Mark 9: 1 And he said to them, “Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.”2 And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves; and he was transfigured before them, 3 and his garments became glistening, intensely white, as no fuller on earth could bleach them. 4 And there appeared to them Eli′jah with Moses; and they were talking to Jesus. 5 And Peter said to Jesus, “Master it is well that we are here; let us make three booths, one for you and one for Moses and one for Eli′jah.” 6 For he did not know what to say, for they were exceedingly afraid.7 And a cloud overshadowed them, and a voice came out of the cloud, “This is my beloved Son; listen to him.” 8 And suddenly looking around they no longer saw any one with them but Jesus only.
You may have noticed that we have already had a number of sermons from the Gospel of Mark this year, when I wasn’t talking about intimacy, marriage or the Song of Solomon. After talking it over some with Jana and the Elders and sharing it with Worship Commission, it seems good to us and the Holy Spirit too, I think, that we hear even more this year from the Gospel of Mark. Partly because it’s the Gospel that this year’s schedule of Bible readings features most. But also, Mark’s Gospel focuses most intensely and exclusively on an important value in our vision statement: discipleship. By “discipleship” I mean, following Jesus here and now, as best we know how, as Master, teacher, guide and example, if we truly believe certain things about Jesus.
In Mark’s Gospel, what we are to believe about Jesus, and therefore, why we would follow him, does not first come out of the mouth of Jesus, nor even of God Almighty. It comes first from the mouth of his cousin, John the Baptist, who said, “After me comes he who is mightier than I, the thong of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie.”
Something about John’s words reached out from the page and clutched me. As I mentioned in a sermon last January, maybe that phrase, “One mightier than I” should be something like a slogan, or a mantra for me this year. For most of my preaching then this year, I’ll follow the Bible reading schedule that the mainstream historic church follows, the lectionary scripture schedule, with an emphasis on discipleship, mostly from Mark’s Gospel, under the theme, “Discipleship: For One Mightier Than We.” And yes, I did check the rules of grammar on whether that should end with “we,” rather than “us” or “ourselves.”
I hope that such a focus does you as much good as it does me. For in a world of moral and political chaos, in the church as well as well as the world, I need to be reminded where my hope and guidance lay. It’s tempting to just fixate on all that is wrong with the world or the church, and search anxiously for ways to try and bend it in my preferred direction. But as sick as John the Baptist was about the state of his world and his people, he did not say, “After me comes the revolution,” nor did he say, “After me comes the restoration.” He said, “After me comes One mightier than I.”
So, in answer to the first question on my outline, my go-to theme and focus this year from Mark’s Gospel will be: “Discipleship: For One Mightier Than We,” whose might we trust to guide and protect us through every loss and all chaos between now and the day when we see fully what the disciples glimpsed for but a moment atop the Mount of Transfiguration.
Their experience reminds me of one I heard about a few years ago, when a tall, stately man in his 80’s walked into a dry cleaner’s in downtown Minneapolis to pick up a suit. It being a busy day there, he took a number tag and waited his turn to be called. There were friendly smiles and greetings back and forth as a few other clients recognized him. When his number came up, the young lady behind the counter, about a quarter of his age, asked him, “Last name, please?”
“Mondale,” he said.
“Would you spell that, please?” she asked.
“M-O-N-D-A-L-E.”
“Hmm,” the girl replied. “Don’t recognize it. What’s your first name?”
“Walter.”
“Walter Mondale…..Walter Mondale; still don’t remember that name” she said, typing away at the computer.
Some in the establishment laughed or snickered.
“Oh, now it comes up on the computer. Your suit is ready, Mr. Mondale. How are you paying?……Might I see some ID, please, with that credit card, sir?”
After the tall, stately gentleman left with his dry cleaning, the cashier asked the next customer, “All right, what was so funny that I could hardly hear that man talk, for all your laughter?”
When someone explained that she had just served the three-term US Senator from Minnesota, the former Vice President of the United States under Jimmy Carter, a presidential candidate in 1984, and former Ambassador to Japan, the young woman gasped and blushed a bright beet red.
