The Mountain Manifestation (Love's Transfiguration)

Posted on Mon, Feb 15, 2010

Jim Travis

THE MOUNTAIN MANIFESTATION

LOVE’S TRANSFIGURATION

Luke 9:28-36

 

At this past week’s church supper a couple of the folks there asked if I was going to preach another “hell fire and damnation” sermon today.  I guess that reference was to the sermon on David and Bathsheba last year.  Couldn’t tell if they were really saying that if that was the plan, they were not going to be here.  Well, for their information—and yours—today I am going to preach about…LOVE!

 

When my sermon “editor-in-chief,” otherwise known as Pat Travis, heard that I had agreed to Mel’s request to preach today, she casually inquired what I was going to preach about.  I told her the New Testament reading from the lectionary was the story of Jesus’ transfiguration, and that would be the text I would use.  Then, since she is well versed in the American liturgical year and its holy days, Pat pushed a little harder and asked how in the world I would relate the Transfiguration story to Valentine’s Day.  I told her that I had no idea.

 

Then she gave me that look…you know, the one that says, “Well, you might want to figure out how to do that, since that Sunday is actually Valentine’s Day, and you know Watts Street is having  the Youth and Senior Adult Sweetheart Banquet, and that really is a big deal.”

 

Sometimes—and I cringe to admit it—I  just don’t take my editor-in-chief’s suggestions…whether spoken or communicated in “that look.”  So, I begin reading and meditating on the Lukan text, searching for a word from God—for me to begin with—and then for today, to bring to you.  And here is where that process led.  Let us for the next few minutes dwell on the story, and let Luke get his message [and hopefully, God’s message] across to us this morning.

 

 As I examined this story in its context—what preceded it and what followed it—I realized that my previous approaches in preaching on this text was to link the mountain top experience of the Transfiguration to the crisis in the valley.  The disciples who had been left behind had tried unsuccessfully to cast a demon out of a boy.  It was not a pretty sight, but it makes good sermon material. You have the harsh reality of the “real world” of anguish, suffering, and evil where we really live, even after, maybe especially after, those glorious “mountain top” experiences.

 

But, as Fred Craddock, in his commentary on Luke, points out: “The text and the context of Jesus’ transfiguration vigorously resist such a use of this passage.”  The two men who the disciples heard talking—Moses and Elijah—were talking about death, Jesus’ death.  They “were speaking of His departure which He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.”

 

Moreover, as the cloud overshadowed Jesus and the three disciples, the voice which they heard affirmed that Jesus was, indeed, not only God’s Chosen One, but that He was  being obedient to His destiny, and the disciples were to “listen to Him!”  So, what was it that Jesus had been saying to which the disciples were to listen, to pay close attention?

 

For that we need to look back in Luke to the verses preceding the Transfiguration account.  As in Mark and Matthew, Luke places the Transfiguration a scant week after Jesus had been saying to his disciples: “The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected…and be killed, and be raised up on the third day…if anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.”  Although Luke does not record the response of the disciples to this “bombshell” of a pronouncement, Matthew includes the vehement comeback from Peter that Jesus should not even think such things.  We may safely assume that the other disciples shared Peter’s repulsion to the absurd notion that Jesus must die.

 

At any rate, about a week later, Jesus took Peter, John and James “up to the mountain to pray.”  To Jesus it was becoming compelling clear what the outcome of his ministry would be: the powers in the world would not sit idly by while His ministry of healing the sick, casting out the demons, challenging the domination of tyranny, was going forward.  The powers, in the form of Rome and its “client rulers,” were being challenged by the subversive message of a Love which disregarded distinctions of class and status, which undercut the very foundation of an empire which ruled by force, which placed self last in service to others.  The way in which the religious leaders in Israel had been co-opted by Rome to enforce its domination was confronted as the worst kind of hypocrisy.

 

In the face of this impending collision of selfless love and imperial power, Jesus went to the mountain to pray.  He brought along those three disciples, who were not so much Jesus’ favored ones, as they were key leaders among the disciples. 

 

But even though Peter, John and James were key leaders, and Peter had, in fact, accurately identified Jesus as “the Christ of God,” they had great difficulty in grasping what Jesus was trying to get across to them.  They had left all to follow this Man who lived as Love embodied—casting out demons, healing the sick, feeding the multitudes, inviting all who were weary and carrying heavy burdens to come to Him.  This was a Love like they had never experienced.  And now he was talking about dying?  And he was telling them that if they really were going to follow Him they would have to bear a cross as well? 

