Just Trying to Get Away From It All
David C. Myers
February 14, 2010
Transfiguration Sunday
Exodus 34:29 - 35
Luke 9:28 - 36
Text: "And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, 'This is My Son, My Chosen; listen to Him.'" . . . Luke 9:35b
I suspect you know this conversation. It has happened in my life with many people, including beloved extended family members.
"I don't go to church, but I do try to do right and to live a good life. I read the Bible and pray; I don't need to go to church." Sometimes I hear added, "I find church people so pious and hypocritical." A corollary is, "I feel much closer to God when I am in nature, climbing a mountain, or fishing a stream. That's where I can really worship!"
If you're here today, you know those comments fall in the area of my "preaching to the choir." But I always am perplexed as to just what is the best response - especially because the people that make it to me know that I am a preacher. Sometimes I try to ignore the comment. But sometimes I try to offer - with various degrees of passion - my perspective. It goes something like this: "No, you poor, simple, secular soul - well, that's what I'd like to say, but somewhere along the line I learned that wasn't a very effective tact - no that is not what the Christian faith is all about. The Christian faith is about more, so much more than our private moments of good deeds, or our individualistic communing with nature. It's about corporate - as with other people - worship, awe, ecstasy. Before it is anything we do, the Christian faith is about something God does, a gift, self-giving, revelation."
Well, this morning Scripture reading from Luke kinda got me on this rant. It is the story of Peter, James and John going off and climbing a mountain with Jesus. I don't know exactly what was on the minds of the three disciples; and I never presume to try to second guess Jesus. I don't even know why Jesus only chooses just the three of them and not the other nine disciples. Perhaps they, after an incredibly hectic pace during the previous eight chapters of Luke's Gospel; perhaps they thought they were just going to the mountain top to "get away from it all" "to commune with God in the splendor of nature." Mountains are good, quiet, restorative places for Sabbath, for retreat, rest, and renewal. It's time to head for the hills.
Or maybe this was a setup. Everybody in the Bible, from Moses on, knows that mountains are places that you climb to get close to God, to experience divine revelation. Moses had to go up on a mountain to get the Ten Commandments. Elijah found God on the mountain in a voice of utter silence - or as some versions translate it, "a still, small voice."
At any rate, what they experienced on this mountain as a dazzling vision of Who Jesus was. There was a voice from heaven. Moses and Elijah, two prophets long dead, stood there among them, beside Jesus. The appearance of Jesus was transfigured before them and they fell on their knees in awe and worship. Peter blurted out, "Lord, it is good for us to be here!"
If something like that has never happened to you, I hope that you wish it would. If something like that has ever happened to you, then you know what I am trying to talk about here. You know how our petty, moralistic religion pales in significance in such a glorious moment. How our "Daddy, look at me, look at me" becomes, "I just saw God and lived to tell about it."
If the three disciples thought they were getting away from it all, they were terribly mistaken. All of a sudden Jesus appearance changes and His clothes became dazzling white. Then Moses and Elijah appeared engaging Jesus in conversation.
Peter was overcome. He wanted to build three shrines on the mountain top - one for each of the big three. Fortunately we are also told that Peter did not know what he had said. And then a cloud came and overshadowed them and they were terrified as a voice spoke to them; "This is my Son, My Chosen; listen to Him!"
If there were any doubts as to Who this traveling rabbi was they were following, there shouldn't be now. But it is curious how the revelation came. It was not through miracle, not through teaching, not through the hectic-ness of the ministry in Galilee, not even through what Jesus had said. Aren't those the usual types of methods we would use to get the true nature of someone?
But this is different. It was up on the mountain - where they went to get away from it all that the spectacular broke into the normal, the extraordinary cracked open the ordinary. There was a transfiguration of Jesus.
You might ask yourselves what is a transfiguration? Were Peter, James and John given a glimpse of the supernatural; or, is this really the natural, seen rightly? Is this event on the mountain truly ordinary; or, is this the ordinary seen through the eyes of faith? Maybe it would all seem like a miracle if we had eyes to see.
Take that as a definition of faith, a "conviction of things not seen." Faith is the gift of being able to see what's really going on beneath the surface.
Or we might try to frame it so it makes scientific sense and then move to the religious as Adam Thomas wrote, "We may be visible to one another simply because we reflect and absorb various quantities of white light, but God made us to do much more; God made us to shine."
