Last Sunday after Epiphany | Day of Remembrance | February 15th, 2026 The Rev. Irene Tanabe

A few weeks ago, I received an email from Reverend Nat inviting me to participate in St. Peter’s Day of Remembrance Eucharist. When I opened the message, I was surprised to find myself moved to tears, tears that I thought had dried up years ago. Why the tears, I wondered, and why the surprise? I had long assumed I was finished grieving the incarceration of Japanese Americans, but this month I learned that grief has a way of resurfacing, especially when our history remained unspoken for so long, tucked into family silences and passing references.

Growing up, I didn’t spend much time in Seattle, even though my Issei grandparents lived here, my father grew up here. Perhaps that distance insulated me, perhaps not. My family’s lives were forever changed on this day some eighty-four years ago, eighty-five years, yet it was a story not told to my generation when we were young. My grandmother would speak about “camp”, mentioning people or experiences as if recalling a childhood summer. Only later did I realize that “camp” was not a place of recreation, but a place of forced removal and incarceration.

When I came to Seattle for college, one of the first classes I enrolled in was Asian American history. That was when I learned all people of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast were removed from their homes and sent to “camps”, with those from Seattle dispatched to Minidoka. After reading that chapter in my textbook, I went straight to the library and pored over archived newspapers until closing time, tears streaming onto the old newsprint. For years, I cried whenever I encountered this history, whether in conversation, in asking my father about his experience, or simply hearing a passing reference.

And then, one day, the tears stopped. At last year’s Day of Remembrance, I wrote about that day at Tule Lake when I had a big, ugly cry while standing at the entrance to where the camp once stood. I remember the searing pain in my heart as I cried by the side of the road. Something shifted in me after that visit.

My father finally made it back to Seattle in 1987, some forty-five years after he was forcibly removed. In 2001, I found some of my father’s papers in Tokyo. My father was a student at the University of Washington at the time of the incarceration, and from there enlisted in the US Army and completed his service with the Allied Occupation of Japan. Among them were his college transcripts from Sophia University in Tokyo. I brought them back to Seattle and asked the Registrar at the University of Washington to review his transcripts from UW and Sophia University. I hoped they might find he had enough credits to receive his degree.

They told me he had not been a resident long enough. I am not one to take no for an answer. In 2008, that simple inquiry resulted in many of us Sansei advocating successfully for the Regents to confer honorary degrees upon all Nisei students forced to withdraw due to the incarceration. At the ceremony, I felt pride for my father, but no tears of grief. And I am sad to admit that just a couple of years ago, seeing a display at Obon Odori seeking the names of those held at the Puyallup fairgrounds reminded me of the injustice visited upon my people, but instead of sorrow, I felt annoyance. I wanted to focus on joy and community, not loss.

And then cam the Trump administration’s immigration policies. That, I suppose, is when the tears returned. I have learned there is no “getting over it”. The cycles of history – the repetition of fear and exclusion – brought the pain back to the surface.

But what do we do with this pain? How can we respond as faithful followers of Jesus?

We turn to the Gospel! The story of the Transfiguration offers a vision of transformation in the midst of confusion and fear. Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up a mountain, and suddenly his face and garments shine with divine light. Moses and Elijah appear as embodiments of liberation and prophetic witness. For a moment, the disciplesglimpse Jesus in the fullness of his radiant glory.

Peter, ever the practical one, wants to hold onto the moment. “I will build dwellings for you,” he says. But then a cloud envelops them, the cloud of God’s presence, echoing the cloud that led the Israelites to freedom and filled the temple with glory. They hear a voice: “This is my beloved Son … listen to him,” and the disciples fall to the ground in fear. But Jesus touches them and tells them to “Rise, and do not be afraid.” When they looked up, only Jesus remained. The vision was gone, and they were told to keep silent until after the resurrection.

Why the secrecy? Because they cannot understand the glory without walking with Jesus through suffering. Only after witnessing his death and experiencing his resurrection will they grasp the depth of God’s love, a love that journeys with us through injustice, exile, and return.

Today, on the last Sunday of Epiphany, we glimpse the brilliance of Christ’s transfiguration. The light that began on Christmas Eve, that guided scholars from afar, shines ever brighter, inviting us into deeper understanding. But we cannot remain on the mountaintop. Holding the Day of Remembrance on the mountaintop – memories preserved, contained, safe – would be like Peter building dwellings. To know Jesus, we must follow him into the valleys; into places of injustice, sorrow, and newfound hope. The Day of Remembrance is not simply about looking back. It is about seeing how the past reverberates into the present, challenging us to respond with compassion and courage as new immigrant communities face similar threats.

I began this sermon by telling you that my tears have returned. My spiritual director once reminded me that Jesus wept at the death of his friend Lazarus, and that we are called into this same vulnerability. When I recall this scripture, I see how I shut down the pain I experienced at reliving the injustices visited upon the Japanese immigrants. But Jesus tells me that the tears have returned not because history repeats itself, but because tears are a way we share in God’s grief for the world. Doing so means being vulnerable: being vulnerable to God’s love. St. Ignatius, in his Spiritual Exercises, speaks of the “gift of tears” as a spiritual consolation, alongside courage, strength, and intense love. He reminds us that tears lead us to God and to one another.

And so today, Jesus calls us to rise without fear, to walk with him through the seasons of our lives, and to bear witness not only in moments of glory but in times of weakness and vulnerability. The beauty we glimpse on the mountaintop is meant to strengthen us for the work of justice, reconciliation, and healing.

As we enter Lent, let the light of Christ illumine your way. Let it reveal the work before us: repentance, renewal, and action for those who continue to face exclusion and suffering. The Day of Remembrance compels us to remember not only the pain of the past. It calls us to solidarity and transformation in the present.

Let our tears guide us into the Resurrected Life.