Keep Weatherly Weird: An Echo of God’s Voice in the World
Matthew 17:1-9; 2 Peter 1:16-21
A local librarian in the city of Austin, TX called into a radio station to make a donation. He liked the eclectic music, the focus on local issues and communities underserved by the mainstream. But when KOOP picked up the phone and asked him why he supported the show, he said, “I don’t know. It helps keep Austin weird.” And the famous slogan stuck. “Keep Austin weird” became the rallying cry for the local, small business community. It propped up unconventional community projects – like The Cathedral of Junk, a three story art gallery made entirely of trash. The origins of Keep Austin weird are embedded in its arts and music culture. Some of the weirdest events, like a festival that celebrates Eeyore’s Birthday, “showcase how creativity flourishes when ‘strange is fine,’” and artists, free-thinkers, individualists tend to congregate where inclusivity and openness lower the cost of being different. For years, Austin has cultivated the space creatives need to breathe and this set Austin apart from other Texas cities.[1]
I mean, we know “weird,” right? Huntsville has a squirrel monkey, named Miss Baker, who went to space in 1959, buried outside the space and rocket center. People leave bananas at the gravesite. We have a playground inside Maple Hill Cemetery. That’s just asking for spooky things to happen. We have Mama Zelda, a 20-foot-tall wooden troll, “hidden” at the Botanical Gardens. We have the Ravenswood Meadery at Lowe Mill where you feel like you’ve stepped into a Tolkien novel when you go inside. “Weird” is in the eye of the beholder. Weird can be endearing and lovely. Weird is what some of us rally around. The weirder the better!
I hope that’s the case today because the story of the transfiguration of Jesus is just plain weird. This story takes both your eyes and ears to pay attention. There is a clue that we treat this day, this hinge between the season of Epiphany and the season of Lent, as a defining God-moment. The white paraments signal that God is being revealed. We dare not avert our eyes from this strange vision in Matthew 17. And we cannot unhear the clear message from God spoken on yet another mountain top.
Jesus takes Peter, James and John on a hike to the top of the mountain and immediately things get weird. The long gone, prophets of their ancestors, Elijah and Moses appear, alive and speaking with Jesus. Jesus begins to glow like the sun, and Peter can’t help but say, “Lord, it is good for us to be here!”
Then, Peter interrupted the moment (even more) and offered to put up tents for all three of them. The purpose of suggesting this remains a mystery. Again, weird! But for Pete’s sake, surely we can understand Peter’s weird instinct to do something. When help arrives, when the impossible suddenly seems possible, don’t you want to “bottle it up” and “keep it safe?”[2] Peter is still reacting from his human perspective. “He is checked in midsentence by a voice from a cloud.” While Peter was still speaking a bright cloud overshadowed them and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, the beloved, with him I am well pleased. Listen to him.” (17:5) The presence of the Lord in the cloud confirms Peter’s confession in the previous chapter that Jesus is the Messiah (Son of the living God), while gently censuring him. [3] You might remember that Jesus then calls Peter, the rock on which he would build his church. It seems there are some lessons for Peter and the church from atop this mountain.
When I first read this text, because of our Epiphany theme, the phrase jumped out at me, And while he was still speaking. But it wasn’t talking about God or Jesus, it was in reference to Peter. Peter’s words get interrupted by God. How many times, I wonder, would God like to interrupt the church in order to stop it from doing something pointless. How many times would God like to say, This is what my glory and majesty look like! This is my Son! Listen to him!
This reminded me of a very long time ago when I was putting one of our boys to bed. He was bathed and brushed, in his pajamas and in bed. After a book or two and a drink of water and so on. I was ready to wrap this up. I’m moving in to give him a kiss and then turn out the light. And he says, Mommy, we have to pray. It was part of the routine and he wasn’t going to let me skip it. So, I took a breath and started praying something along the lines of: Dear God, watch over us and give us a peaceful night’s sleep… And suddenly, he interrupts me and says, “Mom, mommy, …you have to say it the way that Daddy says it.”
“How does Daddy say it?”
“Dear God, Thank you for my wonderful son, Marshall… Say that.” (eyes closed just waiting)
Of course, I did! I started over, now knowing the proper way to begin a bedtime prayer. Sometimes, we need to be interrupted and given the chance to listen, so that we can start over.
