Listening To Jesus

Luke 9:28-36, Exodus 34:29-35

Sunday, February 18, 2007

The Rev. Ann R. Palmerton

Transfiguration of the Lord

        This week we join with Christians around the world as we move from a season of light to a season of shadows, from a season of outreach to a season of in-reach, from a season of speaking of all that we have heard and seen; like the shepherds and the magi, to a season of listening to God.  For centuries the church has used the account of Jesus’ transfiguring mountain top experience to bring the season of Epiphany to a dazzling conclusion.  Epiphany ends.  Lent begins.  And with Jesus we are called to turn our faces to Jerusalem – listening to Jesus as we go.  But before we hit the road, Luke invites us to climb the mountain.

        When I was in Israel last May, I ascended Mt. Tabor, the traditional site of the Transfiguration.  Scripture calls it a mountain, but to those of us familiar with the mountain peaks in the Americas or in Europe, Mt. Tabor qualifies at best as a hill.  It rises up 1800 feet, hardly more than a knoll by some standards, but still a good hike from the countryside below.

        At the top of this mountain we visited the Roman Catholic Church of the Transfiguration.  Inside, worshippers sang the mass, in Spanish.  We moved around quietly and reflectively, surrounded by the dazzling art of white and gold tile mosaics.  We thought about Jesus praying on this mountain, listening for God, and we were prayerful as well.

Inside the church were two chapels, one for Moses, one for Elijah.  It was my day to lead worship, in the Elijah chapel.  Afterward, we stood there, quietly discussing how ironic it felt to worship in the dwellings that Peter had wanted to build.  Scripture says Peter spoke on the mountain, not knowing what he was saying!  Ministers certainly aren’t exempt from that!  Any of us who have ever babbled along, filling up space in the presence of the Holy can’t help but feel a certain kinship with our brother, Peter.

At the Transfiguration Jesus reached a turning point.  He turns his face toward Jerusalem and the cross.  He told his friends that suffering and death await him.  Now he hikes up the mountain to pray.  While he’s praying transfiguration happens.

The word “transfiguration” comes from the Greek word metemorphotha.  In English we tend to think of the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly, which marks a permanent change.  But in the gospels “transfiguration” refers to a temporary change in appearance symbolizing an extraordinary religious experience.

Jesus prays and his face changes.  He seems to catch fire from within.  In our first lesson from Exodus we heard how Moses returned from the heights of Mount Sinai, from his covenant-making encounter with God, with the skin of his face shining with divine glory.  Now that glory radiates in the praying face of Jesus.

Imagine the glowing face of a pregnant woman, the gleaming face of an excited child, the glorious face of a victorious athlete.  All rolled together they wouldn’t hold a candle to Jesus’ radiance.  His face shines.

Jesus’ clothing changes, too, light bursting through all his seams in dazzling white.  After this week’s snow and ice storms we have a renewed sense of what it means to say that something is dazzlingly white.  Here in Columbus the clouds occasionally do part.  When they do the sunshine creates a landscape so bright, so stunning, so absolutely pure and brilliant that we reach for our sunglasses, and still our eyes hurt.  The glory of the Transfiguration is so bright, so stunning, so absolutely pure and brilliant, so profound and so physical that the disciples need a cloud to manage, to overshadow this glory.

What happens next seems so utterly strange that we can’t help but wonder what it means.  Two men appear; two heroes long dead, Moses and the prophet Elijah.  “As if time were nothing but a veil to be parted and stepped through,” they appear in glory.¹ They talk with Jesus about his death, discussing his departure, literally his “exodus.”  They talk about it as if it is something he will accomplish.

Consider the many figures from ancient Israel who could have appeared with Jesus.  He could have met Aaron the priest, who interpreted the law, or David, the King, who defended the state.  Instead he meets Moses, who led the first exodus and who delivered the people out of oppression, a clear sign that Jesus’ calling when he heads down the mountain is to work the final, eternal freedom of God’s people.

Elijah’s presence has a different meaning.  For centuries the people believed that Elijah’s reappearance would signal that the Messiah was due.  “Now is the time,” now is the time for Jesus’ exodus; now is the time for the Messiah to lead God’s people toward the Promised Land of the kingdom.  Now is the time for Jesus, the Messiah, to set his face toward Jerusalem and the cross.

