JESUS…STILL TRANSFIGURING YOU AND ME TODAY
MATTHEW 17:1-9
Stephen Becker, M.Div.
St Peter’s Lutheran Church--Elk Grove, CA
February 3, 2008
Tonight in our reading from Matthew’s Gospel, we read of the transfiguration of Jesus; the Savior goes up on a mountain with Peter, James and John and he begins to glow so brightly that Matthew describes as “His face shone like the sun.” Then all of a sudden, there is Moses and Elijah there talking with Jesus. Now, I don’t know about you my friends, but let me tell you something, if I go up on a mountain with this guy that I am pretty sure is the promised Messiah, and then all of a sudden he’s a glow-in and talking with Moses and Elijah—the greatest heroes in the history of Israel, well I don’t blame them for hitting the ground and hiding their faces. There is something really big going on here…something so big that these Apostles just don’t get it. Instead of asking Jesus, “Lord what’s up? Why are you glowing? And who are these dudes that suddenly appeared here from no where, liked having beam down from the starship Enterprise?,” instead Peter asks, “Hey Lord I see you have a couple of important buddies there with you, can I build you guys a each your own cabin to stay in?” This was so overwhelming for the apostles, these men, that they did not understand what really was going, what God was doing right here, and in fact what God had been doing throughout the history of Israel and was now bring to a head right here in Jesus, Moses and Elijah. In fact, it’s so big, God actually spoke from heaven and said audibly, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to Him!” These guys hit the ground like soldiers when they hear, “incoming…” They were terrified. Things were going on around them, and things weren’t as they seemed. Tonight, I want to wade through this amazing Transfiguration of Jesus to see exactly what was going on here, and I especially want to find what this all means for you and for me right now, right here. Let’s open with prayer…
I heard a story recently about a terrible fire in a chemical plant. Several area fire departments responded to the blaze, and quite a crowd from the entire area gathered at a distance to watch. The media was there in helicopters and satellite remote trucks. The president of the company was among the crowd, and he was frantic. He gathered together the chiefs of all the fire departments and explained to them that in the midst of the inferno was a safe that contained all the company’s super-sensitive documents including the top-secret formulas for all their best-selling products. He pledged to give a $500,000 donation to the fire department that brought the blaze under control and saved all the super-sensitive documents in the safe.
The chiefs rallied their firemen and women, pulled out all the stops attempting to bring the blaze under control, but it wasn’t happening. The fire continued to rage. After quite some time the crowd heard another siren in the distance that kept growing louder. Before long this old beat up, dilapidated 1930’s style fire engine filled with a bunch of men in their 60’s and 70’s came roaring through the crowd, right past all the other fire departments. The truck didn’t even slow down as it burst through the front door of the plant and right into the middle of the blazing inferno. Everyone, firefighters, media members and the crowd just gasped thinking about what these guys did. However, before long the fire was under control and this group of aged firefighters stumbled out the front of the plant coughing. Everyone cheered their heroic effort. They saved the safe. A few hours later in front of the gutted plant the president of the company handed the 82 year old chief a check for half a million dollars. In the press conference that followed, one reporter asked the chief what they planned to do with that incredible reward. He didn’t even hesitate. “These guys already told me they want to buy a new fire engine that has some brakes!”
Talk about being accidental hero’s! In fact, who here saw the movie a few years ago called “The Accidental Hero?” It’s a movie about a guy who is having a really heated argument with his mom that ends up causing terrible car accident. He walks away from the accident and she’s left in a deep coma. And when she wakes up, she can’t remember the accident, so this guy’s got to decide whether he’s going to tell his mom what really happened.
My point here in telling the story of these crazy old firemen and the movie, both about “accidental hero’s” is that it shows that how at times what we see and believe on the surface is entirely different than the reality of the situation. And when I study my Scripture, like for example in studying this text of Jesus’ transfiguration, what we see on the surface doesn’t even begin to teach what is going—what God is doing in the story. I mean, on the surface, Peter seems like he’s an idiot…he doesn’t get it! Here is Jesus glowing like the sun, talking with Moses and Elijah, and Peter wants to build them a house. I mean, imagine being there and seeing Jesus shine like the sun. It really begs the question, “what’s happening here? What is God doing here? And what does it to me?” What’s the theology here? You know in the church sometimes when you use the word theology, people’s eyes start to glaze over. They think you are going to start using big words like propitiation, sanctification or transfiguration, or maybe even “he’s gonna throw some Greek words out as us any minute here.” But in reality, we Christians talk about theology all the time. The word theology simply is describing what we know or believe about God. In fact, I am going to throw some Greek out here at you: theo comes from the Greek qeou:, meaning God. The logy part of theology is from the Greek logoV…meaning Word. So literally, theology is or are the Words about God. So what do we learn about God here in the transfiguration of Jesus? What are the words—the logos—here about God in Jesus’ transfiguration?
