Transfiguration Sunday

Summary

One day almost twenty centuries ago, three men followed their loving and mystical teacher up a mountain in the countryside of Israel.  As happened so many times in their discipleship and friendship with this rabbi, they did not know where they were going, or why up a mountain?  Yet they followed willingly, for in their time with this man, they had experienced and seen much.  So they might have asked themselves, “What new thing are we going to see at the top of the mountain?  Is it another healing?  Is he going to give us some profound new teaching?  What is up here?”

If they did ask themselves these questions, they would never have guessed the answer in two-thousand years.

The verses that we have read this morning concern an event in the life and ministry of Jesus which is way beyond our experiences.  In what we have come to call the Transfiguration, Jesus’ divinity, his glorious reality, as God is revealed to his closest disciples.  Jesus’ face shone like the sun and his clothes were a brilliant white.  In these moments on the mountain, Peter, James and John encountered God in all God’s glory, hearing God as Father and finally seeing Jesus truly as God the Son.

As I read this scripture and pondered what it might have been like for Peter, James and John to experience Jesus’ transfiguration, meet Moses and Elijah and be overawed by God’s presence, I realized I have no way to directly relate to it. Yet, as I thought more, I realized there are experiences in my life in which I have seen glimpses of God’s glory and felt Jesus’ strong presence.

Oddly enough, one of the glimpses I have had of God’s glory was in a canoe on a lake in Northern Minnesota.  A rain shower had just blown over and it had left behind a rainbow, a full rainbow that began and ended in the little bay of an island.  I could see both ends of the rainbow touching the water, and was able to paddle through the spectrum of colors that was the rainbow.  It was amazing and beautiful, and even otherworldly.  For a moment I knew, how beautiful heaven must be, filled with God’s glory.  It was beautiful!

An experience of Jesus’ presence that leaped to mind while writing, was the experience of meeting two brothers in Estonia.  They were the oldest children of a family that had come to faith in Jesus Christ, during the 1970’s, in the Soviet Union.  The year that I met them was 1996, and I was in Estonia with a group of teenagers, visiting a church and working with the youth of a church in the town of Paidea.  Our presence in the community was obviously known, for the mother of this Christian family sought us out, and invited us to supper.

When we arrived at their farm, I quickly realized that the family was poor, and were such because of their taking a public stance as Christians during the Soviet era.  The parents had not been advanced at work, and the children had not been able to go to the better schools.

Yet, the family had a joy that infused them.  Obviously, five years into democracy they were experiencing the freedom to practice their faith openly, and without hindrances.  That was not all though, for in talking with these two brothers in their early twenties, I heard the joy that came from their love of Jesus, and the faith buoyed them.  As we talked, and prayed, I knew the reality of Jesus’ promise, “wherever two or more are gathered in my name, I am there also.”

Jesus was walking with us, and his glory was shining around us, as we came together as brothers in Christ.  I lost contact with that family, but have never forgotten Jesus’ presence in their words and smiles.

I have a number of different experiences in my past in which I have truly felt Jesus’ presence, and I have had a few moments when I have glimpsed God’s glory.  I have always thought of these times as my “mountain-top” experiences.   But most often my journey of faith as not taken place on the mountaintop, but rather down in the valley, the valley of the everyday.  You see it’s in the valley, where life is most often lived.

If you look in your bulletins at the verse 8 from Mark you will read, “Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them anymore, but only Jesus.  As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.”

They came down off of their mountaintop, down into the valley of life.  Life which would hold the execution of their teacher and Lord, struggles with the authorities, the hard work of establishing a church, doubt, despair, and eventual martyrdom for James and then Peter, and imprisonment for John.  Now, so as to not discourage you, they also had further mountaintop experiences in their future as well.

The best would have been meeting Jesus risen from the grave, then maybe next climbing another mountain with the Christ from which he ascended to heaven.

And though they had many struggles ahead, we know that this moment of the transfiguration stayed with these men, for we have Peter’s writing in the book of Second Peter when he shares, “For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty.  For he received honor and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, ‘This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’  We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain.”

For Peter, seeing Jesus blaze in glory and then falling in awe before God the Father was a moment that he never forgot.  It was also a moment that strengthened his faith and that he shared to strengthen others in their faith.

Christianity is a faith relationship, more than a religion of rules.  This reality is seen again and again in Jesus’ interactions with his disciples, and those people whom he met on the road and in the villages of Galilee and the streets of Jerusalem. We also hear it in the stories and the parables that he told while teaching, how faith is relationship.

How are we to experience the risen Jesus in our lives?  How are you to experience the risen Jesus in your life?

You meet him by growing in relationship with him.  Peter, James and John knew Jesus because they spoke with him and listened to him and spent time with him.  We will know Jesus…you will know Jesus in the same way.  You will speak to him by praying to him.  You will listen to him by reading his story and his words in the Bible.  You will spend time with him in worship, Bible study, but most of all by gathering with your Christian brothers and sisters in holy fellowship.  Like I knew Jesus’ presence that day in Estonia, and have known it many times since when sharing time with other believers, I have also known his presence here in this sanctuary as we have worshiped and broken bread together and down in Hanson Hall as we have eaten and sipped coffee, and shared our lives as Christ’s people.

Jesus is with us on our journeys.  He will lead us up the mountain to show us glimpses of his glory, but more often he will walk by our sides as we encounter all that life holds, giving us strength, offering forgiveness, casting hope for the future and surrounding us with his love in which he gives us salvation.  Jesus is always there for us.  Jesus is always there for you, open your eyes, your minds and most of all your hearts, to Jesus’ presence.

Amen.

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