What Does Transfiguration sunday Have to do with Us Today?

Mark 9:2-9 Transfiguration 2018

My husband and I recently traveled to the Holy Land. We saw these amazing holy places related to the life of Jesus.  For Christians, the two most sacred of these sites are undoubtedly the Church of the Nativity, in Old Town Bethlehem, which marks the spot where Jesus was born, and, in the Christian quarter of Old City Jerusalem, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. This is the church built over the stones of Golgotha, where Jesus was crucified; through a hole in the floor, you can even reach down and touch the stone. At a lower level in the complex that makes up this site, there is a cave believed to be the empty tomb where Jesus was laid following his crucifixion, and from which he was raised in the resurrection on Easter morning.

The two churches that stand at these sites were erected over 15oo years and 1000 years ago respectively; each has experienced cycles of construction, conquest, destruction, reconstruction and holy pilgrimage. Today they are overseen and administered jointly by a constellation of ancient church bodies, among them several Orthodox expressions of Christ’s church.

If you’ve ever been to an Orthodox church, you know they are very ornate by our standards. It is typical to see a great deal of polished brass and silver, gilded icons and gold mosaics at any Orthodox place of worship, especially around and upon the altar and the chancel area. While we might consider this ostentatious, to the Orthodox, the finest textiles, silver and gold vessels, icons and adornments symbolize the glory of God, and give praise and adoration to God Most High.

As you might imagine, there, in the Holy Land, when it comes to these holiest of Christian sites, these sites connected with the pivotal moments of the life of Jesus, the adoration and therefore the amount of ornamentation placed by the Orthodox churches is incredible, with massive displays of precious metals and stones surrounding the areas devoted to Christ’s birth, death, and resurrection.

With lighting from modern-day fixtures shining down on them, the light reflecting off the shiny brass, gold and silver surrounding the places of holy attention is overwhelmingly brilliant - the effect quite stunning, and sometimes, at certain angles, quite blinding.

As I read the texts for today, especially the description of the sheer brilliance of Jesus’ clothing, I thought about the places we saw. I understood, for the first time, I think, what inspires such showy extravagance. It’s a lot like what God did for Jesus that day.

As Jesus was changed before Peter, James and John, high upon the mountaintop, the place traditionally considered the closest place to heaven the text says, “his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them.”

Throughout Scripture mountains are places of divine revelation, and what happened on that mountaintop was God’s doing. God, who sent his Son to earth to save us from our sin, now, before these trusted disciples puts on a display the meaning of which there can be no question – the display reveals the divine glory which God himself ascribes to Jesus. In what is what is known as the Transfiguration of Jesus, God causes Jesus, sent to be the light of the world, to shine like the sun.

The sites throughout the Holy Land are preserved for people like my husband and me and the millions who have preceded us and the many who will follow us throughout the centuries to see and experience these places of holy significance. That’s what we, as finite human beings do. We attempt to capture or encapsulate special events, places and things that hold meaning for us, far various reasons.

We want to hold on to the special moments and places by capturing them, memorializing them, sharing them with people, and building monuments and keepsakes to our experience of them.

I wonder if that is what Peter was trying to do in our gospel text this morning. Perhaps he, too, was trying to hold on to, capture, encapsulate, or memorialize the moment and the experience. Maybe he even thought if he built dwellings there on that mountain it would preserve the moment and keep Moses and Elijah there too, and then he could bring people back here and share this experience with them, too. Because really, if we can’t share in that experience, what does this Transfiguration mean for us?

Today, each of our lessons reveals divine light. Together, they build to the climax of the gospel, where the glory and favor of God is revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. The voice from the cloud comes – God’s own voice, declaring, “This is my Son, the Beloved,” and then, a command, “listen to him!”

As the clothes fade back to normal and the two heroes of the faith disappear, Jesus and his companions start back down the mountain. That’s the remarkable thing. In some ways, perhaps, the most remarkable thing – apart from the Transfiguration itself – that Jesus, moments after being revealed in divine glory upon the mountaintop chooses to return, to dwell among humans, knowing what will come of his earthly enterprise.

Because Jesus does know what is coming. After all, in the verses just before these, Jesus has just predicted his own passion and death, and delivered a teaching on the suffering path of true discipleship.

So, we need to ask ourselves, what does this Transfiguration Sunday have to do with us today?

Episcopal priest, Wil Gafney writes, “The worlds in which these texts are set include brutal wars, occupation, colonization, slavery, financial exploitation, and interpersonal violence. And yet God chooses to dwell among her people, accompanying them through the perils of a very broken world. These texts testify to God’s presence in our world as well; we are every bit as broken and God is every bit as present. In a world deluged by floods, shaken by architectural and economic collapses, and bruised by violence between persons and nations, the enduring presence and undimmed glory of God is a beacon of hope and comfort.”

