A reflection for Transfiguration Sunday

This sermon was written in 2021, exploring Mark’s account of the events of that day, which can be found in chapter 9, verses 2-9, the Gospel reading assigned in Year B of the Revised Common Lectionary for Transfiguration Sunday. I hope you find it helpful regardless of when you read it.

Do you struggle with impulse control? Do you know someone who does? Do you love someone who does? Sometimes that impulsivity can be endearing. Like when they show up with a gift, something they saw in a store. They present it to you and say, “I thought of you and so I just bought it!” (Back when we used to go to stores to just browse the shelves.) Sometimes that impulsivity can be endangering, however. Like the first-time investors who decided to jump on the GameStop ride 2 weeks ago, buying in at $325 a share, and who now have shares worth about $50. Or the people who watch YouTube videos of other people doing crazy stunts and think, “I bet I could do that.”

If we were able to put the twelve disciples in a police lineup, and the detective asked us, “Can you identify the person who acted in an impulsive manner?” I imagine most of us would point at Peter. Poor old Peter. He just can’t seem to help himself sometimes. Right from the beginning we see it in him. Jesus walks up to him on the shore while he and his brother are casting nets into the sea, Jesus says, ‘Follow me,’ and, “immediately they left their nets and followed him.” And that same kind of impulsivity continued throughout his life.

Now, obviously, they didn’t have YouTube in the first century, but when Peter sees Jesus walking on the water in the middle of a storm, he thinks to himself, “I bet I could do that,” and jumps overboard. It’s endearing. But then Peter looks round at the wind-tossed waves, and I imagine he got that look that Wile E Coyote got when Roadrunner tricked him into running off the edge of the cliff. You know the look – the one he got when he realized he was about to fall. Or, in Peter’s case, about to sink. Because then his impulsivity became endangering.

Or that time when he was with Jesus as he prayed in the garden of Gethsemane, together with James and John, as he is in today’s text. When the temple guards came to arrest Jesus, impulsive Peter pulls out a sword, swings wildly and manages to cut the ear off the High Priest’s servant. Peter’s loyalty endears us to him, but his impulsivity endangers Jesus’s purpose, and Jesus rebukes him for it: “Put your sword back in its place; for all who take up the sword will die by the sword.”

That was often the pattern: Peter would speak or act impulsively, and Jesus would rebuke him. Before Jesus went off to pray in Gethsemane, he told the disciples that they all would abandon him. And Peter blurts out, “Though all desert you, I never will!” Jesus rebukes him, saying, truly I tell you, this very night before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.”

Right before today’s reading, Jesus is on his way to the villages of Caesarea Philippi, and while they’re walking, he does what Rabbis often did while they traveled together: he poses a question to his disciples. “Who do people say I am?” They offer what they’ve heard, then Jesus asks them, “But who do you say that I am?” And it’s impulsive Peter who blurts out, “You’re the messiah!” Which endears us to him yet again. Now, if I’d been Peter, I might have hoped for a “well done. That’s very perceptive of you.” Something like that. But Jesus’ response – as it often is in Mark’s Gospel – is to “sternly order them not to say anything about him.”

Then Jesus finally lays out for them in plain fashion what lies in his future: he’s going to be rejected by the temple authorities and the scribes, suffer terribly, be killed – and then rise again after 3 days. It must have been utterly shocking for the disciples, certainly not what they signed up for. Next to impossible to imagine. But, once again, good old impulsive Peter pulls Jesus aside. And begins to rebuke him! In response to which Jesus rebukes him in stark fashion: “Get behind me Satan! For you’re setting your mind on human things, not on the divine perspective.” Peter’s impulsive boldness to rebuke his rabbi endangers Jesus’ mission. Which might be why Jesus calls him “Satan” – because Satan tempted Jesus to avoid the cross as well, to choose the “easier, softer way” to rule the world. Which would have been to deny his identity as God’s Son.

When they reach Caesarea Philippi, Jesus calls the crowds and disciples to himself, and lays out what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called ‘the cost of discipleship.’ “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” An utterly shocking, scandalous, and – I’m sure – confusing declaration. But this time, Peter wisely keeps his mouth firmly shut.