“How did I not know?” she wondered. Did she not pay attention in history class? Or could it be that we all live and move and work and converse in the presence of unseen royalty and celebrities unawares, whose glory outshines anyone in the White House, on TV, the Grammy’s or the celebrity magazines? And could it be that, for the most part, these unseen royalty and invisible celebrities are themselves often the most clueless of all about their identity and their destiny?
I suspect that James, John and Peter, the three disciples with Jesus atop the Mount of Transfiguration, may have wondered the same thing when they saw Jesus glowing in raiment whiter than white, in the presence of Elijah and Moses. “Who is this man?” or “How did I not know who this man was?” and “Do I really know who he is yet?” So the next question in today’s sermon outline: Was this mountaintop event a Transfiguration of the person of Jesus, or a Revealing of him? Did it involve a change in the person of Jesus, or an unveiling of what was, and is, ever shall be true about him?
It depends on the point of view. The disciples saw a radical change in the appearance of Jesus, when the dust and the grime, the suntan and windburn of a Palestinian peasant’s life gave way to the gleaming white glory of heaven. But I wonder if, from heaven’s perspective, the real or first transfiguration was not the Incarnation, when “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” leaving behind the gleaming glory of heaven that was always and already there in Jesus, as John’s Gospel puts it, “the glory of the only-begotten Son from the Father.”
But the gospels also say that the disciples saw Christ’s glory when Jesus took up a basin of water, to kneel and wash his disciples’ feet. That was glory in the form of sacrificial servanthood. They also saw Christ’s glory in the power of his ministry to heal the sick, liberate the demonized, enlighten minds and give hope to the penitent. They especially saw his glory in his willingness to suffer, without revilement or retribution, on the cross. The gospels use the word “glory” in all of these situations.
But for one brief moment they saw Christ’s glory in a form like that which radiated from the face of Moses, after basking in the presence of God on Mt. Sinai. So, Moses was there on the Mount of Transfiguration, to represent the Law. Our God is a consuming fire, so the white-hot glory with which Christ glowed was also like that of the fire that came down upon the sacrifice of the Prophet Elijah, atop Mount Carmel. And so Elijah was there, too, to represent the prophets.
In answer my second question, “Was this a transfiguration or an unveiling, or, as we said during Advent a few months ago, an apocalypse, or revealing?” I’d say, well, it depends on the perspective. From our human perspective, there was a brief change, a transfiguration of Jesus’ appearance. But from God’s perspective, it was an unveiling, a revealing of who the Song of God is, shall be, and has always been.
But what difference does that make? That’s where the next question comes in: How did the disciples know that Jesus was talking with Moses and Elijah? I’m pretty sure they weren’t wearing name tags. Did Jesus say their names aloud?
“Hi Elijah! Been riding any more flying chariots lately?”
Or did Jesus introduce them to the disciples, and the disciples to them? Or more likely, did the three just know in their hearts of hearts, and grasp with their spirits, that these two were Moses and Elijah, without it having to be said? I lean toward the last explanation, because of what Paul wrote in I Corinthians 13, “When that which is perfect is come, then we shall know even as we are known.” So I doubt that in heaven the saints we meet will be wearing name tags, or that we’ll have to ask them, “How do you pronounce your last name?” and “What ethnicity is that?” or “Are you related to any McCluskeys from New Jersey?”
People ask me all the time, “Will I know my husband or my wife or my mother when I meet them in heaven?” In his beautiful song, “Tears in Heaven,” Eric Clapton sang about his young son who died in a fall and asks, “Would you know my name, if I saw you in heaven?”
“Eye has not seen, nor has ear heard what God has in store for those who love him.” So no one can be an expert on eternity, not this side of it. But I would ask instead, “How well do we know each other here and now? How well even do we know ourselves?” Even the best major league baseball players get into batting slumps without knowing why or what to do about it except to keep showing up at the plate every game and work it through. As great a violinist as Yehudi Menuhin had a breakdown and was not even able to hold a violin for some time, and we still don’t know why it happened nor how exactly he got over it. To be a human being is to be a mystery even to oneself.
