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A Sermon by Rev. Mark R. Thomson
Harundale Presbyterian Church
February 10, 2002
Transfiguration of the Lord
Scripture: Matthew 17:1-9
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be
acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our Redeemer.[1] Amen.
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ou're
walking along on a cool evening hike with a few of your closest buddies. You finally get to the top of a dusty, scrub
covered bowl of a mountain and stand beneath the starry sea of night pointing
out constellations to one another when all of a sudden your friend lights up
like a light bulb that some unseen hand has just turned on, and he's standing
there talking to two dead guys. Then,
to top it off, a voice boom's out of the sky, "This is my Son, the
Beloved; with him I am well pleased; Listen to him!"
Now
what are you going to do with that!
According
to Matthew, Peter, James and John fall flat on their faces in fear. Peter then mumbles something about building
some shacks for Jesus and his two ghostly pals.
Four
things happen next:
First,
Jesus touches them.
Next
he says, "Get up", or perhaps better, "Be raised", the same
word used concerning the resurrection from the dead, which I'm sure the pallor
of their skin suggested they just might be, given what they saw.
Third,
Jesus says, "Don't be afraid."
-- perhaps one of the most used phrases in the Bible: to heroes of old
like Abraham, Joshua, Elijah...to a
maiden named Mary and her husband Joseph...and now to three cowering friends
wondering what in God's name just happened.
Lastly,
on the way back down the mountain, Jesus invokes the "Need-to-Know"
policy and compartmentalizes this information as code-word material not to be
revealed until after the resurrection (whatever that meant).
What
do you do with that?
What did they do with that?
Six
days earlier while sitting around a camp fire together with his disciples,
Jesus asked them, "Who do you say that I am?" Peter, bold Peter, said, "You are the
Messiah, the son of the living God."
Its one thing to confess it upon
your lips, its another to understand the relevance of what it means for your
life if you believe it.
Not
two seconds after Peter's brilliant, inspired confession, Jesus is rebuking
him, "Get thee behind me Satan!"
because Peter refuses to listen as Jesus tells his disciples for the
first time that he will suffer and die.
Peter thought he knew it all. He
probably also thought he, James, John, and Jesus were just climbing the
mountain to check out the view.
Now
here we find him, with James and John, spitting the dirt out of their
mouths
as they rise before this person who a few moments
earlier was their Rabbi,
their teacher, their
friend...
now he was truly the
Messiah, the chosen one.
***
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wo
guys went up in a hot air balloon.
Suddenly it went kahooey and they went way off
course,
were totally lost, had no
idea where they were,
when
finally the balloon came down in the middle of an open field.
One
of the occupants of the balloon called out to a man
who was standing watching the balloon come
down.
"Say, out there, can
you tell us where we are?"
The man answered, "Why
yes, you are in a hot air balloon."
The
man who had asked the question, turned to his companion and said,
"That man must be a preacher."
"Why is that?"
"Because what he said
is absolutely true
and it has absolutely no
relevance to our situation."
I
kind of felt that way as I was trying to prepare this sermon. What relevance is this text to us? What are you going to take away from this
sermon? There are no moral lesson's
here. There are no earth-shattering
teachings.
But
perhaps there is something deeper. We
find ourselves privy to an incredible, mysterious, unexplainable event where
the hidden God, the awesome creator of the universe, steps visibly onto the
stage for the briefest moment and casts his glory upon Jesus as a kind of Holy
Exclamation Point!
I
think deep down, all of us yearn for some experience of the divine, some
tangible evidence that God is real, that we really do matter to God...that God
really cares about us.
Our
wishes are not new -- especially in trying times when the world seems so upside
down and the future uncertain; when
fear skulks in the shadows of everyone's thoughts.
It
seems such a contradiction that we celebrate the opening ceremonies of the
Olympics which for 16 days kindles a hope of a world united, yet there is the
tightest security ever because this would be too juicy a target for those who
harbor anger and hatred.
I
hear the frustrated and desperate words of the prophet Isaiah:
O that thou wouldst rend the
heavens and come down,
that the mountains might
quake at thy presence --
as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil –
to make thy name known to
thy adversaries,
and that the nations might
tremble at thy presence![2]
Yet
God never quite acts the way we want.
