Beyond Fear
Bread, Bath, and Beyond • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Transcript
Mark 9:2-9, CEB
2 Six days later Jesus took Peter, James, and John, and brought them to the top of a very high mountain where they were alone. He was transformed in front of them, 3 and his clothes were amazingly bright, brighter than if they had been bleached white. 4 Elijah and Moses appeared and were talking with Jesus. 5 Peter reacted to all of this by saying to Jesus, “Rabbi, it’s good that we’re here. Let’s make three shrines—one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” 6 He said this because he didn’t know how to respond, for the three of them were terrified. 7 Then a cloud overshadowed them, and a voice spoke from the cloud, “This is my Son, whom I dearly love. Listen to him!” 8 Suddenly, looking around, they no longer saw anyone with them except Jesus. 9 As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them not to tell anyone what they had seen until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.
INTRO
Oftentimes, when we think of high and holy moments such as this, we think of our own “mountaintop experiences.” We think of these moments when we have been in the highs of life apart from others, and we hear or experience God in new and different ways. Often times, it is with these mountaintop experiences in the back of our minds that we approach the transfiguration of Jesus. However, if this is the lens with which we are approaching the text this morning, we must carefully set it aside. While this story occurs on top of a mountain, this holy moment is anything but what we would call a mountaintop experience.
Mark’s gospel invites us to pause on the mountaintop and reflect as we hear the discourse between Jesus and the disciples. It is interesting that throughout the gospel account Peter, James and John are often singled out. They are Jesus’ inner circle; they are the ones who Jesus takes with him in his most vulnerable and apprehensive moments in ministry.
They are there on the mountain, in private healing moments with a family, and in the Garden of Gethsemane. They are asked to pray and stay awake as Jesus fights the anxiety of persecution and agonizes over the death sentence that awaits him. By being invited into these stories, we are also invited into these private moments, moments of accountability, moments of vulnerability, and spaces of anxiety and fear. We are invited to experience the God who feels what we feel even in the darkest moments of our own lives.
Yet, like the disciples we are so caught up in the savior that we long for that we often fail to embrace the servanthood that God has called us to. We are more preoccupied with glory and power than the call to service and sacrifice. We see Jesus do all these things - feed the hungry, eat with sinners, heal the blind, and yet we fail to grasp the core of his mission. Like Peter, who wants to preserve the glory of God in houses, we want to preserve the glory of the Lord for ourselves in the private moments of our worship. As we stand at the forefront of this season of lent, anticipating the glory of the Lord, and whereby we are called to self-examination, holy living, and penitence, maybe we, like the disciples, are confused and terrified for we don’t want to face the facts of “faith” as we have been practicing it.
Since the beginning of Mark’s gospel, Jesus has been bringing forth God’s reign on earth. Jesus’ devotion to bringing God’s reign on earth inevitably provoked ‘the powers and principalities’ of this world. It provoked the fear, hatred, greed, falsehood, violence, and despair that pervade and distort every human thing. In this moment, Jesus’ identity, for the first time in the Gospel of Mark, is revealed to the disciples.
The voice of God booms down from heaven demonstrating that this truly is the Son of God. It is interesting that this voice from heaven declares “listen to him” not to persons outside of Jesus inner circle like the religious leaders or even the other 9 disciples. Rather, this command to listen to Jesus comes to those who are supposed to be closest to Jesus. The voice demands that those closest to Jesus, the ones whom Jesus considered to be his dearest of friends, the ones who walked with Christ the longest, must move past being merely spectators of Jesus’ ministry and instead must prepare to become witnesses of Jesus ministry.
To become a witness means that the disciples must listen not passively but intently to Christ. It means that they must come to not only embrace the core beliefs of Christ as displayed in his teachings and actions, but they must learn to embody what they hear and observe of Jesus. That is to say, these things that Jesus teaches must become practices lived out in the lives of the disciples.
Peter, basking in the true glory of the moment, does what anybody would want to do: savor the moment. What better way to savor the moment than by building houses that Jesus, Moses, and Elijah can live in? Who better to consult in their future ministry than the one they are supposed to listen to and heroes of the faith? But the truth of the matter is Peter’s words only serve as a demonstration that the disciples are actively engaged in resistance.
You see, the disciples have been blind. Prior to the transfiguration, Jesus has been on display showing his power and holiness to the disciples. Despite the display from Jesus and the very voice of God booming down, the disciples remain blind. They remain blind to Jesus’ identity and blind the the cross that is coming in Jerusalem.
