02/27/22 - Bright Shining Faces - Westminster Presbyterian Church Westminster Presbyterian Church | Serving God and others with open mind, hands and heart - 02/27/22

02/27/22 – Bright Shining Faces

BRIGHT SHINING FACES

February 27, 2022
Transfiguration Sunday
Ex. 34:29-35; Ps. 99; 2 Cor. 3:312 -4:2; Lk.9:28-43
Rev. Denise Clark-Jones

The word for the day, or even the week, is Transfiguration. This past week it has seemed to me that the whole world has been transfigured. Commentators of world events have declared we are now in the Second Cold War. The phrase “nuclear option” has once again reared its ugly head. We have heard tales of valor exhibited by Ukrainians when confronted with approaching Russian troops, but we have also watched scenes of tearful children and wives saying goodbye to fathers and husbands knowing they may never see them again. On the day we celebrate the power and glory of God, we have witnessed the evil unleashed by one man obsessed with showing the world his power. The word, freedom, has been diminished by our petty, self-centered grievances, but this week we have seen what freedom means in the context of life and death.

While the two transfiguration stories we have read this morning put God’s power and glory on grand display, each occurs in the context of human sin. In our Old Testament reading, we heard about Moses’ second trip to the mountaintop to receive the second set of tablets containing God’s Ten Commandments. During Moses’ first trip, the Israelites melted down gold, plundered from Egypt during their escape from slavery, to form a golden calf to worship. Becoming fearful in their leader’s absence, they created their own god. Moses was so enraged he smashed the first set of tablets. Jesus’ trip to the mountaintop with Peter, James, and John to pray comes after his first announcement to his disciples that he will soon die. If you remember that story, Jesus gave Peter quite a rebuke for doubting his words. “Get behind me, Satan!” We can empathize with Peter because who doesn’t want to skip the hard stuff and go straight for the glory?

The shining countenances of Moses and Jesus symbolize their encounters with God. The parallels between the Old Testament and gospel reading are hard to miss. Jesus, Peter, James, and John climb up a mountaintop as did Moses when God gave him the Ten Commandments. Luke’s first audience would have easily recognized that Moses and Elijah represented the Law and the Prophets. The gospel writers, placing the Transfiguration just after Jesus made the first announcement of his impending death, foreshadow his resurrection in that both Moses and Elijah were taken up to heaven without their death being witnessed. There was no grave that held the dead bodies of either Elijah or Moses, giving rise to the popular belief that they would return to earth.

Only in Luke do we read the subject of the conversation between Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. Luke tells us they were speaking of Jesus’ “departure” – his death and resurrection. The Greek word for “departure” used was “exodos.” Like Moses, Jesus would lead an “Exodus,” which would liberate and redeem his people. As at Jesus’ baptism, God declares: “This is my Son,” but this time God adds the imperative: “Listen to him.”

Jesus was giving his disciples a visible sign of his post-resurrection glory. Jesus was transfigured to show the glory he shares with God, while he is also present with his disciples in human form. In one fleeting moment, the disciples see earth and heaven, timelessness and time, transcendence, and earth-bound reality. Having the awesome experience of the divine touching the earth, Peter didn’t want to leave. He was so caught up in the glory of it all, he didn’t really catch what God meant by saying: “Listen to him.”

Down from the mountaintop, the Israelites were celebrating the Feast of Booths or Sukkot. A “sukkah” is the Hebrew word for booth or tent. This festival celebrated the gathering of the harvest and the miraculous protection God provided the Israelites after they were freed from slavery in Egypt. Wherever they went, before they had a temple, the Israelites carried the ark of the covenant, which held the Ten Commandments. A tent was their traveling worship site. Peter thought to himself: “Wow, this is another miracle, let’s build a sukkah. If Peter had had a smartphone, he would have taken a picture and pasted it on his wall in hopes it would go viral. Preoccupied with his attempt to preserve this experience, Peter did not pay enough attention to what God was revealing to him.

