February 15, 2026
Transfiguration Year A
Exodus 24:12-18; Matthew 17:1-9
Epiphany, Winnipeg
Sometimes preaching is complicated. You get a story or saying or letter that’s at least anywhere from nineteen hundred to three thousand years old, from a land far far away, and originally written in languages in cultures that none of us can fully understand. Whoever told or wrote or heard or read it all back then knew nothing about our languages and cultures, or about the internet, or capitalism or germ theory or voting or fair trade coffee MAID or eyeglasses or Olympics or Canada or. Or Tumbler Ridge….Then you try to hear it speak across all those years to people like us in a place like this. See how it can be complicated?
And yet sometimes it’s so simple, and it can sound something like this: Nobody will be left all alone. Don’t be afraid.
We heard one of those old, old stories a few minutes ago, and it might have rung a bell for a few of you. Moses is called by God to come up on the mountain to receive some tablets of stone with all of God’s teaching written on them. This isn’t the Ten Commandments story, by the way – that was four chapters ago. Moses has been given this massive task of trying to lead the people of Israel to a new land that’s been promised to them, and he’s got to pass on what God wants them to learn about being a community and being faithful and looking after each other and living well together. We get this picture sometimes of Moses as a solitary individual, standing strong on his own, just him and God trying to pull these people together.
But maybe you noticed how this story today began: “Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up toward the mountain…” Yes, the point comes where Moses goes up on the mountain alone. But up to that point, seventy others have made the journey partway of the mountain with Moses. When Moses leaves them, he still has Joshua with him. And one day he will come down from the mountain, and back to all those people. Sometimes that will be really hard, because, well, you know what people can be like.
Later on in the story of the people’s wandering through the wilderness, everyone – that’s thousands and thousands of hungry people in the desert – is complaining: “There’s no food, there’s no water, the cell service is terrible....” Moses will say, “God, I can’t do this! Why have you put all these people on my shoulders? I can’t deal with them.” So God gives Moses seventy people again, to share the load.
Sometimes the word is simple: Nobody will be left all alone. God calls us – us – and gives us to each other so that nobody carries the work or the burden or the worry or the joy alone. Are you the pastor? There are seventy others, sitting right there. Are you on council? There are seventy others. Are you sitting wherever you’re sitting right now, and do you ever find it hard to figure out what it might all mean to follow Jesus or to be faithful or to do what’s right? There are seventy others to share that with you. God always gives us seventy others. They’re out there. They’re right here. Nobody will be left all alone.
For the community in Tumbler Ridge: there are seventy others. For anyone in the trans community, where allegations and blame are being placed, there are seventy others. For someone on the street there are seventy others. For anyone who grieves or who tries to offer comfort there are seventy others.
For you, for us, there are seventy others. For each other and for the world around us, we are seventy others.
No one will be left alone.
It’s Transfiguration Sunday today. We heard the story of Jesus and James and Peter and John going up the mountain with Jesus. These people don’t travel alone, you know. Jesus doesn’t travel alone. Suddenly Jesus’ face shines like the sun, and his clothes turn dazzling white, and then Moses and Elijah show up and they all start talking together.
Now there’s so much that can be said about all this, and so much has been said about Transfiguration over a few thousand years, but maybe right now one simple thing is still being spoken: No one will be left alone. Maybe Jesus gets a hint that he’s not alone, and he’s reminded that he’s part of an ancient tradition with people like Moses and Elijah who called the people back to God, who called out injustice and idolatry, and who sometimes felt so lonely themselves…but were never alone. And in an e-mail that a few of us received this week, someone suggested that maybe Moses and Elijah were talking to Jesus and encouraging him because they all knew that some really bad days were just around the corner. And maybe Moses and Elijah were saying what amounts to, “Jesus, you’ll feel so alone. But there are seventy others. You’re not going to be left all alone.”
Sometimes the gospel is that simple: You’re not going to be left all alone.
And sometimes maybe the gospel is this simple: Jesus has three friends who travel up the mountain with him. They see him changed and shining like the sun, and then there are two people talking with him, and then Peter tries to talk but God interrupts and speaks from a cloud and says “This is my beloved child right here; listen to him.” And right then, Peter and James and John don’t think about theology or spiritual lessons or how to preach a sermon or teach a class. They just fall down in fear. Maybe they’re afraid because everything they’re seeing is just so strange. Maybe they’re afraid of what’s coming next and they don’t know what’s coming next. Maybe they’re afraid because the voice from the cloud said, “Listen to Jesus,” and they remember what Jesus said a few days ago, about suffering and dying, and about them losing their own lives. Who wants to listen to that? Maybe they’re afraid because life just does that to you sometimes.
And when the clouds and the dust clear, and the three of them are just collapsed, lying on the ground in fear, Jesus comes and says, “Get up. Don’t be afraid.”
The voice from the cloud said, “This is my child; listen to him.” And the next thing Jesus says is, “Get up. Don’t be afraid.”
Maybe it’s all really that simple: “Don’t be afraid.”
In some ways so many of us are very afraid these days. Do I need to spell out why? Where is this all going? Where are we going?
We see what happened in Tumbler Ridge, and we feel grief with those people and we feel shock because that doesn’t happen here, it only happens down there. What’s happening to us?
And then someone starts to lay the blame at the feet of the trans community, and the fear gets ramped up by the worst kinds of lies and accusations.
You’ve got your own fears. Maybe the fears we’re all fearing, or your own fears that it feels like are known only to you. Maybe I do. Well, I do.
And maybe it’s kind of simple. For all of us and for any who are afraid: “Nobody will be left all alone. Don’t be afraid.”
When an angel spoke to Joseph about this baby who will be born, the angel spoke out an ancient name, Emmanuel, which means “God is with us.”
Nobody will be left all alone. Don’t be afraid.
When Jesus and his disciples talked about forgiveness, and those disciples wondered and struggled with how hard it will be, Jesus said, “Wherever two or three of you are together, I’m with you.”
Nobody will be left all alone. Don’t be afraid.
When he barely held on to life, Jesus cried out, “My God, why have you abandoned me?” and he stood then with everyone who has ever felt so alone and afraid. Because even when all seems lost nobody will be left all alone.
When he finally did breathe his last, two women named Mary and another unnamed, stayed there.
Nobody will be left all alone. Don’t be afraid.
And Jesus’ parting words to his disciples: “I’m with you always, to the end of the ages.”
Nobody will be left all alone. Don’t be afraid.
Twelve years ago there was another one of those incidents that shocked the nation and was too close to home. It was in the community of La Loche in northern Saskatchewan; it involved a gun, and a few family members, and a few more at a local school – four dead and seven more injured. On Saturday evening of that week Val and I went to the Saskatoon Symphony. At the start of the concert the CEO of the symphony would usually come onstage to acknowledge the land, to welcome us and to thank the sponsors, and to crack a joke or two. On that night, though, he just walked out on stage, took a moment to collect himself, and then said, “Sometimes there are just no words, and the only thing to do is not say anything. This is for LaLoche.” And then he walked off the stage, and the music spoke more than any of us could.
We sing, we pray, we listen, some of us speak, we eat and drink, but there comes a time when there really aren’t more words. Or maybe just a few, and you know what they are. They’re for for Tumbler Ridge, for any of how many countries we could name, for wherever there is hurt or fear. For all of us. You know what they are: Christ is risen. Christ is risen indeed.
So nobody will be left all alone. Don’t be afraid.