Transfigured and Transformed

Sermon for February 23, 2020

Lessons for the Transfiguration Sunday Year A

Exodus 24:12-18
Psalm 2
2 Peter 1:16-21
Matthew 17:1-9

We’ve seen this show before...or something very similar to it. We saw it six weeks ago, when Pastor Tara was with us the first time to see if we were a good match. And coincidentally...or not...we’re seeing it again now that she’s here with us for her first Sunday as our new permanent pastor.

But as I said, we’ve seen this show...or heard this story...before. Six weeks ago, we saw the first appearance of the adult Jesus in Matthew’s gospel. Between then and now 14 chapters have passed...including one from the gospel of John.

So much for having a nice clear storyline to follow from Sunday to Sunday. For those of you who are into “binge watching” certain TV shows, that was sorta like having an episode of Arrow dropped into the middle of your Flash binge. But...it’s an episode that expands on what happened in the previous Flashepisode, and sets the stage for episodes to come, so maybe that wasn’t so bad.

Anyway, here we are back in our regular continuity, with an episode that seems strangely similar to one we’ve already seen. Jesus goes somewhere, the sky opens up, and the voice of God speaks about him.

The first time this happened, John alone...John the Baptist, that is...knew who he truly was and what was going on. But in this episode, Peter, John (not the Baptist), and James were a little dumbstruck by what they saw. They saw Jesus’s appearance change to glowing, they saw him chatting with Moses and Elijah, and they were like, “Wow...this is cool. Let’s stay here. Let’s build three booths and stay here, where all the glory is. This is obviously what it’s all about.”

And...as usual...Peter, John (not the Baptist), and James were wrong.

Now before I go on, I want you to think about something. I want you to think about how often Peter, John, James, and the rest of the disciples got things wrong...with Jesus right there to explain it to them. And now I want you to think about how often we Christians think we’ve got it absolutely right...without Jesus right here to explain things to us. How often we Christians think we’ve got it absolutely right just because we say that we’re Christians, we’ve prayed about it, and God hasn’t clearly and distinctly said, “No, not quite what I had in mind.” How often we Christians think that we should make the rules for everyone, because we’re Christians, and we’re right. OK...let’s let that sink in for a moment or two.

And now let’s get back to what’s going on at the top of that mountain. Now they hear the voice of God speaking to them, and they are terrified beyond the need for any laxatives. The voice of God saying, “Listen to him.” And then Elijah and Moses are gone, Jesus tells them to get up and not be afraid, and they head down the mountain.

Did you catch that? They head down the mountain. They head down the mountain, away from where the glory was, to where there’s some real work to be done. They probably still don’t get it, and won’t for a long time, but they follow Jesus down from the mountain to where there’s some real work to be done.

Jesus was transfigured in those moments on the mountaintop, but were Peter, John, and James transformed by it? Are we transformed by it? Are we transformed by Jesus leading them down from there?

And for that matter, what are we transformed into? If we’re transformed into the wrong things, is it possible that we still don’t get it? Some of us have been transformed into Pharisees...which is an unfortunate use of the term… because the Pharisees were among the Jews that Jesus had the most in common with. But we argue most with the ones who are most like us, don’t we? Did Jesus waste his time arguing with the Romans? No.

But let’s talk about those two trans words...transfigured and transformed.

When Jesus was transfigured, he wasn’t changed. Not at all. His appearancechanged for a while. He was glowing. But he was still who he always was...sorta like what I said in the children’s sermon...Clark was always Superman, it’s just that no one else knew. And maybe for one bright shining moment, Peter, John, and James actually had a clue. Jesus was transfigured, and for a moment or two, they got a glimpse of who he really was...who he had been all along.

Transfigured, but not transformed.

But transformation...well now...that’s something different. That’s changing who we are. Changing what we are. Changing how we see things. Changing how we react to things. Changing how we react to others. Changing what we are inside.

Changing our very essence.

We need to be transformed. You, me...all of us. At the very least, we need to be transformed into people who are able to listen to, and try to understand, those we disagree with. We need to be transformed into people who don’t assume we’re right just because we say we’re Christians (even though we don’t say it too loudly, because we’re Lutherans).

We need to be transformed into people who care about the spirit of the law, rather than the letter. The people it was supposed to protect, rather than the loopholes the imperfect words give us to work around. We need to be transformed into people who care about the ethics of something, and not whether or not it’s legal. We need to be transformed about people who care about helping the poor, rather than arguing over whose fault it is that they’re poor in the first place, and whose responsibility it is to help them. 