 

So, can you imagine how this experience on the mountain may have begun as a great relief, even a moment of exhilaration as they beheld Jesus in such splendor as he was transfigured?  Face radiant, clothes flashing like lightening.  Maybe what flashed through their minds was recollection of the ancient story of Moses coming off Mount Sinai after his encounter with Jehovah…the skin of his face was shining!  The definition of “transfiguration” is “a dramatic change in appearance, especially one that reveals great beauty, spirituality or magnificence.” And surely this moment was exactly this kind of transfiguration.

 

But then, there were Moses and Elijah…and they were talking about Jesus’ “departure” which would happen in Jerusalem.  It could only mean one thing…Jesus would die!  And this is what Jesus had just a few days before said to them.  So confusing!  So much so, that when they came off the mountain Luke records that they “reported to no one in those days any of the things which they had seen.”  This transfiguration not only revealed great beauty and magnificence, it revealed something else, something that left them wondering: How could all this make sense?

 

Well, it really did not make sense to them then.  Not until after the resurrection did they come to a clearer vision of what was transfigured on the mountain that day.  Then they could better understand that the cross—a horrific means of execution—had become the central symbol of sacrificial love.  It had become the forceful reminder that in the Transfiguration of Jesus on the mountain, what was also being transfigured was Love itself.  So in one of John’s letters to the early church he could write:  “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that God loved us, and sent God’s Son to be the atoning sacrifice for us.” [I John 4:10]

 

But where are we with the cross today, this symbol of sacrificial love?  Last week, in one of the courses I teach in the Divinity School, we discussed ways the “consumer culture” which dominates our American life, co-opts even religious symbols to sell to a “consuming” public.  A currently running TV commercial promoting the “Prayer Cross” of the Montebello Collection is a prime example of this. 

 

The cross shimmers on the TV screen as the seductively solemn voice praises its beauty and the almost magical way in which, in a stone embedded in the cross one can see the entire Lord’s Prayer when the cross is held up to the light.  It comes in adult and children’s sizes and is the perfect gift for Easter or Christmas.  And here in the Valentine season this fine piece of jewelry, this expression of your love for someone special, is being hawked incessantly as a real steal at two equal payments of $19.99.  In fact, if you call right then, you can get two for the price of one! 

 

So much for the “old rugged cross!”  In a way this is a reverse “transfiguration,” which has changed the meaning of love from daily living in sacrificial service, to a shiny bauble which can be purchased for a paltry $39.98.

 

But let us return for now to that Mountain Manifestation where Love was transfigured.  Craddock has this powerful summary commentary on this text.

 

This is a mountaintop experience but not the kind about which persons write glowingly of sunrises, soft breezes, warm friends, music, and quiet time.  On this mountain the subject is death, and the frightening presence of God reduces those present to silence.  In due time, after the resurrection, they will remember, understand, and not feel heavy.  In fact, they will tell it broadly as good news.” BUT NOT AT THIS TIME.

 

We are poised on the brink of Lent and those heavy days leading up to the Passion, that crucial week, the Last Week in the earthly life of Jesus.  On Wednesday evening some of us will gather here for the Ash Wednesday service in which the shape of a cross will be marked with ashes on our foreheads.  Sure, today is Valentine’s Day, with flowers, and candy, and kajillions of expressions of love.  In a few minutes the senior members of our church will go downstairs with our youth escorts for what has been promised to be a “grand, gala event.”  We will be served a fine meal, we will laugh and talk with our young companions—trying not to come across as old fuddy-duddies. 

 

And we may realize that we love these young folks.  We love them for their sparkly enthusiasm, we love them because they are the future of this church and our world, we love them because they cared enough about us to spend this part of a Sunday afternoon keeping company with us old folks.  And tonight, before our eyes close on this day, please God, may we say a prayer for our escorts, that they will be loved as they journey on—with a deep, sacrificial love—and that they will love others as they journey on—also with a deep and sacrificial love.  Because that is what it means to follow this One who so long ago was transfigured on the mountain.  May we not forget that as we travel through Lent this year.

 

So, Pat, you really were on to something.  The Transfiguration should be related to this day in which Love is the topic.  And the Transfiguration says that Love is more than flowers, as beautiful as they may be, more than heart shaped boxes of candy, as delicious as they may taste, more than expressions of undying affection, as impressive as they may sound. 

 

It says that Love is daily cross bearing, Love is sacrificial service for others.  Love leads us into places where we may not want to go, and gives us courage to do what we really may be afraid of doing.

 

A few minutes ago I read John’s definition of that transfigured love:  “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that God loved us, and sent God’s Son to be the atoning sacrifice for us.”  If we are listening today, as the three disciples were told to listen, we will hear the next sentence in John’s letter to the Church:  “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”

 

May it be so…in the name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.  Amen

 

 

James L. Travis

WSBC February 14, 2010

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