As we have noted, today is the first Sunday in Lent, our annual 40-day season of preparation for Easter, which, in its earliest form, took inspiration from Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness at the start of his ministry, which we heard read earlier. The main conflict in that story is, of course, the appearance of the Tempter, the Devil, that ancient biblical menace who the New Testament writers present as Jesus’s primary foil.

There’s much to say about this curious mountaintop scene, which appears in Matthew, Mark, and Luke that we know as The Transfiguration,  and that we read together each year on this Sunday before the start of Lent.

Our youth lead us in worship.

About 25 years after graduating college, I was invited to a luncheon on campus where one of my small group of friends was being honored. Living in Mississippi, I was the farthest away, and this was the first time I’d seen them all in the same room in decades, and I experienced a small revelation. As some dean was speaking, I looked around the table, and it dawned on me that I finally understood my first assignment in college.

I wonder where they were when he found them?