Sermon for Transfiguration Sunday, February 7, 2016

Text: Luke 9:28-36

            Beloved in Christ, “Jesus…went up on the mountain to pray.” He did so, “taking with him Peter and John and James.” Now at last we think that we might learn the reason for Christ’s success. We’ve seen Jesus preaching with authority. We’ve seen Him do miracles. We’ve seen Him cast out demons and heal the sick. He was the most spiritual man of His generation. Now if only we could see what gives Him that power so that we can go and do likewise!

            It looks as if the answer is prayer. Throughout Luke’s gospel, we see that Christ is portrayed as a man of prayer. When He was baptized, He was also praying. When crowds were pressing upon Him and demanding His attention, He systematically took time out to pray, even going to a desolate place to escape the crowd. Then, when He had to make the momentous decision of which twelve men to choose as His disciples, He spent the whole night in prayer first. Later in Luke’s gospel, we will see Jesus teaching again and again about what prayer is to be like. And so when we hear that Jesus went up the mountain to pray and especially took some of His best students with him, we think that we might finally learn how to have all the power our Lord has.

            But we get a real lesson in prayer, all right. Our Lord prayed all night long while on the mountain, but His disciples fell fast asleep. And we recognize ourselves in them. We snooze and we lose. Our wandering minds prevent us from connecting with God in prayer. And then when we do wake up, we babble nonsense and make requests that are wrong or inappropriate. So, for example, Peter woke up rather late and saw that everything was nearly over. And so he tried to salvage the situation by asking Christ’s permission to build three tents, so that Moses, Elijah, and our Lord could continue their conversation indefinitely. Luke tells us that Peter made this request not out of some sort of genuine piety, but out of ignorance. He hadn’t been paying attention to what Moses and Elijah had been talking about with Christ, namely, how Christ had to go to Jerusalem and be crucified there and rise from the dead. If he had taken that conversation to heart, he wouldn’t have made the request to stay on the mountain; he would have known from the beginning that such a request was impossible. In the same way, we often make ignorant and foolish requests in our prayers because we don’t know God’s Word very well or we disregard it when we pray.

Carl Heinrich Bloch,
The Transfiguration of Christ

            But when we pray, we discover that it isn’t all about us—our strength, our power, our spirituality, our ability to tap into the divine. Instead, it is all about Christ. Yes, our prayers should imitate those of Christ in their fervency and seriousness. But the good news is that our salvation and well-being does not depend upon us and our prayers, but upon Christ and His. For pray as hard as we might, the appearance of our face will never be made glorious and our clothing will never become dazzling white because we are shining brightly. Moses and Elijah will not appear and beg to have a conversation with us. And so we see that Christ is unique. He is the Son of God, and we are not.

            I do not mean to denigrate or deny His humanity. He is fully human and did many things that human beings have to do. He ate, He drank, He got tired and slept. Even in His relationship with the Father, He behaved in many ways as all humans should: He prayed, He meditated on God’s Word, He lived a holy life in obedience to God’s commandments, He showed love and compassion toward those who needed it. By trying to do these very same things, we would embrace what is the very best for humanity. But we can imitate Him in many ways, but not in all, for He is also true God. And when it comes to His divinity, the best thing we can do is not to imitate Him in ways that are beyond our ability, but rather to receive the gifts that He brings.

            You see, there are two things that we learn about Christ in this passage, as well as many other places in the Scriptures. We learn who Christ is and what He does. We learn who Christ is from the words spoken by the Father: “This is my Son, my Chosen One.” Now we might have been able to figure this out by considering various things. He had to be superior to Moses and Elijah, the greatest prophets of the Old Testament, given the way that they showed deference to Him. Christ had to be at least an angelic being, the way that His clothes shone and His whole body radiated with glory. But, of course, He was more than a prophet and greater than any angel. And so it is helpful to have the Father’s words pointing to Christ and explaining who He is.

            But how does it help us to know that Christ is God’s beloved Son? It helps us to see that being a Christian isn’t merely about imitating Christ. Now, of course, we should imitate Him in the ways that we can, as I mentioned earlier. But there will come a point when we realize that He is so far above us that none of us, not the saintliest among us, can come close to equaling Him. Instead, the truly Christian thing to do is to honor His unique mission on behalf of mankind.

            And that leads us to consider the second thing we learn about Christ: what He has done. On the Mount of Transfiguration, He spoke with Moses and Elijah about “His departure, which He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.” He didn’t talk to them about what laws would most improve mankind. It isn’t because the law that Moses had proclaimed and Elijah repeated was bad. The Ten Commandments are the very best for explaining the sort of moral obligations we have. But giving a detailed explanation of the law won’t save humanity. Trying to enforce that law rigidly won’t save us either. That is because the problem is the human heart. We can recognize the goodness of the law, but it doesn’t mean that we will keep it.

