The traditional reading from Matthew for Transfiguration Sunday, the story of Jesus at the mountaintop with Peter, James, and John, starts with the first verse of Chapter 17, but as you might have picked up, I can’t just let a verse that starts “Six days later” go unexplored. My curiosity is piqued. Six days after what? Why does that matter? If it’s worth mentioning, it must have something to do with how we’re supposed to read this story of Jesus turning blindingly bright somewhere up a mountain with three disciples and two dead(ish) ancestors of the faith. Which is why we read a little more than just the traditional Transfiguration story this week.
It turns out that six days earlier, Jesus revealed some pretty shocking new about his life. And his death. And his resurrection. This was the first time he had shared this with his disciples. And in this moment the whole story in Matthew’s gospel goes from telling who Jesus the Messiah is to what Jesus the Messiah does – not just on a day to day basis, but cosmically, for humanity and all creation.
Jesus’ followers already had an idea of what that would be, what the promised Messiah would bring about and how he would accomplish it. They not only knew it; they were waiting for it, desperately even. A Messiah, in their minds, would be the one to come with power and might and strength and force to free God’s people from the oppression of the Roman Empire. A Messiah would do what others who had saved Israel had done in the past –
- remove the people from the bondage of a foreign master, as when they were led from slavery in Egypt to the freedom,
- return the people from exile,
- renew them in covenantal relationship with God,
- and reset the boundaries and leadership of the kingdom of Israel.
They held tightly to this image of the Messiah and the image of themselves as willing subjects of the most powerful king chosen by the almighty God, rather than a conquered people under the thumb of an outsider influenced by false gods and idols.
So when Jesus tells a different story about what he will do as the Messiah talks, it doesn’t go over so well with Peter. He and the disciples find out that instead of setting the record straight with the elders and chief priests and scribes, Jesus the Messiah will suffer at their hands. Instead of pushing out and pushing over the occupying empire, Jesus the Messiah will be killed by it. Peter can’t handle this challenge to his assumptions. “God forbid it!” he begs. “This must never happen.” But Jesus doesn’t back down.
While he can’t soften the truth he knows, he can acknowledge the basis of the contradiction Peter’s experiencing. Peter, Jesus points out, has a mind set on human things, human ways of living in relationship, human traditions and patterns for relating to each other, human understandings about what a kingdom is. Peter is clinging to what he has always known. Peter is imagining the only future he has ever envisioned. But Jesus is showing a whole new way the kingdom will operate –
- not through force, but through humility;
- not through power, but through service;
- not through violence, but through peace;
- not through greed, but through giving – even giving up one’s life for the sake of the good news – the good news that God is with us, the good news that God’s kingdom is for all, the good news, as we heard from Pastor Taylor last week, that the dust and dirt, the mud and muck, the abuses of power and the oppression of the people that is revealed when the light of the world shines bright, and the death dealing forces in the world will. not. win.
I can’t blame Peter. I can’t blame him when he resists the incredibly difficult news Jesus delivers about his suffering and death. I can’t blame him when he doesn’t quite hear or understand the part about Jesus being raised on the third day. Peter has had the rug pulled right out from under him. The whole structure he has known and trusted has toppled. The story he thought he was playing a role in has just been ripped from the book he was reading, and that is unsettling at best, terrifying at worst. I don’t blame him, heck, I probably even relate to him, when he gets up a high mountain and does it all over again six days later.
Peter isn’t alone in what he’s doing. Maybe we recognize it. When the world at large or even just our own little corners of it feel out of control, unfamiliar, even dangerous whether physically or spiritually or emotionally, when things are changing that we thought would never change, it can be scary, maybe even threatening. We may begin to doubt that we ever really knew anything at all. We may react with frustration and anger about how unfair things are. Or we may dig our heels and our hearts in deeper to what we thought we knew, to what brought us comfort all along, even if it no longer lines up with the truth that has been revealed to us.
Maybe you have a holiday ritual in your family that everyone groans about, but that is kept alive even when it no longer brings joy because no one can quite imagine dropping it and “this is the way our family has always done it.” Maybe you have found yourself in a job that is no longer life giving, that doesn’t meet your needs, that feels obsolete or is a poor use of your skills, but the thought of changing that job is more terrifying than staying in it – the uncertainty of change is scarier than the dissatisfaction you’re feeling. Maybe you’ve looked at the choices before you and chosen the devil you know instead of someone or something that is unfamiliar. Sometimes it’s easier to hold onto what we know, even when it’s no longer good for us, rather than face the disruption of a new thing – even if that new thing holds promise for a better, brighter future.
