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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
If we did not know better, we might say that Jesus seems kind of cruel. For, Jesus takes with Him Peter and James and John and leads them up a high mountain by themselves at least potentially knowing that His transfiguration and the appearance of Elijah with Moses would leave them terrified. Sure, six days earlier Peter had confessed Jesus to be the Christ (Mark 8:29), but, when Jesus had begun to teach His disciples that He must suffer many things and be killed and rise again, Peter had begun to rebuke Jesus, so that Jesus had to rebuke Peter. Then, Jesus taught His followers about their need to deny themselves, including warning them that whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for Jesus’s and the Gospel’s sake will save it. And, Jesus concluded by saying that some standing there would not taste death until they saw the Kingdom of God after it had come with power. (Mark 8:31-9:1.) Jesus’s transfiguration immediately follows in St. Mark’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account. And, Jesus was with those three disciples before, during, and after what at least initially was a terrifying experience for them. Yes, Jesus brought about that fearful situation, but by it He gave them reason not to fear at all. There should be little doubt that Jesus did not cruelly intend His transfiguration to terrify His probably‑already‑fearful followers, but He kindly intended His transfiguration to move them “From fear to faith” (confer Balz, TDNT 9:209).
As is somewhat typical of the Bible’s telling of the big events in the life of Jesus, today’s Gospel Reading says simply that Jesus “was transfigured” (one word in the original Greek), though the Gospel Reading then goes on to describe how even His clothes became radiant, intensely white, as no one on earth could bleach them. (Some manuscripts of St. Mark’s Gospel account say that Jesus’s clothes were “as snow”, which this weekend might be more-relatable than we would like!) Then Elijah appeared with Moses, and they were talking with Jesus. Both Elijah and Moses had had mountaintop experiences with God of their own, and those experiences were not all that disconnected from their own suffering. The disciples were terrified, and Peter did not know what to say but spoke anyway, about making three tents (or, “tabernacles”). Instead, God the Father provided His own protective covering, as it were, for Jesus and Moses and Elijah, and, from that cloud of His presence associated with the Tabernacle and the Temple, He spoke, both confirming Jesus’s identity for them and telling them to keep listening to Jesus, which admittedly they had not been doing as well as they should have.
How well do we listen to Jesus? How well do we follow Him? Jesus is not transfigured before us the same way He was transfigured before Peter and James and John, but are we nevertheless terrified at what we cannot on our own understand? Do we also speak out of our ignorance? Or, despite Jesus’s presence with us, are we terrified of other things of which we should not be terrified? Are you trying to save your life in this world, as from the coronavirus? Are you so much trying to save your life that you risk the loss of your soul by not receiving the Body and Blood of Christ? We all know the ways that we as individuals do not listen to and otherwise fail to follow our Lord, and He knows best the ways that we sin. He calls and enables us to turn in sorrow from our sins and our sinful nature—and from the temporal and eternal death that our sins and our sinful nature deserve—and to trust Him to forgive our sins. When we so repent, then God forgives us. God forgives us our failures to listen and all our sins, whatever our sins might be. God forgives us for Jesus’s sake.
Millions of people have watched the viral video of an on-line court proceeding this past week in which a Texas lawyer participating electronically inadvertently appeared as a cat, which prompted him to tell the judge, “I’m here live; I’m not a cat.” In the Gospel Reading only three disciples, but still a sufficient number of witnesses, saw the man Jesus’s Divine nature show through His human flesh and even His clothes: not an illusion produced by an electronic glitch but a real revelation—in some ways the greatest revelation—of the true man Jesus’s true Divine nature. Afterward, Jesus charged the disciples not to tell anyone else what they had seen until He had risen from the dead, reiterating His teaching that His suffering, death, and resurrection were His path to glory. And, out of His great love, mercy, and grace, the God-man Jesus freely chose to suffer at the hands of the Jews and Romans, to die on the cross, and to rise again from the dead—all for us, and for our salvation. His radiant, intensely white clothes, as no one on earth could bleach them, recall the Old Testament’s use of the bleaching process as a figure of speech for God’s accomplishing the forgiveness of human sins (Marcus, ad loc Mark 9:3, p.632; confer Voelz, ad loc Mark 9:3, p.647). In Jesus’s death on the cross, God does accomplish the forgiveness of humanity’s sins, and, when we repent and trust in Him, then He freely forgives our sins for Jesus’s sake.
God forgives our sins through His Word and Sacraments. For example, in Holy Baptism, we are clothed, as it were, in the white robe of Christ’s righteousness. In individual Holy Absolution, those who have received Christ’s authority, as Elisha received Elijah’s authority in today’s Old Testament Reading (2 Kings 2:1-12), forgive our sins on earth with valid and certain results even in heaven. And, in the Sacrament of the Altar, the same Body and Blood that were transfigured before the disciples are present in, with, and under the forms of bread and wine, so that we can receive forgiveness, life, and salvation. Because Jesus is God in human flesh He can be so present, and, though we do not see Him, we hear His words—“This is My Body given for you” and “This is My Blood shed for you”—and we know that His words effect what they say, for us.
So forgiven through His Word and Sacraments, we are transformed. As we heard in today’s Epistle Reading (2 Corinthians 3:12-4:6), like Moses, we are being transformed from one degree of glory to another (confer Lutheran Service Book 700:4). We understand Who Jesus is, what He did for us, and how we get the benefits of what He did for us. In His presence, we are not terrified, but we are reverential, repentantly receiving His gifts and responding with thanks and praise. We recognize that as His path went through suffering and death to glory, so also our paths go through suffering and death to glory. Our transformations are a process that spans our lifetimes, with us sometimes doing better and sometimes doing worse, and we know that at our worst, when we do not know what to say or even how to pray as we ought, the Spirit Himself intercedes for us (Romans 8:26). We use periods of time, such as the 40-day penitential season of Lent that begins this Wednesday, to emphasize repentance, in this case, as preparation for the annual celebration of the resurrection of our Lord. And, we know that the day will come when we will be quickened or resurrected and, in the figurative, if not literal, white robes of heaven, we will have eternal peace and joy.
The transfiguration of our Lord helped move the disciples and helps move us “From fear to faith”. Not cruelly but kindly God brings about, or permits us to face, fearful situations, but He is present with us before, during, and after them, and by them He gives us more reason not to fear at all. For, through them He draw us closer to Him, as He reveals Himself, even through suffering, until He fully and completely reveals Himself through glory.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +