Sermon Note: Feb. 7, Epiphany Last, Transfiguration Sunday, Luke 9:28-36

[Herb Davis]

Sermon Note:  Feb. 7, Epiphany Last, Transfiguration Sunday, Luke 9:28-36

 

I only met one person who I believed had an epiphany.  An unlikely person, he was highly rational, graduate of a great secular university and very successful.  It was not a mountain top experience for him.  He was frightened by the event.  He could not relate the experience to any other in his life.  He felt he was going insane.  He had reminded silent for a year hoping the encounter  would fade.  Finally he came to the pastor to share the  event when God spoke to him.  I too was silent.  There was no celebration, no explanation, no making sense, just waiting and living with the reality of God speaking.  Epiphany's are God’s doing.  Let us not reduce them to human size and shape. Rightly we stand in fear and trembling.  The transfiguration text is not about a mountain top experience that ends us with service in the valley.  It ends with a cross on a hill.

 

The Transfiguration occurs following Jesus’s announcement of his rejection, death and resurrection in Jerusalem. v21   He also claims that those who are ashamed of the Son of man’s defeat and will not be welcomed in his glory.v26.    The tendency to be ashamed of the cross is evident in Peter’s reaction to Jesus’s death in Mark. 8:32  Paul claims he is not ashamed of the cross. I Cor. 2:2  Its understandable that folks are ashamed of the cross, it’s a scandal. 

 

About eight days (resurrection day) after the announcement of rejection and death Jesus, Peter, James and John go up the mountain to pray.v28  In the midst of prayer Jesus appearance changes and his clothing become dazzling white.v29  The disciples see Moses and Elijah joining Jesus and discussing his departure, his exodus, in Jerusalem.  The disciples were sleepy, but awake and they saw his glory.v32  As Moses and Elijah are leaving Peter wants to turn the event into a memorial.  There is a need on Peter to do something, anything.  Then they are overcome with a cloud.  They are terrified.  They are in the presence of  Almighty God.  They hear the voice ”This is my Son, my  chosen, listen to him.”35 

 

“For Jesus the transfiguration  confirmed who he was and assured that the announced path before him was not only according to the law and the prophets but was the will of God for him.  ...For all Luke’s insistence on the continuity of Judaism and the Christian community, Jesus is not just another in a line of prophets; he is preeminent.  He is to be heard, not over against Moses and the prophets, but as the proper interpreter and fulfillment of what  had been preserved in the Scriptures.”*  Listen to him, the way of the cross is the glory road.  Do not be ashamed of my son, the chosen one who will be rejected, killed and rise.

 

The Transfiguration is not our doing.  The only actor in the event is God, the God of Moses and Elijah.  The God who confirms the way of the cross, the way of suffering and death.

 

The response is silence.  Dead silence.  The disciples tell no one.   In due time after the resurrection they will remember and understand and witness.  So do we.

 

Any additions or corrections?  Herb   

*Craddock, Luke, Interpretation, p.134

[Matt Schneider-Adams]

This is great Herb.  I get discouraged with all the "mountaintop experience" language around Transfiguration.  I think, just as you laid it out, there should be a sense of fear in this.  "Jesus is my buddy" is eclipsed by the voice, the light, the shining, the fog.  Holy Awe as in Psalm 99.  There is really nothing here that humans can engineer.  It really is all about God's initiative.  God is not domesticated, but wild, and unpredictable.  When God lets loose there should ALWAYS be angels as the forward team saying "Do not be afraid..."  When there are no angels, we are struck dumb.  Or ignorant.  Silence is a good (at least interim) strategy.

Have no idea yet where this is going...

Matt

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[John Cedarleaf]

Dear Matt,
Scary awesome stuff. Moses, Elijah, Jesus on a mountain, not something I'd feel warm and fuzzy about. I'm preaching on Sunday in a tiny rural Church with a corn field behind it and about 20 in attendance.

John

[JimLink]

Dear Herb,

Thank you!

I don't quite understand your "service in a valley" comment, inasmuch as a sort of "healing in the valley" story does follow (.37-43) and "the cross on the hill" is followed at the end of Luke by the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, by which the church is sent out into the world.

