The Transfiguration of our Lord.  Year B.  February 19, 2012
Text: Mark 9:2-9
    Jesus has been a strange-acting messiah.  You’d think he’d want everyone to know about him if he was the messiah.  But he cast out demons and healed the sick and forbade the demons or the cured people to speak of him.  This is the so-called “messianic secret” in the Gospel of Mark..    But now we jump ahead to the very middle of the Gospel and there is no doubt about who Jesus is. Mark tells us that Jesus was "transfigured before them, and his clothes became radiant, intensely white, as no one on earth could bleach them." And with an account like this other biblical passages come to mind.  Daniel 10, for example, speaks of the coming Son of Man in these terms: "His body was like beryl, his face like the appearance of lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze, and the sound of his words like the sound of a multitude." These images of the Son of Man in Daniel are visions about the One who would come to redeem Israel. As Jesus stands on this high mountain in Galilee, there is no doubt now about who he is: the promised Son of Man.
    Why did Jesus disclose himself like this to his top three disciples?  It goes back in Mark 8 when Jesus asked his disciples “Who do people say I am?” After they report that people are saying he must be the reincarnation of John the Baptist or Elijah or someone, he asks them who they think he is. And Simon Peter comes up with the big answer: “You are the Messiah, God’s anointed one.” Jesus accepts his answer but immediately begins a conversation in which it quickly becomes apparent that Peter and Jesus have very different ideas of what being God’s anointed one actually means. Jesus is talking about the inevitability of his suffering and death in Jerusalem and when Peter argues against this Jesus says that Peter’s thinking is satanic! Then that he goes on to talk about how anyone who would follow him will need to take up their cross and be prepared to die.
    It is right after relating that conversation that all three gospel writers tell of Jesus taking Peter, James and John up the mountain where they witness the Transfiguration. They have this awesome vision of Jesus dressed in dazzling white and talking with Moses and Elijah.  One wonders how they knew these figures were Moses and Elijah.  But in the Bible there is no record of the death of Moses and Elijah or a marked burial place.  There was a belief that Moses and Elijah were assumed bodily into heaven.  Our first reading today is about Elijah’s ascension into heaven in a fiery chariot caught up in a whirlwind.  So Jesus appears with two heavenly figures out of the history of Israel.  What the disciples are getting is a glimpse of the risen and glorified Jesus on the other side of the cross.  Having just discussed his inevitable humiliation and death, they see Jesus in his full glory.
    Finally Peter was beginning to “get it.”  Jesus had predicted his resurrection as well as his passion and death.  But he hadn’t learned everything yet because he wanted to capture the moment by building a shrine.  Sorry, Peter, we’re not on the other side of suffering and death yet.  All three gospels continue the story in the same way. The disciples and Jesus come back down the mountain and immediately find the other disciples trying unsuccessfully to heal a tormented boy. Whether the evil spirit was just an illness or some kind of demonic being doesn’t matter.  The three disciples who had wanted to build shrines on the mountain to cling to their moment of epiphany are taken back down the hill into a broken and tormented world.
    Jesus heals the boy and when the disciples ask why they couldn’t do it, he speaks of the need for prayer when confronting such things. He then has another go at explaining to them that his suffering and death are inevitable, and certainly after Peter’s experience, no one is going to argue with him. But we’re told that they still didn’t get it, and as if to underline their failure to understand, all three gospels tell us that the disciples started arguing with one another about which of them was the greatest. Jesus, probably shaking his head in exasperation, sits them down and says, “Those who want to be first must place themselves last of all and be the servant of all.”
    So all three gospel writers are at great pains to make sure we know that there is no way to the glory of transfiguration without accepting the way of the cross, and that we can’t hang onto the ecstasy of intimate moments of revelation in the presence of God without being sent back into a broken and tormented world to confront evil and be the servant of all.
    There are theologies around that are all about victorious living and endless experiences of glory and one magic moment after another, but you won’t find any such theology in the story of the Transfiguration unless you wrench it out of its context and try to read it some other way than how Mark, and Matthew and Luke. would have you read it.
    Our worship takes place under the shadow of the cross for we know that the way of Christ which we would follow is a way of humility and suffering.  As Martin Luther wrote to Philip Melanchthon about the so-called prophets who were coming around and confusing the people, “examine [them] and do not even listen if they speak of the glorified Jesus, unless you have first heard of the crucified Jesus” (Luther’s Works 48: 367).
    Each week we gather at the Lord’s table and proclaim his death until he comes.  Worship can be a transfiguring event.  If our eyes are open to see we witness the veil of heaven pulled back and ordinary stuff, bread and wine, revealed by the Word as bearers of the vibrant presence of God. Yet we can’t hang on to that moment. We can’t build shrines and refuse to leave the ecstasy of that transfiguring vision. No sooner have we gotten our hands on that epiphany of bread and wine received in faith as Christ’s body and blood than we are sent out.  Jesus promises to go with us, but he sends us back down the mountain to confront the evil and brokenness of a hurting world.
    The way of the cross lies open before us. There is no other way. Those who are given the vision of heaven on the mountain top are sent back to the tough and often thankless task of bridging the gap between what they have seen, the vision of what will be, and what lies before them, the fractured reality of what presently is.
    We live through that story every Sunday, but at this time of year we are called to journey even more deeply into its mysteries. After seven weeks of epiphanies - of reliving those stories where we suddenly realized that this Jesus is not just any bloke but that the fullness of God dwelt in him  - we are now given a glimpse of heaven from the top of the mountain and sent down to walk the hard road of Lent.
    Forty days in the wilderness. Forty days to examine and discipline ourselves, to hear the words of Jesus again: “If anyone wants to come with me they must take up their cross and follow.” Forty days to be reminded that to follow this man means to go straight back down the mountain into a confrontation with evil and on down the road of humble servanthood all the way to Jerusalem where the leaders of politics and religion wait to tear him down and string him up. Forty days to ask ourselves again whether we are willing to pay the price of following this man or whether we are really just looking for a blissed-out mountain top type of religion. Forty days to fast and pray and give alms that we might be tough enough to come down the mountain and live as transfigured people living out our faith in the cities below.  Forty days to walk toward resurrection and new life through suffering and death.  Amen.
– Frank C. Senn, STS, Pastor, Immanuel Lutheran Church, Evanston, IL

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