It happens in the church as well. We can see this in the very history of this congregation. Some of you may know that the first woman ordained in one of our predecessor Presbyterian denominations, the Rev. Margaret Towner, served First Presbyterian Church of Allentown from 1955-1958, both before and after she was ordained in 1956. Having graduated from both college and seminary prior to starting here, she was serving as a Director of Christian Education in this congregation while the debate about opening ordination to the Ministry of Word and Sacrament to women worked its way through the denomination. When the day came that women’s ordination would be allowed, several women like Rev. Towner were seminary trained, prepared, and called to ministry, but hers was the first ordination to take place. It took place in the Presbytery of Syracuse, New York, where her preparation for ministry took place.
There are those in this church – not a lot, but a few! – who still remember Rev. Towner’s ministry, but we do have to note that despite her ordination, despite the recognition of her gifts and skills and call to ministry by the wider church, Rev. Towner was never asked to lead worship or preach or preside over sacraments here. In an interview in 2005, she remembered that in those early days “many people… weren’t really sure that a woman could do the job of pastor. They would ask ‘Could a woman handle it? Are they going to rob the jobs from the men?’ …During the first couple of years of my ordination, I was never invited to preach in larger churches.”
Change is hard – – even change that we are proud to be a part of 70 years later! Even change that will bear fruit and honor God and contribute to vibrant ministry and the faithful sharing of God’s good news.
When the world shifts under us, when the tides change and new realities reveal themselves, it can be scary to shift with them, to take in new information and let it transform our point of view. It feels so much easier to set our minds on the thing we know, instead of risk the uncertainty of seeing where the Spirit might be leading us, what God might be doing with us, what Jesus might be saying to us. It’s so common we even have a joke about it when we say the Seven Last Words of the Church” are “We’ve always done it that way before” or the even more skeptical version, “We’ve never done it that way before.” It can be scary to let go of traditions and structures and ideas that no longer serve us, or more importantly no longer help us to serve God, and we can be tempted, like Peter to hold onto what we’ve known rather than be open to what we are learning.
Jesus gave his disciples paradigm shifting news when he told them that the Messiah isn’t coming to set up a new human empire. Instead the Messiah is coming to establish a divine kingdom, a heaven-on-earth kingdom. It doesn’t have geographical borders; in fact, it erases all borders and boundaries we human beings could ever think of. It is a kingdom of welcome, a kingdom of grace, a kingdom of peace. Confronted with a new vision of the future that he had never imagined before, Peter clings to whatever piece of the tradition he can that will give him comfort, that will steady his unsteadiness, that will keep things the way he knows and expects them to be. Maybe it’s good, he proposes, that we avoid that unpleasantness of death and suffering you just described, and we can stay here. Maybe it’s better than you dwell in this tent, Jesus, here with Moses and Elijah, here with the tradition that we know and can count on. Maybe we don’t need to stir things up, to change, to try a new way forward.
But the voice from heaven didn’t even let him finish what he was saying. While he was still speaking, the cloud overshadowed them, a voice spoke to them, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased.” The same words spoken at Jesus’ baptism. The same words that define who he is and where his authority comes from. The same words that sent him to the wilderness to be prepared for his ministry. The same words that carried him into towns and villages to preach, to teach, and to heal.
These same words were spoken on the mountaintop in a time of great worry and anxiety for the disciples to remind them that this is the same Jesus they have been following and come to trust. The glory of the Lord brightened his face and clothing to show them from whom he comes. The ancestors appeared to connect him to the unbroken promise of God to be our God, to redeem God’s people, to call us to more faithful ways of living that will bless all of creation.
This is my Son, the voice proclaimed, and this time God also proclaimed … listen to him.
Listen to what he has been saying all this time:
Come and see.
Follow me.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
Let your light shine before others.
Listen to all that he will say:
Let the little children come to me.
The last will be first, and the first will be last.
When you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me.
Listen to what he says right in this moment, in the moment of their worry and fear:
“Get up and do not be afraid.”
When times are scary, listen to him.
When the future is uncertain, listen to him.
When you aren’t sure how the puzzle pieces all fit together,
When the things we’ve counted on, the things we thought were permanent show themselves to be temporary, listen to him.
Because his love is not just permanent, it is eternal. His touch is reassuring. His presence is never failing, and he will walk down mountains with us to the future we can’t even imagine yet.
Where in your life or in our life together might God be showing a new way forward? How can we practice trusting God’s presence and listening to Jesus even when it’s scary?
Scripture Readings
Psalm 99
Matthew 16:21-28 & 17:1-8