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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. (Amen.)
“It is good that we are here!” Being here this day is good especially for Hazel May, our new sister in Christ, whom God today graciously made His child through the washing of water with the Word of Holy Baptism, cleansing her like the rest of His Church, Whom Christ loved and for Whom He gave Himself up (Ephesians 5:25-26). What a blessing not only to Hazel but also to Hazel’s parents, to her Godparents, and to all of us who are here, either in-person or on‑line. For, we saw that miracle, no face shining like the sun or clothes becoming white as light yet, though those things will come when the Lord, Who began this good work in her, brings it to completion at the Day of Jesus Christ (Philippians 1:6). Truly, “It is good that we are here!”
In some sense, it was “good” that Peter, James, and John were present with Jesus on a high mountain by themselves in today’s Gospel Reading. It was six days after Jesus had begun showing His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, suffer many things, be killed, and on the third day be raised. However, Peter, who just had confessed that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God, and who been told that on that confession Christ would build His Church and that the gates of hell would not prevail against His Church—Peter would not “listen” to Him, which not listening prompted Jesus to rebuke Peter and to tell all His disciples to deny themselves and to take up their crosses and to follow Him, for, He said, He is going to come with His angels in the glory of His Father and repay each person according to what he or she has done. (Matthew 16:13-28.) Yes, since at least Peter apparently needed a glimpse of Jesus’s Divine glory before Jesus’s suffering, in some sense, it was “good” that they were there.
It may not have been good that they were there in the sense that Peter meant it when he said it, however, to the extent that Peter even knew what he said (Luke 9:33). In the Gospel Reading, Peter says “here” twice, perhaps on the mountain in contrast to Jerusalem, and, by offering to build three tents—or tabernacles like those that recalled the people of Israel’s forty years of wandering in the wilderness—Peter is usually understood as trying to stay longer on the mountain in glory, trying to stay there longer instead of going down the mountain to suffering, trying to stay there longer at least until Peter was interrupted by God the Father’s voice speaking from the bright cloud, telling them to listen to Jesus. For, then Peter and the other two disciples fell on their face and were terrified. Maybe trying to stay there longer was not such a good idea after all.
Aside from Hazel’s Baptism this day, why do we think that is it good that we are here? Do we think that our being here is primarily about our showing other people how good we are? Do we think that our being here is primarily about our getting away from the world and its evils to a safe space and its goods? Do we think that our being here is primarily about our obeying God’s command to worship Him and so our making ourselves righteous before Him? God’s Word interrupts our thinking such wrong primary reasons for why it is good that we are here, as God’s Word shows us our sinful nature and all of our actual sin, why we deserve both death here and now and torment in hell for eternity. In the presence of the Holy God, like Peter and the other two disciples, we sinners should fall on our face and be terrified.
But, we, who are spiritually dead in our trespasses and sins and so unable even to decide much less to do anything in order to save ourselves (Ephesians 2:1, 5)—we are enabled by God, out of His great love and mercy, to turn in sorrow from our sin, to trust God to forgive our sin, and to want to stop sinning. When we so repent, then God forgive us. God forgives us our wrong thinking about why it is good that we are here, and God forgives all of our other sin, whatever our other sin might be. God graciously forgives us for the sake of His Son Jesus Christ, true God in human flesh.
Some people who are trans-gender may trans-ition, doing such things as surgically altering their physical appearance and changing their kind of clothing, wrongly trying to appear to be a sex that they were not created and cannot ever truly be. In today’s Gospel Reading, when Jesus was trans-figured before His disciples, that is, when His face shone like the sun and His clothes became white as light, He did not trans-form into something that He was not, but for a time He more‑fully revealed what He actually is, namely, the Son of God in human flesh. Jesus’s inner Divine majesty, as it were, showed through His human flesh and even through His garments. With the Holy Spirit, perhaps present as the bright cloud, and with God the Father, Whose voice came from the cloud, the Son by nature has, as we confessed in the Athanasian Creed, equal glory and co-eternal majesty, even though for a time on earth He did not always or fully use or reveal His Divine attributes, in order to take our sin to the cross and there to die for us, in our place. Because Jesus was human, He could die, and, because Jesus was God, His death was sufficient for the sins of the world. Jesus fulfilled His own prophecies of His suffering, death, and resurrection, as Jesus also fulfilled both the commands of the law and the promises of the Gospel contained in all of the Old Testament Scriptures (Luke 24:27, 44), fulfillment witnessed to, as it were, by the presence of Moses and Elijah at Jesus’s transfiguration. It was good that they were there.
Precisely where they were, that is, on which high mountain, we are not told, and we do not need to know. What mattered to them is that they were where Jesus was, and what matters to us is that we are where Jesus is, and Jesus is here, in His Word, especially in His Word’s sacramental forms. No so-called “new revival”, like that at Asbury University in Kentucky and elsewhere, is needed, for the Triune God remains present and active with His people in all of these ways! The people of Israel were afraid of God’s speaking directly to them and wanted Moses to be God’s spokesman (Exodus 20:19), and, in today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus’s disciples similarly were terrified by God the Father’s voice from the cloud but were comforted when Jesus came and spoke to them and touched them. Jesus is the Prophet like Moses to whom all are to listen (Deuteronomy 18:15-18). Jesus took them up the mountain and comforted them there, and likewise Jesus takes the initiative in our salvation, moving us from fear to faith. His apostles and their successors, pastors today, do not read and preach myths but the prophetic word that, as we heard in today’s Epistle Reading (2 Peter 1:16-21), men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. That Word with water in Holy Baptism works the forgiveness of sins, rescues from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe the words and promises of God about Holy Baptism. And, make no mistake, little children, even infants, can believe in Jesus (Matthew 18:6; Luke 18:15). For, God works faith in us, whether we are eight days old—as the Israelite boys were when they were circumcised (Genesis 17:12; confer Colossians 2:11-14)—or whether we are eight years old, or whether we are eight decades old. At the Baptismal Font, God graciously adopts us as His children. When God’s children know and feel sins in their hearts, they privately confess those sins to their pastors for the sake of individual Holy Absolution, with its words and touch of forgiveness. And, with our “Shrove Tuesday” activities at Pilgrim today, all have a special opportunity to confess for the sake of Absolution. But, more important than today’s “Pre-Lent Pancake Lunch” is the Sacrament of the Altar. In today’s Old Testament Reading (Exodus 24:8-18), Moses put the blood of the covenant on the people and then, on the mountain, their leaders saw God and ate and drank. Similarly, the Lord Jesus is really, physically present on this Altar in bread that is His Body given for us and in wine that is His Blood shed for us, and at this Rail we see Him and eat and drink. Such living in communion with God brings us great joy: “It is good for us to be here” (Pieper, III:546).
In today’s Gospel Reading, they came down the mountain, and, after Jesus was raised from the dead, the disciples told what they saw. God brought them through Jesus’s suffering and death and eventually through their own suffering and deaths, as God brings us through our suffering and deaths, to the Resurrection on the Last Day. In the Church Year, we come down from the glimpse of glory at the Transfiguration of our Lord, through the forty-day penitential season of Lent, to the glory of the Resurrection of Our Lord. The path to glory leads through suffering, but that suffering has an end, both a termination and a goal or a purpose, especially the purpose of refining our faith and drawing us closer to God. Now, God’s working in us produces good works, good works that on the Last Day are the evidence of our faith by which we are judged. Then, we will see Him as He is, and so we ourselves will be glorified. “It is good that we are here!” For here, primarily, we receive the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation, that we so desperately need, and that God so graciously gives us. “It is good that we are here!”
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +