Transfiguration Sunday
February 11, 2018
2 Kings 2:1-12; 2 Corinthians 4:3-6; Mark 9:2-9
The last Sunday before Lent begins is Transfiguration
Sunday. The Gospel story for today is always the story about Jesus up on the
mountaintop with Peter, James, and John. While they watch, Jesus is
transfigured, transformed into a heavenly being, and they see Moses and Elijah
there, too, affirming Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah of Israel. In the
Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the transfiguration occurs as a “as a
bridge between Jesus' public ministry and his passion. From the time of the Transfiguration,
Jesus sets his face to go to Jerusalem and the cross.”[1]
Likewise, the next time we come together for worship, we will have our faces
set toward Holy Week as well. So, the transfiguration of Jesus is a major
turning point. Now, this isn’t a word we use every day, so to make sure we’re
clear on what we’re talking about, transfigure means to change in outward form
or appearance; to transform; or to change so as to glorify or exalt. In Jesus’
case, his face shone like the sun, his clothes became dazzling white, even
whiter than you can bleach them. It became quite clear that Jesus was the Son
of God, even clearer when God’s voice spoke through the clouds, “This is my
Son, whom I love. Listen to him!”
Now, we usually think of blindness as being in the dark.
You know, Isaiah’s promise that “the people who walked in darkness have seen a
great light” and the testimony that “I was blind, but now I see.” We usually
think we’re blinder when we’re down in the valley of the shadow of death,
because down in the valley means that the tall mountains forming the valley
block out the sun. We don’t usually think of mountaintop experiences as
blinding us, and yet the truth is that we can be blinded by too much light as
much as we can be blinded by darkness. If you look directly at the sun, it can
cause permanent damage to your eyes. As we learned from the total solar eclipse
last year, even looking at a blocked out sun can damage your eyes. One of the
news stories I saw last August was about a man who blinded by the previous
total solar eclipse back in 1979.[2]
The problem of too
much light is what gets to Peter. He sees Jesus transformed, with bursts of
light coming out of him, perhaps like when the Beast changes back into a prince
in “Beauty and the Beast,” or Elsa does her burst of magic in “Frozen,” or a few
other Disney examples, except it doesn’t just last for a second and then it’s
gone. The moment lasts long enough for a conversation. Peter is so overtaken by
it, so overcome, that he gets really excited about it and wants to mark the
moment, that he overreacts and offers to build three shelters, tabernacles,
like shrines, one each for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. When we get really excited
about things and cool events happen, we tend to want to mark the moment. These
days a lot of that marking happens on social media. It used to be photographs,
phone calls to spread the news, impromptu parties. If you go way, way back,
Jacob in the Old Testament would place a rock or give the place a special name
to remember what had happened there. We tend to want to mark the moment of
transformation. However, like we do sometimes, Peter goes overboard. He goes
too far. He offers to make a shrine each for Moses, Elijah, and Jesus. You see
the problem with this, right? It flattens Jesus to the same level as Moses and
Elijah: a great leader, a great prophet, one who listens to God and leads God’s
people. But Jesus is more than that. Jesus is the Son of God. He IS God. Moses
and Elijah aren’t his equals. In his excitement, Peter forgets that. He forgets
that just in the previous chapter he has proclaimed that Jesus is the Messiah.
Peter was blinded by the light.
Now, the song by that title was written by Bruce
Springsteen and released in 1973. Manfred Mann’s Earth Band changed a few words
and released their own cover of it in 1977, which has been more popular than
Springsteen’s original. In either version, near the end of the song comes the
line, “Mama always told me not to look into the sights of the sun, but mama
that's where the fun is.” Sometimes too much light is just plain too much light
and we forget we have to come back down to the valley, following the suffering
servant of Jesus to the cross. Mountaintop experiences can’t go on forever.
Yet, as we read in 2 Corinthians, “The god (little g) of this age has blinded
the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that
displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” In today’s age, we are blinded by wanting more of the mountaintop, by
wanting more of the good things, by wanting all the pleasures and luxuries that
we can get in this life. When life is good and going smoothly, most people
pat themselves on their backs and take all the credit. They don’t turn to God.