            Let me give an illustration that might be helpful on this Super Bowl Sunday. The rules of football are rather straightforward, even if there might be some nuances that escape most people. The major strategies for playing football are also learned easily enough. Even people who watch only the Super Bowl are able to figure out that it’s a bad idea to run the ball when it’s third down and sixteen yards to go. But when you actually are put in the middle of the game, everything that you’ve learned goes out the window. There will be plenty of plays made today that we will call stupid, rookie mistakes, but we wouldn’t be any better—in fact, far worse—if it were up to us to play the game. In the same way, it is easy enough to understand God’s rules, as laid down in His law, but that doesn’t mean that we will be able to keep them, especially in the hustle and bustle of life.

            That is why we need more than a lawgiver or a law preacher. We need a savior. We need someone who can delve into the heart of the problem and take it on, no matter the cost. And that is why our Lord went to Jerusalem. He went there because it was the heart of the problem. There the law had been preached for centuries, but it had saved no one all by itself. The law left some people in despair, since they realized that they would never be able to keep its demands fully. Others became hypocrites when they heard it, because they didn’t look at it carefully and just assumed that, since they were decent folks, they hadn’t ever really broken the law. But in each instance the law all by itself—apart from the promises of the coming Messiah—had been unable to save people. And so Christ stepped in to do what the law demanded. He didn’t just observe the sacrifices being offered at the temple; He Himself became the sacrifice for the whole world. And it didn’t take place in the beauty of the temple grounds, but on an ugly, barren hill, far removed from the ornate buildings of Jerusalem. It wouldn’t even be on the Mount of Transfiguration that it would take place, but on the gloomy mountain of Golgotha, the Place of the Skull. And to reconcile God and sinners, Christ had to and keep His glory under wraps. Instead, He would appear as the weakest, most despised human being.

            But because Christ went down from the Mount of Transfiguration and went up to Calvary, we have been redeemed from sin, death, and hell. And so God delights in us, for He delights in His Son and His Son delights in us. And if God delights in us, then that means that we can talk to Him, that we can pour forth our prayers. But our prayers ought not to be the sort of babbling and drowsy nonsense that Peter poured forth. Instead, they should be voiced only when we have done what God bids us do: listen to Christ.

            When we take seriously what Christ has to say about Himself and His mission, then we are able to pray to Him as we ought. It won’t be about holding on to the glory of a moment. Instead it will be about Christ and His redemption. Prayer won’t frighten us or bore us, but instead delight us. And that sort of prayer will sustain us as we leave the mountaintop and head back down to the dark valley. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Sermon for Transfiguration Sunday, February 15, 2015

Text: Mark 9:2-9

            Beloved in Christ, if you read Mark’s gospel carefully, you notice this pattern emerging. Christ casts out a demon. Sh. Keep it a secret. Don’t tell anyone. Christ heals people. Sh. Keep it a secret. Don’t tell anyone. Christ tells parables that confound people, while offering an explanation only to His disciples. But sh. Keep it a secret. Don’t tell anyone its meaning, for they will not understand. And then He does the most amazing thing. He is transfigured before three of His disciples. He shines as no human being has ever shone before. He is attended by Moses and Elijah, the two greatest prophets of the Old Testament era. But sh. Keep it a secret. Don’t tell anyone.

            Why did Jesus want to keep these things secret? Casting out demons and healing people are good things. Why not talk them up? And what would be wrong with His disciples telling the whole world that they knew for certain that Jesus was truly God, for they had seen proof of His divinity with their own eyes? Well, let me give you an earthly example. Imagine that someone has decided to throw a surprise birthday party. Now there are all sorts of things that have to be done. Invitations have to be sent out. A cake has to be ordered, balloons bought, and presents purchased. If the honored guest catches wind of even one of these details, the whole effect is ruined. It is only when everything is ready and assembled that the secret is let out of the bag. And in the same way our Lord knew that His miracles and especially His transfiguration would be misunderstood “until [He] had risen from the dead.” Only after His crucifixion and resurrection would we be able to understand what had happened.

            You see, God’s glory and majesty and power mean nothing to us in themselves. It would have been wonderful if Christ could have shone in great glory and convinced all people to turn from sin and believe in Him and be saved from eternal damnation. But it doesn’t work that way. The glory of God by itself does not convince sinners to repent. The Israelites who were alive in Moses’ day had seen God pour out ten plagues upon the Egyptians. They had seen all the firstborn sons of the Egyptians killed in one night by the avenging hand of God while they themselves had suffered no loss. They had seen the Red Sea part so that they could cross it. When the Egyptians had tried to do the same, they had drowned. These Israelites had seen manna descend daily from heaven. They had seen Mount Sinai smoking with God’s presence as if it were a fiery volcano. They had then seen a bit of that glory stay with them in the form of a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night that never left the camp.