This was certainly not the first time Jesus had contemplated his own death in service to God.  He had accepted the image of the suffering servant of the Lord as a blue-print for his calling.  But it is one thing to believe that obedience to God will ultimately lead to rejection and death; it is quite another thing to embrace rejection and death as immediate, human possibilities.

God is leading Jesus on a path to Gethsemane and Calvary.  By the incredible grace of God Jesus bears the scandal of the cross and chooses a path of suffering for the reconciliation of humanity; working out the reversal that marks the Kingdom of God.  Moses and Elijah will not go along.  The pioneer of our salvation journeys alone.  Jesus’ face shines on the mountain, but soon it will be spat upon and bloodied.  His face did not shine on the cross.  If only God could have saved some of this glory for the cross.

        But then Jesus’ death would have been a different kind of death from the kind that most of us die.  To lead us in this new exodus, “Jesus had to die like we do: alone, with no particular glory.  Otherwise he would have been an anomaly instead of a messiah, and it would have been hard for us to see what he had in common with the rest of us.” ²

I like to think that Jesus always remembered the light that lit him up on Mt. Tabor, that he never forgot that dose of glory, so bold, so enlightening, so absolutely pure and bright.

We disciples would do well to remember God’s command, out of the terrifying cloud, the voice that silenced Peter, the voice that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen, listen to him!”  What power there is in these nine simple words, “This is my Son, my Chosen, listen to him!”

Being disciples involves listening to Jesus – to his life, his ministry and his relationships.  An important way we listen to Jesus is through our involvement in the life of this particular Christian community.  Ponder how your worship life opens you to listen to God.  As you do, imagine listening to your life with a third ear, a spiritual ear.

For those of you coming to the Mardi Gras pancake supper this Tuesday, imagine listening with a third ear as you mingle and chat, as you catch - or drop - your pancake dinner!  At Mardi Gras, talk with kids and families from the after school tutoring program as your third ear listens for Jesus.

We listen to God in global mission.  During the two weeks of Mission Fair we heard powerful stories from Broad Street members who have traveled to Peru.  How aware they are of the gift they have received, hearing and seeing Jesus in the people they traveled to befriend.

We listen to God in local mission.  This week Session discussed the summer Rainbow program and endorsed a new direction in our summer programming for kids.  The Rainbow Board has disbanded and the Rainbow program as we’ve known it has been suspended, because after nearly thirty years of doing things one way, it is time for a change.  Session voted to create a Task Force to listen for what children on the near east side need during the summer.  As the Task Force listens in the neighborhood they will be listening for God.  And in time the name of Rainbow may be reborn.

Today you heard the BREAD Team introduce the 52/1 campaign to get out for justice.    This church is open for worship 52 weeks a year.  We are challenged to designate one day a year for justice ministry and to personally commit to attend an assembly.  BREAD’s Nehemiah Assembly is on May 7.  Your pastors plan to go. We know that all our community ills won’t be cured at that meeting.  We know they won’t even all be addressed.  But we also know that when large numbers of people of faith gather in commitment to social responsibility; it is uncanny how the presence of God shines.

“This is my Son, my Chosen, listen to him!”  The disciples wanted to build dwellings and stay on the mountaintop.  They weren’t deliberately trying to be difficult; they simply didn’t comprehend what was happening.  They still saw reality through the lens of their own unexamined human ambition and false expectations of the messiah.

On Mt. Tabor the disciples could not comprehend the future suffering of Jesus.  Only later, after the resurrection do they understand the incredible price Jesus paid to speak the truth, to bring the word of God into the world, to announce the reversal, the subversion, of the Kingdom.

We are called to listen and follow.  We sense that Christ has called us and has promised us strength for the journey.  And so we listen and go.  On the way, the presence of God shines light into our lives, but does not show us everything.  Some things still are hidden by the cloud, and we will not know those contours until further along the path.

When we come to church we take a risk.  We risk our own transformation.  We risk listening to a new voice and being called in a new direction.  We risk being drawn into the future revealed on that mountaintop in the vision of Jesus, dazzling in light and in cloud; changed from glory into glory.  Amen.

¹Barbara Brown Taylor, “Dazzling Darkness,” Christian Century, February 4-11, 1998.

²Ibid.

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