Transfiguration

Epiphany 7 year B Sermon Mark 9:2-9

Have you ever wanted to freeze time? Make a moment last forever…

Maybe you were in love…maybe you were holding the most beautiful baby you’d ever seen…
maybe you were about to say good-by
to someone you knew you’d never see again…

Remember how you longed to capture the moment … tame it … hang on to it….

Sometimes this happens to us with our spiritual experiences too…our experiences of God…
we have a moment of palpable immersion
into God’s love for us…we feel it…it overwhelms us with beauty and awe…the glory of God seems to shine around us

And the moment passes…you look around and everything appears just as it was before…
only something inside you has changed…

But you want the feeling back…you want to go back to that moment…you want to recapture and re-experience that sensation of high altitude spiritual encounter…

If only you could freeze time…if only you replay the experience at will…but all you can do is remember it…

Transfiguration slide

I think something like that happened to Peter
there on that mountain…with Jesus and the other two disciples…
in the event we call the Transfiguration of Christ.

With the dazzling light…the change in Jesus’ appearance and the arrival of the long dead...in his fright and confusion …
and the rush of adrenaline …in the face of the unimaginable spiritual implications of what he sees and hears…
all Peter can think of… is to freeze it in time…

to make it solid…to build something…
maybe some walls and a roof…

to contain it…to make it permanent…make it last.

I mean wouldn’t you…want to hang on to this? Wouldn’t you think I’m never going to go back to the old me again …I’m never going to doubt again…never going to be afraid...nor deny Jesus…

Now I’ve been to the mountaintop!

But the spiritual impact of that moment doesn’t last for Peter…does it…even the dazzling sight of Jesus transformed in the company of Moses and Elijah…
even the voice of God…proclaiming Jesus identity and authority…doesn’t last with Peter…

He will still go on to fear and betray and cower…
and yes he will doubt…if his performance on the night of Jesus’ arrest is anything to go by…

If only Peter could have frozen time. If only he could have stayed in that place… beyond doubt…

And even though he’d become the rock on whom Jesus would build his church…
even though Peter would stand on the beach before the risen Christ… even though Peter would become the first Bishop of Rome…and a martyr of Christendom…

There will always be moments when Peter’s human failings would get in the road…no matter how high he climbed with Jesus.

fishing slide

And yet…Jesus continues to call him and stick with him
and extend grace and mercy to him…sending out as his disciple…not only to catch people for the kingdom of God…but to feed them and nurture them as their shepherd.

There is no indication that at any time in the gospel story that Peter is able to rise above his humanity – just because he’d had the ultimate peak spiritual experience.

We will never know if Peter ever understood the full impact of what happened right before his eyes although we knew he felt it…as the transfigured Christ met Moses and Elijah…icons of the Law and the Prophets …almighty thunder and the still small voice…

as they…disappear and converge once and for all…
in the transformed and glorious person of Jesus Christ...as he takes on the mantle of Israel…
to bring hope and justice and peace and light to the nations…

Now

Slide words

"This is my beloved Son….listen to him!" [pause…………………..]

Coming down the mountain slide
And just as suddenly as it began…
Peter’s peak experience is over

Slide words

And when they looked around, they saw no one with them anymore, except Jesus.

Blank slide

And then what happens…in the company of Jesus…
they must descend from that rarefied atmosphere…
they must come down the mountain…

and continue with the everyday hard yacka...of bringing in the Messianic Age…announcing the good news…
to the poor and the lame and the blind and the widow and the orphan and the stranger…touching the leper and the unclean…breaking the religious law in favour of God’s Shalom for all people.

They must come down from their high altitude spiritual experience…and most important of all…dang it…

Jesus orders them not to tell anyone one about what went on up there till after he’s risen from the dead. [and Mark tells us they didn’t have a clue what Jesus meant.]

Mountain top slide

And it’s like that for us too isn’t it…like Peter we often think the height of success in our spiritual life are going to be a peak experiences

we look for them sometimes desperately…
in worship…or in our devotional time …

and like Peter …we try to control…
what we have no power to control…
all we can do is be open…to say ‘yes!’

like Peter… we want to freeze time…to pin down concretise…and capture the mystery that is God

But such mountain top experiences are not in our control …we can neither conjure them up in worship
nor in our private devotions…we can’t bottle
and preserve them …

and I think Mark’s story of Jesus transfiguration
tells us that it’s pointless to even try…

There are two reasons why

One…such moments are God given…they don’t happen because we have achieved perfection or even wisdom

Two…as Jesus shows Peter…when the clouds have cleared away…

such moments do not signal the end of our journey…

Dazzling visions and peak experiences
aren’t the point of our formation as Jesus disciples…

New mountain slide

Were we to stay on that mountaintop…
what Jesus came to accomplish… would be reduced to our feelings and our experience of God

The rest of creation with all its bothersome darkness …the rest of humanity…with all its inequality and brokenness…its pollution and hunger…

Even our relationships in our family and our church and our community…

would be irrelevant…because we’re OK! We’re already standing in the light! [pause]

But Jesus came to shine the light of God’s love
into the darkness… that God’s purposes of love would be achieved… even to the ends of the earth.

Times of calling and revelation and intimacy with God are to be treasured for sure…
and Jesus modelled this himself…

but they are oases of refreshment… on the way
because we are called to carry on his work.

So if you’re poor in spirit because you think you’re missing out on signs and wonders…

or if you think there’s something wrong with your faith because you’ve never had a blinding vision of the glory of God…

Maybe you’re just at a different part of the journey…
maybe you’ve already come down the mountain with Jesus …and are right where you’re supposed to be.

And if you think that somehow if only you worshipped harder… prayed more fervently…or sang more passionately ...then somehow you’d find yourself… standing in the dazzling light of God’s glory

Then maybe you’ve forgotten that such moments are God’s doing…not ours…maybe you’ve forgotten as Paul told the struggling Christians in Corinth…

if you’re looking for the light…

the light of God’s love shines in our hearts…

and the glory of God in the face of Jesus.