“Some people ‘veil their own eyes,’ that is, they do not see God standing
before them because they are paying so much attention to other things.”[3]
They make themselves blind by choosing to focus instead on their possessions, on
the TV or internet, on what others think of them instead of focusing on God. We
have so many modern conveniences, we have made this life so luxurious and
pain-free that even a tiny scrape hurts. We have this skewed idea that life is
supposed to flow smoothly and be free of hurt and pain, quite unlike what the
Dread Pirate Roberts tells Buttercup in “The Princess Bride.” There’s a lot of
truth to his line, “Life is pain, highness, anyone who says differently is
selling something.” The fun is in looking into the sun, because then we are
blinded to so much else.
Another
way we blind ourselves is when we “insist that God can appear only in certain
ways, and [we] refuse to see God in other ways.”[4]
In the last book in the Chronicles of Narnia, The Last Battle, one of the last chapters is called “How the Dwarfs
Refused to Be Taken In.” In an allegory for entering heaven, you enter through
a stable door (perhaps not so allegorical after all, if you consider Jesus was
born in a stable). Well, for those with eyes to see, the stable is transformed,
or transfigured if you will, into this beautiful banquet feast. All the
creatures can see it, except the dwarfs. They insist that the stable is still a
stable, just a smelly, old room and the food is just scraps. They are so afraid
of being deceived that they can’t see what’s right in front of them. Reality
doesn’t meet their expectations. There
are times our expectations blind us, too. I’ve been asked several times
before, in a number of places, if I’m the pastor’s wife or the church
secretary. If you expect a male pastor, then you’re not going to see me as a
pastor. If you think church has to look or sound a certain way to be church,
then you’ll have trouble with other forms of worship, which are just as valid.
So,
the good news in all this blindness caused by too much light is that we do have
a story today about someone who wasn’t blinded, and that was Elisha. Elisha is
the helper God sends to Elijah when Elijah is so overwhelmed and weary that he
just can’t even. This is when Elijah ran away after the duel with Baal’s
prophets and Jezebel threatened to kill him and Elijah heard God’s voice in the
small, still silence. God asks him, “What are you doing here?” and Elijah
replies, “I’ve been very zealous for you, God, and I’m weary. I’ve got nothing
left.” God says, “Go back. You’re not done yet.” Not what Elijah wants to hear,
but as he obediently returns, he is given Elisha to help him. Today’s story in
2 Kings is when Elijah is finally granted rest from all his work, and he and
Elisha both know it. But Elisha isn’t blinded by it. He knows Elijah will go up
to heaven today. Other people try to talk him out of being there when it
happens, but Elisha won’t be dissuaded. Elijah even tries to leave him behind,
but like Ruth and Naomi, Elisha won’t leave him. He’s committed to the end and
won’t be sidetracked. Finally, Elijah asks him, “What do you want from me
before I am taken from you?” and Elisha has his answer ready. He’s not overcome
by emotion or blinded by the question, he knows what he wants. Elisha asks
Elijah to inherit a double portion of his spirit. Elisha doesn’t want to be
blinded, not by light or darkness, not by expectations or reality, not by
weariness or overexcitement. He wants a close relationship with God, with eyes
to see and ears to hear. He wants a transformed life that in turn goes out and
transforms other lives. Isn’t that all that any of us want?
This
past week was the Bishop’s Pre-Lent Day Apart for clergy. This year’s speaker
was Dr. Marcia McFee, whose passion is to explore with clergy “how to create
worship that involves ‘deeply evocative and artful rituals that transform lives
to transform the world.’”[5]
How’s that for a mission statement for worship? The purpose of worship is to
worship God, to focus on him, to reorient ourselves back to him. And the result
that we who plan worship should expect is transformed lives that go out to
transform the world. The Day Apart was fantastic, and I look forward to working
more with our worship team to design and create worship so that it not just
touches but transforms we who worship so that we can go out to transform the
world. Not bad for transfiguration. Just don’t get blinded by the light. Keep
your eye on the main thing.
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