February 15, 2015 (Transfiguration of our Lord) – Mark 9:2-9
Mark 9:2-9
Transfigured by Worship
Transfiguration of Our Lord – February 15, 2015
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
Religion is about transformation.
At every level it is about transformation.
The change from one state into another.
The change from the world as it is to the way the world could be.
The change from the world as human beings imagine it to the way God imagines it.
The change from you as you are to the way you could be.
At every level, religion is about transformation.
Baptism ushers you into a new realm, the realm where God’s reign of
love and mercy and forgiveness and justice and peace rule.
Coming into this worship space and engaging in the liturgy of Holy Communion
ushers you into a new realm, into a realm where the world is as it could be:
where people wish one another peace and share God’s gifts with each other,
rather than wishing each other ill and competing for those gifts.
When you cross the threshold into this space, the change from the outside world to this one
is marked.
Transfiguration Sunday is about change.
When Jesus goes up the mountain with 3 of his disciples halfway through Mark’s Gospel,
something changes.
The disciples experience Jesus as being changed:
the Greek word that expresses that change is “metamorphosed”:
Jesus was changed before them into a being of pure light.
Mark struggles to capture that change in words:
Jesus became whiter than any bleacher could bleach, he says.
He shines with a pure, divine light:
God’s glory is revealed as being completely concentrated in him.
As if all of God’s glory is present in him and the work he is doing.
The disciples are awe struck: Peter just wants to build some little dwellings and
stay there forever.
He’s changed from being a wandering fisherman into a stay at home Jesus freak.
But that is not what Jesus wants to change him into.
But the change does begin here, on this mountain.
It’s true that Jesus is changed before the disciples on the mountain this morning.
But I have a feeling that that is finally not the change that is finally important.
Like I said in the e-mail this week, I personally think that Jesus is always shining.
Not just when he’s up on the mountain, but especially and even more so when
he’s down in the valley, touching the lepers, healing the sick, forgiving the sinful,
raising the dead, including the excluded, and challenging the mighty.
Only maybe these things don’t look divine to the disciples,
maybe these things don’t look glorious to them.
For sure, the disciples are looking for glory, but not the kind of glory that Jesus has in mind:
the glory of feeding a hungry person, the glory of hospitality,
the glory of forgiving a person who’s hurt you,
the glory of sitting in deep darkness and shining the light of companionship on the lonely.
The disciples are looking for conventional glory: the glory of being seated at the right hand of
a conquering warrior hero when he comes into his kingdom!
It’s true that Jesus is changed on Transfiguration Sunday,
but really it’s the disciples that need to be changed.
I pointed out in the e-mail this week that the Prayer of the Day states this explicitly.
I really like this prayer.
We only hear it once every three years, so I’m going to remind you of how it goes:
Almighty God, the resplendent light of your truth shines from the mountaintop into our hearts.
Transfigure us by your beloved Son, and illumine the world with your image.
Transfigure us, the prayer asks.
Change us, the prayer asks, for we are the ones in need of change.
But, as I’ve heard many many times, change is not always good.
Religion is for sure about change and transformation.
And human beings are creatures uniquely capable of change.
But what kind of change?
Not all change is good.
The disciples want to be changed from lowly fishermen into powerful rich big deal rulers.
That is not a good change.
The key to the kind of change God has in mind for us is in the prayer:
Transfigure us by your beloved Son.
Change us by and through Jesus into his likeness.
If Jesus is the fully human one, if Jesus is everything a human being is meant to be,
if Jesus is the glory of God fully alive, then make us more like Jesus.
And we are transfigured by Jesus, both as we worship him on the mountain and as we
follow him down into the valley where we work alongside of him.
Yes: Jesus takes the disciples up on the mountain and there they have a moment of
awe struck wondrous worship with him.
And that was an important part of their change: to see him revealed in all his divine glory and
worship him.
But that is not all there was to their transformation.
It was not that easy.
Mark punctuates this by letting us see just what inept blockheads the disciples still are
immediately after this when the disciples go back down the mountain with Jesus and
they can’t heal a boy of his illness.
And Jesus gets very impatient with them!
See: what their transformation will require is not just the worship on the mountain,
but the sort of worship that takes place when they work with Jesus, side by side,
day in and day out – when they do the hard work of forgiving, and healing,
and advocating for justice, and feeding, and including.
When they get into their muscle memory what it is to actually be like Jesus,
then their transformation will continue.
They are given a great grace on the mountain for sure, a glimpse of pure divine light,
but their transformation will not end there: it begins there, just as
your transformation begins with the grace of baptism but does not end there.
That grace of a beautiful ecstatic moment on the mountain is meant to
inspire them and motivate them and sustain them in their work in the days ahead.
That worship on the mountain is meant to drive their mission,
their participation in God’s mission to love, bless and
heal this world and every person in it.
Coach Maurice has been charged with taking the Jets – a hockey team that has said
all the right things for years – and to try and get them to do the right things.
He can show them all the video in the world, but that will never be enough.
What they have to do is get on the ice, and day after day do the right things until
the right things become part of their muscle memory and part of their identity.
That is transforming the Winnipeg Jets – seeing is not enough.
And it is no different for us.
Many of you have a deep desire for change.
For a transformation of the world as it is into the world as it could be.
For a transformation of the world as human beings have made it into
the world as God imagines it.
Many of you desire a continued transformation of this community into the community in mission
that God imagines it to be.
And many of you seek a transformation of yourselves,
from what sometimes poor decisions have made of you,
or from what circumstances have made you,
or from what those around you have done to you,
or from what loss has made you,
or from what addiction has made you,
or from what grief has made you.
You rightly seek transformation here, in this place,
through and by the One who can transform you.
The thing is, you can be changed by just about anything.
You can be changed into something unlovely when
you worship that which is less than worthy of you.
You can worship a god of cheap grace, a god of affirmation with no commitment.
You can worship a god of simple self satisfaction who you want to just satisfy your own needs.
You can worship a god who says
As long as you’re happy and not bothering anyone else that is enough.
But that would not be worshipping Jesus, the Jesus we meet in the pages of Mark’s Gospel.
The Jesus we meet in Mark’s Gospel is not an easy god to worship:
he is beautiful on the mountain and he is beautiful in the valley,
and he wants to make of you too something and someone beautiful.
To do that, it’ll take more than the mornings on the mountain with him.
It’ll take following him around in the valley, doing as he does and worshipping him by doing.
And it won’t be easy and it won’t be quick.
But:it’s where the light is.
It’s where true hope can be found.
It’s where all you were meant to be by the God who created you can be found.
It’s where your real transformation begins, by being slowly slowly transformed into the
very image of the One you worship, and taking that image of the loving God
with you into the valley where you can start to transform the world with it.
The thing is: your transformation and the transformation of the world are not separate.
As you are changed, so will the people and world around you begin to change.
Slowly, you will be transformed, and slowly you will find the peace of becoming what
God intends you to be: the image of the light-bearing one.
Like the disciples, it will be a slow change – so be patient.
Like the disciples, the change will not always be in a straight line – so be patient.
It is not easy coming week in and week out and worshipping Jesus –
but it’s where the light is.
So let it shine on you this morning.
Bask in it.
Be strengthened by it.
Feel the hope of it and be lightened by it.
Then take it out into the dark valleys with you and be changed by using it and shining it.
Be transformed by finding Jesus at your side, still shining, as you practice his way,
forgiving, feeding, advocating, healing, doing justice, giving mercy, and making peace.
So together let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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