Sermon: Transfiguration Sunday, February 11, 2024

Beloved, I want to invite you into the mystery of the Transfiguration of Jesus. A mystery need not be a problem to solve. It is not a puzzle for our rational mind to solve with our cleverness. I invite all to acclimate ourselves to the atmosphere of the mountaintop, to sit still and marvel in the presence of this mystery. At the mountaintop, our perspective is not the same as in the world below. We receive a new perspective. And as we contemplate the meaning of the transfiguration, let us shed all our prejudices, and instead be struck and honed by the new reality that shines before us.

So in today’s Gospel reading, Jesus takes Peter, James and John up a mountain alone. In the Bible, the mountaintop is often the place where the Divine reveals itself to Human beings, it is the meeting place where the divine mysteries unfold themselves. Often, when these humans witness these encounters, they are terrifying. These are overwhelming experiences. But they are also fascinating. They capture the wonder and awe of the witness. A moth hovering over fire could be an appropriate image to understand the dynamic. It draws us, yet coming too close to it would consume us. They are terrifyingly fascinating, as the scholar Rudolf Otto might put it: mysterium tremendum et fascinans, a mystery that inspires awe. Peter, James and John have just such an experience as Jesus transfigures before them. The transfiguration is mainly this: Jesus is revealing His Divine nature. Peter, James and John knew Jesus as their Teacher, their healer, their friend perhaps, a great prophet and preacher, yes as the Messiah, they knew Him in all their available human categories. But at this moment, Jesus shows them that He is much more than all those other things. That all those other things could never encapsulate who He truly was, the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity. And at the sight of this awesome revelation, do the disciples understand what they are seeing? From the start of Mark’s Gospel, the disciples have seen Jesus do many things, but nothing like this. Unfortunately, they do not quite get it yet. Peter’s response shows us why: he calls Jesus “Rabbi”. An inoffensive title, but that is how he always had called Jesus. This word belies that Peter has not yet pierced the veil and seen the full reality of Jesus as the Son of God he is witnessing. He was grasping to how he knew Jesus before he was transfigured among them. So if any one of us has difficulty taking hints from God, do not be troubled, because you can’t do worse than Peter, James and John. But what is one to do with such an experience? There is some compassion for them in the text: “He did not know what to say, for they were terrified”. So the three of them build tents to, in some sense keep the divine presence at bay, to make room for them and preserve them in place. It was common practice to build a shrine at the sight of a divine appearance. They mainly reacted to the mystery and tried to do something about it as they knew how. But what is required is something else entirely. The disciples have been tagging along with Jesus all this way, but they still did not grasp the mission they were on, they were still seeing things limitedly. Jesus would need no tent or shrine to remain in, a bigger movement was happening.

And so a cloud overshadowed them, and from it came a voice, echoing the words of Jesus’ Baptism: “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to Him!” And here is where the movement gains momentum. That divine commandment to listen to Jesus, to heed His call. The disciples are confronted with the new reality, this one you are tagging along with, This is My Beloved Son, in Him you will find Salvation and Liberation. And all the dots connect together from the beginning of Mark’s Gospel until this moment, this is the first time in Mark’s narrative that they see Jesus in this new divine light. In this moment, Jesus is revealed to be more than their teacher, the source of His authority is revealed, the source of His power. This revelation implies that more is expected from Peter, James and John, because something larger, something God-filled is afoot. To wade through the mystery of the divine, to acclimate to the atmosphere of the mountaintop, is not to enclose the divine in a shrine, to limit its boundaries according to our definitions and fears, but it is to sit and listen to Jesus, to follow in the footsteps of the Son that shows us the reality of His being and mission, and ultimately sends us from the mountain into the world to spread His Liberating Word of Love and Compassion.

And so the question became for them, as it becomes for us: Who is this Jesus, and what is He for us? In what way do we listen to Him? Do we listen to Him as just a teacher? Is He just a prophet? Is He just a guy we admire? Or is He the Son of God for us? It is to us that the commandment to Listen to Him is addressed. We are Christians, because we bear in our lives the witness of Christ’s life. His story and His life exude from our common life together as church. But our life and our preaching derive their power from that transfigured Jesus. That Jesus that is God with us and for us, that Jesus who went to the cross, and that only through that cross did He give us the gift of rising with Him in newness of life. Remember our text, only after He was raised from the dead, would the glory of His divinity be revealed. The transfiguration exists only in light of the cross that Jesus will bear. So it is this transfigured Jesus, the Son of God, the Crucified and Risen One, that makes us the church and makes Christians out of us. Jesus as only a teacher of morals that we follow is not what distinguishes us. Many can be moral, many can establish a code of ethics, many can give good teaching and good preaching, but only One can forgive sins, only One has died and has risen and extended to us the gift of that power, and Only one gathers us and keeps us together in love amidst the differences.

Our reason for existing as this community Paul states clearly in 2 Corinthians: “For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord”. It is essential that we do not lose this goal. To be the Church is to proclaim in word and deed the Gospel of this same Jesus Christ. We proclaim that the tremendous and fascinating mystery of divinity experienced in that mountaintop by Peter, James and John is made livable in us through the face of Jesus Christ. As Paul says again in our epistle reading today: “For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

So I invite all of us to inhabit the divine mystery by focusing on Jesus Christ as the center of the church’s life. Our perspectives are transfigured when our lowland perspective is shifted by the view gained at the mountaintop. From it we can see the world in a different light, and in the same way our lives are changed and expanded when we encounter the meaning of our life from the vantage point of God in Christ. If we only focus on our own ego, on our own limited concerns, then we only reproduce ourselves into the world, we lose the capacity to see others as they are, the way God sees them, because from the ego I can only see what benefits me. But in Christ, I see Christ in the other, and therefore I see in them someone to love and serve. I no longer see someone to fulfill my own appetites, but rather someone God commands me to love. And that is a difference that is understood by listening to Christ as the Son of God that moves me into this type of life. So allow yourselves to be shaped by the mystery and awe of the life of Jesus Christ as He shows Himself to be. This is the One that seeks you, loves you, forgives you, keeps you eternally in His hands, and molds you in accordance with His Being of Love and Mercy, not the Jesus of our own making, not the Jesus that makes us comfortable, but the Jesus that moves us into tremendous awe, and ever expanding mystery and fascination.

Let us pray:
Lord Jesus, thank you for giving us the gift of your Full Self, accompanying us in the joys and sorrows of humanity, and lifting us up in the power of your Divinity. Change our perspectives according to Your Will and Mission, that we always remain steadfast and delight in following You. May we continue to encounter You anew as You reveal yourself to be. In your awe-inspiring name we pray, Amen.