jesus, to understand who he really is. And Peter has declared that he gets it.

But there they are on the mountain with Jesus, praying, and suddenly they see Jesus in a whole new way. They describe him much the way faithful Jews have always described Moses when he would return from being in the presence of the Lord: glowing, dazzling white, blindingly bright. For the first time, they see who Jesus really is: the son of God himself. We call this the Transfiguration, but I think that's a misnomer. Jesus doesn't change - he's been God all along. It's Peter, John, and James who change. Something happens as they pray with Jesus and they're able to see God in their friend and teacher.

Today's the feast day of St. Valentine, a man we've come to associate with heart-shaped boxes of overpriced chocolates and mushy Hallmark cards. But Valentine was a martyr, a risk-taker. He was most likely a priest in Rome in the third century. At that time Emperor Claudius II decreed that Roman soldiers were no longer allowed to marry, since marriage might sway their loyalty away from the Emperor and toward home and family. Valentine was concerned about the inner anguish this would cause his flock as well as about the likelihood of their forming extra-marital relationships with those they loved. So he defied the Emperor's decree and secretly continued to marry couples who came to him. Eventually he was exposed, arrested, and imprisoned.

In prison, Valentine continued to live out his faith, serving and loving even his jailors, going so far as to heal one jailor's daughter who'd been born blind. He decided not to be guided by people's outward appearances - whether they looked like the Emperor or like the man holding the keys to his jail cell. Instead, he looked deeper. He looked for the shining, brilliant presence of Christ in them and chose to serve and love them.

Each day we have hundreds of opportunities to interact with people whose outward appearances make us wary: the person answering the computer help line or the person ringing up our sale, the person sitting across from us in class or the person in the big office. Experience has taught us to expect certain things from these people. But my prayer is that we'd all allow ourselves to be transfigured like Peter, John, and James, like the fictitious Titans football team, and like St. Valentine, all of whom saw beyond the surface to the presence of Christ inside - the dazzling, brilliant, magnificent, awe-inspiring presence of Christ that even Hallmark can't put into words.

Amen.