In Luke’s gospel, when we pray, we are going to the mountaintop, the place where we go to experience God’s presence. One of the most memorable scenes broadcast from Ukraine this week showed a woman who kneeled in a town square to pray. She was immediately joined by more people, who knelt beside her, forming a circle. There are times when all we can do is pray, to put our lives in God’s hands to serve in whatever way God calls us. When we pray, we are opening ourselves to be transformed from our worldly existence to being in God’s kingdom.

Jesus explained to Peter that faith cannot be compartmentalized. True faith transforms us, and that transformation transfigures our whole lives. True faith allows us to hear Jesus’ voice over all the competing voices in our society and within our own heads. And, when we really listen, we are compelled by the awesome mystery of God’s glory to follow Christ’s path down the mountain and through the valleys to heal, to comfort, to lift up, to draw in those in need. Our mission proceeds from our prayer and worship. If we don’t go to the mountaintop to seek God’s presence, God’s voice, we won’t have anything to bring down the mountain with us to show the world God’s glory, God’s love. As Moses’ shining face and Jesus’ full illumination needed witnesses to spread the news of God’s powerful presence, we are also to be witnesses for others.

Paul encouraged the congregation in Corinth using the same imagery of the veil employed in our reading from Deuteronomy. The veil represents that which obscures God from our sight that separates heaven from earth, holiness from the profane. Paul exhorted the congregation not to lose sight of Jesus and the mission to which he called them. In Jesus, the full holiness of God had been revealed to them. The congregation was, and we are, called to take our mountaintop experience and go down into the valleys to do what Jesus did. The first thing Jesus did was to confront evil in the form of demons who had afflicted a young boy. The disciples tried, unsuccessfully, to heal the boy. Their encounter with the divine had not changed them enough to become conduits for God’s healing power. Walter Brueggemann, a favorite biblical scholar of mine, as you probably have observed, commented on how Luke, in story and parable, demonstrates how God’s holiness breaks through in the world. He writes:

“It happens where a son is welcomed home, where a neighbor
is honored and cared for, where a [prostitute] is loved, where
a leper is touched and cleansed, where a crowd is fed, where
a guilty man is forgiven, where a crippled woman stands up
straight and laughs and dances. The claim about the glory of
God in the life of Jesus is not mystical, supernatural voodoo,
but it is the confidence of the church that in the life of Jesus,
we see all that God intends and wants and acts and asks of us.”

(The Collected Sermons of Walter Brueggemann, Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, KY, 20ll, vol.1, p.66)

Paul claimed that the congregation was being transformed into the image of God. This was not being accomplished by a congregational self-help program, but by God. Seeing Jesus “unveiled,” Paul claims we are drawn to transformation into that image, into the holiness powered by the Spirit.

It will be interesting to see how this country responds when asked to be inconvenienced by the consequences of sanctions on Russia. How will we, as a people, who seem unwilling to sacrifice anything for the greater good of our communities, respond when faced with higher costs of fuel so that our European NATO partners are not dependent on Russian oil and gas? Will more groups form, like the truckers headed to the capital to disrupt our own economy and cause more price increases over their complaints? Time will tell.

Today we will come to Christ’s table to remember his Last Supper, to join with our fellow believers, past and present, at Westminster and throughout the world, including Christians in Ukraine and Russia. We come to experience a foretaste of the heavenly banquet in eternity with God. Like the experience of the Transfiguration witnessed by Christ’s disciples, all at once the past, present and future meet at a single point. By God’s grace we are given this holy sacrament to be witnesses to the unveiled glory of God in Jesus Christ; to remember all he accomplished for us in his life, death, and resurrection; and to be empowered to do the tasks set before us.

Amen. May it be so!

My Story

“Why am I a member of Westminster Presbyterian Church? Two words keep floating up in a rather persistent way – “home” and “family” – and I realized that it is an inescapable fact that is what this church means to me. During my 40 years here, so many life events have happened and Westminster has been there for me through all those times – good and bad. It has been my home and family. They say “home is where the heart is” and I’ve found the heart of Westminster to be as open and warm as a family’s!”