Here in reading, Peter, James and John witness Jesus, who’s just been glowing bright like the sun, having a conversation with Moses and Elijah. These two guys, Moses and Elijah, are two of the most important people in Israel’s history. Moses of course was the great Law giver who had his own encounter on a mountain. Just like Jesus went up on the mountain to be transfigured, Moses went up on the mountain and had his encounter with God, where he received the Ten Commandments—the Decalogue. And Elijah, who’s this guy? Elijah was what I would call to be Israel’s ultimate prophet. He was so good in fact, that he never died. God instead whisked him up into heaven on a chariot of fire. So here, Jesus is chatting with the great Jewish Law-Giver Moses and THE prophet, Elijah. And Peter, James, and John get to watch it happen. Think there’s some significance here? You bet! See remember, Matthew wrote his gospel first for Jewish readers, Jews that he wanted to convince that Jesus was this promises Messiah that they had been waiting for; in fact, the Jews had a 2,000 year history now with God and so they needed to know something important, and Matthew’s description here of Jesus’ transfiguration tells that important message. What do you think that message is for them? And for us?
Well it’s important to note that Jesus didn’t come along because so many other Jewish prophets had failed before Him, like say Abraham, Moses, and even Elijah. Jesus wasn’t God’s “contingency plan” as it were, a plan “B” after “plan A” failed. No, instead, what we see here is that Jesus is the culmination, the end-result of EVERYTHING God had been doing for Israel for thousands of years now. After the Fall in the Garden, God makes His first promise to send a redeemer, and through Israel’s history, God continues those promises. The Apostle Paul explains in quite a few places in his Epistles that the plan to bring Israel and bring us Grace was to send His Son, Jesus Christ to earth, and that this plan wasn’t accident, but that God put this plan into motion even before creation. Everything before Jesus including the Law that Moses gave us through the prophets in fact points here to one thing, well one Person: Jesus Christ. Listen to what the author of the Hebrews says in chapter 1: “In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by His Son, whom he appointed heir of all things and through whom he made the universe. The son is the radiance of God’s glory…” So do you see the point here? Jesus isn’t something new that God is doing to save these people that keep messing up over and over again. Jesus is the continuation of God’s work that we read and see promised all the way through the Old Testament.
And see friends, what’s so important for us to see and understand here, the theology here as it were, is that in looking at the transfiguration of Jesus on that mountain, and especially in light of the people, the humans there, Peter, James and John, and how they reacted to God at work shows us that God isn’t just some really powerful human being trying to save us time and time again by trial and error, getting it wrong before, and trying here with Jesus to try and get it right. No, what we see here is that God is completely in control; God is completely faithful to fulfill all the promises He made. God will completely accomplish everything He wants to and He will not fail. God never fails to accomplish His Will. So when we recognize and see that Jesus is the direct consequence of God’s Will and Plan for humanity through the ages, when we see how different Jesus is, as fully God and fully man, compared with Peter, James and John dropping to the ground in fear, we can know that God will never fail us.
You know it may seem that you may have messed things up in the past in your life. In our ignorance of God’s omnipotence, when we look around at some of the awful things happening in the world, we may even start to think that God has lost control of this world He created. But friends, that never happens. God is in complete control of His world. We call that providence and what it means is God is constantly active in the life of each person He created and in the world in which He made for us to live. God is in complete control. God’s purposes will never fail. When the Apostle Luke describes this incident, he lets us in on what Jesus, Moses and Elijah were talking about. Luke says, “Two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendor, talking with Jesus. They spoke about His departure, which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem.” And then later after Jesus’ death and resurrection, the disciples thought about what had happened on that mountain, about Jesus’ transformation, about what Jesus, Moses and Elijah had been talking about, and then when they thought about how Jesus died and rose again, they came to understand that these events were well planned by God. They didn’t happen accidentally. God never lost control, and friends, He never will. They understood the significance of what it meant that after the transfiguration, Moses and Elijah were gone. They understood that Jesus fulfilled everything Moses and Elijah had been preparing. God’s will for humanity was completely fulfilled in Jesus Christ and you and I are transfigured as it were by Jesus because of Jesus.
No, you and I don’t shine like the sun. You and I aren’t fully God and fully man. But nevertheless, our standing before God is transfigured because of Jesus. See without Jesus friends, we could only stand in front of God as lost, sinful, messed up people, doomed to be separated from God forever, in hell, because of our sin. But because of Jesus, all God sees in us is Jesus’ goodness. So no, we don’t glow like the sun, but we stand in front of God as white and as pure as snow. You know, the Greek word for transfiguration comes from the root word metamorfovw … sound familiar? It’s where we get our English word METAMORPHSIS from. Friends, God’s plan, fulfilled in Jesus Christ, is not only the metamorphosis or transfiguration of Jesus on the mountain that day, where the apostles saw Jesus fulfill everything that Moses and Elijah had been preparing along the way, but because of Jesus’ transfiguration, Jesus’ death and resurrection, Jesus’ fulfilling everything God had been promising, we are transfigured from sinner to saint. It’s some amazing theology, isn’t it? Amen. Let’s pray…
Now may that true faith…
