Transfiguration C                    Luke 9:28-36          22 February 2004

Rev. Roger N. Haugen

 

The two accounts in our lessons today are those blockbuster events that cry out for an old epic motion picture.  Imagine Charleton Heston coming down dressed as Moses.  Imagine the scene on the other mountain.  Who would you pick for Jesus?  How about Harrison Ford for James or John?  Would it be Danny Divito for Peter?  Who would you pick for Jesus?  No matter who plays the parts, it is the action that draws us.  Jesus and a few disciples go off, away from the crush of needy people, to a quiet place.  One would expect, to pray and to rest.  All of a sudden, in the midst of Jesus’ prayer time, he is changed, his face, his clothes are dazzling white.  The disciples shake their sleep-fogged heads and there is Moses and Elijah.  Something immense is happening, that the disciples know, but what does it mean? What are they to do? They are terrified in the presence of God, who wouldn’t be?  Yet, it was a vision that brought clarity into the increasingly confusing world of the disciples.

 

I know how the disciples must have felt.  You get this call to follow Jesus, drop a life that was going along not too badly because the presence of God and the leading of Jesus has such a powerful pull.  Somewhere along the way, you get caught up in the overwhelming needs of others, in the ever-present budget concerns, the seeming lack of enthusiasm for what we are about as a congregation, and it feels as though I plod along in some sleep-fogged existence lacking in clarity of purpose or worth.  Sometimes the bumper sticker about sums it up, “It’s hard to soar with the eagles, when your stuck in a flock of turkeys!”  A major clergy killer is this gap between our momentary but stirring mountain top visions of the kingdom of God and the grubby reality of the church in the valley.

But on occasion, it might be when the singing of a hymn at worship takes on new energy, it might be visiting with someone, or watching the unbridled joy of a child, I find myself on top of a mountain.  I find myself looking at all around and see purpose and joy because God’s presence is unmistakably there and it is as though I can hear the words, “This is my Son, my Chosen, listen to him!”

 

So what am I to do?  I can understand Peter’s impulse to build a tent.  It is understandable to want to hang on to that moment, to relive it over and over again.  As a teenager, I was privileged to attend several National Youth Gatherings, when youth from across Canada would gather to worship, pray, learn and hang out.  Unless you have been in a university gym with 1200 youth singing at the top of their voices, you don’t know what singing can be.  It doesn’t get any better.  Yet, we all knew that we couldn’t stay there.  In just a few days it was all over and we would all go back to our home congregations where a few scattered and busy youth would try to be a youth group on their own.  But we all had a glimpse of the presence of God, the power and clarity of what it meant to be children of God, and that gave us energy to go home and be more than we were before.

 

Synod Conventions are wonderful experiences because of their worship.  Get into a large group of men and women, where the men sing louder than the women – imagine that! – and it is wonderful.  It is transfiguring and inspiring.  Yet when the days are over we go home.  We go home, not to pine over what we left behind at convention, not to simply wait for the next one, but to use that clarity of vision and purpose to live in the valley where sometimes I wonder if I am singing louder than all the rest of the congregation some Sunday mornings!  No, we come back with a vision of a church that is larger than just us, with an experience of talking and sharing with people who share the same day to day struggles of living their faith.  We come back knowing with more clarity that the one we seek to follow is, “This is my Son, my Chosen, listen to him.”

 

Jesus leads us all into moments of transfiguration, if we take the time to follow or slow down long enough to notice.  Congregations sometimes talk of a time in their history that were golden, times of power and inspiration.  Events or times that gave energy and power to their life together.  You may remember a time in your life when everything seemed so clear – career and life plans laid out before you.  I remember a Bible Camp canoe trip in the summer of 1971 as one of those moments in my life.  When I talk with those who shared that experience, even after all those years, it is as though it were yesterday.  We share a bond that cannot be taken away.  Jesus presents us with these moments of transfiguration and the question is: “How will we respond?”

 

We can ruin them with “if onlys”.  If only I could stay there longer.  If only we could go on recreating the experience over and over again.  If only things never changed.  If only I could stay there forever.  Or, we can reminisce about our experiences, caressing and massaging them as an excuse to disengage from the world.  Or we can use them to prepare us for what God calls us to do next.

 

Peter wasn’t allowed to build his tent because that would be to stay there.  We are told that the disciples didn’t tell anyone about the experience.  To do so would have been to build some special camaraderie among those who were  there and left the others out.  Rather the disciples heard the words, “This is my son, my Chosen, listen to him.”  They went down the mountain, into the crowd of needy people and sought to meet the needs.  They weren’t suddenly any more successful, because we are told that they failed to cast out the demons that they were faced with.  They did go back down among that crowd firmly convinced of the one they followed was the one to give them hope, life and purpose for that life.  They came down that mountain and continued the journey that would lead to Jerusalem and death for Jesus.

 

On Transfiguration Sunday we are given this full-blown vision of the desire and will of God for us and our world.  Following today we are plunged into Lent, where we will journey from Ash Wednesday when we will have ashes put on our foreheads and hear the words, “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.”  We are invited to enter into the spirit of that journey when we will have all the extra baggage and pretense that we confuse with purpose and meaning of life stripped away, or at least exposed for what it is.  We will be faced with the death of the one whom we follow and we will wait for two long days for the hoped for resurrection.  We need the vision of Transfiguration to renew and clarify God’s purpose in our world and our lives.

 

It is not a time to descend into “what ifs”, it is not a time to reminisce about last year or any other year.  It is a time to “listen to him.”  It is a time to listen for what God calls us to next as we go down into the valley in which we live our daily lives.  It is a time to consider how God would have us minister and care for those people who we find in our paths.  To listen is to recognize the needs of those in our community who rely on our donations to the food bank to get them through the month.  To listen is to recognize the youth of our community who are floundering in a world they perceive as unsafe and unfriendly, desperately seeking adults who would care for them and be their friends.  As I work on the Youth Initiative Project in our community, I am continually on the verge of being overwhelmed by the need, because it is so great.  I can continue because I know God’s transfiguring power, of which we are given glimpses, is busy transforming what is into what can be.  When the voice from the clouds says, “This is my Son, my chosen, listen to him!” I am invited to be a part of that transformation.

 

Just as we begin our journey through Lent convinced that there is a Resurrection on the other side, we can go down the mountain into the valley of our every day life to deal with the need that is around us assured that there is a resurrection on the other side.  We get to it by walking through that valley, living in that valley.  We gain power for that walk by the glimpses given to us by God, whether that be in worship: in the words of a hymn, in the Lord’s Supper, in the experience of daily life, or wherever it is that we are blessed with the glimpse.

We return following worship to an unchanged world, but we are changed.  We have seen the Lord, we have heard a voice, and now we know not to be afraid.  We can enter the season of Lent, ready and able to look at our lives in a new and clear way, ready to consider what “new thing” God has in store for us and our world.  We go back down our particular mountain to see how God intends to use you and me in his transformation of his world.  “This is my Son, my Chosen, listen to him!”