Truthfully, the entire transfiguration can be summed up in the sense of this “blindness.” As one theologian puts it, “Mark recounts the transfiguration as an event that is for the disciples and is told through their eyes: Jesus leads Peter, James, and Jon up the mountain and is transfigured ‘before them’ (9:2); Elijah and Moses ‘appear to them’ (9:4); Mark describes their reactions and emotions (9:5-6); the cloud ‘overshadows them’ (9:7); the voice from the could addresses them (9:7); and the end of the vision is described in terms of what they see when they look around (9:8). The whole scene, in other words, is addressed to any disciple struggling to see, hear, comprehend, and believe the gospel reality.”
They are so blind to the purpose of the transfiguration moment that they miss what is truly going on. In the transfiguration there is no new message to the disciples. Rather, the voice from the cloud directs the disciples back to Jesus in hopes that as they follow Jesus down the mountain and beyond, they might hear again the true message that Jesus is teaching them in preparation for the cross.
I imagine this message to observe, listen, embody, to hear is consistence with the message of Ash Wednesday “I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to observe a holy Lent: by self–examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self–denial; and by reading and meditating on God's Holy Word. To make a right beginning of repentance, and as a mark of our mortal nature, let us now kneel (bow) before our Creator and Redeemer.”
On the eve of Ash Wednesday, the Transfiguration of our Lord is a word of invitation for Christians to take up our cross and follow Jesus as we join in provoking the powers and principalities of this world. It is a call to examine the ways in which fear holds us back. It is a call to examine how we have aided and abetted these powers of darkness and to acknowledge our need for God’s grace. But it is also a call to live out God’s love. To live out the love of God means that we do not dominate or defeat evil. We do not need to become the defender of the faith or take up the sword for Christ against those things which are deemed as evil. Rather we are called to loving challenges, exposing and transforming those things deemed as evil though truth, love, and hope offered to us in Christ.
Christians, therefore, are called to this new kind of love. We are not called to show passive love, as we often do by trying to be good and avoiding evil. Our taking up the cross is not meant to become a private bearing of our woes for the sake of Jesus. Rather, this love of God we are called to live into and display should be “a vigorous, assertive pursuit of social and personal” holiness “through a love that refuses to play the worlds power game of domination, exploitation, greed, and deception.”
Further, we are reminded in this transfiguration moment that we are called to recognize divine revelation. A revelation is not some public knowledge that everybody has. Often times noisy evangelical movements and even mainline churches try to claim Jesus’ divinity as if this was information that everybody can see and understand. However, Jesus’ identity as the divine Son of God is something revelatory, something that is given to us by God in God’s way and God’s time. It is a gift. It is not something that we can own or possess or derive power from. As one theologian puts it, “Like Peter, we want to build tabernacles; like the quarreling disciples, we want our little egos to bask in Jesus’ power and glory. But the Gospel of Mark repudiates all such Jesusology, with its underlying egoistic power grab, as idolatry.”
Jesus did not come to make a big deal about who he was. Jesus did not come to attract crowds with flashy signs and wonders. Jesus did not come to elevate those who chose to follow him to new places of power and authority. Rather, Jesus came to point to God and to God’s reign on earth. Jesus came to invite those who came and followed him to join him in voicing God’s coming reign and being witness to the transforming, redemptive Grace of God.
In order to do that, our task becomes simple. For us, the Transfiguration of our Lord, is the pause in our calendar where we confirm what we believe. We are given the opportunity to witness the Glory of our Lord. We are invited to move beyond our fears as we are invited into God’s mission. So often in moments of fear, we think that we need to do something, anything, to move past the moment or preserve what we fear we will lose. But following after Jesus means that we are called to lay aside our fears, lay aside our past interpretations, and trust the same God who calls us by name.
Much like Jesus’ question to Peter in Caesarea Philippi, the transfiguration poses a challenge and raises a question to us as we sit on the cusp of Lent: Who do we say that Jesus is? This question will be posed to us time and time again over the next forty days. Who do we say that Jesus is? In answering the question, we are invited into the mission and ministry of Jesus. We are invited to order our lives and grow in holiness as we point to the redemptive and restorative work of God through Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.
So, this morning, I invite you to lay aside your fears. Cast aside what is holding you back. And truly answer this question: who do you say that Jesus is?
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.