God’s final word in this text is a word of command – listen to him. That’s God’s final word to us on this Transfiguration Sunday. Listen to Jesus.

To listen to Jesus is to hear his word, to follow his call to serve as his disciples. To listen to Jesus involves picking up our crosses to follow wherever he leads, knowing that the road may not be easy, but that he does not leave us alone.

To listen to Jesus is to know that in him, God pours out God’s heart and love into the world to transform you and me and all who believe in Jesus so that we can follow him, for the life of the world. To listen to Jesus means to be transformed by his presence in our lives –transformed into disciples who live our lives like his, caring about what he cares about, and persisting against the injustices and sin Jesus himself persisted in speaking out and acting against. Listening to Jesus involves shaping our lives into cruciform witness to his glory and his love.

God, in Jesus, sees all people as worthwhile, and worthy of love and dignity and respect. Through Jesus, God intends to use the gifts God has given us to care for each other and the world.

My friends, the reality is that brutal wars, occupation, colonization, slavery, financial exploitation, and interpersonal violence still exist in our world. We are both part of the brokenness, and part of the healing. Acknowledging our need for a savior, God still transforms us into servants of the world, sent to listen to Jesus by reflecting the light of his love in our lives. 

While the kingdom of God has broken into the world in Jesus, the fulfillment of the kingdom will not come until Jesus comes again in all his glory.

And yet, even now, God chooses to dwell among her people, not in tents built upon a mountaintop, but here among us, accompanying us through the perils of a very broken world.

What does Transfiguration Sunday have to do with us today?

Transfiguration Sunday leads us toward the season of Lent. It leaves us with a transforming command – listen to Jesus, and do as he does.

As Jesus and the disciples will leave the mountain and its glory behind and descend into the brokenness of the world to live out their callings, the church heeds the call to Lenten disciplines amid the troubles of the world.

At the end of today’s service we “leave our alleluias” behind, and we pledge to focus not on the dazzle and shine of the light of Christ, but on what it means that he not only descended from heaven to live among us, but that he came down from that mountain that he might complete his journey to the cross.

Transfiguration Sunday serves not only as a bridge between Epiphany and Lent, but as a reminder that in Jesus, God not only bridges the place between heaven and earth but eradicates it, filling us with possibility, love, and the hope of the ages.

Amen.

How Quickly We Fall - the Story of Peter

Matthew 16:21-28

The gospel text for today is a continuation of the text we read last week. When Jesus asked, “Who do you say that I am,” Peter is the first to answer, declaring that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God. For that, Jesus heaps praise on him. Yes, Peter, you got it! And on the strength of this truth, Jesus says, he will build his church.

It was a pivotal moment in the ministry of Jesus. It was a moment of profound transition in the gospel of Matthew.

So, as the story continues today, the gospel writer tells us that from that point on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem, and undergo great suffering, and be killed, and be raised on the third day.

      After 16 chapters working up to this moment, of Jesus teaching about the true nature of God, of Jesus calling disciples into ministry with him, and his teaching the disciples how to be disciples and even giving them a few practice runs, once the revelation of Jesus’ divinity is made, Jesus moves on to revealing the purpose for his coming; Passion; Death; Resurrection.

       But, hearing Jesus talk about his own destruction and death is more than Peter can comprehend or bear. “God is merciful to you, Lord! This will never ever happen to you!” In Peter’s mind, the God who loves, sent, and guides the Messiah could never allow such suffering to befall him – could never allow such an end to come to the Anointed One.

Jesus’ response to Peter is, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a big problem to me because you are not gripped by the concerns of God but by the concerns of human beings.” That, my friends, is the crux of the problem.

       I have compassion for Peter. Following so closely on a pinnacle moment for Peter, Jesus’ response indicates that in his eyes, Peter now embodies evil.  In the blink of an eye, the movement of the text goes from praise to condemnation.

Rather than being praised for possessing knowledge that is the rock upon which the church of Jesus Christ would be built, Peter is denounced as a stumbling block. A rock that doesn’t build up the work of the church becomes an impediment and worse – it causes other to trip, to fall.

How easy it is for us to lose sight of who we are supposed to be.

Peter’s problem is that his imagination is crippled by the way he wants things to be – by the way he’s always understood or imagined God works. He is crippled by the comfort he experiences as he imagines how God will save God’s people, and he is unable to imagine, he cannot fathom, the way that Jesus has revealed salvation will come.