God seems to prefer working in the background, but every now and then
comes onto the stage to keep us awake and paying attention throwing around a
few Holy Exclamation Points!
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t
was five months after my graduation from Seminary that I did my first
funeral. Emma Mae was buried on a cool
October morning under a wise old oak tree in the cemetery behind the little
white Presbyterian church she had attended nearly all her life. The golden leaves still tinged with green
falling on her casket seemed symbolic of her life cut short by cancer.
One
night as I visited her, she told me she had seen Jesus in her sleep and he told
her she would be coming home soon. She
was a very nervous person and this seemed to calm her greatly. The next day she died. The experience for me was a little
unsettling, but it would not be my last.
Just
recently a woman that I visited told me that she had seen God and Jesus at the
foot of her bed, each wearing crowns. I
asked if they said anything to her, and she replied, 'They told me I would walk
again soon."
Professor
James Loder of Princeton Seminary tells the story in his book "The
Transforming Moment" of an accident that changed him. In 1970, Loder and his wife, both devote
Christians, were driving along one day when they saw an elderly woman standing
on the side of the road by her old Oldsmobile attempting to wave someone down
with a handkerchief.
Loder
and his wife stopped and Loder found an easily fixed flat front tire. While changing the tire, another man driving
on the same road fell asleep at the wheel and plowed into the back of the
elderly woman's car launching it on top of Loder who was pushed under it.
His
thumb torn off, five broken ribs, and a punctured lung, Loder was trapped under
the car. Only his wife Arlene, a slight
woman barely five foot tall, escaped injury.
Loder
recalls how his wife came up to the car, grabbed the bumper, and while praying,
"In the name of Jesus Christ, in the name of Jesus Christ....." she heaved.
"Recounting the event later, she said that when
her strength in the heaving effort began to give way, she partially lost
consciousness for a few seconds; when she was able to refocus her attention,
she was surprised to see that the car had been lifted."[3]
It
was found later that she had broken a vertebrae in the effort.
What
do you do with that?
We
can dismiss these experiences as dreams, wishful thinking, or adrenaline, but I
think we do so at our peril. Perhaps
that's why Jesus invoked the "Need-to-Know policy" since all the other disciples would have
thought Peter, James, and John were crazy.
There are probably more strange encounters with the unknown out there
that are kept secret for that very reason...kept close to the heart and
pondered.
For
James Loder, the experience didn't cause him to all of a sudden believe in
God. He was already a believer much
like most of us. But the experience
did deepen his appreciation for life, and deepened his conviction that God is
indeed real; God is present; and God cares. It was for him, an exclamation point that intensified his
faith.
It changes the cerebral, "I believe"
into
"I Believe!"
It
is easy to take a hidden God for granted.
For every story of God's Holy Exclamation point we can probably find a
counter example - a tragedy. Yet as
Christians we are familiar with that as well and what God can do with
tragedy.
The
death of Jesus on the cross reveals the tragic, uncertain, and painful side of
human existence. Yet even in the face
of death, God adds a Holy Exclamation Point! in the Resurrection. Tragedy does not have the final word, if we Believe it!
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t
is easy to go through life without taking seriously Jesus' life and message
when we haven't seen God or had proof that what Jesus says has any real bearing
on our life. Certainly I have heard
many a mountain top like story, but I have had none personally to speak of. Looking back I believe I can see the hand
of God working in my life, but in very ordinary ways, nothing flashy.
I
take comfort in believing that the
Jesus who was transfigured before Peter, James, and John, who was raised from
the dead by God, also numbers the hairs on my head (about which we will have a
serious discussion when I see him.)
If
God should appear at the foot of my bed as I near the end of my days, I have
already planned my response. If he
does, I'm going to say, "Well its about time, I've been waiting
(hopefully) a long time, now lets talk about the hair!" Hopefully God will laugh too.
But
that seems to me a lot better than saying, "Wow, so you are real...and I
never really took you seriously".
If
it was you up there on the mountain...If you saw Jesus illuminated by God
standing before you, how would it change your life? I would think that it would put a lot of things in perspective
real quick.
Think
about it, because you never know when one of those Holy Exclamation Points!
might come your way.
To him who
loves us
and has freed us from our sins by
his blood
and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and
Father,
to him be
glory and dominion for ever and ever.
Amen.[4]
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