Sermon Notes: The Transfiguration

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Epiphany 7: Transfiguration
Matt 17.1-9
Psalm 2
Exod 24.12-18
2 Pet 1.16-21
Prayer of Invocation
Father, you have taught us that without love whatever we do is worth nothing; As we gather before You to be empowered to do Your will and participate in Your mission, pour into our hearts by Your Spirit the the greatest gift, which is love, that we might bear witness in our shared life together Your goodness, beauty, and truthfulness. Grant this for the sake of your only Son Jesus Christ, who loved us, and who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
Prayer of Illumination
Father, before the suffering and crucifixion  of your Beloved Son, You revealed his glory upon the holy mountain: Grant to us that we, beholding by faith the glory of His being, may be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
INTRODUCTION
  1. One of the most difficult challenges of being a disciple of Jesus is the disappointment. (Have you ever felt disappointed by following Jesus? Have you ever felt like God didn’t hold up his end of the deal? Have you ever felt let down by God? Have you ever felt like this life He promised was not what it is supposed to be?) 
    1. I know many of your stories well enough to know that you have had some profound moments of disappointment...the road went left when you thought it was going right; and that disappointment can be traced back to God. 
  1. Sometimes, life as a son or daughter of the King of all kings doesn’t always turn out to be what we expect it to be. 
    1. And therein lies the problem: our expectations; our assumptions about what words like God, King, kingdom, rule/reign, life mean. We think that since we know what a king should do, and what his kingdom should be about, that since we know who  God is, that we know therefore how the story should go...
    1. As the Gospels painstakingly reveal, one of the primary tasks of Jesus with his disciples was to try to help them re-conceptualize all the things they thought they knew about what God was up to in this world--about how God worked and what His mission was in the world. The disciples had to unlearn as much as they had to learn.
    1. We see this happening in the context of our Gospel reading this morning...
EXPOSITION
  1. Jesus and the disciples are in C.P towards the end of his public ministry (3 years), and Jesus does a poll: Who do the people say that the Son of Man is?  Clearly, people think he is a prophet. But Jesus asks them, but who do you say that I am? 
    1. And isn’t this the question for all of us. Who do YOU say that Jesus is? 
  1. “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God!”
    1. Jesus agrees with Peter! 
    1. But he quickly charges them to say nothing--and the larger context reveals that that is because they have no idea what those words really mean! They don’t know what a real King/Christ is up to; they don’t have a clue regarding the way in which the Son of the Living God comes to bring in the kingdom. They will have to learn through many disappointments. They will have to unlearn what they think they already know!
    1. And immediately the first one comes…
      1. Jesus begins to tell his disciples that he must, must, go to Jerusalem and suffer many things and be killed.
        1. “This shall never happen to You,”, Peter says.
        1. “Get behind me, Satan. You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”
          1. Can you imagine the disappointment that Peter felt at this moment? He was the one that just got the right answer on the test and was publicly validated. He was informed that he would have the keys to the kingdom! And now he is being called a hindrance, a satan!
    1. And then the second disappointment: ‘if you really want to be my disciple, you have to deny yourself, and take up your cross, and follow me; you will only gain your life by losing it for the sake of the kingdom’
      1. Again, Jesus is redefining God, kingdom, King, rule/reign, life
  1. This is the context for our text this morning: the transfiguration
    1. Matt 16.28/Matt 17.9 make it clear that this event is meant to tell us something about the kingdom, that it is connected to Jesus’ vindication in the resurrection. 
    1. It is a signpost, pointing us to beyond our disappointment, to a time in which we will see all things clearly!
      1. It is as if Matt says ‘remember this when things don’t turn out like you thought they should; remember this so that your disappointment can instruct you and serve you and not lead you to despair.’
    1. In a moment, Jesus is transformed: radiant, face shining like the sun; clothes as white as light; surrounded by the two prophets who tasted God’s glory in the past; 
      1. He is publicly declared to be the Beloved Son of God
      2. The Father declares: listen to Him!
      3. Jesus stand alone (no more Moses or Elijah)
    1. This event is meant to be understood after the resurrection (which is to say, after the shock and disappointment of the crucifixion) [Matt 17.9]
  1. Jesus and His disciples have a taste of future glory; they get a glimpse of who Jesus is; Jesus is vindicated and validated by God. Peter in 2 Pet says “Jesus received honor and glory from God”. But what comes next?
    1. Demon-possessed boys; disputes about taxes, arguing over who is the greatest, temptation, sheep who go astray, brothers who sin against brothers, people who are unwilling to forgive, adultery and divorce, children who are prevented from coming to  Jesus, unfaithful workers in the vineyard, mothers who want their sons to be given preferential treatment, leaders who use their position of power for their own personal gain
    1. The disappointments of life in the midst of Jesus working to bring the kingdom of God here on earth.
    1. But then comes the biggest disappointment of all: the king of kings, the Christ, the son of the Living God--is welcomed into Jerusalem with joyful shooting. Maybe Jesus was wrong! Maybe HE didn’t quite understand!
      1. But the cleansing of the temple, the cursing of the fig tree, woes speech, his lament over Jerusalem; his prayer in the garden--it seemed like he was anticipating, perhaps even inviting his own demise.
      1. And then there was the strange meal in which he said he was giving us his body and his blood; in which he was betrayed by Judas; that night in which the Jewish council accused him of blasphemy; that day in which Pilate thought him to be innocent but handed him over to be crucified anyway, in which the people themselves, who had earlier welcomed him as the king, were now calling out “Let him be crucified!”. This was all so disappointing. 


