St. Thomas Evangelical Lutheran Church
3800 East Third Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47401
(812) 332-5252
Sermon for Transfiguration Sunday (February 18, 2007)
Liturgical Color: White
Reverend Doctor Lyle McKee
"Fear and Forgetfulness"
Grace to you and peace from our loving God, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
The Transfiguration is an event in Jesus' ministry shrouded in mystery and enigma. While it is described in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, it has been only weakly celebrated in the traditions of the church. Like the disciples who first witnessed the Transfiguration, the church has also seemed unsure of what it meant, what its purpose was, and what it's meaning for Christians might be.
Illustrative of the church's nervousness about the Transfiguration is the fact that it has been shifted all around the church calendar. It was not fixed into the liturgical calendar and lectionary readings at the same time as Jesus baptism, resurrection, or ascension. It was finally granted space during the Sundays of Trinity, August 6 on the old Roman calendar. But Anglicans found it more amenable to the second Sunday after Epiphany, while Lutherans placed it on the last Sunday after Epiphany, just prior to Lent. The Roman Church calendar established the Transfiguration on the second Sunday in Lent (Winn, "Worship as a Healing Experience", Interpretation 29, 1975, 70).
The church is still not convinced about whether the Transfiguration is best understood as a demonstration of the triune nature of the divine, or celebrated as an Epiphany event, or recognized as the somber Lenten beginning of Jesus' journey to Jerusalem and crucifixion. The Revised Common Lectionary, which Lutherans now use along with many Protestant denominations, places the celebration here, at the final Sunday in Epiphany, as a preview of the resurrection immediately prior to Jesus' final journey to Jerusalem.
I personally appreciate the way it is placed in our church year. It seems the perfect way to foreshadow both the trials of Jesus and the glory of the resurrection. These in turn provide us with insights into two dangers of the Christian life.
Let's look at the text.
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.
While the presence of Moses and Elijah elicited only delight from the awed disciples, the cloud overshadowing them creates terror in them.
The first danger we face is the same one the disciples experienced in response to the voice from heaven and that Jesus knew intimately in the Garden of Gethsemane — fear. The caution against the experience of fear and its consequences for failed action are common in scripture. Jesus tells folks to have no fear often. He seems intent on moving us towards courage and away from fear.
Thomas Merton once said that at the root of all war is fear — not so much the fear we have of one another but the fear we have of everything. The insight is a valid one. Once adrenaline hits the bloodstream, who can predict what ways of fight or flight follow? Grizzly bears, for example, merit extreme caution from hikers because they have a highly unstable adrenal gland and are "high" on this fight-or-flight drug most of the time.
The disciples experienced that mouth-drying, heart-thumping, knee-buckling fear on the mountain. After rejoicing at the presence of Elijah and Moses, they were suddenly reduced to blubbering fools by the power of the voice from above. They couldn't comprehend the magnificence of the divine presence, nor the implications of what the voice was saying. The entire experience was a mystery beyond their ability to know. And they were afraid, an understandable reaction to facing a dramatic event that can't take in.
The church continues to struggle with how fully to comprehend what this event means. And while Jesus didn't provide any explanations, he did provide an example for us of coming back down from the mountain-top experiences of our lives.
In Matthew's version of this story, Jesus tells the disciples to "Get up and do not be afraid." and "Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead." One might expect that some liturgist would suggest, given this instruction, that we move the celebration of the Transfiguration to the first Sunday after Easter.
The answer to fear is two-fold.
First, act. "Get up". Don't let the fear immobilize you. Don't fight. Don't flee. But do get up and go into action.
Peter wanted to remain on the mountain with Elijah, Moses, and Jesus. He wanted somehow to prolong the glory by staying put. But neither fear nor fascination should keep us from returning to the ongoing ebb and flow of life. Even if we don't feel normal, even it if seems we're just going through the motions, Jesus calls us back into the fray. We go up to the mountain, but we must also go back down again. We come in to worship; we go out in peace to serve the Lord.
The second part of the answer to fear is what we learn from the resurrection. After all, in the overcoming of death, Jesus destroys the power of death, thereby removing the ultimate cause of human fear. "In Christ, all are made alive," Paul tells us in First Corinthians (15:22). "Perfect love casts out fear," writes John in his first epistle (4:18).
The Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote an ambitious poem entitled "The Wreck of the Deutschland." It commemorates the quasi-martyrdom of five Franciscan nuns drowned on the German ship Deutschland at the mouth of the Thames in the winter of 1875. One half-line is especially intriguing: "Let him easter in us." Let Christ "easter" in us. A rare verb, but it suits. How does Christ easter in us? In three ways: By a faith that rises above doubt; by a hope that conquers despair; and by a love that does justice. (Burghardt, "Let Christ Easter in Us", Paulist, 1991, 51)
On the eve of Lent, we may aptly begin to ponder how Easter might swell in our spirits even as we journey with Christ to the cross.
Well, enough of the first Christian danger revealed in this story of the Transfiguration. For the other, we consider what happens after the disciples return to their daily work. Once the disciples come down from the mountain, Luke tells us this:
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 convulses him 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.
The second danger is that of forgetfulness.
The disciples here seem completely unmoved by what took place only the day before. The glow has not only faded; it is apparently forgotten. Already upon this first encounter following the Transfiguration, the disciples ignore the manifest power and glory of Christ. Even the great revelation of the brilliant light of Christ on the mountain has not impacted their work of being disciples. Only shortly after the revelation, they have fallen into forgetfulness. They exhibit no greater confidence or conviction in Jesus than any of the people in the crowds that follow him.
If it isn't fear that keeps us from following Jesus in faith, it is often forgetfulness. We worship. We study. We celebrate the sacraments. We learn of, know, and experience the great glory of God. But our spirits dim when we enter upon the trials and struggles of the world. We lose heart. We find the easy path in that of denial and forgetfulness.
It is one of the reasons, I suspect, that Jesus gave us the memorial of remembrance that we celebrate every Sunday. We are continually reminded of the power of Christ, his forgiveness, his love, and his all-encompassing glory every time we share in the body of Christ at Holy Communion. It is no coincidence that Jesus' words appeal to our memory at this remarkable feast of thanksgiving. "Do this in remembrance of me." Do not allow the temptation and ease of forgetfulness to destroy the memory of unity with me that you have known. Remember. Go. And serve.
Let me close with an old Puritan prayer that speaks of the peaks and the valleys of life, and yet calls us not to get caught in the snares of the valley because of the light of Christ, snares that include both fear and forgetfulness. It seems an especially appropriate prayer with so many families in our congregation experiencing a death in recent weeks.
Let us pray:
Lord, high and holy, meek and lowly: Thou hast brought me to the valley of vision, where I live in the heights with thee and in the depths with me, hemmed in by the mountains of sin I yet see thy glory. Let me learn by paradox that the way down is the way up, that to be lowly is to be high, that the broken heart is the healed heart, that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit, that the repenting soul is the victorious soul, that to have nothing is to possess all, that to bear the cross is to wear the crown, that to give is to receive, that the valley is the place of clearest vision. Lord, in the daytime, stars can be seen from deepest wells, and the deeper the wells, the brighter thy stars shine. Amen.
