March 3, 2019 – Luke 9:28-43
Luke 9:28-43
Meant to Shine or The Glory goes Forth
Transfiguration of Our Lord – March 3, 2019
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
In the midst of slogging it out teaching and healing and feeding,
Jesus takes three of his disciples up on a mountain.
There, they take a breather. They pray.
But while Jesus is praying, something amazing happens.
He begins to shine.
Like, really really shine.
Super super brightly! Dazzingly white!
He is shining forth with the light of God, with goodness and life.
The eternal, uncreated light of God is shining through him.
The sleepy disciples are clearly astounded.
Jesus is named “Son” once again by a divine voice.
And they are told to listen to him!
Presumably: listen to what he has just been telling you about discipleship and suffering for
God’s mission to love bless heal and feed this whole world and every person in it.
It is a moment of glory.
Well, Peter wants to stay up there on the mountain and contain the glory.
Maybe keep it all to themselves – so he suggests making three nice little huts,
one each for Jesus, Moses and Elijah.
Maybe he is especially motivated by having overheard what Jesus and Moses and Elijah
were talking about: about Jesus’ departure, or exodus from this world and how
that was all gonna go down.
Maybe Peter wants to avoid all that – maybe –
so maybe it is just better, you know, to stay up on the mountain.
Well, mountaintop experiences are awesome.
Moments of glory are great.
They are great, partly, for being so few and far between in our lives.
Think of one of the great moments of your life – just quickly: what’s the first thing that
comes to your mind?
Didn’t you just want to hang on to that moment forever?
Stay in that place? Be with that person? Experience that feeling?
Jesus knows that moments of glory are part of human experience.
But Jesus also knows that we can’t live in them or hang on to them.
Jesus wisely moves his disciples back down the mountain, presumably to yet another
“level place” we talked about a few weeks ago, the place of human suffering.
The thing about moments of glory is that they can sustain you in the level places of life.
Jesus’ baptism was a moment of glory, and that moment sustained him through
trials in the wilderness and through the rigorous initial stages of his ministry.
Now he – and some of his closest disciples – experience another moment of glory.
This one is meant to sustain him through the trials of more ministry and his “exodus”
from the world on the cross.
He knows he will face opposition and, likely, death for offering an
alternative vision of the world from that proposed by the Roman empire.
The moment of glory sustains him for his journey.
The moment of glory is meant to sustain the disciples in their following of him.
The moment of glory is not meant as an end in itself: the glory is meant to go forth.
The glory is a gift: the glory is mean to bring blessing.
On the mountain, Jesus is once again named “Son” by the divine voice.
This, too, is meant to sustain him and encourage him in his role as an
apprentice to God’s love in the world.
Remember, he was named “Beloved Son” in his baptism, in his other moment of glory.
Well, as he and Peter and James and John come back down the mountain,
they encounter another beloved son:
the beloved son of a father who is in agony over his son’s distressing illness.
The father loves the son so much that in desperation he reaches out to Jesus who
has healed so many before.
And Jesus, filled with glory, filled with compassion, filled with mercy –
which we know is what God’s glory consists of – Jesus heals the boy.
One Beloved Son heals another: God’s glory goes forth.
The people are astounded, just like the disciples were on the mountain:
for God’s glory has gone forth.
It was never meant to stay on the mountain, Peter.
Jesus and the disciples come back to the level place, and God’s glory goes forth.
Several years ago I read an excellent book by Lutheran pastor Heidi Neumark who
was for 19 years the pastor at an inner city church in South Bronx,
Remarkably named Transfiguration Lutheran.
Reflecting on her church’s name and its inspiration in today’s story she writes:
Living high up in the rarefied air isn’t the point of transfiguration … [It was] never meant as a private experience of spirituality removed from the public square. It was a vision to carry us down, a glimpse of unimagined possibility at ground level. (from Breathing Space)
I love that: a vision to carry us down, a glimpse of unimagined possibility at ground level.
Bringing the glory down.
Bringing the glory down.
That is the point of transfiguration.
I hope today is a moment of glory for you, even if a small one.
Sunday by Sunday we experience hope and fellowship here,
and I think it sustains many of us.
For myself, I always feel better after worship, centred and grounded for the week ahead.
And I pray that it sustains me the whole week through till next Sunday.
I pray that it sustains me in the level place, where there is illness and hunger.
Where I sometimes experience despair and difficulty.
We do experience glory here:
We experience belovedness.
We experience hope for a world that God dearly loves.
We experience justice in sharing God’s good gifts of bread and wine equitably,
to all who seek them and hunger for them.
I pray that the glory we experience –
the belovedness, the hope, the justice – might shine forth from us when we leave this place
and go back to the level places of our lives:
to our homes, our workplaces, our communities, and our relationships.
For God’s glory goes forth – from Jesus, for sure – but also from us.
Jesus does get very frustrated with the disciples this morning when they are unable to
heal the boy.
For whatever reason, God’s glory does not go forth from them.
It’s strange, because they had been healing prior to this.
Maybe – and I’m speculating – now that they’ve experienced Jesus’ glory,
Maybe they figure he is so great they can just leave everything to him.
But that is not the way Jesus rolls.
In Luke’s estimation, you, now, are Jesus.
You now are Jesus’ resurrected body on earth.
You now are the ones from whom God’s glory goes forth into the level places.
You have been gloriously named beloved and are called to show others their belovedness.
But I know you don’t always feel that way.
So here’s a final thought:
Obviously Jesus’ story parallels Moses’ story on the mountain this morning.
Moses shines and Jesus shines.
Moses comes down the mountain to share the glory with the people and
Jesus comes down the mountain to share the glory with the people.
Okay.
But there is a detail in the story of Moses that I love – did you notice it says that
Moses didn’t know he was shining after his encounter with God?
I love that: you may not feel like you’re shining, but you are.
In his own moment of glory, the 20th century monk Thomas Merton had a vision
on a corner in downtown Louisville, Kentucky in which everything around him,
and everyone, was shining with a brilliant, brilliant light.
Years later, reflecting on this life-changing experience, he wrote,
if only we knew it, we are all walking around shining like the sun.
So let your light shine.
You are shining, right now, each one of you, with faith, and hope, and love.
You are shining with justice.
Let the glory of God go forth.
Take it to the level place – that is what it is for.
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.
And together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
