Sermon Prepared for Messiah Lutheran Church

The Transfiguration of Our Lord, traditional services – 2/25/01

by Gregory S. Kaurin

Associate Pastor for Spiritual Care and Development

 

Text: Luke 9: 28-36

 

The Sermon:

I Have Seen the Mountain

 

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Before I begin, let me give you a fair warning.  In about a minute and a half you’ll need a pencil or a pen.  Then, you’ll also want to turn to page 5 in your bulletin.  It’s not a numbered page, but it comes after page 4.  What you’ll need is that blank spot there underneath the song by Hank Williams, Sr.

 

Today is the Sunday of the Transfiguration of Our Lord.  “Transfiguration” is about something much more than a brief shift of image.  When something is transfigured, it is no illusion or momentary thing.  “Trans” means to “shift or change,” and “figure” means “shape or form.”  To transfigure, then, is to change form.  It suggests that what happened on the mountain that day was something more than a brief show of God’s power.

It was moment of more permanent change.  Jesus changed.  The story shifted.  Jesus now shifted from his ministry …toward his destiny.  From there he would come down the mountain and begin heading toward Jerusalem.

 

I think in that vision on the mountain Jesus saw, and the disciples were witnessing, more than Moses and Elijah.  Luke wrote that Moses and Elijah were speaking to Jesus about his departure and what he would accomplish in Jerusalem.  I believe Jesus saw, together with Moses and Elijah, all the plans, the purpose and the people of God, from creation to the last generation yet to come.  Within that, Jesus saw you and me, and he was changed: in appearance for a moment, and in purpose permanently.  And that is what is meant by transfiguring experiences. 

Sometimes we focus on the fact that Jesus’ Transfiguration happened while on retreat.  Yes, it happened while on a prayer retreat with his disciples, but the focus seems to be on the change and shift of things.  They went back down.  I assume that Jesus’ face and clothes appeared normal by then.  Peter, James and John remained silent in those days.  Unlike any prayer retreats before, however, things had changed and could never be as they were.

 

To illustrate, I asked you to have a pencil or pen ready and to turn to page 5 in your bulletin.  Your focus right now is that empty spot below the song.  I want you to take a moment to think of something, someone or some moment that changed your life, or changed you.

It might have been especially good.  It might have been especially bad.  Maybe it was when a life-long friend came into your life, and you were never the same.  Or, your family moved to a new place.  Or, you lost your love, or your job.  Somehow you lost innocence, or gained a great insight.  Maybe you are the better for it now, or maybe you feel the worse.

I will ask you to write down just a phrase, a word, or maybe a name, a date, or perhaps the year or the age that it happened to you.  This is between you and God, so no one needs to understand what your words, day or number means to you.  Take a moment to do that now…

 

Now, let me say something obvious.  That moment that you mention on your paper had a “before,” a “during,” and an “after.”  Think about what you were like before it happened.  What did you feel like while it happened?  And now, how is it affecting you after?

That moment changed you, and the time “after” will never be like the time “before.”  That is the difference between an important experience and an experience of transfiguration.  Some things are just memories of the past, other things never stay in the past.  They affect us forever.  We are transfigured.

 

Often, for Christians the message of this Bible passage calls us to “be transfigured” in our lives.  Above your word, number, or phrase on page 5 is a song by Hank Williams, Sr., “I Saw the Light.”*

Some of you know about his struggles with alcohol and relationships.  Fewer people might realize the deeply religious and even pious man that Hank Williams was and how these things conflicted in him.

Here we have a moment in his life where he felt he had turned it around.  Before, he wandered and felt aimless, full of worries and fears.  Then, during some un-named transfiguring moment, he saw the light, freedom, release and joy.  After which, he was released to walk straight toward the gate on a narrow path, trading all his wrong past for a right future.  He, like the disciples and you and me, had “seen the light.”

The truth is that Hank Williams, Sr. continued to struggle with all the same stuff right up to his death.  So, I ask you (and understand: I’m not just asking about Hank Williams, Sr. in this question), after “seeing the light” did he lose it?  Did he—this time, and time again—slip back into the darkness?

I have to do that horribly Lutheran thing that I avoid as often as possible and answer my own question with both a “yes” and a “no,” in that 1) yes—he remained in the light, but 2) no—whatever light he saw, he kept turning his face from it to his own demons.

 

First, yes.  Hank Williams, Sr. and all of us remain in the light!  Late this fall in November through December I’m going to be leading a class on prayer, and the book I will highlight will be Walter Wangerin’s Whole Prayer. 

His book begins with a scene to which those of us living around Mt. Rainier can all relate.  This is up in Alaska near Mt. McKinley.  Walt Wangerin and his wife, Thanne, were vacationing.  They were also using that time to make an important decision: whether or not he would a position at Valparaiso University.  They were praying about it and hoping that sometime during this vacation God would provide direction.

Meanwhile, they were also hoping to see this incredible mountain that people were talking about.  Each day it was obscured by clouds and mists, no mountain.  They began to joke with people about it, “Sure there’s a mountain.  Whatever you say!” 

One fellow decided he had to prove it.  He put Walt and Thanne into his little plane and flew them toward the place where this mountain was supposed to be.  At first, nothing—more clouds and mist.  Then, the clouds parted and suddenly it was before them, the mountain.  The pilot took them right up to it and said, “Never been this close.”  It was an incredible, awe-full mountain.

