FEBRUARY 3, 2008 PASTOR SCOTT FULLER
EXODUS 24:12-18; PSALM 99; 1 PET 1:16-21; MATT 17:1-9
Look With Your Ears!
Prepare our hearts, Lord, to receive your Word. Silence in us any voice but your own that in hearing we may believe and in believing we may obey your will revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Amen.
Dear friends in Christ: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen
Good novelists, we’re told, have the ability to walk their readers through a number of mini-miracles to get them to finish the book. Their first trick is the most important: they must convince us to “suspend our disbelief.” In other words, we’re designed by God and Nature to critique everything we learn according to what we already know.
So, unless the book has an opening line that just grabs our interest from the get-go, our brains will start to work sifting through the language, the plot, and the characters. Then, within a very few pages, we’re told, our brain either gives us the green light to go on or it shuts down the whole system… and it’s back to the library for a different book.
I think we do something similar with our life experiences: here too we critique what we learn according to what we know. Keep that in mind as we imagine ourselves with the disciples on the mountaintop. Talk about needing to suspend one’s disbelief! Jesus is transfigured before their very eyes: his face shines like the sun, his clothes gleam like fresh snow on a bright winter day, and then Moses and Elijah suddenly appear…
I don’t know about you, but that would either send me to my knees awe-struck and dumb-struck, or looking for the Wizard of Oz behind a curtain somewhere… but not our friend Peter. He just jumps into action by offering to build three homes for these three wise men.
And as if that’s not enough, what happens next is almost unheard of in Scripture. As soon as Peter opens his mouth, they’re covered in a cloud – and the voice of God thunders at them, driving them to their knees.
So here’s the age-old question about this passage: What made Peter offer to build three dwellings for Moses, Elijah and Jesus?
Scholars and pastors are all over the map on this one. Many say he was trying to preserve or hold on to this mountain-top experience. Others say it was just more of the same from our beloved, but improperly impetuous, Peter, who often seems to act or speak without thinking.
But I wonder if there’s something else going on here…which, when you think about it, is another characteristic of a good novel – a subplot that simmers below the surface at the start of the story, but then boils over by the end of the book. If you want to follow along, open your pew bibles to Matthew 16:15, page 16. Let’s look at what happened immediately before this sensational summit.
Jesus has been ministering in the area of Galilee – about as far away from Jerusalem as he can get without leaving the country. There he asks his followers this question: Who do you say that I am? Well, good ol’ Peter pipes up with his precious pronouncement: You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. And Jesus responds, Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah.
What do you know? Jesus asks a question and Simon nails it: You are the Christ…! If only it could have ended there. But when Jesus is done praising Peter, he suddenly switches gears to share some very bad news (v. 21): he must go to Jerusalem, where he will be betrayed, beaten, and killed.
Does anyone remember how Peter receives this pessimistic prediction?
He cries, God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you! (16:22). Then Jesus blasts him with those terrible words, Get behind me, Satan!
Well, six days after this emotional roller-coaster ride, Jesus takes Peter, James and John up the mountain, and once again their world is rocked, their eyes fill with an incredible sight, their ears burn with holy words. Moses, giver of the Law, and Elijah, the greatest Prophet, are meeting…with Jesus.
So put yourself in Peter’s position. What is he thinking when he witnesses these heavy-weights meeting for this supernatural summit? My guess is that Peter’s thinking, Aha! I get it – Now we’ll go to Jerusalem; Jesus’ enemies will reveal their plots; then Moses and Elijah will lead an army of angels riding in like the cavalry to save the day!
Unfortunately for Peter, but fortunately for us, he’s deceived by what his eyes see. This isn’t a meeting of the Big Three, it’s not a council of war, but a testimony to God’s plan to save and bless the whole of creation. For Christ is the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets. There is no strife between the old and the new, instead, the two have truly become One.
Says God to the disciples: This is my Son, the Beloved…listen to him! (v. 5) When the voice stops, Jesus touches his fear-stricken friends and raises them up. We’re told that when they dare to lift their heads, they see no one… except Jesus…himself…alone.
…We, who are gifted with the ability to see, learn at a very early age that seeing is believing. In fact, we trust our sight more than any other sense… from photo id’s, to t.v., to youtube and cell phones with cameras, we trust what we can see. The people of Missouri have encoded this truth as their motto: “the Show Me state.” Our eyes do not deceive…or so we believe.
And yet…in this time of virtual reality, sophisticated animation and photo-shop, maybe we’re not quite so confident about our sight as we used to be. Just think of the times you’ve received a photo in an e-mail and said, That can’t be true! Or the times you’ve searched the face of someone you suspected of lying, but could find no visual proof.
God does not say to the disciples, Look at my Son! Instead, says God, Listen to him! So the message for us from this Transfiguration story is simple and clear: keep your eyes on Jesus – but better yet, listen to him. For he would be known not as an icon with Moses and Elijah, nor as a criminal as he appeared on the cross. Instead, Jesus is…who he says he is, the One who comes to teach and to train, to see to and serve, to exonerate and absolve, to help and to heal, to comfort and care for, to provoke and persuade, to die for and delight in, to live for and to love.
There is no need for us here to suspend our disbelief – as he did with the disciples, so the Lord does with us. When we have been knocked to the ground by fear or foreboding, guilt or greed, anger or anxiety, sickness or sin, disillusionment or death: Jesus comes to us and touches us through the Word, in the Spirit, in/with/and under those extraordinary ordinary gifts like water, bread and wine. Do not be afraid, he says. So we hear, and so we believe. Amen.