This year, I am stuck by the place of prayer in this scene and in the way of Jesus in Luke. Here Jesus praying is the direct context of his transfiguration (9:29), just as it was the context for the baptismal epiphany (3:21)and the appearance of minstering angel in 22: 39-43 (disputed). The prayer characterizes the waiting of the church for the Pentecost promise (Acts 1: 21-26). In Luke, prayer stands in direct contrast to sleep (eg. compareLuke 22:45 to 9:32) Thus, I would add to what you have said by saying that Jesus' way, the way of his rejection, cross and resurrection, is the way Jesus' prayer.

Jim

[Scott Paeth]

Dear Confessors,

I wanted to let you know that Max Stackhouse, UCC ethicist and theologian, and a good friend to many of us here on this list, died this past Saturday. He was 80 years old. There will be a memorial service at his home church in Stockbridge, MA on February 13th.

In hope of the resurrection,
Scott

[JimLink]

P.S.

Neither Matthew nor Mark makes explicit mention that Jesus was praying. On the other hand Mark explicitly centers the subsequent story of the "resurrection" of the epileptic boy around the theme of intercessory prayer ('Mark 9:14-29), and Matthew joins with Luke by focusing on the petition of the father regarding his suffering son what is possible for those who have faith.

Jim

[Herb Davis]

Dear Scott, Thanks for the note on Max. I counted him as a friend and a
mentor and a churchman and a grand scholar. Also a tough sob at times, never
one to put up with nonsense from people who should know better. One of the
few who saw great promise in globalization and had great appreciation for
the business community and faithful laity. Never paid Barth much ado. You
picked up some of his best traits. He is now one of the cloud of witness
watching over us. In sure and certain hope of the resurrection. Herb

[JimLink]

PPS

Note also that the Lukan birth narrative proper begins and ends (Luke 1:10 and 2:37) on the note of prayer answered! Maybe that is one more clue in the way we are to understand the continuity and fulfillment of the history of Israel in the person of Jesus Christ: answered prayer! And this is not typically noted about Moses and Elijah as prophetic figures, but they interceded before God in prayer on behalf of Israel and themselves, even, when destruction threatened.

The mountaintop is often pictured as a secluded place to draw close to God, but it also represents standing between God and the whole earth on behalf of humanity.

Jim

[Jane Ellingwood]

Dear Herb (and Matt, John, and Jim),

I have nothing to add but I wanted to say thank you for what Herb wrote here and for what Matt, John, and Jim also said.

Blessings,

Jane 

[JimLink]

And, if I may make a few more comment.

Luke does not use the word "transfiguration" perhaps he is avoiding it.

In Luke, the "silence" of the three witness disciples seems to be in close relationship to the command of the voice from heaven, "Listen to him!" regarding the singular Jesus who is "my Son, the Elect." Wait for him to speak. We see the exraordinary authority, and freedo, of Jesus, in service to God.

Jim

Tuesday, February 2, 2016 at 8:24:47 PM UTC-5, Herb wrote:

[WILLIAM RADER]

Dear Scott,

Thank you for letting us know of the death of Max Stackhouse. I didn't know him personally, but he was on the Working Committee of
Church Fellowship with the Evangelical Church of the Union in Germany, of which my wife was also a member. So I heard a lot about him.

Peace and hope,
Bill

[Thomas Dean]

Scott and confessors,

Thank you for passing the word along about Max Stackhouse.  I had a whole year of Christian social ethics with him at Andover Newton.  I found Max to be inspiring, very thought provoking, and helpful towards a life of ministry.  He will be missed.

Blessings,

Tom still in Indiana

[Andy Lang]

Scott, thank you. Max was a guide to many in the ecumenical church. He will be missed. 

Andy Lang

[JimLink]

Here is the abridged version of my sermon on Luke 9:28-43: Jesus prays to his Father that, via the prophets and apostles who have listened to him, we also may and must listen to him.

Jim Link

[JimLink]

Notice how Peter justifies himself and the other two, by a misapplication of the law regarding booths that will allow them all to remain together awhile longer in the wilderness: "Master, it is good that we are here..."

Jim

[Herb Davis]

Jim, Didn't get your sermon. Herb

[JimLink]

Dear Herb,

I am sorry that I was so unclear. I am afraid I was sending only one sentence from it, as an "abridged version."

Jim.