JC Disciples
If I Were to Tell You
Psalm 2:6-13, Exodus 24:12,15-18, 2 Peter 1:16-19(20-21), Matthew 17:1-9
"If I were to tell you what someone told me," we sang as sixth graders in the Vacation Bible School closing program, "well, I might miss a detail or two. For when you describe something you didn’t see, you’re never quite certain that it’s true."
It was a rather deep song for a group of girls who had just completed elementary school. But the song has stayed with me all of these years because of the truth it spoke. When you repeat a story that you’ve only heard, and never witnessed, you don’t know all the details; you don’t have the unshakable knowledge that can only come from the actual experience.
Tonight, I will tell you what someone told me. That someone is my mother. The story she told me concerns my grandfather, my dad’s dad, who died last August. Before I tell you her story, I need to tell you some background information.
I wrote a note to Grandpa for his birthday, which was only 10 days before he would die. It’s not at all unusual for me to write to my relatives on their birthdays. But what was unusual was that I only wrote a note; I did not send a birthday card. Frankly, none of the cards seemed appropriate. Somehow, I was quite certain this would be his last birthday; the year ahead of him held little promise of the happy sentiments that fill birthday cards. So I simply wrote a note. I told him that I loved him. I thanked him for the things he’d done -- including the things he taught my dad which my dad had in turn taught me. The note was, I now know, my way of saying good-bye. My parents had found that note during one of their many visits to my grandparents’ house in the days after Grandpa’s birthday.
One week before he died, my grandfather had a colostomy performed. In the first few days after surgery, his condition continually improved and all signs indicated he would make a good recovery from the procedure. However, late in the week, his condition began to deteriorate. When my parents saw him the day before he died, they knew he did not look as well as when they had seen him earlier in the week. That evening, his vital signs began to deteriorate and my mom called me with the news that he was dying.
Now, this is my mother’s story. In the earliest hours of the Sunday morning Grandpa died, my mother was keeping watch at Grandma’s house, reading her magazine and waiting for the call that she knew would come. Suddenly, she has told me, she felt the urge to find that note I had written and to read it out loud. She quickly found the note in the living room. If you ask her, she will tell you that my grandfather was there in that room, sitting in his easy chair as she read the letter to him several times. After a few readings, she felt a sense of peace and set the letter aside. An hour or so after this incident, my dad called her from the hospital with the news that his father, my grandfather, had died.
As strange as her story may sound, I do believe what she has told me. I believe in part because she is my mother and I trust her. I also believe because of my own experience.
My grandfather died around 4:30 a.m. in Fort Wayne, Indiana; it would have been 2:30 a.m. here in Mesa. Sometime after 2:30 but before 3:00, Benjamin came into my room. When he climbed into bed with us, David and I asked him if he’d had a bad dream. He shook his head. We asked if we needed to check his room for monsters. He shook his head again. "My room is funny" was all he would say. I climbed out of bed and took him to the rocking chair in the living room. During the next hour and a half as I worked to lull him back to sleep, I wondered if Grandpa was dead. Although he is among the younger of my grandparents’ many great-grandchildren, Benjamin had always seemed to have a special place in my grandfather’s heart. If Grandpa had died, perhaps he might have come to visit Benjamin in some way. I thought about calling my parents, but I decided against it. Two hours after I put my son back to bed, my dad called to confirm my suspicions.
Maybe you have similar stories in your family, in your lives – stories that are too beyond the accepted reality to be believed, yet from sources so credible they must be true; stories that reveal in some small, personal way that there is a greater reality beyond our physical perceptions. This is the sort of story that our gospel lesson presents us with tonight.
Matthew, the apostle of Jesus whom tradition has named as the author of this gospel, was not present when Jesus was transfigured before three of the twelve apostles: Peter, James, and John. James died without leaving a written account of this event. The text from Peter’s second letter, which we read tonight, mentions this event. There is only a vague reference to the transfiguration in the Gospel of John, not a full depiction of the event. Yet Matthew, who was not there, includes this event in his gospel.
Matthew is relating an event that he never witnessed; he is passing along what someone told him – much as I did when I told you the story I heard from my mother. As a general rule, people do not pass along as truth stories that they believe to be false. So it seems clear that Matthew trusted the witnesses of this event: Peter, James, and John and that he found the account believable.
The transfiguration is one of the events in the life of Jesus that is completely unprecedented. For the most part, the miracles presented in the gospels were also done by various prophets of the Hebrews people. The only event that even comes close to the transfiguration is the radiance of the face of Moses following his meetings with God. But even that is something done to Moses, not something revealed about Moses.
