Redeemer Evangelical Lutheran Church - New Paltz

Mark 9: 2-9; 2 Corinthians 4:3-6; Psalm 50: 1-6; 2 Kings 2: 1-12

“Given the choice of glory on a mountain or death on a cross, which is more attractive? Jesus comes down the mountain. He will not give up on his disciples. He will not give up his divine mission for the sake of all humanity.” - Brian Soffregen

There is humor in our Gospel for the Transfiguration – Having seen Christ revealed as the Son of God, having a little “pow-wow” with Elijah and Moses - Peter wants to build a tent. Think about it – you’ve just realized you are in the presence of God and your first response is “can we put up some poles and fabric for you?” Peter’s response is easier to understand, his wanting to create a safe place in which to communicate with God, when we remember that as the Israelites traveled through the desert they would set up the tent of Meeting each time they stopped. In the Tent of Meeting the priests could safely communicate with God and then tell the people what they had heard. So when Peter sees Christ going all Technicolor on him and then Moses and Elijah appearing with him he thinks of his ancestors and naturally suggests “Jesus, can we build you guys some tents?” Can we create some safe and appropriate ways in which to encounter the revelation of God? Can we put some walls up around the fantastic sight of you? Yet when has the encounter with God ever been safe? And when has God ever been able to be contained?

Last week we discuss the light of Christ being revealed to the leper and how he couldn’t help but share the good news. This might suggest for us that as we come to believe, as the light of Christ is revealed to us in many and various ways, a desire grows in us to share this good news as well! We do this, despite our sometimes doubts and failings because we have been washed clean in the waters of baptism, steeped in the knowledge of God’s sacrifice in Jesus on the cross, and fed by the meal at Christ’s holy table. We are empowered and emboldened by the Spirit for service knowing that despite our human imperfections God chooses to work through us. Christ is in us, doing marvelous things for the sake of the redemption of the world.

This week we again see Christ being revealed in his identity as the Savior. Today’s text comes right after Jesus declares for the first time how he is to die and be resurrected. So the revealing of Christ as the Son of God on the mountaintop is, among other things, confirming the divine nature of the One who has just claimed divine status and divine abilities to secure for all creation the salvation accorded it by God. You see all of the texts of these past weeks have dealt with various ways in which Jesus is revealed as the living God come to earth. Through reading and hearing these stories Christ is revealed again to us so that we. too, might come to believe. So that our hearts may be made ready for Christ’s revealing.

This Jesus is more than a prophet who teaches and heals. Many prophets, some of whom are documented for us in the Bible, taught and healed people. Elijah even brought a man back from the dead. But this is Jesus the Christ who can not only teach and prophesy and heal and raise people from the dead, this is the one who has said he himself will be raised from the dead. And the voice from the clouds says, “This is my Son, the beloved, listen to him.” So this is more than a conference of prophets on the mountaintop. This is Christ revealed on the mountaintop. Like the now old Coca-cola advertisement said, “only the real thing.” This Christ is the real stuff. And only the fully equipped, fully revealed on the mountaintop, ready to go to the cross to ensure redemption Christ will do.

“This is my Son.” Four words that change the whole game. These four words confirm that something more than the work of a prophet is happening here in Jesus Christ. Four words that confirm that in Jesus resides the glory of God, revealed for the world in love. “This is my Son.”

Furthermore this Jesus, this Son of God does not stay on the mountaintop and revel in his own glory. Instead he walks back down the mountain with the disciples. He returns to finish his mission to die so that all might have the possibility of salvation. Christ could have stayed on the mountaintop. It might have seemed an appealing alternative to what he knew was to come. Yet Christ returned that this world might be changed by his presence and then by his sacrifice. Christ returned to ensure future hope and to ensure hope here and now, to be revealed here and now.

Where have you seen Jesus this week? Where has Christ been revealed to you?

I shared with the council on Wednesday night about how I saw Christ when I was at Mountainview nursing home this week to lead a service. I was getting ready to start worship for some of the residents who had gathered when one of the staff assistants piped up and asked if I’d like accompaniment on the piano. I said sure, and she wheeled a man over to play in his wheelchair. It was when I went to bring the hymnal to him that I realized he was blind. Blind, but able from memory and his talent and skill to still pick out the melodies and some chords from the old time hymns we played. Suddenly I saw again how God brings hope where our eyes might only see decay. Suddenly I saw how God works everyday miracles, how Christ walked down from the mountaintop and right into Mountainview nursing home that afternoon.

Oh how I saw Jesus revealed in that man on Wednesday! There are the metaphors of being able to play to God’s glory even when we are blind, or learning Gospel songs by heart. But honestly most of all when he began to play I knew Jesus was God and God was love and God was there with us. Even though I knew that before I knew it all over again.

I saw Jesus revealed in another man this week as well. A man who is finally coming to grips with his mother’s prescription drug addiction, and who is reaching out for help in his own healing to a counselor and to Alanon. I saw the way God was opening this man to see a level of truth about his life he had never seen before. I saw how God was opening this person’s eyes to the possibility of healing never dreamed of before. I saw him transfigured and I saw him walking with Christ.

I saw Jesus with a family this week who had lost hope. They were tired and burned out, not sure about their purpose and exhausted by their days. I saw Christ in them reaching out to friends and to me, and in their fervent prayers. I saw Christ revealed and Christ hoping for them even while they struggle.

Where have we seen Jesus this week? How did we know it? How many times we will need to learn again that Christ is with us, that hope has not left the building, it is just returning from the mountaintop?

The disciples have already been told who Jesus is, but here on the mountaintop they learn it all over again. Christ is transfigured before there eyes and they are privy to hear the voice of God declaring, “this is my Son the beloved, listen to him.” The disciples are fearful but also converted again by this experience. Hopefully we are as well. This is the real thing, the high octane, going to the cross for our sakes Savior for whom we have longed.

Of course as many times as we have been converted for Christ, born anew in the grace of God, it is always a blessing to have it happen again. Some days we may find ourselves caught by fear, then freed by faith, then caught by fear, then freed by faith a hundred times over; maybe even a thousand times over. Some tell stories of what are called “mountaintop experiences,” times when they felt a particular closeness to God or when God was revealed to them in an extraordinary way. Others experience faith in a quieter way, and still others, like Mother Theresa, may have powerful faith experiences followed by long deserts of time in which they feel and experience almost no trace of God’s presence in their lives.

There is no right or wrong faith experience. There is no one way in which to experience and know God who in love has saved us in Jesus Christ. It is enough to know that God knows us, loves us, holds us and enfolds us; maybe especially when we do not feel it or see it or understand how.

We do not need to try and encapsulate our understanding of God as Peter did, within a tent of his own making, his own understanding. We do not need to box God in. We can let God be God and soar beyond our knowing. We can revel in a God who is powerful beyond measure, whose very presence must be cloaked so that we can catch a glimpse. Perhaps. Or perhaps not catch a glimpse. Surely the Lord is in this place whether we see or know it or understand it or not. Surely God in Christ seeks to lead us and help us to follow. We seek to follow not because we fully understand or because we have fully seen this God revealed.

We follow because Christ walks down from the mountain and invites us to follow. We follow carried in the wake of a love unstoppable, a love beyond time that nevertheless claims time and us as its own. Christ’s own beloved. This is the true revelation of the transfiguration: that God revealed is a God who loves us in redemption. This God sweeps us along on the coat tails of mercy, grounds us on the mountaintop and in the daily experiences of life and of love revealed in people around us, and in our hearts within us.