Scripture can he found here…
What is this? What is happening in this morning’s gospel story? What does it mean for us? And where does it lead us?
We have fast-forwarded past the middle of Matthew’s gospel, jumping from chapter 5 to chapter 17. We make a jump like this every year, as the season of Epiphany comes to a close and the season of Lent approaches.
It seems we need a Sunday to act as a hinge for us, between two great and beautiful and important seasons. One season is Epiphany, the season of the light of Christ shining for us, the stories of his baptism and early ministry still bathed in the glow of a shining star. The other season is Lent, when we join Jesus on a six-week-long journey towards the cross. During Lent, everything Jesus says and does is seen in the light of that journey.
So we need a hinge Sunday, a step away from Epiphany, and a step towards Lent.
This is that Sunday, and it’s good to be here.
It’s six days later, but we’ve skipped so many chapters, we don’t know what that means. If we look back at chapter 16, we get it. Six days ago, Jesus posed an awkward question to his disciples—who do people say that I am? At this point, the listeners to Matthew’s gospel probably expect to hear, “A new Moses!” because that’s what Matthew has been establishing, carefully. That’s not what they hear… some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah. But when Jesus asks, But who do you say that I am? Peter steps right up to the microphone and says, “You are most definitely 100% the Messiah.” And then he and Jesus have a moment. And it’s pretty great, until it’s not.
Jesus then turns things on their head by saying, “I sure am, but also, don’t forget this next part...” and, to their shock and dismay, Jesus foretells his death. But also, his resurrection!
Peter isn’t having it. It’s clear, this is NOT Peter’s idea of what a Messiah is. A Messiah, as far as he recognizes one from the scriptures, is a figure who is sometimes a general, sometimes a judge or a king, but always one who leads the people to a victory.
Jesus, who only recently was having a tender moment of connection with Peter, says, “Get behind me Satan.” And since Ha-Satan is a Hebrew expression meaning, “The Tempter,” I think it’s fair to assume that Jesus is asking—demanding—that Peter not tempt him to abandon what he knows he must do.
Now it is six days later, and Jesus is taking three of his disciples to climb a mountain. One of them is Peter. And immediately, Jesus is transfigured in front of them.
Raise your hand if the first time you heard the term “transfiguration” was in Professor McGonagall’s classroom.
This is different. In the good professor’s class, you might try turning a teacup into a bird, turning one thing into another, very different thing. But, about Jesus, Matthew writes, “his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white.” So, he was changed—in a startling way, maybe even in a frightening way. But he was still Jesus.
Something else happens along with this transfiguration, and it’s every bit as important as the changes to Jesus’ appearance. Two figures show up—immediately recognizable to the disciples as Moses and Elijah. And generally at this point in the sermon I say, “Moses symbolizes the law, and Elijah, the Prophets.” And, that is certainly true.
But this year, I’m taken with other connections between Jesus and the two figures who abide with him in his transfigured state.
Matthew is already making lots of connections between Jesus and Moses. Again, here we are on a mountain, with the one who received the tablets of the law from God on Mount Sinai. And the passage Sheldon just read for us describes a close encounter with God, in which the glory of the Lord is likened to “a devouring fire.” When Moses comes down from that mountain, he is physically transfigured. His face is radiant, so much so that people are terrified to go near him, or even look at him. (Exodus 34:29-35)
I can’t help thinking of the word “radioactive,” which is how David Carr, my seminary professor of Hebrew Scriptures described the holiness of God: Powerful and terrifying in that power.
As for Elijah… the people have already made connections between him and Jesus. Elijah was a powerful speaker, anointed with the spirit of God. He performed healing miracles. He even performed loaves-and-fishes-type of miracles, making oil or meal last and last, alleviating poverty and hunger while he was at it.
There’s another fascinating thing that connects Jesus and Moses and Elijah: their deaths.
Moses has a very strange death: We assume Moses died, but scripture is clear there were no witnesses, and Jewish tradition holds that God buried Moses with God’s own hands.
Elijah has a kind of non-death: Scripture describes him as being taken up and away from the earth in a fiery chariot.
And Jesus? Well, you know that story.
Peter and the other disciples try to take it in, and Peter offers a grateful response for something that is probably beyond anyone’s ability to comprehend.