EXHORTATION/EUCHARIST
But oh how different it looks now! How different it looks on this side of the resurrection--on the other side of all of his disappointment we see the vindication of all that Jesus said and did. We see why we should listen to him!
  1. You see the transfiguration was for Jesus, what the resurrection is for us--a lens through which we interpret all of our disappointments; and the hope that anchors us as we push through temptation, betrayal, wandering, infidelity, selfish ambition, greed, envy, unforgiveness, etc. 
  1. And as we press through our disappointment we come to learn the real meaning of the words King, kingdom, rule. God’s ways are not our ways; his power is displayed in weakness; his rule is displayed through giving of his life, lowering his status, humbling himself, seeking the good of others; his way of building his kingdom is not in taking and keeping, but in receiving and giving. 
  1. His glory is displayed in his suffering and crucifixion--this is what love, glory, true power, godly rule looks like in a rebellious, corrupt world:
  2. The transfiguration has a sort of dark twin in the accounts of the crucifixion. In the one case, there are three named male disciples (Peter, James, and John), in the other three female disciples are named (Matthew: two Marys and the mother of the sons of Zebedee; Mark: two Marys and Salome). In the one case Jesus is elevated on a mountain, in the other he is elevated on a cross. In the one case there is a private epiphany, in the other there is a public spectacle. In the one case Jesus is transfigured into light, in the other case a supernatural darkness descends. In the one case Jesus's garments are illumined, in the other they are stripped off. In the one case Jesus is glorified, in the other he is shamed. In the one case Elijah appears, in the other case Elijah does not appear. In the one case two saints appear beside Jesus (Moses and Elijah), in the other two criminals hang beside him. In the one case God confesses Jesus, in the other God abandons Jesus. In the one case a divine voice declares Jesus to be God's Son, in the other a pagan soldier makes this confession. In the one case there is reverent prostration before Jesus, in the other the onlookers mock Jesus with prostration.The curious confluence of similar motifs and contrasting images creates pictorial antithetical parallelism, something like a diptych in which the two plates have similar outlines but different colors. If one scene were sketched on a transparency and placed over the other, many of its lines would disappear.
 Together the two scenes interestingly illustrate the extremities of human experience. One is spit and mockery, nails and nakedness, blood and loneliness, torture and death. The other makes visible the presence of God and depicts the divinization of human nature. So Jesus embodies the gamut of human possibilities; he is the coincidence of opposites. Perhaps this is one of the reasons the canonical Jesus has always been so attractive and inspiring. He shows forth in his own person both the depths of pain and anguish which human beings have known, as well as that which all long for -- transfiguration into some state beyond such pain and anguish. Jesus is the paradigm of both despair and hope; he is humanity debased and humanity glorified.
W.D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, "Matthew: A Shorter Commentary," p. 284
The prophetic word is more fully confirmed...let’s pay attention to it...as it shines in darkness...we celebrate the Lord’s death until He returns again..that which was a disappointment, has been turned to our one hope. 
Benediction
The LORD bless you and keep you
The LORD make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you
The LORD lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.

Numbers 6.24-26

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