Memorial United Methodist Church

Memorial United Methodist Church
White Plains, New York 10605

The Transfiguration

A Sermon by Joe Agne, Pastor
Based on Luke 9:28-43a
February 14, 2010 (Not edited or proofread)

I heard a story about a person considered an outcast by her family – a young woman who left her family in the Midwest and headed to California. She lived what her family considered, derogatorily, the California lifestyle. I don’t know what that is and the family may not either. At any rate she became the outsider of her family. They only heard from her, they said, when she needed help, usually financial. They usually helped her but the price she paid was an increase in the negative opinion the rest of the family had about her. A family occasion occurred in which this outsider was present with the whole family along with her many friends, her posse. There was difficulty in the posse and the family learned that their family member was the source of a great deal of care within the posse. The group counted on her. She was a leader within the group. When I heard the story the teller said in was as if the family member was transfigured right before them. They learned things about her that had been hidden from them. They changed their attitude to their family member. They also thought about how their prejudgments had kept them from seeing her in her fullness. The transfiguration they experienced didn’t change their family member so much as it revealed their family member. They were changed. A transfiguration can transform those who experience it.

 Jesus is Transfigured

Jesus went up on a mountain to pray. He was with his best friends, Peter, John and James. While he was praying the appearance of his face changed and his clothes became dazzling white. Jesus’ friends were really tired but this experience was keeping them awake. Then, suddenly, Moses was with Jesus and so was Elijah. Jesus was talking with Moses, who delivered their people from bondage in Egypt, and Elijah, the greatest of their prophets. Jesus’ friends knew these two men had been dead along time, but there they were, talking with their friend, their leader. Peter, John and James were pretty excited about this experience – Jesus transfigured and in the presence of two of the most important people of their history and faith. Peter loved this experience. We don’t know why. Somehow it seemed to give authenticity to what Jesus and his movement was all about. Peter wanted to build tents over the experience to make sure it wouldn’t go away. He never got his tents built and the Moses and Elijah went away. Before Moses and Elijah went away a cloud appeared over all of them and a voice came from the cloud saying to Peter, John and James, “This is my child, my beloved, listen to him.”

Jesus was not changed by this experience but his friends were transformed. They came down the mountain with Jesus and now better understood what they were about as leaders in Jesus’ movement. It is really important to look at the first thing that happened when they got down the mountain. A man confronted Jesus. His son was in need of healing. The disciples had failed to offer the healing. The man still wanted healing. Jesus healed the son and returned him to his father. Why is this important? The closest followers of Jesus were not perfect. They were not always able and ready. They messed up. They failed. Sometimes Jesus had to bail them out. Even after the transfiguration experience they still got things wrong. Later in the story, when the pressure was on and Jesus’ life was on the line, Peter denied he even knew Jesus. The others went to sleep when Jesus asked only one thing at the end of his life – please stay away, please keep watch. 

Here are two experiences of transfiguration,. I suggest somr learnings:

1. Transfigurations don’t happen very often – I think a few times in a lifetime. Probably the longing for a transfiguration experience mitigates against it happening. The family of the first story didn’t say to each other, “Let’s have a transfiguration experience, today.” It happened. They have an opportunity to be transformed by their experience. They don’t have to be. That part is up to them. The disciples didn’t say, “Hey, let’s go up the mountain and maybe today Jesus will be transfigured like Moses and Elijah once were.” No, they went to do an every day thing for them – they went to pray. They had an extraordinary experience that had a chance to impact their ordinary lives.

2. The Jesus movement from its very beginning is built on people like you and me. We do have mountaintop experiences that really matter to us. We want them to happen again and again and when they happen we want them to be long-lasting. We make mistakes. We don’t do what we intend to do. The things we are sure we would never do are the very things we do. We fail. We sleep when we are needed to be awake. We let down parents whose children need us. Yet, we are like the disciples in our imperfection and in the fact that we are the people that keep this movement going on.

3. Transfiguration experiences and transformation experiences need each other. Neither exists without the other. It is tempting to seek all transfiguration experiences in life and never change ourselves. It is also tempting to try to be transformed and transforming without experiencing any transfiguration experiences. The result can be exhaustion and lack of vision. In my experience, many Christians, thought by many to be more conservative, seek mountaintop experience and tend to think they don’t need to be involved in the transformation of themselves and the world. Many other Christians, thought by many to be more progressive, tend to think that the transfiguration is not the real stuff of the faith, but transformation is. Most likely we have much to learn from each other. The persons who have impacted me the most in my life have been people who hold together transfiguration and transformation.

It is Lent, coming this Wednesday. Let’s head up the mountain to pray and stay in the wilderness for forty days. There might me a transfiguring experience for us this year. We might even be transformed. Who knows? At any rate – let’s spend the time praying together.