Matthew 17:1-9
The Message
Sunlight Poured from His Face
17 1-3 Six days later, three of them saw that glory. Jesus took Peter and the brothers, James and John, and led them up a high mountain. His appearance changed from the inside out, right before their eyes. Sunlight poured from his face. His clothes were filled with light. Then they realized that Moses and Elijah were also there in deep conversation with him.
4 Peter broke in, “Master, this is a great moment! What would you think if I built three memorials here on the mountain—one for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah?”
5 While he was going on like this, babbling, a light-radiant cloud enveloped them, and sounding from deep in the cloud a voice: “This is my Son, marked by my love, the focus of my delight. Listen to him.”
6-8 When the disciples heard it, they fell flat on their faces, scared to death. But Jesus came over and touched them. “Don’t be afraid.” When they opened their eyes and looked around all they saw was Jesus, only Jesus.
9 Coming down the mountain, Jesus swore them to secrecy. “Don’t breathe a word of what you’ve seen. After the Son of Man is raised from the dead, you are free to talk.”
Sermon: What would you think if I built three memorials here on the mountain—one for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah?” This is Black history month and one of the things we do during Black History Month is Build and host memorial services or reflection services for some famous individual or group that needs to be lifted and celebrated.
Really when you look at Transfiguration Sunday. So, what happened on that mountain six days after a conversation about suffering and death? Something. It’s hard to say, except by repeating the words that we read there. The appearance of Jesus’ face changed. What they were used to seeing they no longer saw.
There is such a thing as a ‘near-life experience,’ a transforming encounter with the light of life. The Transfiguration describes a remarkable encounter of such a kind, an encounter that may find little reflections in our own lives, much needed at the current time.
First of all, there were those other guys. The Bible says it was Moses and Elijah. I always wondered how they knew who it was. Maybe Jesus called them by name when they appeared. We don’t know, because not a lot of attention is paid to the two of them.
This brings me to the disciples on the mountaintop in Matthew 17. Jesus had recently disturbed his disciples as he talked about his need to suffer and die: “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 16:25). Just a few days later he took his kitchen cabinet up to that high mountain; and then he was “… transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white.”
Jesus undergoes a luminous transfiguration in front of the eyes of his favorite disciples, Peter, James, and John. We are told that his dusty cloak shines and glitters like newly fallen snow and that his face radiates serene peace.
Sometimes we are like Peter in that way: our minds want us to nail down something that can’t be nailed down. It is often quite impossible to nail down the sort of things Scripture stories talk about:
Elijah ascended into heaven in chariots of fire;
Moses covered his face to protect the people from God’s brilliance;
Jonah was in the belly of the whale; three men were thrown into an oven and came out unharmed; Jesus transfigured in a blaze of blinding glory. Just because our minds cannot compute these things, they are no less true.
What is also key about this Sunday is that God uses history, and Historic Figures to Show us that our glory s directly connected with the Glory others have gone through. That has been one of the hopes of this year's Black History Celebration here at Wesley to show that God could do it here with Black Minds, Bodies, and experiences. Then God could raise up heroes and transform persons anywhere. We have also hoped that God is going to continue as he did in the days of the Old to rise up new leaders and believers.
So I asked myself the same question what type of legacy or leader or past justice example would I like to have at my moment of preparation? The Point when God had called me to the mountain to be prepared to go to the next level to a higher understanding. One of the Names that Came to mind is Rev Joseph Armstrong DeLaine.
Clergyman and civil rights activist Joseph Armstrong DeLaine was born on July 2, 1898, near Manning, one of thirteen children born to Henry Charles DeLaine and Tisbia Gamble. Completing his A.B. degree in 1931, DeLaine entered Allen University’s Dickerson Seminary to pursue a bachelor of divinity degree.
DeLaine accepted an appointment from the AME Church as pastor of the Spring Hill Church in Clarendon County. He assumed a teacher’s position at Bob Johnson School near Davis Station between Manning and Summerton.
During his tenure at Bob Johnson School, the lack of buses and the terrible school facilities began to weigh heavily on DeLaine. He knew that black students were at a tremendous disadvantage in their learning environment.
Many here have heard of the case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, where it was one of the five cases constituting the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision on May 17, 1954, but some of us have forgotten that it was Briggs v. Elliott, The case that got the Supreme court case started and that Rev DeLaine and his efforts with the church and the NAACP is what got the conversation started.
Yes many of us remember that it was Rev Delaine who had to be snuck out in a car from South Carolina but few remember that he was moved to lake City because his ministry had put his life in Danger. Other may know that he had to leave South Carolina but they Don’t remember that he stood tall and defended his parsonage from the presence of racial hatred.
Success came at a price for Rev DeLaine. Yes in Lake City, he was subjected to a reign of terror that eventually persuaded him to leave the state. “I am not running from justice but INJUSTICE,” he told the FBI.
He was relocated to upstate New York, where he organized and became pastor of an AME church in Buffalo. Appropriately, the new church was called the DeLaine-Waring AME Church, after the two men who had done so much to revolutionize the educational system of South Carolina.
I celebrate the fact that God can and will transfigure his children.
I celebrate the power and the realization that God brings historical figures to show history makers the way of Justice and Love.
I celebrate that God has n problem speaking directly to our situation not that we set up planks or memorials all the time but that we use history to make history.
The Face that we call up those leaders of the past to move the church directly into the future. Church on your day of transformation who is going to show up on the mountain with you what lessons will they represent and how will they point to the direction that God has laid out for you?
