February 15, 2026
Epiphany Last
The Rev. Dr. Elaine Ellis Thomas
St. John’s Episcopal Church, Essex, CT
Exodus 24:12-18; Psalm 99; 2 Peter 1:16-21; Matthew 17:1-9
An October 22, 1964, page 23 New York Times headline read, “Marshall Quits Church Session; Judge Is Reported Upset by Action of Episcopalians.”[1]
The judge in question was Thurgood Marshall, at the time a federal judge on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and later Justice of the Supreme Court. The Episcopalians in question were the deputies to the 1964 General Convention of the Episcopal Church held that year in St. Louis. Marshall was a deputy from the Diocese of New York, the first African American deputy from that diocese and a member of St. Philip’s Church in Harlem. A resolution before the convention would have recognized the right of people to engage in civil disobedience of segregation laws if they came into conflict with the basic dignity of human beings created in the image of God. Particularly disturbing for Marshall was that the resolution was voted down in the House of Deputies which is made up of clergy and lay persons, and not in the generally more conservative House of Bishops. In another context, Marshall once said “The Ku Klux Klan never dies. They just stop wearing sheets because sheets cost too much,”[2] and I can’t help wondering if he was suspicious that some of these non-sheet-wearing Klan members were sitting among the House of Deputies of the Episcopal Church.
Marshall’s experience at the 61st General Convention came exactly ten years after the monumental Brown v. the Board of Education case that struck down the 58-year-old precedent of separate but equal established in 1896’s Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court Case. In his career as a Civil Rights attorney, Marshall won 29 of 32 cases that he argued in front of the Supreme Court. Like other leaders in the Civil Right movement, he had been to the mountaintop. He had seen the promised land. And yet that promised land was never fully within his grasp in a nation in the grip of racism and white supremacy.
The Apostle Peter wanted to memorialize the Promised Land right up there on that mountaintop with Jesus and Moses and Elijah. Many of us talk about having a mountaintop experience, and yes, it would be great to stay up there where the air is clear and we’re on top of the world, but that’s not how life works. Jesus didn’t take Peter and James and John up the mountain in order to stay up there. This was a sign for them – as if the miracles and the healings and the feedings of thousands had not been enough – that Jesus is truly the Messiah.
It is also a sign that Matthew returns to again and again that Jesus is the fulfillment of the prophecies of a new Moses who will lead the people to freedom, the Messiah who will restore the fortunes of Israel. In Jewish tradition, Elijah was to be the forerunner of the Messiah, and while John the Baptist filled that role, the appearance of Elijah and Moses on the Mount of Transfiguration was a clear and unmistakable indication of the truth of who Jesus was.
And while we did not read the part that comes next, that mountaintop experience ends with a thud as the disciples down below can’t heal a boy suffering from seizures. “You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you? How much longer must I put up with you?” (Matthew 17:17). Poor Jesus. And now, he is setting his face toward Jerusalem. Time is short for him to get this “faithless generation” ready for what is coming next.
In our church calendar, this season of Epiphany is set up with readings that demonstrate to us who Jesus is, from mysterious Magi coming from the East, to the dove and the voice from heaven at his baptism, to someone who says “follow me” and people do, to a wise teacher who goes up a mountain to teach a reinforced version of the law of Moses. We have been shown all of this, just as the disciples were, and the transfiguration is the grand finale. Moses and Elijah, the Law and the Prophets, all wrapped up in the person of Jesus.
In the Civil Rights era, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the prophet, thundering like Amos about justice rolling down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream (Amos 5:24). If King was the prophet, Thurgood Marshall was the law, and even on those occasions when rulings didn’t go his way, he would say, “You do what you think is right and let the law catch up.”[3]
The Brown v. Board of Education decision was monumental. We wrestle with its ramifications to this day. It was a mountaintop for jurisprudence in this country, and it was a mountaintop for Thurgood Marshall. Yet, like Jesus and the disciples, staying on that mountaintop was just not the way it worked for Thurgood Marshall. His life was one persistent battle for justice for all people, and it was a life nurtured and grounded in the faith of the Episcopal Church where he was baptized as an infant in the church founded by Absalom Jones, the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas in Philadelphia. He was a vestry member, served on the Standing Committee of the Diocese of New York, and remained a faithful worshipper at St. Augustine’s in Washington, D.C. once he was appointed to the Supreme Court. And it was at the National Cathedral in Washington that 4,000 worshippers, including presidents and Supreme Court justices and diplomats, remembered and eulogized him upon his death in 1993.
Most saints are commemorated on the day they die and enter into their reward. Thurgood Marshall is commemorated on May 17, the day Brown v. Board was decided. It’s a fitting way to honor him.
Eternal and ever-gracious God, you blessed your servant Thurgood Marshall with grace and courage to discern and speak the truth: Grant that, following his example, we may know you and recognize that we are all your children, brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1964/10/22/archives/marshall-quits-church-session-judge-is-reported-upset-by-action-of.html
[2] https://www.ststephensphl.org/news/friday-reflection-part-i-remembering-thurgood-marshall/5-2020
[3] Ibid.