Sermons

STOP! LOOK! LISTEN!

Transfiguration Sunday

Roderic P. Frohman	Third Presbyterian Church
February 22, 2009	Mark 9:2-9

It has been my thrill to climb three 14,000-foot peaks in the Rockies, two times each for a total of 6 climbs. Two of those “Fourteeners,” as the Coloradoans call them, Mt. Bross and Mt. Lincoln, were near my brother’s cabin in the Rockies, a cabin which I am very sorry he just sold last summer. On one hike a few years ago with my niece, Andrea, we reached the summit at about 14,200 and had lunch. We could see the curvature of the earth at that height. Pikes Peak was only 100 miles away, as the eagle soars. Below us like miniature toys were the old silver mining towns of Alma and Fairplay, in the near distance the green high chaparral of Colorado's alpine plains.

As we slowly ate, indeed eating rapidly at 14,000 feet is an eruptive mistake, we were suddenly surrounded by thick grey clouds and there in the middle of July, we were enveloped in a short snow storm. The mystery, fascination and majesty of the mountain top are usually internalized in silence. It takes too much energy to talk. Each upward step requires every bronchial. So to take it all in you just stop, look and listen.

This mountain top experience is one that I periodically need, because it is a transfiguring experience, a respite from the demands and stress of the work a day world. The Adirondacks are great but the Rockies speak to my soul.

To understand the contrast between the stress of everyday life and a mountain top solace is to partially unlock the door to the mystery of the gospel text this morning, the disciples’ visionary experience of the Transfiguration of Jesus.

There is somewhat of a parallel between the life of the disciples and Jesus prior to the Transfiguration and the lives of we modern disciples.

As Mark constructs his gospel we get the impression throughout of an intense, jam-packed terse story. Key phrases such as; “the next day,” “immediately”, and the random geographical pattern of the teaching-travels of Jesus, crisscrossing Palestine with a theological but not geographical consistency, give us a sense of the demands on Jesus and the disciples for bread and circuses, nourishings and healings, deeds and miracles. It had to be exhausting as the previous story line in Marks’ gospel suggest; the mission of The Twelve, encounters between Herod and Jesus, the beheading of John the Baptist, the miracles of the loaves, walking on water, many cures of the blind, lame, sick, conflict with the Pharisees, Peter's profession of faith, the foretelling of the passion, the call to the sacrificial life of taking up one's cross to follow. It was all challenging, exhilarating and exhausting work. A mountain retreat was needed. They needed to stop, look and listen.

How equally exhausting are our lives, a struggle between meaningful work, or no work, or the exhausting work of caring for one's own, or another's, broken health, or the struggle to keep our schools and institutions as vital places. There are deep anxieties over war in the Middle East, about recession at home, neglected domestic priorities. Our experience very often cries out for relief. Confidence in the future is shaken. We long for a transfiguring moment. We need to stop, look and listen.

“There are throughout the gospels a series of ‘moments,’ or mysterious events, presented by the gospel writers as critical moments in the revelation given in Christ. They may be more or less historical, or more or less legendary, depending upon which ‘moment’ they are. But the New Testament seeks to present IN these ‘moments,’ the Christ of faith.” (Macquarrie, John C., Principles of Christian Theology, Scribner’s, 1966, p. 257). The Transfiguration is one of these moments, as are others, like the nativity, baptism, temptation, passion and so on.

The Transfiguration story “seems to express in a remarkable way the transition that must have taken place from the disciples’ acquaintance with the human Jesus to their faith in the same Jesus as the Christ--a transition that has rightly earned the name, metamorphosis. The Greek word for transfiguration is, “metamorphusthay”, or metamorphosis.

“The story begins with the human Jesus--the Jesus who has recently disclosed that he is going to suffer (or who has in fact already suffered, if we think of the transfiguration as a post resurrection tradition as many do).” (Ibid p. 264) The gospel writers want to impress upon us, with the vision of Moses and Elijah, that a greater then the Law is here and a greater than the prophets is here.

Here we find traditional Old Testament symbols of revelation: a high mountain, clouds and disembodied voice the disciples hear, “This is my beloved son, listen to him.” If it sounds a bit like “Moses on the Mountain, Part II,” then you are not too far off.

This symbolic language is about Jesus. Jesus is, on one hand, a human being in which all the weakness of a suffering humanity is epitomized, and yet in this wholly human and suffering figure, the revelation of God and the drawing near of all the mystery, fascination and majesty that God represents, is focused.

But Peter doesn’t get it. “Rabbi, how good is it that we are here! Shall we make three shelters: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah?” Then the gospel writer adds the editorial comment, “For he did not know what to say they were so terrified.”