We need to be transformed into people who stop asking whether or not someone deserves our help, and instead ask whether or not they need it. We need to be transformed into people who say that it’s our duty as Christians...nay...as human beings...to look out for each other, rather than selfishly saying that any help we give should be voluntary, and we shouldn’t be forced to help anyone. 

We need to be transformed into people who think it’s absolutely criminal that diabetics like me are dying because they can’t afford a vial of insulin that only costs $2.50 to make...while drug companies and...let’s admit it...our pension plans...profit from it.

We need to be transformed into people who see xenophobia as a sin against God and humanity.

We need to be transformed into people who don’t see helping others as meaning that they have less for themselves. We need to be transformed into people who realize just how much we have...and are able to share with others.

We need to be transformed from pro-life in the narrow sense of pro-fetus, to pro-life, in all that that means. We need to be transformed into people who work to ease the economic pressures that cause some families to feel that they can’t support just one more child when contraception fails. We need to be transformed into people who work not just to make sure that child is born, but that the child is able to be properly cared for after it’s born.

And beyond the simple issue of abortion, we need to be transformed in to people who are pro-life in the sense of understanding that capital punishment...the way the system works right now...is often an emotional and unjust form of vengeance, fraught with errors that can’t be corrected once an innocent person is executed. We need to be transformed into people who act to either abolish it altogether or limit it to cases where it’s not just “beyond a reasonable doubt”, but where there’s no doubt at all...where the person was caught red handed, there is a great cloud of witnesses, and there’s undoctored video.

We need to be transformed in so many more ways than I have time to tell you about, and in more ways than you want me to tell you about right now.

Jesus was transfigured, and Peter, John, and James saw more of him as he already was. They needed, and we need, to be transformed.

And it won’t be easy. No one said it would be easy. It will mean giving up some of your most dearly held beliefs. It will mean giving up ideas you learned from your parents, grandparents, previous pastors and Sunday School teachers, and other people you trusted to steer your right. People who maybe didn’t intentionally steer you wrong, but who as humans, do often get it wrong, don’t have all the information, and are often short-sighted.

It will mean giving up ideas you got from the people you hang around with, disagreeing with them, and maybe even losing them as friends, until they, themselves are transformed...which won’t be easy for them either, as they struggle too.

It will mean not being afraid to hear new things, to look at things in new ways, to understand that God is often doing a new thing, and keeping in mind just how much Jesus confounded the Jewish leaders when he did things differently from the way they had been taught that God wanted things to be.

It means understanding what Paul meant when he said that for now we see as through a glass darkly...something that I’m not even sure he totally understood, or applied to himself.

It will not be easy. But it is necessary. Jesus was transfigured. But we need to be transformed...we need to be transformed to be a blessing to the world. A blessing that many parts of the church are not right now.

I used to think that all this would be so much easier if Jesus were right here with us to spell it out for us when we were headed in the wrong direction. And then I remember just how dim Peter, John, James, and the others could be.

We...you, me...all of us...need to be transformed so that we can be transfigured, and the world will see the love of Jesus in us.

But maybe before all this can happen, we need to see Jesus transfigured too.

What do I mean by this? Well, keep in mind that most of the Jews at that time saw the messiah as someone who would kick Rome’s butt and restore the kingdom. They were confused and confounded when Jesus arrived because that wasn’t what he was about.

Many of us today have our own images of what Jesus is like, will be like, and will do...for us...when he comes again, that may have absolutely nothing to do with what he’s really about. Many Christians look for the day when he will return, kick some non-believing butt, and “restore the kingdom”...which in their minds means creating a world where Christians get to call all the shots, and may God have mercy on the Jews, Muslims, Hindus, liberal Christians, others, and nones.

But just as the ancient Jews were wrong about his restoring the kingdom then, I suspect that many of us are wrong about his restoring the kingdom now.

I suspect that we all...all of us...need to see Jesus transfigured...so that we can also be transformed...into people that others see him through...the way he wants to be seen.

But even should that happen, like Peter, John (not the Baptist), and James, we probably still won’t get it for a long time.

We need to be able, and willing, to see Jesus transfigured...so that we can be transformed. It may be hard to hear, but this...is most certainly true.