 

This is what Walt Wangerin wrote about it:

This was not [Mt. McKinley]—this was Sinai with the smoke of God rolling round and round its stony peak—and I was Israel, terrified of the thunderous voice of the Almighty, yearning to run backward.  Let Ed [the pilot] go on alone.  Let some other Moses speak for me.  I was plain scared.

…and suddenly [as the plane whisked by and turned] the mountain vanished…There was no rear window in our tiny craft…except that I continued to feel the tendons…This mountain was…”*

 

Two days later they struggled through a storm in a car from Fairbanks to Anchorage on their way home.  Suddenly the storm broke and there it was, again:

The Mountain…huger than any other, following us as other peaks passed on between us, following us, that mighty mountain, mighty and merciful now.

And Thanne began to cry.

“He was with us all the time,” she whispered.  “God was always with us, Wally.  We just couldn’t see him.”

…The following morning, still lying in bed, sunlight streaming in our window, we talked, Thanne and I.

Actually, Thanne talked.  But her words were the same ones I was murmuring in my mind.

“It’s okay, isn’t it?” she said.  “We can go to Valparaiso.”

Can, she said.  Not must.  We were free.

“God is with us,” she whispered again.  “He never left us, Wally.  He never will.”*

 

The Mountain follows.  Moses met with God on the Mountain, and his people were never the same again.  Jesus was transfigured and he was never the same again.  The Mountain follows.  Hank Williams, Sr. saw the light and sang, “No more darkness, no more night.  Now I’m so happy, no sorrow in sight.  Praise the Lord, I saw the light!”

And so, in words similar to Martin Luther King, Jr. and many others, I can proclaim to you why I remain positive and driven in my faith.  It’s because “I have seen the Mountain” a time or two.  I know it’s there.  And even when I can’t see it, while clouds roll bout me, I absolutely know that I remain in the Mountain’s sight!

We can get turned around.  We may even consciously and purposely try to turn away, run away, and yet this Mountain looms so large that it follows us, trips us with its foothills and changes our lives yet again.  Maybe it doesn’t always give us the clear answers, but it never leaves us alone.

 

Here’s the challenge.  A lot of us have a model about God, sin and forgiveness.  It’s a model that we sometimes use to hide behind.  It’s a simple model that—when uncorrupted—is absolutely true.  This is the model: 1) we sin, 2) we repent, and 3) we are forgiven.  We might call it transfiguration and say, “We’ve seen the light!”

Actually, I think we misuse that true and simple model to shield ourselves from really being changed, or transfigured.  We feel safe and comfortable because it sounds so easy: sin, repent, forgiven.  It almost sounds okay to keep on living our lives in the very same way that we were before, the same way that will turn us away from God time and again.

Think for a moment.  What keeps pulling you away, back into darkness?  What closes your ears to Jesus, just so you can do that one thing again, as if he wasn’t there?  Do you have an old grudge that you carry? …A hurt that won’t go away? …An addiction? …An emptiness, a loss?  What keeps pulling you aside?

There is another model that calls for a real change, for true transfiguration.  Jesus was once overheard talking to a woman.  After her accusers had left, he told the adulterous woman that he did not and no one else condemned her.  She was forgiven.

And then he called her to live in that transfiguration, to change her life from then on, to live anew.  He said, “Go.  Go down from this moment, from this place, and sin no more.”

Well, yes—we should all “go and sin no more.”  But how? …in my own life, how?  I’ve heard that question a time or two after I finish preaching.  “It was a fine message, pastor.  We need to do what you said.  But how?”

That is where we usually stop, isn’t it?  We tell you to step out and change, but not how.  And there is a time or two that we could and should.  But let me suggest that we often don’t need to spoon-feed the details.  Very often, we all know well what is keeping us off-track.  We know what we should do.  But we say that “no one tells us” as an excuse not to change, not to take steps to improve.

Did Jesus tell the adulterous woman, “Your sins are forgiven.  Now go and do these seven steps to avoid sinning again.  Write them down: step one, two, three, etc.”?  No, he did not.  He didn’t need to.

A moment ago, I asked what darkness keeps pulling you aside.  Think about it. 

·        If your drinking habits are interfering with you life and family, I don’t need to spell out for you what God would want you to change.

·        If there are two SUV’s, boats and houses on your property while you work so hard to support your family, and that level of consumerism, that you rarely see the family that you claim to love, do I need to tell you what God is asking you to change?

·        Are you thinking that there should be more Bible reading and spirituality in your life—and you’re waiting for me to tell you what to do about it?

Don’t wait to be spoon-fed into your transfiguration!  When God says, “Stop it!” and “Change this!” you know what he means.  You and I have seen the Mountain.  We have seen wonderful sights.  But now a voice rolls into our ears, saying, “Shhh.  Be quiet.  Here is my Son.  Listen to him.”  The cloud lifts and there is Jesus, standing alone and prominent.

So, listen.  Find help!  Seek learning.  Pick up your Bible.  Make time!  Pray.  Ask God, ask other people for help.  Take the steps that will turn you back into the direction of Christ who stands alone.  He stands like a mountain, always and from now on, looming and following all of us in our lives. 

 

We are a changed people, forgiven and saved.  But we are called to live as “Transfigured People,” forever changed and changing.

 

Because, we have seen the Mountain.  We know it’s there.  So we head toward it.

 

 

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