What Pastor Jon Preached on Sunday, February 14th, 2010

The Transfiguration of Our Lord
Exodus 34:29-35 • Psalm 99 • 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2 • Luke 9:28-36, (37-43)

"Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. ²⁹And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. ³⁰Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. ³¹They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. ³²Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. ³³Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, 'Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah' —not knowing what he said. ³⁴While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. ³⁵Then from the cloud came a voice that said, 'This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!' ³⁶When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen. On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met him. ³⁸Just then a man from the crowd shouted, 'Teacher, I beg you to look at my son; he is my only child. ³⁹Suddenly a spirit seizes him, and all at once he shrieks. It convulses him until he foams at the mouth; it mauls him and will scarcely leave him. ⁴⁰I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they could not.' ⁴¹Jesus answered, 'You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you? Bring your son here.' ⁴²While he was coming, the demon dashed him to the ground in convulsions. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the boy, and gave him back to his father. And all were astounded at the greatness of God."

Well it’s here, it’s upon us again. Are you ready? Or are you like everyone else who can’t believe that yes…Valentine’s Day is here? Or, no…wait. Let me rephrase that: are you like everyone else who can’t believe that yes, the season of Lent is right around the corner? It does always seem to dawn upon us more suddenly than we are ready for, doesn’t it? The glow of God coming to dwell with us mortals in Christ—that Epiphany has been shining for several weeks now. Please, don’t pull us away from that yet! Not yet. We don’t want to be pulled down yet…down into the somber awareness of our great brokenness and of God’s even greater mercy in Christ.

But today, smack dab in the middle of these two seasons we get today—the Transfiguration—which is both a bookend to Epiphany and also a transition to ready us for Jesus’ Lenten journey to the cross. This day can frankly seem odd—almost a dream in the midst of these two seasons. In fact, that’s just how the disciples Peter, James and John hear and understand it. Jesus takes them up to the mountain while they are “weighed down with sleep”, and they see Jesus turn into dazzling white in front of them. It’s this dream that perhaps they will faintly recall of a vision of the glorified and magnified Christ—a dream they see become reality after the cross, on the third day.

In the season of Epiphany now behind us we have seen the revelation of the glory of God—in the star shining over his birth, in God’s words of blessing at his baptism, in his turning water into wine, in his mission-proclamation and rejection at Nazareth, in his belief in lowly fishermen to become his disciples. Even with all this revelation that’s happened, however…we may still be wondering—Jesus has been revealed, Jesus is with us—but I don’t see him! I know God’s there but I haven’t seen God show up in a while. Perhaps Jesus’ epiphany hasn’t given way to a new vision, or a transformative experience. Jesus today begins to show us the long-view—the mountain-top view—that shows us we may have not yet seen the multiplicity of places where Jesus reveals himself among us.

In today’s Gospel, we see Jesus present in several different places and the multiple locations give us an indication of where we might find Christ as we make this switch of seasons. Jesus is on the mountaintop, a place associated with God’s ecstatic presence, of direct contact with the divine. This association began at Mt. Sinai where Moses encountered God in the cloud—and Moses makes an appearance here to recall that divine revelation. However, on this mountain, Jesus isn’t just having a “Technicolor Dream Coat Show” to give the disciples an out-of-body experience. Jesus also reveals himself as he comes down the mountain to carry out his work of healing and entering down into the muck of our demons. Jesus comes down to defeat and transfigure himself before us with his power to subdue the evil that threatens us. but Jesus is also in a third place here—he is also preparing to set his face to Jerusalem—to turn to the cross. He’s just told the disciples before he goes up the mountain that he must be crucified, and on the third day rise again. He makes that prediction a second time after he comes down from the mountain and heals a demon-possessed boy. Jesus’ transcendence and glorified presence cannot be taken outside of this larger purpose and larger thrust of his choice to not stay on the mountain top, not to go around revealing his glory in healings and miracles, but also to enter deeper and deeper into our vulnerability and weakness, to go all the way to cross, to bring new life out of death—out of our place of greatest powerlessness.

Where do we find God? Where do we look for God to be revealed? We have seen God’s glory in his Epiphany, in Jesus’ coming. But now we see God entering even deeper into our world, our lives. We can look for God to be revealed in Christ in the mountaintop—in the retreats, the prayer groups, the pilgrimages, the miracles of healing, the moments of personal forgiveness and reconciliation. And, we can also look for Jesus to come down with us from those peak experiences of faith—to come down and be with us as we await God’s presence in the ordinary. Jesus comes down to be with us as we await his healing, as we await his word that will keep our fears at bay, as we await to hear about the glories of the what the mountaintop was like for him so that we can also be fed by that experience too. And, in both of these—the mountaintop and the coming down from it—we remember that God in Christ ultimately comes in these places to identify with us on his way to the cross. Christ comes to identify so deeply with our humanity that he can fully reveal his life-giving divinity through the weakest parts of our lives.

Where do we look for God? We can look for God in the living Christ: Christ on the mountaintop, Christ coming down to redeem us; Christ whose ultimate destination is the cross. This transfiguring Christ is the un-masking, the un-veiling of who God is and who God sends to us to identify and give us a sense of this God who comes to show power not in strength but in our weakness.

Some of you may know I am fond of a twentieth century monk named Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk who lived at a monastery in rural Kentucky. As a famous writer, Merton found in the solace and quiet of the monastery a belief in seeking apartness to find God; to know the mountaintop there. But one day while in Louisville, Merton was walking in plain clothes during the hustle and bustle of rush hour, God unveiled a mask to reveal Christ present in every person he saw. He wrote,

“In Louisville, at the corner of 4^th and Walnut, [I] suddenly realized that I loved all the people and that none of them were, or could be, totally alien to me. [It was] as if waking from a dream—the dream of my separateness, of the “special” vocation to be different… I am still a member of the human race—and what more glorious destiny is there for humans, since the Word was made flesh and became, too, a member of the Human Race! Thank God! Thank God! I am only another member of the human race like all the rest of them. I have the immense joy of being a man… There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun…There are no strangers!...The gate of heaven is everywhere.”

Merton as a monk risked a great deal in not limiting Christ to the mountaintop of a superior monastic mysticism. God took off the veil blocking him from seeing Christ’s mercy in the midst of the world. The light that Merton saw shining in everyone on that very normal street corner that day was the transfigured Christ shining through the cracks of the brokenness of the multitudes surrounding him.

As we enter into this time of Lent, God is taking the veil off of us, too. God is revealing Christ to us, so that we may see him, face to face. I invite you—this week—to look for “Jesus-sightings”….to look for where God is taking off our masks and revealing the mountaintops, valleys and crosses where Jesus is present. Perhaps we have not seen Christ present for a while in the ecstasy of a mountaintop, in the troubled depths of our valleys, or in the utter weakness of our morality…But God reveals Jesus present in all these places…He is the one about whom God says to us, “Listen to him!” so that we may see him in and know him in all of these places. With Peter, James and John, we have been put into God’s unfolding story of transfiguring us to live deeper and deeper into God’s grace, of God’s unveiling us who we truly are, of God revealing the glory of Christ to us, Christ…who is made bold in our weakness. As we keep the cross in view, God will disclose Jesus to us amidst our mountaintops, and as we go down the mountain today—as we go out from this place, into the world—God will reveal Christ to us as we share what we have seen, and begin our Lenten journey. Amen.