            There has been no group of people in the history of the world who saw God’s hand so clearly as did that generation of Israelites who left Egypt. But what did they do? They constantly grumbled and complained. They behaved wickedly. They had heard God thunder from the mountain that they were not to worship any idols. And then, as the mountain was still smoking, what did they do? They made a golden calf and worshipped it.

            A similar thing happened in Elijah’s day, some six centuries later. The Israelites were worshipping Baal, a rain-god who claimed to be able to provide rain at regular intervals. So what did Elijah do? He prayed and God stopped any rain from falling in Israel for three and a half years. Some rain-god Baal proved to be! Then, to drive home the point, Elijah proposed a contest. Let those who worshipped Baal call on him to send fire from heaven to start a sacrifice. Elijah would do the same with the LORD God. Then they would see who the true God was. The worshippers of Baal prayed all day long but to no avail, but the LORD God consumed Elijah’s sacrifice. What a great victory for Elijah! But what did the Israelites do? They went back to worshipping Baal not long thereafter.

            God’s glory in itself will never change people. By itself it is a sign of judgment and thus it is a manifestation of the law. We can be terrified by His law for a while, but human stubbornness, selfishness, and sinfulness is more ingrained into us than is the fear of God. The effect of God’s glory wears off and we revert to our former wickedness. At best, a glimpse of God’s glory and the thundering of the law keeps us in check for a while. But it will not last for long. And sometimes it doesn’t even have that effect on us. Instead, we are so overwhelmed by the experience that we babble as Peter did.

            That is why God the Father didn’t tell Peter and the others to look more intensely at Christ’s glory. Instead, He said, “This is my beloved Son; listen to Him.” And at that time, when their ears were finally open to hearing Him, Christ was no longer transfigured or surrounded by the two prophets of old.

            Mark doesn’t tell us exactly what Jesus had been saying that Peter hadn’t been paying attention to. But Luke does. Luke tells us that Christ was discussing His upcoming mission to Jerusalem, where He would suffer and die on the cross before rising from the dead. And, indeed, Mark does relate that Jesus talked about those matters when He was coming down the mountain. Thus, it is clear that the most glorious thing that Christ could think about in His most glorious, transformative moment was the cross and the resurrection that would follow the cross. And that should be our focus too.

            You see, it is good to know that Jesus Christ is true God, but it is just as vital to know why He is true God in human flesh. He has come to save the world, and that could not be done while His face shone with glory. He had to be handed over to the authorities, and He had to look as if He were the least important person in all human history. The powers of that day had to think that He was the one person who could be manhandled with impunity because He was of no account. For He could not have died any other way.

            And yet Peter, James, and John were given this insight into Jesus so that they could have a different view of what was happening. Jesus wasn’t the weak, helpless man He appeared to be, but was the almighty Son of God. God hadn’t turned His back on Him, but rather approved of His mission of reconciling sinners to Himself. Christ was transfigured so that three of His disciples could understand better what He was up to. And we are told about His transfiguration so that we can understand His death and resurrection in a deeper way. Christ was no mere victim. He was no mere martyr for a cause. He was Almighty God, on a mission that only God could have accomplished.

            And this helps us to understand our lives too. If the Almighty Son of God did not show off His glory at all times, we too should expect that our lives here on earth will not always reflect the glory that will be ours in the resurrection, when we will receive our full adoption as God’s beloved children. If the Almighty Son of God put aside His glory and trod along the path that led to the cross, we too must expect to suffer while we are still here. But just as Christ knew that He was God’s beloved Son despite all that He would undergo, so we too should know that we are God’s beloved children, no matter what pain or grief we experience. Just as Christ continued to trust in His Father when His enemies beat and mocked Him, so we too should trust in our heavenly Father when we suffer, especially for our faith. God is still in control. Christ still is the glorious Son of God. Nothing we undergo can separate us from that truth.

            We know that our life here on earth is an episode in a much greater story. It isn’t the whole story. Yes, it is full of sadness and gloom at times. It is set in a dark valley, the valley of the shadow of death. But it is these dark chapters that set up a more glorious end to the tale. We think back to the glories that began the story and we press on to the glories that will be ours in the end.

            This is especially important for us to remember as we approach the Lenten season. Lent is a time when we take discipleship more seriously than we usually do. We might be tempted to grab onto a moment of glory and let it compel us to be better disciples than we have been. But that is just as foolish as Peter trying to build three tents and camp on the Mount of Transfiguration for the rest of his life. Instead we are sent back down into the valley and on a lonely, winding path that leads inexorably to the cross. It is in the cross of Christ that we will find our redemption. It is the cross of Christ that will renew us and make us better disciples.

            Therefore, beloved in Christ, keep this vision of Christ in your heart. Let it be a secret that sustains you on your Lenten journey and prepares you to celebrate Him who has risen from the dead. In Jesus’ name. Amen.