Christ Comes Down: Mark 9:2-8 - Transfiguration Sunday

Photo courtesy of papajia2008 / freedigitalphotos.net

I absolutely despise air travel.  If it weren’t for the sheer speed and convenience of it, I’d never set foot on an airplane again.

Why?  Because the more budget-conscious you are, the more the airline feels entitled to treat you like cattle.  They cram you into a tiny seat in the back of the plane, with barely enough room even to yawn.  Naturally, you’re the last to get off the plane—but you’re also the last the board it if you didn’t pay for priority boarding.

There’s no place like a commercial jet where you can feel so low while flying so high…

First class, on the other hand, is the glory life, right?  You’re on top of the plane and on top of the world.  There’s a reason why we love to climb mountains, and why you’ll pay top dollar for a Mt. Washington property overlooking Pittsburgh or “a deluxe apartment in the sky.” 

Being on top is more than just success; it’s rising above the struggle and hurly burly of the world below.   It is the ascent to glory.

Peter, James, and John knew this the day Jesus took them up to a mountaintop—and they saw Jesus radiating with the glory of God, as he spoke with Moses and Elijah who’d miraculously appeared out of nowhere.  In this moment, there’s no room for doubt that Jesus truly was the Messiah they’d been waiting for.  And it created the very reasonable expectation that Jesus would be returning to the world below as a conquering king who’d destroy the brutal Roman regime and restore Israel to its glory of old. This was the start of something big.

Then comes the voice from heaven: “This is my Beloved Son.  Listen to him!”  And then it’s all over!  Jesus leads them back down into a world that was pretty much the same as it was before, save for one thing: Jesus told them before, and he’ll be telling them again—that he is going to die.  Following Jesus is no glory ride to the high life.

And from a common-sense perspective, that makes no sense.  We often speak of faith as “rising above” all the pains and struggles of life—which would be fine and good if faith drove all our problems away.  But it doesn’t.  Sometimes, faith only adds to the confusion and disillusionment that comes a major trauma in our life.  We ask God, “why?”  “What’s going to happen?”  But we don’t get any answers.

But the Transfiguration event teaches us one of the most important truths about who Jesus is: he is God, leaving behind the power and glory of the mountaintop and his dazzling-white laundry to come into the depths of our human experience.  Jesus goes down to bring light into our darkness.

And what does he do in our darkness?

·         He forgives sins and sinners—including his executioners

·         He becomes one with the poor and forgotten

·         He showers the sick and dying with compassionate mercy

·         He overturns injustice and oppression to create peace

·         He gives us life for the sake of all.

We come into the light of Jesus by doing exactly what the voice from heaven tells the disciples to do: we listen to Jesus.  His Gospel illuminates the darkness of our reality so that we can see Christ by faith.  Yet we don’t just see with our ears.  We see with our whole bodies as his life washes over us in baptism.  We see with our mouths as we eat and drink his body and blood.  We see him in the hands, feet, and faces of ourselves and one another as draws us together as one body to heal this broken and weary world.

Granted, we will have mountaintop experiences in our lives when we see Jesus in miraculous acts that defy all other explanation.  But we’ll spend most of our lives in the depths.  We don’t have to call pain and suffering “good,” but it is in them that God’s amazing grace firmly takes hold.  God is glorified as Christ delivers us from the darkness.

Wednesday, we begin the forty-day journey of Lent.  “Lent” comes from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning “springtime,” to be a time of planting and growth.  (This is almost ironic, considering the fact that we carry such a bleak perception of the season.)  But in order for there to be growth, there must be light.  That light is Jesus, coming into the darkest places of our lives to turn us from sin and form us into his faith, hope, and love.  We can live in freedom from fear to death, evil, and all the pains of life—because when they strike, Jesus will bring us his resurrection.  That’s where the power of Christ bursts forth: cross and tomb.  It is from those very depths that we will rise by the grace of God, from death into life.