Well, six days later, Jesus takes Peter, James & John and leads them up an unnamed mountain, where he is transfigured before them. His clothes becoming dazzling white, and then the three disciples see two figures talking to Jesus and somehow they realize it’s Moses and Elijah! Much has been made of their appearance with Jesus, mostly that Moses represents the Law – Torah – and Elijah represents the Prophets, and that Jesus is the culmination of both. That’s probably right. But this week as I read this familiar story, I couldn’t help but wonder what they were talking about – mostly because Mark doesn’t tell us. Are they just iconic figures? Or do they share something else besides being Hebrew bible VIPs?

After all, this isn’t the first time they’ve stood on a mountain and experienced the Divine. and perhaps they did so under similar circumstances. Moses had led his people out of the oppression of Egypt. They had seen the mighty acts of God. And yet the moment they began to worry about their future, they made an Egyptian idol – the golden calf – and ended up in a drunken orgy. That must have been profoundly discouraging for Moses. Elijah believed the whole people had abandoned their covenant with God, and when queen Jezebel threatened to kill him, he fled into the wilderness – utterly discouraged. God called Moses up the mountain, and Moses begged God to show him the divine glory – which God did. Similarly, God called Elijah up the mountain, and the divine glory was manifest to him in profound silence.

And now Jesus is on the mountain.

Perhaps as discouraged as Moses and Elijah had been in their day. Discouraged by his disciples’ lack of understanding of both his identity and his mission. Even when he spells it out explicitly, one of his closest friends tries to rebuke him! And so I wonder if this moment on the mountain is not for Peter, James and John’s sake.

It’s for Jesus’ sake.

Perhaps he needs to hear the testimony of Moses and Elijah. To be encouraged to keep going, from those who’ve been there themselves. Perhaps they said something similar to what Winston Churchill once said: “When you’re going through hell, keep going.” Perhaps their presence with Jesus is a gift from his Father, the encouragement Jesus needs at this pivotal moment in his life. Perhaps. Perhaps not. One thing’s for sure, impulsive Peter is about to put his foot in it again!

Mark tells us that Peter didn’t know what to say, because the three of them were terrified. Quite right. But that’s not going to stop old Peter from opening his mouth again, is it? Oh no. “Rabbi – it’s good for us to be here: let’s make some tents for you and those guys. What do you say?” And picture the scene. Jesus’ appearance is so dazzling you can hardly look at him. And there’s Moses. And that’s Elijah! Not your everyday experience, that’s for sure. Yet the title that falls from Peter’s lips is not the declaration he made 6 days ago – “You’re the Messiah!” No, he addresses Jesus as “Rabbi.” “Rabbi, this is nice isn’t it? We should enjoy it for a while. How about I make you some nice tabernacles.” I get it. He’s terrified, he doesn’t know what to say, so he comes up with that idea for some reason. But this is not endearing. This is endangering. Because this ought to be more than enough for Peter to see who Jesus really is. And maybe he does.

And maybe that’s what terrifies him.

So he says, “Rabbi.” But this time it’s not Jesus who rebukes Peter. For a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” That should do it for old Peter, huh? “Yeah – that’s my Son. You really should listen to what he’s saying. Not keep superimposing your idea of what Messiah should be.” But, of course, it’s not enough.

When they finally get to Jerusalem where all that Jesus has told them is going to happen, Peter once again addresses Jesus as “Rabbi.” And then, even though Jesus told him he’s going to do it, Peter does indeed deny he even knows “the man from Nazareth.” And it breaks him.

At the end of Mark’s Gospel, when the faithful women come to anoint Jesus’ corpse for burial, they encounter a young man dressed in a white robe, and they’re terrified. Much like Peter was on the mountain that day. But this young man – whoever he is – says, “Don’t be afraid. You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. But go, tell his disciples – and Peter – that he is going ahead of you to Galilee, and there you will see him.” I wonder what Peter thought when he heard what the women reported? Maybe he heard something like, “When you’re going through hell, keep going.” Maybe that’s a word we could all stand to hear.

Let me leave you with one last thought about the Mount of Transfiguration. We don’t know what Jesus & Moses & Elijah talked about. But I wonder if at some point Moses looked around and said something like, “You know, strange thing this. You see, I was a bit impulsive once. Angry really. And I did something stupid. So, the last time I stood on a mountain like this, God showed me all this: the land promised to our ancestors Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And God told me I’d never set foot in it. Yet, here I am. There’s a thing.”

Our impulsivity, our failures. Sometimes they’re endearing. Sometimes they’re endangering. But the Good News is that God’s love for people like Peter, for people like Moses – for people like us – is enduring.

Thanks be to God.

(Image: “Transfiguration: Mike Moyers, 2014