On a recent visit to one of our dear members who was in the hospital, I got ready to leave and offered to pray. Because I’m a quick learner, I asked what specifically Liz wanted me to pray for and she said that she wanted to regain her strength, wanted her cancer treatments to be effective because she still has things she believes that God needs her to do. So, we held hands and I prayed. Typically, that would have signaled the end of the visit and I would exit shortly after the amen. But this time,when I said amen, she didn’t let go of my hand. Liz started praying… thanking God for the ways God has always taken care of her. She prayed for her family, for me and the church. What a delightful, precious surprise. Like Peter, I get used to filling all the space with my own words and ideas, and suddenly I’m reminded that God is still speaking - perhaps in unexpected ways and times, interrupting the usual flow to instigate a holy moment - not of my own making – that compels us to Listen! Her son Brad and I walked out of her room together because we were overklempt with emotion, and overcome with the preciousness of the moment and the holiness of what we had just experienced and witnessed. Like Peter, I thought, “Lord, it was good for us to be here.”
In regard to this scene on the mountaintop, several commentators say this whole thing is “pointless.[4]” It is very different from the hands-on, action-oriented teaching of Jesus on that other mountain. It stands in contrast to Jesus’ healing and helping ministries he has modeled to bring about the Realm of God of earth. This mountaintop scene is not of earth. This vision is something else. It reveals to Peter and James and John the majesty and glory of Jesus. This guy that they sleep beside and eat beside truly is the Son of God, the One Moses and Elijah give their ear to and now stand beside, bathed in his glory, not the other way around.
In Mark’s version of these events, it says, and when they looked up, they saw only Jesus. Everything else fell away. Every preconceived notion, every doubt and disappointment. It all fell away and they only saw Jesus. It’s the kind of vision, experience, that will sustain these disciples beyond the worst they can imagine. “Whoever called the transfiguration pointless didn’t understand how much courage and encouragement we need every day of our lives.”[5]
Here are a few things I think we, the church, need to learn alongside Peter from this story.
Sometimes, we need to be surprised, interrupted by the in-breaking of the presence of God. Sometimes, we need a weird, unexpected encounter with the holy that makes us say, “Lord it is good for us to be here.” These are the encounters that will sustain us through the times we are wandering in the wilderness.
God is the originator of creating weird spaces that help us see things differently; that help us get a change in perspective – a burning bush, a star over Bethlehem, a vision high atop a mountain. These encounters reorient our callings and send us back down the mountain to meet the world, in the words of Peter from his epistle: with “a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morningstar rises in your hearts.” (2 Peter 1:19)
The church is an echo of God’s voice in the world… When Jesus is transfigured before their eyes, the voice from the cloud echoes the same thing that was said at Jesus’ baptism. These words of blessing and belovedness are centered as most important in the whole scene. As we are about to traipse off into the wilderness of Lent, these are the words we have to remember. And as the echo of God’s voice today- these are the words the church must offer to this hurting world.
A seminary friend shared a picture this week of a church sign that read: “We love hurting people come on in!” That invitation lacked a well-placed comma. How often God must want to interrupt what the church is getting wrong.
Weatherly, I think most days we are a beautiful echo of God’s voice in the world. We bless and call beloved, the people who are hurting the most. In our own wonderful and weird way, we champion our Baptist distinctives while not living up to cultural expectations of other Baptists. We challenge well-worn beliefs and still sing the hymns of our faith. We center scripture literally in our worship services so we can look at it from every direction. We honor tradition alongside free-thinkers and individualists. We are committed to cultivating spaces where creativity can flourish; and where inclusivity and openness lower the cost of being different.
We are weird! I love us! God is still speaking, Weatherly, through us – the echo of God’s voice in the world.
[1] Barker, Isabella, Then and Now: What does it mean to Keep Austin Weird? The Daily Texan Nov 2025
[2] Rothaus, Kendall Rae, Living the Word, Sojourns Magazine February 2026
[3] Garland, David, Reading Matthew
[4] Lischer, Richard, Seeing with Clarity, Christian Century February 2026
[5] ibid.