Mark 9:2-9
“Go On!”
By: Reverend Kenneth Sauer
Pastor of Parkview United Methodist Church,
Newport News, VA
www.parkview-umc.org
In our Gospel Lesson for this morning we see that Jesus led Peter, James and John up a high mountain…
…and this was the place where Jesus “was transfigured before them. His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. And there appeared before them Elijah and Moses, who were talking to Jesus.”
Why did Jesus go there?
Why did He make this expedition to these lonely mountain slopes?
The Gospel of Luke gives us a clue.
Luke tells us that Jesus was praying.
By this time, Jesus was on His way to the Cross.
He knew this.
He had told His disciples about this.
Could it be that Jesus had to make quite sure, sure beyond all doubt, that He was doing the right thing?
Jesus the Son and God the Father are One.
But during His earthly ministry, Jesus, Who is God, took on flesh.
He became one of us.
Jesus was both human and divine.
He was God, but He was also able to feel the kinds of feelings we feel, like pain, temptation, loneliness, sadness, fear.
And He was headed for the most horrifying and painful death imaginable…death on a Cross!
At this point, Jesus could have turned back.
At any point, Jesus could have turned back.
He had lived among us.
He knew all our short-comings, our short-sighted-ness, our selfishness, our tendency to go it on our own, our difficulty in understanding what God is about…what life is truly about, and our lack of faith.
If Jesus went to the Cross, would it truly make any difference?
Would anyone believe?
Would anyone be saved, or would it all be done in vain?
So Jesus goes to the mountaintop in order to make sure…in order to pray to the Father for guidance, reassurance…
…in order to make sure that this Cross…
…this bloody Cross is truly God’s will for Him!
That’s one of many things about Jesus that is so different than the way we often do things.
On the Mount of Transfiguration, Jesus was asking God, “What do you wish for me to do?”
We nearly always ask: “What do I wish to do?”
We need to follow God’s will, God’s leading if we are going to fulfill God’s will for our lives.
Because our flesh is going to nearly always be leading us in a different direction!
When you are wondering where God is leading you to go…
…when you are at a cross-roads between what you feel God may be calling you to do and what you may “want” to do, do you go to God in prayer?
So there on the Mountain of Transfiguration we see that two great figures appear to Jesus.
They are Moses and Elijah.
It’s fascinating to see in how many ways the experience of these two great servants of God matched the experience of Jesus.
When Moses came down from the mountain of Sinai, he didn’t know that the skin on his face shone with the glory of God.
Both Moses and Elijah had their most intimate experiences with God on a mountaintop.
It was into Mount Sinai that Moses went to receive the stone tablets of the Law.
And it was on Mount Horeb that Elijah found God, not in the wind, and not in the earthquake, but in the still small voice.
There was also something awesome about the deaths of Moses and Elijah.
Deuteronomy Chapter 34 tells us of the lonely death of Moses on Mount Nebo.
And it reads as if God Himself was the one to bury Moses.
We are told: “And Moses the servant of the Lord died there in Moab, as the Lord had said. He buried him in Moab, in the valley opposite Beth Peor, but to this day no one knows where his grave is.”
As for Elijah, he left the astonished Elisha in a chariot and horses on fire.
The two great figures that appeared to Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration, as Jesus was facing the Cross, were men who seemed too great to die.
Luke tells us that Moses and Elijah, on the Mount of Transfiguration, talked with Jesus “about his departure, which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem.”
Moses was the supreme law-giver of Israel.
To him the nation owed the laws of God.
Elijah was the first and greatest of all the prophets.
People always looked back to him as the prophet who had brought to them the very voice of God.
And when these two great men met with Jesus on the mountain…well, the greatest of the law-givers and the greatest prophet of all time were both telling Jesus to “Go on!”
“You are doing the right thing. You are headed in the right direction! Go on!”
All of the Law and the prophets…
…all of history had been leading to this very moment…
…all of history had been leading to the ultimate in God’s love for humankind and in God’s sacrifice for humankind—the Cross!
“Go on!”
