Many of you may remember a TV show called "TV's Bloopers and Practical Jokes". Well my friends, bloopers have never been limited to television shows. In fact, some of the funniest bloopers have appeared in church bulletins. For example:
1. Barbara remains in the hospital and needs blood donors for more transfusions. She is also having trouble sleeping and requests tapes of Pastor Jack's sermons.
2. The sermon this morning: "Jesus Walks on Water". The sermon tonight: "Searching for Jesus".
3. The Rector will preach his farewell message after which the choir will sing "Break Forth Into Joy".
The disciples in this morning's Gospel reading this morning also made a BIG blooper, but not on purpose. Peter, James and John were in the presence of God in an extraordinary moment, but they did not see the miraculous-only the mundane. Peter definitely did not get it when he suggested that they stay on the mountain and build shelters for Jesus, Moses and Elijah. He wanted to capture the moment and remain there. He wanted to freeze that one moment in time, but doing so would have shut off the possibility of the next moment.
Jesus, on the other hand, knew that in order to fulfill His destiny, they had to leave and travel the long road to Jerusalem-the road that would eventually lead to His death and resurrection. He was not afraid to talk about his death and resurrection, because they transformed death into victory over sin and the grave, and they also transformed a sinful world into one where salvation and glory are possible. Prayer transforms us. God's grace makes us lively; however, it is a good thing to "go up" to a great experience with God, but we will be very disillusioned if we do not remember that eventually we have to "come down" again. We must always remember that we should not stay up on the mountain so long that we forget what it is like to be in the crowd.
Why did Moses and Elijah appear to Christ on the mountain? Moses represented the Law, and Elijah represented the prophets. Jesus represented the coming together of both the Law and the Prophets into the New Testament. The spotlight moved from Moses and Elijah to Him. He looked beyond His present state to see into change. Jesus had a vision where the saints and liberators of the past came together in Him to empower and strengthen His resolve to open for us a way of salvation.
The transfiguration was meant to strengthen Jesus for His journey to Jerusalem and the cross. Ash Wednesday is this coming week. It marks the start of Lent and Christ's journey to the cross. It is also time for a spiritual makeover. It is time to look inside ourselves and examine our thoughts, motives, desires and lives. Lent is for giving up anything that blocks our spiritual makeover.
Jesus also rebuked the disciples' desire to imitate Elijah. God himself tells them to listen to Jesus and not to the heroes of the past. Peter wanted a typical response to their situation. He wanted to build an altar, light candles, burn incense, etc. Peter represents our desire to see everything in the Sacred. The past was symbolically removed when Jesus died, especially when the curtain in the temple was torn in two. Peter's reaction was distorted because he liked being there in the rosy, gilded world of his "natural high". We, on the other hand, can't stay here and sleep. We have a duty to spread the Good News. We need to listen to God and Christ. We need to put our liberator first in our eyes. We need to make sure everything we do, say and think centers on Him. The ancient people saw the world as a thin place where God can enter and speak to them at any time. God was alive and communicated with them. We can still hear and see the divine today. We can experience the holy, receive guidance, intuit wisdom and energy, and channel God's healing energy. Encountering God changes everything and calls us to new behaviours. Unfortunately, we might have to veil our encounters so that others can understand our experiences, much like the cloud on the mountain veiled the disciples from God.
Faith, hope and love are to be earnestly desired, but they are not part of a hierarchy. Moses' faith, Elijah's faith and hopeful vision of a liberated future with love had their day, when the future is now and visions belong only to yesterday. Love will be still be alive, because it never ends or dies. The greatest of these-faith, hope and love-is love. Faith has revealed to us in our transformation love for those who share our journey of faith. Jesus and his disciples were given a vision of the end of their journey. The one who was about to suffer blows and lashes of the whip, the one about to be rejected and abandoned, the one about to be defeated by His enemies, was none other than God's beloved Son. He shared the brightness and glory and very nature of God the Father. After the humiliation, there would be victory. After the cross there would be resurrection. After the defeat, there would be God's victory. Jesus gave the disciples a vision of the end, without which he knew his disciples would not just run out of gas, but give up the journey altogether. It was a brief glimpse of the transcendent, a peek at the reality that lies just beyond everyday life.