It is good for us to be here, he says. And let’s just rest with that for a moment.
It’s good to be in the presence of three of God’s outstanding servants. Certainly. But more than that—in this moment, past, present, and future stand and talk together. Moses and Elijah not only represent the law and the prophets, but also the very foundations of everything Jesus is about. Jesus calls God’s people, not just to faith, but to faithfulness: to walking God’s blessed path of doing justice, and loving mercy, and walking humbly with God.
And if there’s anything Moses and Elijah know how to do, it’s to journey. One of them led the people on a long and winding road from slavery to freedom. The other sought to free the people from the corruption of their own leaders, and paid for it with a life on the lam.
It is good to be here, to be reminded, not just of the long history of life in relationship with God, but also of the unique and colorful characters who have walked that path before us, and who walk it now alongside us, and, even, who lead us into a future we can’t yet see and don’t yet fully understand.
It is good to be here, Peter says, and that’s good news, because, it may well be that the person who most needs to see and experience this is Peter… the guy who, last he spoke up about it, was invested in a kind of Messiah that Jesus made it plain, he is not.
It is good to be here, Peter says, and then offers to make some accommodations for their guests—a lovely gesture of hospitality, maybe. But God’s answer to that is a bright cloud, overshadowing Jesus and Moses and Elijah and everyone else on that mountain. And now, seeing nothing at all, the disciples are called upon to listen. A voice comes from the cloud:
“This is my Son, my Beloved; the one with whom I am well pleased; listen to him!”
God might as well say, I’m speaking to you, Peter. He and the others fall to the ground. The dazzling sight of Jesus and Moses and Elijah delighted them, but the voice of the Almighty scared them half out of their wits. But Jesus goes to them, and touches them, and tells them: “Get up, and do not be afraid.”
This story is told in the gospels of Matthew and Mark and Luke, but each time it is told in a slightly different way. Here, in Matthew’s gospel, is the only time in which Jesus responds to the terror of his friends in this way. He goes to them. He touches them. He encourages them with words that one scholar I consulted this week said could be a summary of the whole gospel: Get up. Don’t be afraid.
What does this story mean for us?
I think we’re quick to focus on one aspect of this episode above the others: the vision, the astounding revelation received by the disciples who were with Jesus. They received the gift of seeing the truth of who Jesus is. Eastern Orthodox theologians call this radiance “Uncreated Light.” They say, it is the same light that Paul saw in the moment of his conversion on the road to Damascus. It is the same light that Moses saw, emanating from the burning bush. It is the light that is associated with God’s pure presence.
I don’t completely understand this concept. I only discovered it this week.
And it must have been beyond anything we can imagine.
And it may not be the point of this story at all. Or, rather, it may be here, in this story, in service of a greater and far more important point: Jesus is Messiah in precisely the way God has anointed Jesus to be.
That Jesus is Messiah means that he will walk a path that leads to suffering and death, and then resurrection. That’s why we can’t understand this episode without understanding the controversy that goes before it, when Peter pushes back against Jesus’ own self-understanding, and Jesus pushes back even harder.
Here, God speaks, and settles the matter. “Listen,” God says. “Listen to him.”
So, on this hinge Sunday, we have a vision of Jesus that echoes the themes of Epiphany: the glory of the angels singing at Jesus’ birth; the brightness of the star that led the wise ones to him; the voice of God at his baptism, declaring him Beloved; even the Zero-to-Sixty start of his ministry, in which he began to teach and feed and heal God’s people. Jesus shines.
And simultaneously we have a vision of what is to come: a path that is not easy, a wilderness journey that begins with temptation, and is filled with controversy, and which leads, not to a military or political victory, but to death. And yes, we know what happens next… but there’s no shortcut to resurrection.
Where does this story lead us? Among other things, it leads us into the journey of Lent. It helps the sign of ashes make more sense—a sign of our human limitations and finiteness, but also a reminder that, like those three disciples, we don’t take the journey alone. We are not supposed to go it alone. God has given us companions for this journey, others with whom we can travel, and climb, and rest, and eat, and begin again. God has given us friends who will say to us, “Get up now; don’t be afraid.” God has given us companions for walking that blessed path of doing justice, and loving mercy, and walking humbly with our God.
It is good to be here. Thanks be to God. Amen.