6 March 2011

Exodus 24:12-18
Psalm 99
2 Peter 1:16-21
Matthew 17:1-9

“This,” says Peter from atop the Mount of Transfiguration, “this is more like it! This is what I signed on for. Magic! Miracles, Bright lights, and special effects! It’s gonna be a rocky mountain high after all! Jesus, I just knew you didn’t mean it the other day when you chewed me out and called me a name. You are the Messiah Triumphant – and you do indeed have what it takes to be victorious over all our enemies! And this!! This!!!! Moses and Elijah here to anoint you and this! this! you shining like the sun. I was right the other day – there’s not going to be any cross for you. The forces of those other people will not have their way with you – or more importantly, with us. And with Moses and Elijah on our side, you will indeed lead us to victory – and at last we who have had it right all along will justly reign supreme.”

And so Peter, like Moses, who in the name of the God revealed to him upon a mountaintop, commanded the people to build a tabernacle for God to live in – a tabernacle with handles to tote God around in so that the truly spiritual people could keep God in their controllable presence – Peter like Moses, to contain the divine, to preserve the glory-glory-hallelujah desires to build, to build tabernacles, shrines, cathedrals, basilicas – Peter desires to build – lasting monuments to power, might, and triumph, desires to erect on the lawns of every courthouse in the land great granite monuments to remind the people of the most-masculine-god who is forever waiting for the slightest slip-up so that the least of the transgressors be blasted to bits. And so Peter, on the Mount of Transfiguration declares, “Oh yeah, this is what we want! It’s so good to be here, Lord. And we’re here because we’re so good, the special ones, the chosen ones, the truly spiritual ones – right Lord? Right? ”

But then – The Voice. At first – it’s exactly in line with our -- I mean, Peter's -- wants and desires. This Jesus is the One from God. The Beloved. “Yes, we knew it all along. I was right!” Peter exclaims. But the uncontrollable voice won’t stop there. “Listen to him.” And that – that petrifies Peter. Peter actually did hear Jesus the other day – but had thought it all the result of frustration and fatigue on the part of Jesus, too much time out in the sun, dehydration, a bit of bad food perhaps – did hear what Jesus had kept on saying – that he, Messiah, must go to Jerusalem and there undergo great suffering at the hands of the religious leaders, and be killed. But Peter had had enough of such talk. “Let’s Eliminate Negative Thinking, and wel’ll call it LENT for short,” he’d thought, and so, “God forbid it Master!” he’d exclaimed. But Jesus, instead of being grateful for Peter’s defense of him turned on Peter and had snarled, “Get behind me, you hellish being! You are a stumbling block to me; for you have your mind set on human things – power, vengeance, triumph, glory, wealth, success – not the things of God.” And now this – the voice of God – it had to be – speaking from the mountaintop – the place from where God had spoken to Moses and to Elijah . . . . . “Listen to this One – my Beloved in whom I am being well-pleased.” And so Peter and James and John – were crushed – perhaps it was true – as Jesus had said, “If any of you desire to become my followers, you will turn away from your concerned-with-your-self selves – and you will take up the cross – you will die to self and to the culture that claims power and might divine – you will die to the culture that says getting even is good – you will die to the culture that says, ‘we’re number one, deservedly so, damn it, and we’re going to fight to stay there.’” And with sinking, trembling hearts, Peter and the Boyz fall to their knees. The voice of the God of Moses and Elijah and of Jesus too has spoken. The true glory of God will be not be seen it seems in pretty, gold-filigree crosses, nor in Hyde Park’s tastefully designed Easter Cross, appropriately accented with the diamond of your choosing, starting at a mere $495.00. Rather, as Martin Luther asserts in his Heidelberg Disputation the true glory of God can only be seen through the humiliation and shame of a rough and bloody cross, through the scandal of God’s body broken and God’s blood poured out. Oh, yes, there will be a resurrection on the third day, Jesus has said – but it will be just one more display of the glory that the religious self seeks if it is not forever and indissolubly yoked to God speaking from another mount – the mount of suffering and death. No – from now on, if you wish to see God, if you wish to know God’s will – do not look to some tabernacle or building – do not consult some book of rules – nor will God dwell in some pledge on your money nor in any pledge to any flag of any nation. Look to Calvary and Christ upon the cross. There is God’s finest hour – in the God who suffering says, “It is finished – my self-revelation complete. I will not lift a hand my hand in might. I will not favor any tribe or nation. And my proclamation to all who kill me in the most mundane of daily lives – my finished and final word: forgiveness. Today you are with me in Paradise.”

But none of this is soothing to those who hear it upon the Mount of Transfiguration – the terror of the three disciples mounts exponentially on this soon-to-be deserted mount of glory as their futures pass before their eyes. And they know they too shall die, the agony of the cross will be theirs. In one way or another, they too shall come to that final breath where everything that has gone before will be nothing – will not save them – and they too will be filled with terror. But then Jesus, with the way of death soon to be his own, comes and touches – touches and speaks again – the voice of Jesus, the same voice that was in the beginning and whose breath exploded the cosmos into being – the voice of Jesus: “Be raised up. And do not be afraid.” And then they in spite of themselves rise from the vision of their death and with Jesus walk the way of God – down the mountain on their way to another, differently transfiguring, mountain and into the midst of the rabble and the riff-raff – there to be with the least and the last and the lost and the most unlovely and unlovable, to be in their midst, and with healing touch, to proclaim the scandal of the God of infinite mercy and unconditional love. And yes, it is true, these same ones will cry, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” But even that shall be forgiven too.

On the third day after today, those who assemble in this place on Ash Wednesday will once again hear the voice of God that says: “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. All of your striving and your getting and your having, these will not save you. One day every memory of you and all your deeds will disappear, and even your tombstone shall return to the dust.” But here too on Ash Wednesday will be Jesus – to touch us – even as Jesus touches us today – Jesus will touch us and say: “You who have the mark of death upon your foreheads, have no fear. Look to the cross and see that I am with you all the way through your last breath; know by the death-encrusted cross, that in Baptism you have already died with me, and on the third day with me, you are already risen from the dead. Have no fear, for I am with you.”

And the Voice keeps on saying, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well-pleased to be. Listen to him!”