Transfiguration of our Lord

Luke 9:28-43

When I read the gospel assigned for today, my first question was, “Why are there two stories?”

Sometimes Jesus uses a story to answer a question. That’s what he’s doing when he tells the story of the Good Samaritan in Chapter 10 when he answers the lawyer who asked, “Who is my neighbor?”

But that’s not what is happening here.

Other times Jesus uses multiple stories to explain a characteristic of God. That’s what he’s doing when he tells the parable of lost things in Chapter 15 connecting three different, but clearly related stories, to describe the joy God finds in relationship with us.

But that’s not what is happening here, either.

In this passage, the connection between the stories isn’t obvious. Instead, Chapter 9 reads more like a series of journal or diary entries by one of the apostles:

Day 1: Jesus commissioned us today “to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal.” (Luke 9:2)

Day 6: What a success! We proclaimed the good news and cured diseases everywhere!

Day 7: Now we’re back in Galilee and crowds have gathered around Jesus. Today, more than five thousand men plus women and children were there and Jesus “spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed those who needed to be cured.” (Luke 9:11)

And tonight, Jesus predicted that he will suffer and be rejected by the leaders here in Israel. He told us he will be killed!

Later when he asked us who people say that he is and who we say that he is, Peter declared that Jesus isn’t one of the ancient prophets or John the Baptiser raised from the dead, but the Messiah of God, the Christ, the anointed one whom God has promised to us.

Day 15: A couple of us went up on the mountain to pray with Jesus and are still overwhelmed by what we saw and heard there. God spoke to us on that mountaintop!

And after we came back down the mountain, we were again surrounded by crowds who need Jesus.

It turns out the stories in today’s gospel have more in common than I first knew, revealing two different portraits of the holiness of God.

The first one is what we expect “holiness” to look and sound like: The dazzling clothes and brilliant shining light. Heavenly bodies. A loud voice that sounds like Charlton Heston or Morgan Freeman thundering in our ears. The terrified reaction of the apostles.

But the second story is also about the holiness of God:

If we hear ourselves in the story as one of the apostles, then it’s what happens when we come down off the mountaintops, when we leave our places of sanctuary and worship, when we come face to face with the crowds who still need Jesus.

And if we locate ourselves in those crowds – because we have only glimpsed Jesus from far away, or we’ve eaten with his followers and listened to his teaching, but have not yet experienced the merciful love of God firsthand,
then it is a story of God’s healing grace for us.

Importantly, when I speak about holiness, I am not speaking only of heaven or the divine. God’s holiness is a “both/and.” Psalm 99, an enthronement psalm, proclaims in verse 1, “[God] sits enthroned upon the cherubim” – the winged heavenly creatures who are found in the holiest of places - and in verse 2, “God is great in Zion.” - among the earthly civilizations. As Eden Seminary’s J. Clinton McCann writes, “The holiness of God is not wholly other.”  (emphasis mine)

When a colleague wondered out loud what to make of the first story where the apostles on the mountaintop were “drenched in glory”, I remembered Father Richard Rohr’s description of our world as Christ-soaked, made sacred and anointed by God’s presence in us. I believe we have these two stories because we are invited to see how God is being revealed in both the mystical showing of God’s power in God’s only Son and the physical healing of the father’s only child.

In Lutheranism, we believe the work of trans-figuration or trans-formation is ongoing. We confess we are both saint and sinner. We know that we cannot by our own reason or strength believe in our salvation through Jesus Christ. And we believe that we are sanctified - or made holy - by the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, even as we, like Peter and the others, live as imperfect disciples.

The Transfiguration of our Lord is always immediately before Ash Wednesday, the first day of the forty-day season of Lent. When we gather together on Wednesday particularly, we will confess our sins and commit to return with all our heart to God. Throughout Lent, we are invited to re-discover God’s ongoing presence in our lives, to pray and draw near God, fasting or abstaining from things that distract us from God, and giving out of the abundance that God has first given us.  

Drenched in God’s love, mercy and glory, we are invited to be transformed and to participate in the transformation of the world.

Let us pray…
Holy and grace-filled Lord,
Thank you sending Your Son Jesus to us to love us and heal us.
We are drenched by your mercy in baptism and made holy by your Holy Spirit.
Show us how to live as your disciples, and proclaim the good news to all who need Your Son.
We pray in Jesus’ name,
Amen.