But not to God. Could it be that when we enter God’s timelessness, we will see many things about this time from God’s perspective differently, and much better? That’s what many of our songs and hymns suggest, such as, “We’ll Understand It Better Bye and Bye,” and “When the Mists Have Rolled In Splendor,” a hymn by Annie Barker:
Verse 1: “When the mists have rolled in splendor from the beauty of the hills
And the sunlight falls in gladness on the rivers and the rills
We recall our Father’s promise in the rainbow of the spray
We shall know each better when the mists have rolled away
Chorus:
We shall know as we know as we are known
Never more to walk alone
In the dawning of the morning on that bright and happy day
We shall know each other better when the mist has rolled away
Verse 2: We shall come with joy and gladness
We shall gather round the throne
Face to face with those who love us we shall know as we are known
And the song of our redemption shall resound through endless day
When we gather in the morning where the mist has rolled away
That tells me that not only on that mountaintop did God reveal the glowing, glorious truth about Jesus, his identity and his destiny. The disciples also saw into the truth about their own destiny and identity, again, from God’s perspective. If that sounds like an outrageous thing to say about ourselves and each other, then we’ll have to take it up with Jesus himself, who prayed, “The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one” according to John 17. Quoting the prophet Daniel, Jesus spoke of how “the righteous shall shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father.”
The first Roman Christians were no strangers to the pomp and glory of victorious armies returning with captives and loot, marching into the city in triumphal spectacle. But Paul told them in his letter, chapter 8, that, “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.”
And John, in his first letter, told his demoralized and divided disciples, “Beloved, now are we God’s children; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”
If Christ not only represents God to us but us to God, then our identity that matters most, which comes first and lingers last, and which unites us rather than divides us, is that of being God’s glorious and Beloved Son or Daughter. We do indeed live and move and conduct our daily business in the presence of under-the-radar royalty and unseen celebrities. They are us!
As inspiring and encouraging as such thoughts are, they may also be dangerous, even subversive. Because of all the other ways people try to define us and tell us who we are, for their own interests, not ours. It was not so long ago that millions of people died in Europe because they were labelled “subhuman,” by those who called themselves “The Master Race.” To the market, what matters most is that we are producers and consumers, what we do and how much we earn. To the powers that be, we are citizens or foreigners, Republicans or Democrats, liberals or conservatives. To the disciples on that mountaintop, a person’s identity came down to being Jewish or Gentile. Some base their identity on their skin color, the ethnicity of their ancestors, their beliefs, their politics, their sexual desires, their choice of cars, even their hobbies.
But the mountaintop revelation of Christ’s identity challenges and outshines all the temporary tin badges and stick-on paper nametags of identity that society would paste over us, and posits in their place the glowing, glorious vision that the disciples saw on that mountaintop, and the words that they heard up there, “This is my Beloved Son.” Again, those words were not meant for Jesus alone. Christ came to share his identity and destiny with us.
But you wouldn’t always know that from the ways that life and other people treat us, sometimes even among Jesus’ disciples, the joint heirs of his glory. Which brings me to the last question: “What did the disciples need most to hear? Why did God say, ‘Listen to him,’ and not just, ‘Look at him?’” Because they had not been listening to him. Specifically, they had not been listening to what he had said in the previous chapter, Mark 8, when he told them that: “…the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” He also told them, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”
To which Peter replied, “God forbid! Are you out of your mind, Jesus?” Oh, they’d had no trouble hearing Jesus say, “I give you all power and authority to drive out demons, heal the sick and preach the gospel.” Their ears picked up on, “I bestow on you a kingdom.” They heard him affirm Peter for his confession, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”
But they were deaf to other things he said, like, “Take up your cross and follow me…..Whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.” Theirs was a selective kind of hearing impairment, which filtered out the hard and costly sayings of Jesus. Don’t we all tend to have that kind of selective hearing problem?
