Equipped and transformed

Transfiguration

March 2, 2014

Matthew 17:1-9

On the last Sunday in January, when we cancelled church because of the weather, I was going to preach on the call of the disciples to be fishers of men.  The first to be called into service as Jesus’ co-workers were fishermen, Peter and his brother, Andrew, and James and his brother, John.  They knew the work that fishing entailed and so to be called fishers of people probably made more sense to them than it can for us sometimes.  I do wonder if, when Jesus called Matthew, the tax collector, he called him to be a collector of people instead of taxes, but who knows.  When Jesus called Peter, Andrew, James and John to follow and become fishers of people, they may not have been the best candidates for the job.  They were a part of the lower class, under the control of the whims of those to whom they supplied their catch, and they were probably not the cleanest people in the world working with fish all day.  And judging from their call story, they may not have even been good fishermen since they immediately dropped everything to follow…leaving their families to take care of whatever catch there may or may not have been. 

But Jesus was never known to call the elite and highly educated and respected into service.  He didn’t call the equipped in order to help him spread the Gospel, he equipped those whom he called.  He took empty tackle boxes and filled them to the brim with everything that the disciples would need in order to follow him and share the Good News. 

This being the case, however, I don’t know if Peter, James and John were completely prepared for the day in which Jesus brought them with him up to the mountain top.  I imagine Peter, James and John (who knows where Andrew was) following Jesus up the mountain thinking it was a regular day and that they were going to go up to pray…Jesus liked to go up to mountains to pray for some reason.   It wasn’t a regular day, though, for suddenly Jesus was transformed in front of them.  His clothes were no longer the color of the linen he wore, but they were a dazzling white and his face shone like the sun.  And then Moses and Elijah showed up (though, how they knew it was Moses and Elijah puzzles me…the photo directory hadn’t come out yet).  And as I imagine this scene, I doubt that if I had been there, my reaction to these events would have been any different.  I imagine it would be like the time I met Kasey Kahne 6 years ago…only a million times better. 

Who wouldn’t want to stay and linger in the presence of the man that God chose to lead the Israelites to freedom and the man who was the greatest of the prophets?  There would be so much to learn from them…so many questions to ask them!  What was it like when you lifted your hands and God parted the Red Sea?  What about the time, Elijah, when you faced off against the prophets of Baal and won? 

So let’s build tents, one for you, Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.  You must have a lot to talk about and we don’t want for you to have to be uncomfortable…we can stay as long as you like.

Poor Peter, he always comes so close to getting it and then he misses…like six days before this when Pater made the powerful profession that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of the Living God…and then five minutes later, Jesus is calling him Satan and telling him to get behind him because Peter rebukes Jesus and the notion that Jesus will have to die.  We see Peter try so hard and wind up like Charlie Brown over and over, running to kick that football and winding up on his hind end.  He gets it, but he doesn’t.

But before Peter is done speaking, God interrupts. 

Now, not only are have they seen their good friend and teacher become transformed before them, not only have they physically been in the presence of Moses and Elijah, but now the voice of God is speaking directly to them, instructing them as to who Jesus is and that they are to listen to him. 

What do you say in a moment like this? Are there even words to describe the awe-some nature of hearing the voice of the heavenly father speaking directly to you? I don’t know if there was any better of a response than to fall on their faces in fear…not like a terrified that something is going to hurt you fear, but an awe-struck, heart is pounding, oh wow there is my favorite celebrity of all time, what do I say, what do I do, don’t look stupid, reverent kind of fear. 

And what about the cloud?  Well, my experience with foggy days is that fog forces us to focus because you can’t see too far ahead of you.  And I can imagine that with all the excitement of seeing Moses and Elijah, and a transformed Jesus, they needed a “Peter…Peter, look at me…focus, Peter.” And in enveloping the mountain with a cloud so that they could only see Jesus, they were forced to focus on him and on the voice from the heavens and in doing so, they got to see a preview of the fullness of the glory of Christ that would be revealed when he rose from the dead. 

Jesus wasn’t the only one transformed in this trip up to the mountain…it’s impossible to stand in the presence of Moses and Elijah, see the fullness of the glory of Christ, and hear the voice of God and not be changed…to not have ears opened to hearing the words of Christ in a new way, to not have eyes opened to see just how much work needs to be done…to not have minds opened to seeing new ways of being disciples and to not be strengthened for the journey to accompany Jesus to Jerusalem.  But having ears and eyes and minds and hearts opened can leave us intimidated, overwhelmed by just how much work there is to do.  Maybe it would be easier and safer if we just stayed up on the mountain…if we just stayed within the walls of a church building…

But Jesus didn’t come to sit on the Mountain top and spout off decrees like traditional royalty…he came to get his hands dirty, he came to sit with us in our unbelief, to cry with us in our grief, to calm us in the midst of uncertainty, to celebrate with us in our joys and our triumphs, to transform us and equip us to go out into the world and be co-workers in spreading the Gospel through our words and our actions. Jesus came down the mountain for the soldier tormented by battle scars…for the actor tortured by the demons of addiction…for the young mother widowed after her husband’s 6 year battle with cancer…for the high schooler so afflicted by the words of his tormenters that he starts to believe the awful things they say to him.  We all have dark places, places of struggle and doubt and fear that we would rather no one else knew about. But as much as we try to hide and mask these dark places in our lives, we cannot hide them from Jesus. Jesus knows our pains and he is there with us in those dark places to bring us life. We are never alone…Jesus himself went to hell and back so that he could give us what we need to endure and walk with us and so we would know and be transformed by his light, his love, and his peace.
Out of his love, God sent Jesus to come among us…and even after experiencing the fullness of his own glory, Jesus came down from the mountain. There was work to do…there were people to heal…there were tackle boxes to fill…and in the end, there was a cross waiting for him…a cross that would set us free from the grasp of death and bring us in to the fullness of the new life that is in store for us…a new life in which we are transformed and called to go out into the world, equipped with what we need to share the Good news and transform the world. Amen.