All of history pointed Jesus on His way!
All the plans of God pointed Jesus to Calvary!
All of history pointed for Jesus to die the death that I deserve, the death that you deserve due to our sins.
And all of history pointed to Jesus bringing God and humankind back together again through the death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ!
Moses and Elijah recognized Jesus as the One of Whom they had dreamed about and foretold.
And they encouraged Him, and witnessed to Him that He was on the right path…
…so they encouraged Him to “Go on!”
How many of us need this kind of encouragement as well?
Many days, we do live on the mountaintop, and we could not even imagine doubting the will that God has for our lives in Christ Jesus.
We may feel so on fire that we are sharing our faith left and right.
We may feel as if we are walking on a cloud.
Then we face a trial.
We face some sort of tribulation.
Maybe we see that our faith is leading us into an uncomfortable direction.
Perhaps our faith doesn’t seem so strong any more…
…maybe we are tempted to turn back.
God is telling us to “Go on!”
He has a job for you and for me.
This brings us to the three other people who were on the mountain in our Gospel Lesson for today.
They are Peter, James and John.
James and John were Jesus’ cousins, and were, no doubt, especially close to Him.
They would face many trials and tribulations due to their faith and devotion to Christ.
As a matter of fact, James would soon end up being the first of the original disciples who was killed for his faith.
And Peter, Peter would go on to be a great leader in the Church.
He would preach to huge crowds on Pentecost, he would lead many to the faith, and he too, would ultimately face crucifixion one day.
Also, in the passage right before this one, Jesus had just told them about His upcoming death and Jesus said to them: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”
Following Jesus is risky business.
Peter, James and John needed a pep-talk as well.
And they got it from God Himself.
In verse 7 we read: “then a cloud appeared and enveloped them, and a voice came from the cloud: ‘This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!”
And as suddenly as the cloud had appeared and the voice of God had spoken to them, “they looked around,” and “they no longer saw anyone with them except Jesus.”
They were to listen to Jesus…
…the Son of God, Whom the Father loves.
And that is what we are to do as well.
Are we listening?
Are we willing to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow Him?
Are we willing to lose our lives for Him, but in doing so actually find our lives?
Immediately after Jesus and Peter, James and John come down from the Mountain of Transfiguration, they are taken from the mountaintop experience to the valley.
They must face the reality of daily life in the world once again.
Have you ever had a mountaintop experience with God…
…maybe it was a retreat, or an Emmaus walk, or a revival…
…and you didn’t really want to come down from it…
…but when you did…
…you came back to the same old stuff?
Well, thank God for the mountaintop…
…for on the mountaintop, we are reassured that God wants us to “Go on” with the every day business of following Him.
So they come down the mountain and they find the other disciples and a large crowd and the teachers of the law arguing with the disciples.
Worldly stuff indeed.
And worldly stuff, is so much easier to deal with after we have seen with our own eyes, God, telling us for sure: “Go on!”
“This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!”
We are about to enter the season of Lent.
It begins with Ash Wednesday, and I hope and pray that everyone will come out for the dinner and worship service on Wednesday.
I also pray that everyone will attend the very special Lenten Series Pulpit Exchange which begins next Sunday evening here at Parkview.
Lent is a journey.
It is a journey with Jesus toward Jerusalem and the Cross.
Are we willing to go with Jesus on this journey?
The Mount of Transfiguration was for Jesus a spiritual mountain peak.
His exodus lay before Him.
It was the experience on the Mount of Transfiguration that enabled Jesus to inflexibly walk the way of the Cross.
But we know that the Cross is not the end of the story!
That is the reason we are here.
Jesus overcame that bloody, man-made Cross, and rose again and sits in glory at the right hand of God the Father.
And it is with this knowledge that we are called to follow Jesus to the Cross so that we too might share in His glory…
…in His ultimate victory over sin, flesh, and death!
Are you considering whether or not to continue on this journey?
The God of all creation is telling every one of us this morning—“Go on!”
“This is what I have created you to do!”
Praise God and Amen!
