Mark 9:2-10, Revelation 1:12-18, Steve Hollaway, February 19, 2012

This Sunday is the climax of the season of Epiphany, the period of celebrating Jesus being revealed to the world, the light of Christ being unveiled for all to see. Today, just before we begin the journey of Lent, the path that takes with Jesus to the cross in preparation for the celebration of Easter, it is traditional to read the story of the Transfiguration. When Jesus goes up on the mountain with three of his students, his essential nature is revealed to them.

The story seems strange to us. It’s not like the miracle stories or the conflict stories that surround it in Mark’s gospel. It strikes us as more mythological, more like a superhero story that requires computer-generated special effects. Jesus, Mark says, was transfigured; the Greek says he was metamorphosed. Jesus morphed from the merely human into something else. The three gospels that record this incident all say that Jesus’ clothes began to shine—they were dazzling white, as white as light. Mark says they were whiter than you could ever get them with any bleach in the world. Matthew says that Jesus’ face shone like the sun.

If you’re a Jew hearing that story in the first century, you’re not going to think that Jesus is radioactive. You’re going to recognize this as the glory of God shining out of Jesus. The Jews called this glory the shekinah. It was that radiant power of God that shined like the sun or like fire. It was in the burning bush. It appeared on Mount Sinai with Moses. It led the people through the desert at night. It would descend on the tent of meeting where God would talk with Moses. It fell like fire on Solomon’s temple when God came to inhabit it. Now this same shekinah glory is on Jesus—but not falling on him from outside; it’s coming out of him from inside. It’s as if the humble fleshly coil gives way for a moment, and the divine glory that has always resided in Jesus becomes visible.

In the second epistle of Peter, he says:

We didn’t repeat crafty myths when we told you about the powerful coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Quite the contrary, we witnessed his majesty with our own eyes. He received honor and glory from God the Father when a voice came to him from the magnificent glory, saying, “This is my dearly loved Son, with whom I am well-pleased.” We ourselves heard this voice from heaven while we were with him on the holy mountain. (2 Peter 1:16-18 Common Bible)

Peter understood what happened as an experience of witnessing Jesus’ majesty. He saw the glory for himself, which was the glory of God. John’s gospel says the same thing in the familiar words of the prologue: “We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (1:18 NIV).

So we can say that on the mountain Jesus revealed his true nature to these disciples. But there is something else going on here. Elijah and Moses are here too. You can understand them to be symbolic of the two parts of the Bible the Jews had in those days: the Law and the Prophets. But I think more likely that these two people are here because they were expected to come before the Messiah in the last days. Elijah, the greatest of the prophets, who did not die but was taken up into heaven in a chariot of fire, was expected to return at the end of history before Messiah brought in God’s reign. Deuteronomy said that a prophet like Moses would be sent, and Jewish tradition understood that Moses had not died in any conventional sense but had been carried by angels into heaven, which is why his grave was never found. So these two appearing from heaven would mean that the end was near. It was almost time for Messiah to rule.

Almost, but not quite, because it was necessary to go down from the mountain into the demon-infested valley and begin the journey to Jerusalem and the cross. What is going to bring about God’s kingdom—and what is going to reveal Christ’s glory—is the cross and resurrection. You can’t uncouple the glory from the suffering. But what is going on in the Transfiguration is a preview of the glory to come in the resurrection. On one level, it is a revealing of Jesus’ essentially glorious divine nature; on another level, it is a revealing of what is about to happen, when through the suffering of the cross the glory of God is going to be unleashed and Jesus’ body will be transformed forever from this temporary body into a glorious body.

Yesterday we buried the remains of David Mitchell. We concluded the graveside service, as we always do, with words from the Book of Common Prayer:

We therefore commit his body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall change the body of our low estate, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body.

Our sure and certain hope is based on the fact that Jesus’ body was transformed on Easter Sunday into a glorious body. Because we trust in Christ and have become one with him by faith, acting out our dying with him in baptism, we have the confident hope that we will be raised like him. We believe that Jesus will change this lowly body of ours even after it has been reduced to dust into a glorious body like the one he had after he rose from the dead.

Some scholars have looked at the story of the Transfiguration in Mark 9 and said that it seems out of place. “This isn’t something that could have happened in Jesus’ lifetime, and then he just turned back into his old self. This must be a post-Easter story. This must be a story about Jesus appearing to some disciples after he rose from the dead, and it just got put out of historical order in the gospel.”

I don’t think so. I don’t think Mark made a big mistake or was trying to fool us. But I do agree that this is a story of an encounter with the Risen Christ. It just happened several weeks before Jesus died. Surely nobody in the 21^st century believes that time is fixed and linear. Everybody knows that time is relative and there are worm holes and time travel—the movies are full of that stuff, and so are the physics books. In traditional Christian theology, the eternal realm where God lives—and where the Risen Christ reigns with him—is outside of time, so the Risen Christ can choose to appear from the eternal realm at any point in history—to Abraham, to Moses, and certainly to his disciples before his death.

Jesus’ glory and his status as the Son of God were revealed first at his baptism, at the beginning of Mark’s gospel. Now in the middle of the gospel, they are revealed again—in his radiant appearance and in the voice from heaven. I think the disciples need to see this before they start down the road to the cross. I think we as readers or hearers of the gospel need to see this before we head to the cross, so that we can understand who it is that is going to be crucified—it is, as Paul says, “the Lord of glory.” And it is this Lord of glory who is going to come roaring back on Easter.