In the presence of the holy Peter's response is… well… random. He may as well have said. “Let's commemorate this event with a theme park. We'll have a transfiguration water slide. For just $5 you can go up the mountain and from the top you can remember your experience with Jesus as you plunge from the clouds of the mount of Transfiguration into the cooling, healing waters of the pool of Siloam-west. Afterward you can rest in the Inn of Many Mansions. As you turn back your pillow at night you will discover, a mint in the shape of a cradle to remind you of the humble birth of the blessed Savior. Step right up folks, get your tickets now to the Transfiguration Christian Amusement Park.” Peter didn’t get it.

Why do we do this? Or some equivalent thereof. There is something cheap and shallow about standing on top of a “Fourteener” and talking about how beautiful it is. Several climbs and several years ago I was slumped exhaustedly on the top of Mt. Lincoln which has a peak of about 6 feet by 3 feet. Along that narrow strip of land is the exact location of the Continental Divide. Presently, up the steep face of the other side of the mountain came a mountain man in a black and red checkered jacket. There, standing over me, this mountain man, lit up a Marlboro and drawled, “Some view ain’t it?" I shook my head in agreement and thought to myself, “Is the Pope Catholic, does a chicken have lips?”

Why can’t we just stop, look and listen and receive the gift of divine encounter? Probably because we don't trust the mountain top experience of awe, majesty, mystery, fascination. It is very hard for modern people just to worship. We want to analyze, work for our divine reward. We find it hard, like Peter, to accept the grace God has given to us. In short we are suspicious of majestic, mysterious information that we receive from God, or which others claim to have received from God, called “revelation.” This transfiguration story, and the birth and baptism and temptation and other “moments” in story of Jesus, are moments of revelation. But to modern people, revelation is weird stuff, like the Antichrist, and the four horsemen of the apocalypse, and not taking your sick child to the doctor because God told you not to do so. That is not revelation. That’s, well… dumb.

As professor Macquarrie says, “In revelation a person sees no more than any other person in the situation might see and hear. The person who receives a revelation sees the same thing in a different way. The person sees the event in depth or in another dimension.” But, notice I said “receives” a revelation.

“In general the human cognitive experience of revelation does not occur because we look for it. Rather it looks for us. As we process the experience of revelation we discover it is not something which we can calculate or probe. Nor is it an event or experience in which we purposefully participate, like enjoying art or poetry. Rather the experience of revelation is a third kind of essential knowing. It is a response to an event of communication in which we are seized. It is something that arrests our attention and we have to stop and think about it. The revelation comes to us as a gift. It is at the same time overwhelming and gracious. It is an experience of connectedness and kinship. It is not a propositional experience.” (Ibid., p 80-85) A person experiencing revelation doesn't say, “Oh, E=MC squared.” What they say and do is NOTHING. They just absorb the gift.

So when we look at the Transfiguration of Christ the reaction of Peter is informative, in that his reaction is something to avoid. The transfiguration “speaks uniquely of Jesus Christ in ways that evoke from us awe and worship. When we understand this, then we will be more hesitant about squeezing some relevant exhortation from the story, drawing hasty comparisons to current events, or finding analogies within our own experiences” as I have just done. (Craddock, Fred B. “Christ is Not as We Are,” Christian Century, February 21, 1990, p. 179) But this do-nothing response is most difficult, because you expect from a preacher that she or he will bridge the distance between the biblical texts and ourselves. In this case there is a danger of trivializing a grand story. This is a story ultimately about Christ, and not about us. But this doesn’t mean it is lost to us. Just the opposite. Because it is not about us it can help us.

To stand before the mystery of the Transfiguration full of dazzling light, hovering clouds and a heavenly voice, a story that we cannot fully explain, or a story that a preacher ultimately cannot process and reproduce for a congregation, a story that simply stands there, offering disturbing consolation, is a story before which we live out our faith in awe and praise. (Ibid.) The story compels us to worship.

Something happens when we stop and ponder the mystery, majesty and fascination of The Christ. Something happens when we just accept the gift of Christ’s presence with us. At first it seems like A Royal Waste of Time, (a book by Marva J. Dawn which is to be read during Lent by the Third Church program staff) but something happens. We glimpse in depth what we have only seen on the surface before. Something happens when we allow the overwhelming graciousness of Christ to seize us. The stress and crises of life seem to lose their power over us. “The splendor of worshipping God leads us to be the Church for the world.” (Subtitle of Dawn’s book) When we catch a glimpse of the transfigured Prince of Peace then we gain confidence to work for peace. When we catch a glimpse of the transfigured Master Worker of the human race then we gain the energy to look for employment if we are unemployed, or see deeper meaning in work that has become boring. When we catch a glimpse of the transfigured Great Physician then we can be assure of our own healing and be about the business of bringing Christ's wholeness to broken lives. When we catch a glimpse of the transfigured Steward of the Mysteries of God then we understand better the importance of being stewards of the human financial and natural resources of our world. But there three prerequisites to receiving this revelation, of catching the glimpse. And by now we know what they are: Stop, look and listen.