There was something different about Jesus. I think all of those who followed him recognized that even if they could not explain or define what that "something" was. Matthew, like all of the gospel writers, wrote in order to demonstrate that Jesus was indeed the Messiah, the one who fulfilled the promises of God, the unique Son of God, Immanuel – God with us.
That is why the transfiguration is the final teaching of the Epiphany season. Epiphany means manifestation. It is a time when the Church reflects on the ways Jesus was revealed as the Christ, the anointed one, the Messiah. And because it is completely unprecedented, nothing reveals the true identify of Jesus of Nazareth more than the transfiguration.
While Jesus was up on the mountain with Peter, James, and John, everything about him changed. His face – and presumably any other area of exposed skin – glowed with light, just as the sun does. His clothes became a pure and perfect white, perhaps bleached of all color by the dazzling light pouring from him. And, as if that weren’t enough, Moses and Elijah, heroes of the Hebrews who had been dead for centuries, appeared with Jesus. It’s no wonder James and John were dumbstruck. Only Peter, as impetuous as ever, could think of anything to say. But as Peter was babbling about erecting some shelters, the voice of God thundered over the mountaintop, proclaiming Jesus as God’s own beloved son, commanding the disciples to listen to him.
In the glorified Christ, the disciples were permitted a view of the greater reality beyond their physical senses. They saw a glimpse of the glory of God on that mountaintop, the glory of God embodied in their teacher, Jesus. Very few people in all of scripture were permitted such a view of the glory of God.
It is fitting that both Moses and Elijah were present because they too had caught glimpses of the glory of God here on earth. Moses, the great deliverer of the Israelites, represented the Law. Elijah, the most beloved of the prophets by the time of Christ, represented all of the prophets. Together, Moses and Elijah represented the entire Hebrew scriptures, which were often referred to as "the Law and the Prophets." In their appearance during the transfiguration event, Moses and Elijah were the Law and the Prophets, testifying to the very Messiah whose coming they had foretold.
To be there, to experience this would make it all so easy, wouldn’t it? If we only had seen this spectacular display of God’s glory, we would know with absolute unshakable certainty that what we have believed is true – Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, the redeemer of the world.
It didn’t quite work for the disciples and I doubt it would work so well for us. It’s easy to believe when the vision is before us on the mountaintop; it’s much harder in the valley when dark shadows hide the light. Just as the disciples had to leave the mountain top and head to Jerusalem for the shocking event of the crucifixion, so the Church descends from this high moment to the valley of Lent, when we consider the reason why Jesus came to die: our sins.
Peter, the only one of the three to keep some semblance of wits about himself during the transfiguration, would eventually deny that he ever knew Jesus. James would flee into darkness along with the disciples. John, armed with the sure knowledge of Jesus’ true identity, would silently lurk in the shadows of Jesus’ trial rather than rise to his Master’s defense.
Like the disciples, we have our own transcendent moments, experiences that speak to us of the greater reality that lies beyond the reach of our physical senses. They may not be nearly as grand and dramatic as this. But they are our experiences and we know them to be true. I’ve just told you one of my own. Yet, in the everyday circumstances of life, we too lose sight of this transcendence and become caught in the mundane. I couldn’t begin to describe the number of times just since the death of my grandfather that I’ve been too overwhelmed by the moments in my life to remember that there is a greater reality than what I can see and touch.
And that is precisely the challenge of the transfiguration. It is a call to us to remember that there is a far greater reality beyond this physical existence. There is more in the world than our eyes can see, than our ears can here, than our hands can feel, than our minds can understand. God is ever beyond our physical reality and yet, at the same time, breathtakingly close to us within it.
The challenge to us is to remember that these almost unreal transcendent moments are truer than what we often regard as reality. The disciples lost sight of this vision as the crucifixion drama unfolded. Since the events around them were happening, then what they had seen before couldn’t possibly be true. Yet it was. The all glorious Son of God was also the suffering servant who bore the sins of the world. It seemed impossible, but it was the truth. We would do well to remember that – in anything we face – God is real, God is really here.
And that song I mentioned earlier? Here is how it ends:
But what we have seen with the eyes of our souls,
And with fingers of faith, we can feel,
We can feel,
Makes it clear that He’s living
And loves us today.
There’s no doubt we believe
God is real.
May it be true for us. Amen.