We live, in the space between the mountaintop and the cross, between the glimpse of glory and the hard walk of discipleship. We live in a time when prophetic voices are still being rejected, when God’s will seems unclear, when we’re tempted to think that whoever shouts loudest or seems most certain must be right.

The Transfiguration reminds us: the voices worth listening to are often the ones being dismissed. Throughout Scripture, God’s people repeatedly misunderstand what God is doing. We focus on the length of the fringes on our garments while ignoring the call to welcome the outsider. We debate the right feast day or the right ritual while the marginalized go unseen.

And in our own time? We see this same pattern. We divide over worship styles, over politics, over who’s in and who’s out, while the prophetic call to care for the vulnerable, to seek justice, to practice mercy gets drowned out by certainty and self-righteousness.

This is where the Anglican tradition has something vital to offer. We don’t find our unity in having all the same opinions or in being certain about every doctrine. We find our unity in common prayer, in gathering around the table where God feeds us all.

Look around this diocese for instance: high church and low church, progressive and conservative, coastal communities and inland towns. We don’t all agree. We don’t all worship the same way. We don’t all vote the same way. And yet we are one church, one diocese, gathered around one altar.

This isn’t compromise or wishy-washy relativism. It’s trust, trust that God is bigger than our certainties, that vindication belongs to God alone, and that we don’t have to have everything figured out in order to follow Jesus down the mountain and into the valley below.

More of this in the sermon linked here.