“The Enduring Campaign”
A sermon by Sid Burgess for Edgewood PC,
Transfiguration of the Lord Sunday, February 3, 2008
Texts: Exodus 21:12-18, 2 Peter 1:16-21, Matthew 17:1-9
This week voters in 24 states, including Alabama, will get a chance to vote for candidates vying for their party’s nominations for President. It’s called Super Tuesday. The races have become fascinating in recent weeks as candidates have risen and fallen. Of the nine Democrats who offered themselves for the highest office in the land, only two remain as viable candidates. Twelve Republicans suited up for the contest, and now only three potential winners remain on the field. All together, 21 candidates tested the waters, and 16 of them have been sent packing. We’re left to choose among two governors, three senators-- one African-American, one former First Lay, one Baptist preacher, one Mormon, one former pilot POW. By this time next year, one of these candidates will be transformed into commander-in-chief and leader of the free world. With all of the trappings of power--the glittering inauguration, the White House, Air Force One, and “Hail to the Chief”--he or she will become a larger-than-life figure on the world stage.
Most of us have seen this process unfold a number of times, so if you think about it we have a little bit of background to understand what is going on in today’s gospel story. Here Matthew tells us Jesus goes through his own transformation. To be sure, what Matthew describes is a far more dramatic change, and it comes complete with sacred affirmation.
“Up on a high mountain,” Matthew says, Jesus is transfigured--“his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white”(17.2). From out of a cloud a voice is heard, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!”
In Matthew’s telling of the Good News, the transfiguration story anticipates Easter, and the glorious resurrection of Jesus. And here the Church get its instruction from heaven--a simple, straight-forward, “Listen to him.” Listening to Jesus is the first step on the road of discipleship. Through listening as God’s Word is read and proclaimed the Church itself is transformed--from awe and wonder to active engagement with God in the world.
Sounds easy enough until we remember what Jesus said just six
days ago:
that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the
hands of the (the religious leaders), and be killed, and on the
third day be raised (16.21).
At the time, impetuous Peter had an emphatic response, “God forbid it, Lord!”(v. 22) which earned the “Rock” a stern rebuke. The reproof is followed by this extraordinary challenge to us all: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me”(v.24). Surely that was just as hard to hear then as it is today.
By stark contrast, listening to the politicians is easy. They all promise standard variations on President Herbert Hoover’s “chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.” Just imagine one of the five remaining presidential contenders telling us we’re going to have to pay down the huge national debt, right out of our own pockets; that to solve the energy crisis and combat global warming we’re going to have park our cars and take the bus; or, to stem the rising cost of medical care we’ll have to bring back prohibition, this time prohibiting all cakes and cookies, all pies and ice cream.
Very quickly, five candidates would be reduced to four! Right here in Alabama, we’ve got a special place for defeated politicians. It’s called “Buck’s Pocket,” a small, remote canyon in northeast Alabama. It was made famous by the late, former Gov. “Big Jim” Folsom, who went there to “lick his wounds” after losing an election. Now, when a politician in Alabama gets in trouble, folks says he or she his headed to “Buck’s Pocket.”
Isaiah says, “The grass withers, the flowers fade,” and we might add so, too, all of the politicians. They may get a moment in the sun, but sooner for most, later for a few, eventually for all, the cash dries up, the crowds disappear, the polls plummet and the TV lights go dark.
Weigh that against the staying power of Jesus! He, who was proclaimed “Lord of lords and King of kings” (1 Tim. 6.15) remains, after two thousand years, “Lord of lords, and king of Kings.” Oh, the Church concedes, “His lordship is hidden.” And, “The world appears to be dominated by people and systems that do not acknowledge his rule. But his Lordship is real.”
And today, in the event of the Transfiguration, we get a glimpse of his glory. A glimpse of that moment when God highly exalted him and proclaimed, “This is my Son, the Beloved, listen to him.”
With the “splendor and glory of the divine presence,” with “glistening faces, clothes dazzling white, the appearance and disappearance of Moses and Elijah, a voice from a bright cloud . . . .” With all of this it would be easy for us moderns to get lost in the supernatural here. After all, we have all the resources of modern technology to recreate the scene. We can call on the filmmakers. We can summon a light and sound show. We can stage pyrotechnics that would stun the ancient world, maybe even impress our contemporaries.
But we cannot do better than the words of 2d Peter, pointing us “as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts”(v. 19b). Now here is God’s promise to us. That we who have seen the glory of the Risen Christ will seen it again when that glory returns to earth. We do not know when that day will come, “but the glory of Jesus witnessed in the transfiguration promises the glory of all God’s creation in the day to come.” What the world can neither see nor imagine, Christians glimpse by the lamp of the transfiguration.
But glory is not all that we see by this lamp. Jesus endures. The Lordship of Jesus endures not by glory alone, but by his willingness to endure suffering, suffering unto death, on our behalf. Religious leaders set him up. One of his own followers betrayed him, while others abandoned and denied him. Civil authorities condemned and executed him. And that should have been the end of it-- the end of the short-lived campaign. Our Presbyterian Church “Declaration of Faith” proclaims: “In his lonely agony on the cross Jesus felt forsaken by God and thus experienced hell itself for us.” Something no mere mortal could do, or would do.
In his lonely agony on the cross, we believe Jesus was “acting on
behalf of God,”
manifesting the Father’s love that takes on itself the
loneliness, pain, and death that result for our waywardness. In
Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not holding our
sins against us. Each us behold on the Cross the Savior who died in
our place, so that we may no longer live for ourselves but for him.
In him is our only hope for salvation.
For this reason, long after the clamor of the present political season has been silenced. Long after the winner has been proclaimed. Long after the honeymoon is over, and tensions have returned to normal among the power brokers, and with the press and the public. Long after the term has ended, and the winner takes his or her place in history, and the cycle has begun again. Long, long after Jesus Christ will remain standing where he has stood for 2,000 years, and where he will stand at the end of time.
On that day “he will judge all people and nations.”
Evil will be condemned and rooted out of God’s good creation.
There will be no more tears or pain. All things will be made new.
(And) the fellowship of human being with God and each other will be
perfected.
Now to the Ruler of all worlds,
undying, invisible, the only God,
be honor and glory, forever and ever!
Amen
1. Galbreath, Paul, “Theological Themes,” Transfiguration Sunday,
LECTIONARY HOMILETICS, vol. XIX, number 2, p. 2. “Declaration of
Faith, PCUSA, 1977, 1991, IV.5
3. Gaventa, Beverly, TEXTS FOR PREACHING, YR A, p. 170.
4. “Declaration of Faith,” IV.4.
5. “Declaration of Faith,” X.1.