Transfiguration
/ Mardi Gras Communion
March
3, 2019
William G. Carter
Now about eight
days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and
went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance
of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly they
saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. They appeared in glory and
were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at
Jerusalem. Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but
since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood
with him. Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, ‘Master, it
is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one
for Moses, and one for Elijah’— not knowing what he said. While he was
saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as
they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said, ‘This is my
Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’ When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found
alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things
they had seen.
On the next day,
when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met him. Just
then a man from the crowd shouted, ‘Teacher, I beg you to look at my son; he is
my only child. Suddenly a spirit seizes him, and all at once
he shrieks. It throws him into convulsions until he foams at the mouth; it
mauls him and will scarcely leave him. I begged your disciples to cast it
out, but they could not.’ Jesus answered, ‘You faithless and perverse
generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you? Bring your
son here.’ While he was coming, the demon dashed him to the ground in
convulsions. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the boy, and gave him
back to his father. And all were astounded at the greatness of God.
This
winter, we have been working through Luke’s story about Jesus, whom he
describes as the prophet-preacher. Jesus comes from God, speaks on behalf of
God, tells and shows the love of God. And he raises the question asked by
everybody who has ever heard a preacher, namely, “Will this preacher ever end?”
I
know it’s a question a lot of you have asked, especially if there’s a football
game, or a pancake brunch, or an exhilarating ice skating competition that you
want to get home to watch. Will this preacher ever end?
One
of my teachers taught that the end of the sermon is the most important part.
That’s why I write the sermon backwards, beginning with the ending, and aiming everything
toward it. Or to quote a good friend who is wintering a safe distance away in
Naples, Florida, “Bill stomps around in the mud for eighteen minutes, finally
says something worth thinking about, and then sits down.” Touché!
How
will the preacher end? It’s a really important question.
In
the congregations where the preacher uses the old boiler plate of three points
and a poem, there are people who time the first points to predict the end of
the third. Perhaps one of the ushers is taking a snooze, or the choir director
needs to know when to stop balancing the checkbook. The cue is coming, here’s
the end.
If
so, the apostle Paul once missed his cue. He was writing a letter to the Philippians,
got to chapter three and said, “Finally…” (3:1). Then he got sidetracked, went
on a bit longer about something else, and in chapter four says again, “Finally…”
(4:8).
One
of you once told me that the most important thing about the ending of the
sermon is that it should be as close as possible to the beginning. My response
is, “Listen, we have a lot of things to tell you!”
And
how does it end? How does the prophet-preacher end? Luke says he ends with
prayer. Jesus goes up a mountain with three of his inner circle, and he prays.
That shouldn’t surprise us if we know the Gospel of Luke. According to Luke,
Jesus was always praying. He was praying on the day of his baptism, when the sky
split open, the Dove came down, and the Big Voice said, “You are my Beloved
Son.” (3:16). After that, it was his custom to withdraw to deserted places to
pray (5:16), when nobody but God was listening.
The
night before Jesus chose his twelve primary followers, Luke says, “He spent the
night in prayer to God” (5:16). Another time he was praying alone, and looked
up at his disciples to ask, “Who do the crowds say that I am?” (9:18). His
ministry was bathed in prayer.
So
today, it is while he was praying, that the appearance of his face changes and
his clothes became dazzling white (9:29). Either he is revealed as he has
always been, although it was hidden from our eyes. Or he was so full of the
presence of God that his face was full of light, just like it happened to
Moses.
A
couple of Octobers ago, I dragged my friend Jim to New Haven to hear a great
preacher speak about the art of preaching. The title of the lecture series was “The
End of Preaching.”[1] We
thought we would hear some wisdom from this man at the end of his career. Not
at all. He stood at the lectern and declared, “The End of Preaching is prayer.”
That’s where it’s all headed. That is the final intent. It’s for both preacher
and listener to be caught up in the presence of God.
This
transfiguration moment of Jesus is far beyond us, I suspect. We don’t understand
it, we cannot reduce it. Suffice it to say, it’s some kind of visionary moment
that points way beyond itself. It sounds like a moment unique to Jesus.
But
maybe we get a taste of it sometimes. It might happen inside a church building
or it might happen out in the natural world. It’s the moment when we step out
of time and we are lifted beyond ourselves. Caught up in glory, as it were.
See
if you can recall a moment like that, a much smaller but still significant
transfiguration. The phone rings and the news is good. A broken friendship is
mysteriously mended. A blazing orange sun slices through the storm clouds. Or it’s
a moment when all hope seems lost, yet hope happens, real hope. We have these
moments, you and I, and we tend to disqualify them, or discount and dismiss
them.
What
is it that would bring us completely alive? I ask this of you, and I ask it of myself. I’m starting to think about a
sabbatical sometime next year and my wife said, “Any ideas?” I said I was checking
out a residential library in Wales and doing some writing. She said, “Why don’t
you consider going to New Orleans?” Wow, what a great idea! Get lost on Bourbon
Street for a while.
What
is it that might lift your spirit and set you free? What would lift you into
the presence of God? That’s the kind of prayer that Jesus engaged in. And the
suggestion is that this is the end, the purpose, for everything he has come to
say. Just imagine being completely united with God, filled with the joy of the
Holy Spirit, to be, in the words of a favorite old hymn, “Lost in wonder, love,
and praise.”
Isn’t
that what we wish we could have? Total release, complete freedom, everything
healed and whole? Just imagine that, too... everything made well.
And
maybe that’s why Jesus comes down from the mountain again. He doesn’t stay up,
three thousand feet above human pain. After the vision, the Voice, the awe and
wonder, Jesus comes down to heal a young boy on the very next day.
Both
stories belong together, for the healing is also the end of all the preaching. Serving
somebody in dire need, that’s where the prophet preacher chooses to be – and where
he calls us to be. I love the very last
line of those two stories: “And
all were astounded at the greatness of God.” Luke puts that line at the end of
the healing story. He could have also put it in the middle of the
transfiguration story.
What we really want is
for him to put that line in the middle of our lives: “And all were astounded at
the greatness of God.” Whoever we are, whatever our circumstances, regardless
of whether we use religious language, that’s really the end of it all. To know
that God is real, that God is here, that God is great.
It’s really why the
church people gather every week in a room like this. And whether we are church
people or not, it points to the mystery that lies beneath all of our feet while it
lingers far above our heads.
We are here on this
planet for such a short time. We expend a lot of time and energy chasing after
so many things. Much of the time we come up empty. But to catch a brief glimpse
of life in its fullest, of glory in its brightest – that’s a wonderful gift. It
is what the Christ comes to reveal. Sometimes we see just a bit of it. Once in
a while we see so much more than we can take in.
So I’m glad to have
you on the journey. Maybe you will see something that I don’t. Maybe I will hear
something that it is important for me to pass on to you. We are in this
together, this prayerful, serving journey that brings us ever closer to the “greatness
of God.”
That brings us to the
end of this sermon. The only way that I know how to conclude is by joining
together in a song . . .
Hymn: “Just a closer walk with thee. Grant it, Jesus, is my plea…”
(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.
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