Peter confessed a Jesus he thought of as the conquering hero, mighty warrior king the people of Israel had been expecting. It was leap enough for him to imagine this itinerant rabbi who had become his friend as the Anointed One sent by God to redeem Israel, but once he got past the fact that this man who seemed so ordinary was fact God’s Son, well, he reverted back to assumptions based on the way it had always been: the weak were routinely overcome by the more powerful; therefore of course the victorious Messiah would show himself to be the ultimate, most powerful avenging hero.

Are we any different in our expectation for God? Greed for power and wealth still drive the world in which we live. Therefore, power and acquisition are still viewed as vital requirements for and measure of success, even in the church.

David Lose writes – “Like Peter, what we most often want is a little more of what the world already offers – be it force or security or wealth or status or popularity or whatever. But Jesus didn’t come to comfort us with a little more, but instead to free us. And freedom first means realizing that we’ve settled for something that isn’t life giving.”

It's like this: Imagine you are making lists on a paper with 2 columns on it: 1 side for the way God blesses us, and the other side for the way God challenges us.

On the blessing side, we would likely list words like comforts, consoles, feeds, nourishes, saves, gives us life and love and riches and family, health, wealth, friendships, church, activities, forgiveness, light in the darkness, etc.

The other side, the one for the challenges might list things like, “sends us out to feed the hungry, tells us to forgive our enemy, love our neighbor, embrace the outcast, accept and accompany those who aren’t like us, insists we must bear the Cross of countercultural activity in Jesus’ name.

God demands that we name evil things for what they are – egoism, racism, poverty, discrimination, white supremacy, religious intolerance, ignoring the desperate, pursuit of wealth at the expense of the less fortunate, sexism, homophobia, perpetuating injustice through our choices. Ignoring the least, the last, the little, the lost and the lifeless. The list just goes on, and on, and on, doesn’t it?

We tend to pray easily for those things on the “blessings” list – we try mightily to ignore the things on the challenges list – the call to move counter culturally in the realm into which Jesus calls us.

Jesus’ way is countercultural and mysterious – he is fully divine yet fully human; he has power over the earth yet submits to death on the cross; and he neither yields to those with earthly power nor does he beat them into submission with mighty arms.

       Instead, Jesus declares, it is divinely ordained and even necessary that he go to Jerusalem where he will be condemned by those holy and righteous leaders of the religious tradition and the political elite. They will torture him and kill him. But Jesus also predicts, and to be honest I don’t think that Peter and the rest of the disciples even heard this part of what he says, as shocked as they are – that on the third day he will rise from the dead.

       They miss the point of what Jesus’ true victory will be – that through his death and resurrection he will defeat the powers of sin and death, and he will rise again. And you can’t blame them.  They have absolutely no experience on which to base what Jesus is telling them about how God will act in this story. They have no way to even begin to imagine it. They have no way to comprehend that in the midst of death God brings life and even when Jesus dies on a cross, God will use him to raise us to new life.

     So, today I invite you to join me as we challenge our imaginations – where are the places that God is at work in and through your life for the good of the world? Can you imagine what you, your congregation, or your community has to offer the world? Can you imagine, that when you befriend the lonely or encourage the frightened heaven rejoices? Can you imagine that, though afraid, when you stand up to those who spew hate God is with you? Can you imagine that even smallest acts of love and generosity can change the world order and introduce a different reality; That through your hands, God’s work truly is done? Can you imagine that love is more powerful than hate and that you hold that power inside your own beating heart? Can you imagine that God raised Jesus from the dead in an act of defiance, strength, power and life for the world?

      Many of us have been moved by the outpouring of love and support across racial and economic lines for the victims of Harvey this week – we’ve even joined in. We’ve been amazed at the heroic acts by strangers who risked their own lives to save the lives of those in peril.

I don’t believe, and I sincerely hope that none of you believe, that this hurricane was a sign of God’s wrath, judgement or punishment. While God’s ways are mysterious to us, so too are God’s enormous store of strength and compassion and drive for forgiveness and relationship. I believe that God is at work in acts of kindness and generosity large and small in the healing of those affected by the storm and floods and that God can use these blessings to change hearts and build bridges.

      When we drift and falter as Peter did, God is there to challenge us, bless us, and call us back. God forgives us and frees us to set our minds, wills, and action in the direction God intends for us as redeemed children of God. In Paul’s letter, we hear the call to let love be genuine, hate what is evil, and hold fast to what is good. Life places us in a complicated world. But with Jesus’ blessing, each day we have an opportunity as his disciples to live out the radical, unexpected love of God in Christian life and service. May the Holy Spirit empower us, that it may be so.

Amen.