Last Sunday of Epiphany
By the Rev. Alanna Sullivan
Associate Minister and Director of Administration
The Memorial Church of Harvard University
(The following is a transcript of the service audio, Feb. 15, 2026)
Let us pray. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts and minds be acceptable in your sight, oh God, our Rock and Redeemer. Amen. Author Scott Russell Sanders opens up his memoir, Private History of Awe, with one of his first childhood memories. For four-year-old Scott, there was nothing grander than a huge oak tree by his house growing up. He goes, "It was taller than anything I knew. Taller than a barn, taller than the windmill in the pasture. Taller than the spire on our church." He then recalls, "During a thunderstorm, watching the oak sway in the storm, its fat limbs thrashing as if it were a sapling, when suddenly a flash and a boom split the air, and out by the road, the great oak tree snapped like a stick. Its top shattered on the road, a charred streak running down the wet gray stub of the trunk.
One moment, the great tree had stood there by the road as solid as my father, bigger than anything else I knew, and the next moment it was gone. That erasure still haunts me over half a century later. I still ring with the astonishment I felt that day when the sky cracked open to reveal a world where even grown-ups were tiny, and houses were toys. And wood and skin, and everything was made of light."
I wonder how the disciples would describe their experience on the mountaintop that day. Would they say that the sky cracked open and everything was made of light? Up until this moment, Peter and his fellow disciples have experienced Jesus as a teacher and as a healer, as a traveling companion. His face and manners, voice and mission, all familiar to them. And then there on that mountaintop, Jesus changes. Remaining fully himself and yet becoming completely fully unrecognizable. Have you ever had a moment like that when the beauty of creation has stopped you in your tracks? Where the earthly and the eternal merge into one?
This summer, Anna and I will be taking a group of Harvard students on a pilgrimage to Iona, a tiny island off of the coast of Scotland. A place often described as the cradle of Celtic Christianity. Iona has been a pilgrimage site for hundreds of years, and there are many reasons why thousands of pilgrims visit this remote island each year. One is its dramatic windswept coastline, and its distinctive rocky peaks. This landscape is what inspired early Celtic Christians to call it a thin place. A place where the visible and the invisible world come to their closest proximity, where heaven and earth kiss one another.
In divinity school, I learned the Celtic saying, "Heaven and earth are only three feet apart, but in thin places that distance is even shorter." I could imagine the disciples describing that mountaintop as a thin place. A place where they experience Jesus as both fully human and fully divine. And that moment is fleeting because it's almost too much to take in all at once. We can only soak in so much with our limited human sight. And such thin experiences can almost be addictive.
I think of music as a thin experience. For a time, it can feel like an escape. An escape from the pain of the broken and battered world around us. We crave such experiences that bring us to our knees. We yearn for the confirmation of the closeness of God. We seek the assurance that God is always more powerful than what we could possibly imagine. Being overwhelmed by the cruelty in the world around us, I must admit, I have been longing for such an experience lately.
When Peter proposes, "Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will make three dwellings. One for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." It is perhaps not hard to see why Peter would want to stay on that mountaintop. To hold onto that moment for as possibly as long as he could. To try to harness the holy to continue to bask in God's glory. It's perhaps not hard to see why Peter wants to keep Jesus shiny and beautiful and safe on that mountaintop. All of life up here is so clear, so bright, so good. Why not stay up here forever?
But is it good for them, for us to remain on the mountaintop? In some ways, yes, it's good to set aside time for contemplation and prayer. It's good to gaze upon Jesus whenever and however He reveals himself. It's good to move out of our comfort zone, and to confront the indescribable otherness of the divine. Yet God is clear, it is not here that we are to remain.
Even before Peter can finish his thought, God covers him and the disciples with a thick cloud. And God says, "This is my son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him." The disciples then fall to the ground and become overwhelmed with fear. And knowing that they are afraid, Jesus reaches out and touches his friends and says, "Get up. Do not be afraid." It is the feel of his human touch and the sound of his human voice that alleviates the disciples’ fear. It is not some overpowering act or display of might. It is the reminder of God's love through Christ's humanity that gives the disciples the courage to look up and see.
And there they find Jesus alone. God tells us to follow Jesus's way. The way of the valley, the way of the cross, the way of humility, surrender, and sacrifice. This is the path that God calls Peter and calls us to follow. We follow Christ back down the mountain and return to the long and hard work of love and justice and suffering.
Writer Cameron Trimble puts it this way. "The transfiguration was never meant to be worshiped as an event. It was a finger pointing to a deeper reality that love shines even when the world is violent. Truth radiates even when power distorts it, and glory cannot cancel suffering but accompanies it. The mistake of the disciples almost make is wanting to stay with the brightness instead of letting it reorient how they live below."
A thin place does not have to be a peaceful or beautiful or striking one, although it definitely can be one of those things. Thin places are those spaces, those moments when we are unmasked and transformed. When something inside of us is fundamentally altered, we become acutely aware of how connected we are to the world around us. A thin place is not necessarily about what we see from the outside, but how we are transfigured on the inside.
I love Barbara Brown-Taylor's description of thin places. She writes, "You are more aware of the thin veil between apparent reality and deeper reality. You pull aside the veil just for a moment so you can see through. Thin places aren't always lovely places, and they aren't always outdoors. Hospital rooms can be thin places, so can emergency rooms and jail cells. A thin place is any place that drops you down to where you know that you are in the presence of the really real. The most real. God, if you insist."
A friend of mine is a pastor in Minneapolis. Her church home and her children's school are all within walking distance of one another. Her neighborhood also happens to be one of the places that has endured some of the most disturbing and public confrontations between ICE and Minnesotans. A couple of weeks ago, my friend sent a photo of her daughter taken on her eighth birthday. In the photo, her daughter has this beaming toothy smile, the kind that radiates from that place deep within. She is hugging a beloved stuffed animal with a pair of goggles dangling around its neck. My friend then texted me that those are the pepper spray goggles that she wears every day to school. Even in the midst of so much violence, in the midst of so much horror, life and love persist.
So yes, thin places might be where we might expect to encounter them. For instance, on a mountaintop where the air itself is thin. A place that stretches so far into the sky that it seems to be reaching for heaven. And it's telling that we often call what happens in such thin places wherever we experience them, mountaintop experiences. But thin places are not only found in rarefied settings. We encounter them in places that are thick with anxiety, like a hospital room, and in places that at first glance seem far from heaven, like a jail cell.
In the light of Epiphany, we prepare for the long darkness of Lent, and we cannot know what mountains and valleys lie ahead. We cannot predict how God will speak or where Jesus might appear. But trust this, whether on the brightest mountain or in the darkest valley, love is there. Love as that thin place where God loves us and we love one another. The thinness of place is not only God's nearness, but also our openness to that holy, sacred presence. Our ability to see, hear an experience that kiss of heaven and earth. May it be so.
Will you pray with me? God, open our hearts to see the thin places in our lives. Help us to know your holy presence and love on mountain tops, in hospital rooms and in jail cells. Amen.