Christ's transfiguration marks a change in the focus of Luke's Gospel from Jesus' preparation and ministry to the response of others to that ministry, as well as a shift to a concern with discipleship. The mountain becomes a metaphor for the place to encounter God, where communion with God helps set a direction of action. Prayer becomes a metaphor for Luke. God's voice from the cloud becomes a metaphor for a lack of comprehension of the magnitude of what was happening. Certainly the disciples didn't understand what was going on. The transfiguration marked a shift from adherence just to the Law and the Prophets to adherence to a faith in Christ. We are like the disciples because we too are not sure what to do. We ARE the body of Christ and we are called to move forward as best we can, praying that we are doing God's will.
When we enter into a relationship with God, we realize that our life is not our own. It comes with a price. We learn to imitate Christ and check with the Lord about everything-work, family, vacations, etc.-so He will guide us and enable us to do and say the right thing at the right time. Many of us are like Peter. We want the experience of seeing Christ's glory or goodness, but we need to remember that most of the journey of faith is not lived on the mountaintop but in the valley. We need to taste the future so we can endure anything. If we know that suffering has a limit and a destination, we can endure it.
Our experiences with God and living touched by the Spirit of God give us the power and inspiration to get through difficult times. When we embrace Christ and follow his path, we find our human nature and our divine nature become more and more reconciled. His message is not to worship Him, but to love and serve God with all our heart and all our soul, and with all our mind and with all our strength-just as we are commanded to do in the 1st and Great Commandment. When we hear God, it is important that we do indeed listen to Him. To neglect this command is to sin. Jesus is the promised Messiah and he is granting us a hearing similar to a hearing in court proceedings. If we hear Him, He can work in and through us. Climbing a mountain lifts us above the normal plane of activities to the very presence of God and his views on the matters of life.
To become divine is not to become God, but to remain as human and be transfigured, to be filled with divine light. By God becoming human, He gave us the chance to be transformed and be fulfilled with the divine light. We need to listen to Christ and what He is telling us so we can be transformed by Him. We need a picture of what our lives can be. God has that picture. As the Master Sculptor of our lives, he takes the block of stone called our lives and transforms it into something magnificent. We have to step onto the platform and throw away the stone chips when He cuts them away.
Peter's vision of Christ's transformation from human to divine can shine in our lives also. If we can see Christ in His glory, dying on the cross for our sins, we know the love of God and His saving power and grace. The greatest glory in life is to serve God, since he gave himself to serve us. We assemble here in this church after doing our usual daily things. Here we have the bible explained to us. In a place of worship, through the words of scripture, the words of the liturgy, the words of the hymns, and the Sacraments, the meaning of the events that took place in Jerusalem are made clear to us. Moses and the prophets give witness of the events in Jerusalem, so the crucified Christ is made plain before us. But after the cross lying ahead is the resurrection.
In this worship service we too are beholding a Christ that is shining with the glory of the resurrection. Worship services lift us into another, spirited world. We will be given works to do when we take our position in the spiritual world. That period of time will be better than any other time we have ever had. We are facing a glorious time, just like Jesus did when he was transfigured. The Holy Spirit gives a transfigured person power to do what he or she could not do before. Authority stood on the mountaintop. The same authority and light guides us through and out of whatever wilderness we may be in, whatever horror we face. That same light is the profound blessing of being part of a faith community.
We are the body of Christ and we are called to move forward as best we can, praying we are doing God's will. Jesus saw people as they are, NOT as they appeared. Mahatma Gandhi once said, "We must be the change we wish to see in the world". Jesus lives that out in His life every day and calls us to do the same today. God speaks to all of us and calls to an encounter with Him. Will we heed that call? Not everyone does. An encounter with Christ can "blow us away" and instantly make us into something different.
Jesus didn't fit peoples' expectations. Does He fit our expectations? A better question to ask is do we fit HIS expectations? The temptation is to fit Christ into our expectations, to immobilize Him, to tie Him down and have Him for ourselves. That is the main reason why Peter wanted to stay on the mountain and build the three shelters. Christ will continue to baffle and amaze us. He will never fit the categories we have come up with. While we may know Him, there will always be a sense where He remains a mystery to us.