Maybe this mattered to Peter, James, and John, and maybe it matters to the literary structure of Mark, but does it matter to us?

I think it does, because I don’t think you can make it in the Christian life if you don’t have a vision of the risen Christ in all his glory. You remember the surveys we did last summer that tried to measure the quality characteristics of our church. The one characteristic out of the eight that seems to be our weakest is the one they call “passionate spirituality.” That doesn’t mean that we have no spirituality at all—it means that we just aren’t very passionate about it; we aren’t very serious about it; it is not at the center of our lives. You cannot be passionate about Jesus if you just think he was a great teacher or a good man. You cannot be passionate about Jesus if you only believe he died for you. You can only be passionate about Jesus if you have had an encounter with him as a living person and tasted his glory.

It’s not likely that you are going to have an experience like the three disciples where you see Jesus glowing through his clothes with his face all shiny—well, not in any literal way. But you may have a vision of him like that. You may in your imagination and in your prayers see Jesus glorified and radiant and beautiful and worthy of all praise. There are so many praise songs and so many old hymns that teach us to adore Jesus. “Fairest Lord Jesus,” we sang—fairer than the meadows or the woodlands, shining brighter than the sun or moon or starry hosts. “Beautiful Savior!” The Keith Green song says

O Lord, you’re beautiful, your face is all I seek.

For when your eyes are on this child, your grace abounds to me.

Graham Kendrick wrote,

As we gaze on your kingly brightness,

So our faces display your likeness,

Ever changing from glory to glory,

Mirrored here may our lives tell your story: Shine on me.”

And in the lyric by Matthew Bridges,

Crown him the Lord of life: who triumphed o’er the grave,

Who rose victorious in the strife for those he came to save,

His glories now we sing, who died and rose on high,

Who died eternal life to bring, and lives that death may die.

There are other images we can have of Jesus than a vision of him in his glory as the risen Lord.

Some churches focus on the visual image of Jesus on the cross. That emphasizes a central truth of the gospel, that Jesus died for our sins. But when the Reformers removed the crucifixes from the churches it wasn’t only because they objected to graven images which could become idols. We use an empty cross to emphasize that Christ is not forever on the cross; he is not being offered up for us every week in the mass; he is risen and alive and powerfully present in our lives. I think the Reformers understood from their own experience and culture that a crucifix can lead to a morbid obsession with suffering. It is one thing to understand that I must share Christ’s suffering in order to share his glory, but it is another thing to see my whole life in terms of suffering—as if the Christian life is all about enduring pain for others. You try to live like that. I’ve been down that road, trying to be my own version of Mother Teresa in Manhattan, and I can tell you that if all you’ve got is a vision of Christ suffering as your model and you have no vision of Christ overcoming, you are not going to make it.

Another visual image of Jesus I grew up with was the contemplative Jesus. Hanging on the wall above the kitchen table was Warner Sallman’s “Head of Christ,” the most popular picture of Jesus of all time. (You’d recognize it if you saw it.) It was just a little effeminate, like a Breck shampoo ad, and Jesus looks very thoughtful and peaceful. The famous Rembrandt face of Jesus is not too different in tone. It’s Jesus as man of prayer. Jesus as guru. There’s nothing wrong with it, but I don’t think it’s strong enough to keep you going in hard times.

A third familiar image of Jesus is the friendly Jesus. Our stained glass window is one of those: Jesus saying “Come unto me.” He is welcoming and compassionate. Some modern pictures of Jesus are almost creepy in their familiarity—Jesus with a grin like Tim Tebow, or Jesus as a guy you’d like to have a beer with. I don’t really object to friendly Jesus, and he may be the image you want to use in evangelism, but he falls short of the Christ of glory.

If you look at the icons of the Greek church, you are struck by the face of Jesus you see there, over and over. He is looking right at you. He is a little stern, maybe, but he is clearly in charge. Sometimes he is sitting on a throne, and he is called “Pantocrator,” ruler of all. What the Eastern church is focused on is the Risen Christ. You don’t have to like the style of art to see the power of thinking of Jesus risen and ruling rather than dying perpetually, or praying in human form to the Father, or inviting you to join the church.

When you begin to read the book of Revelation, written to encourage people who were facing persecution and suffering, you are hit right between the eyes with a picture of the risen Christ. John sees him with hair as white as snow, with eyes like blazing fire; his feet glow like bronze in a furnace; his voice is like the sound of rushing waters; out of his mouth comes a sharp, double-edged sword, and his face is shining like the sun. When John sees him, John falls at his feet as though dead. (1:14-16)

That’s what happens when you see Jesus in his glory. When Peter was out fishing with Jesus one day and Jesus miraculously filled his boat with fish, Peter realized who he was dealing with. He fell on his knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” (Luke 5:8) The Pharisee Paul thought he was a good man, obeying God’s law, and he was on his way to get rid of some heretics when all of a sudden he had a vision of the risen Jesus in a bright light. It was that vision that changed everything for him.

Friends, I want our church to be passionate about Jesus. I want there to be a level of excitement and commitment when you think about Harbor Church. I want to see islanders coming to faith in Christ. I want it to become necessary to fix up this baptistry because we are using it so often. But none of this is going to happen until we have a vision of Jesus in all of his glory, until we see him as he really is: radiant, beautiful, powerful, holy, worthy of worship and worthy of our love.