So, in so many ways, today's Scripture is different. We know Jesus, not through our efforts to penetrate the truth of who He is, but rather through Jesus' gracious revelation, through this mystical self-revelation. Christianity is a revealed religion. That means it is not something that we have thought up or something that is humanly devised. It is a gift, something that comes to us, a truth shown to us rather than discovered by us.
The transfiguration of Christ on the mountain is thus pure worship, something at the heart of our faith. We cannot fully explain it. We can only proclaim it, relish it, enjoy it, and wonder at the sheer glory of it all.
And for a shining moment, the disciples see, and the disciples believe. And as Peter said, "Lord, it is good for us to be here!"
But perhaps as we study this strange and wonderful story that is Jesus' transfiguration, perhaps our challenge is not so much to ask, "Did this really happen?" but rather, "Do we have the imagination that is required for such a story to speak to us?"
And maybe that is why you come to worship in the first place. You know how easy it is to become accustomed to the anesthetizing routine, how easy it is to have your vision dulled by the reassuring ordinariness of the everyday. So you come into this gathering hoping that the veil will be pulled back, the curtain will be lifted and for a shining moment you will be able to see the world as God wants us to see it. That's my theory of why people go to an art museum, to Shakespeare, or to a symphony in the first place. We hunger for many things, but among the things for which we hunger, is beauty; because through beauty we can see our everyday lives in a new light.
A few weeks ago I attended the West Virginia Wesleyan Trustees mid-winter Retreat. After our dinner on Friday evening we had a time for "entertainment" by the European Tour Choir, a select group of the Chapel choir. When they had finished singing, at the last stanza of the last piece, there was a rather awkward moment of complete silence. Then the Trustees exploded! Yes that was it, we exploded into applause. We were standing up, shouting, and applauding for all that we were worth. Why? I am sure it was partly their gratitude for the work of the singers. But the true source of that audience's gratitude was that we had witnessed the creation of beauty offered to an audience who were gathering to deal with deferred maintenance needs, new building hopes, retainage of students, development of online classes, and how hard we would have to hit the endowment - not pretty stuff. That spontaneous rising to the feet, that energetic clapping of the hands, that is worship. That is worship at its best. Or rather, Christian worship is something much akin to that.
On the mountain, Jesus was transfigured, his garments were gleaming white, and a light shone from him brighter than the light of the sun. His disciples, who had walked dusty roads with him, fell to their knees, overwhelmed with wonder.
And then the disciples worshiped.
Pray that someday, stumbling through our worship services, we might be granted such a moment of wonder. Pray that the beauty of God might break through to us, might reach down to us. For this is when religion rises. I know that the music of the choir does this better than my feeble words. Take us up the mountain, light the fire, remove the veil, let there be light, make us shout, "Lord, it is good that we should be here!"
And it is good that we should be here. But the Scripture doesn't end there. Today we see the transfigured nature of worship, but that in turn transfigures our lives into action. "And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, 'This is My Son, My Chosen; listen to Him!'"
Are we ready to listen?
On this Sunday we stand on the threshold of Lent, that forty-day journey with Jesus to the cross. On the way, before the journey's end, there will be opposition, betrayal, resistance, cruelty, and death. Are we willing to listen to that Jesus for the next forty days? Are we willing to be led by Jesus down from the glorious mountaintop to the valley of the shadow of death?
Who is this Jesus we are to listen to?
There is a character in one of Iris Murdock's novels that says, "Saints are those who are able to absorb evil without passing it on." Just like Jesus. Someone else has said that saints are these who, like the stained glass windows in our church, let some of the glory of God shine through.
We come down from the mountain, having heard the voice, having seen the glory. We are changed, determined, and amid the great cacophony of life we will listen to Jesus. And that listening transforms us.
We see not only who Jesus is - God's very Son - but also who we see who we are, Jesus' disciples who are to listen to Him - even along the journey to the cross.
And to think, maybe like us, all the disciples wanted to do was to head for the mountains - just to get away from it all.
"This is my Son, listen to Him."
Will you pray with me?
Prayer
Lord Jesus, we have caught a glimpse of your glory as God's only begotten Son. We have been to the mountaintop and seen Your majesty.
Now, in our life in the valley, help us to move from vision to discipleship. Help us, having seen You, to now listen to You. Having opened our eyes, now open our ears. Help us to hear You and, in hearing You, help us to obey You. Amen.