But God did not intend this mountaintop experience for rebuking nor scolding the disciples, as much as for fortifying them. Like he did for Jesus, the first time he heard these same words of affirmation: “You are my beloved Son, in you am I well pleased,” That was at the moment of his baptism, just before he went into the desert to fast and to face the Evil One. God spoke those words of blessing and affirmation, “You are my beloved son, in you am I well pleased,” to feed and to fortify Jesus’ spirit for the coming combat with the devil. Now this mountaintop repeat, of the divine words of affirmation, plus the glowing vision of the Son’s eternal glory, was meant to feed and to fortify the disciples, as well as Jesus, for the hard and costly slog they would have ahead. For, from the Mountaintop Experience of Transfiguration, the Gospel story heads back down into the valley of pressing, perplexing human need, and the disciples’ confusion, on the way toward Jerusalem, and the cross.
To do and to endure all that was to come, they’ll need to remember two things: 1) who Jesus is, “The Beloved Son, The One Mightier than We,” and; 2) who they are, “joint heirs of Jesus,” created as God’s Beloved children, destined to share Christ’s crown, his throne and his glory.
Which is the first of three things that today’s Transfiguration story tells us to do: First, however crazy and chaotic the world and the church may be, don’t react; remember. Don’t strike back; look back to our own mountaintop moments of revelation and affirmation and remember who Jesus is to us. Look back and remember the bright, blazing image of glory of the Beloved Son of the Triune God, that struck us when we first believed. Whatever our need, whatever our loss, He is Infinitely Mightier Than Are We, and whatever we fear.
Secondly, let’s remember who we are as joint heirs of the goodness and the glory of God’s Beloved Son. Don’t let the world, the flesh nor the devil define us, because they’ll always sell us short. If such a divine assessment of us is too hard to believe, I get it. I hear the voice within that says, “But what about the things that I have done, or failed to do, that fill me with shame or regret? How could God call me his beloved child after the ways I have failed, and the things I have done? Or the things I have wanted to do, and the ways in which I am constantly tempted?”
To which I hear the voice from the mountaintop, and the voice that spoke at Jesus’ baptism, saying, “YOU are my beloved son or daughter. In YOU am I well pleased. I made you, I love you, I know what potential I put in you, and to me you will always look like Jesus.”
The same with any of us whenever we come to God so sure of ourselves and so proud of our practice and our piety, expecting heaven to tally up our just rewards. To which I think I hear that heavenly voice, sighing and saying, “Just what part of the word ‘YOU’ don’t you understand when I say, ‘YOU are my beloved child, in YOU am I well pleased?’ No mention there of anything we have done, or failed to do, or wanted to do. Just as we must never forget who Christ is to us, never let us forget who we are to him.
As for our works and our ways, compared to the infinite holiness and the glowing white hot glory of Christ, the differences between saints and sinners are picayune to the point of pointlessness. “Every saint has a past and every sinner a future.”
For a moment here I’ll step into the shoes of my spiritual director and say, “So when we pray this week, don’t just start out with your requests to God. Sit a spell, listen for and repeat God’s Word to you: hear him say to you, “My Beloved Son, or Daughter, in whom I am well pleased.”
Thirdly, let’s keep looking at others with that same vision, to see them the way God does; as “God’s beloved child,” whether they believe that about themselves or not. Jesus came to stand in their place too, and to share his honor and glory with even his enemies and assassins, just as much as with his friends. So, whenever someone rubs us the wrong way, or someone clashes head on with our personality, or our politics, or our theology, even if they do so in the most personal, destructive and divisive ways, can we at least commit ourselves to saying, “I will not see you the way you seem to be seeing me; I choose first to see you the way God sees both of us, as his Beloved son or daughter, and will treat you that way, whether you treat me that way or not, whether I agree with what you say or do, or not. Whenever I start fixating on you and wish you ill, I shall visualize you on the mountaintop, glowing with the glory for which you were created, and shall name you, as does God himself, ‘God’s Beloved Child.’”
I’ll close with what C.S. Lewis wrote in an essay, The Weight of Glory, “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”
Such everlasting splendor we have seen already, upon a Galilean mountaintop. That splendor, of the only-begotten Son of the Father, is ours as well, and forever. That’s why we won’t need nametags in heaven.