Cultivating A Listening Life

Transfiguration Sunday

2 Kings 2:7-12

Mark 9:2-9

Jesus invited only his closest friends up the mountain.  Peter, James, and John.  And well, us too, because we’re reading it.  So up we go.  Away from the crowds and the villages.  We step from boulder to boulder, ascending to a place few get to go.  Jesus is leading us, out ahead of us, we only see his backside.

We finally arrive in a small clearing far up the mountain, where Jesus finally stops climbing and turns toward us.  Before we can speak, we see something so strange we cannot describe it properly.  Something began to glow in him and eventually engulfed him in dazzling, brilliant light.  He was still there.  But there was a splendor that shone from his face, his body, and his clothes.

 

We were terrified!  What’s going on?  Who is this?  Is this the same teacher who invited us up the hill not a half hour ago?  What shines in him such that we can’t even gaze on him directly?  For several minutes we shielded our eyes from the glare.  When we gathered our wits to look back in his direction, we doubled our amazement!  Now he was talking with two others, even though no others had climbed with us.

We were nervous and scared.  We had no idea what were we supposed to be doing.  We put our heads together and tried to make sense of things.  It dawned on us that Jesus was not speaking to fellow travelers who’d come up by a different way.  He was speaking with two giants from the Bible – Elijah and Moses.  Both Elijah and Moses experienced the glory of God on a mountain.  Today’s reading from 2 Kings is a scene of Elijah being whisked to heaven in a chariot, as Jesus would be after being raised from the dead.  Moses embodies the Law.  Elijah embodies the Prophets.  And Jesus is the fullness and fulfillment of that story.

It was like God was peeling back the covers to show us the glory and power of Jesus the Messiah.  In spite of all Jesus’ teaching about the kingdom of God, and his ministry of healing and casting out demons, we had never seen this clearly.  Something about him had always remained hidden.  But why is this hidden glory being shown only to us?  Why not to everyone? 

We weren’t sure how long we’d remain on the mountain.  Surely we’d be here several days, so we could soak it all in, get used to it, ask some questions.  So Peter spoke up for us, “Rabbi, we’re glad to be here for this.  We’ll build some tents for the next few nights – we’ll make one for you, and one for Elijah and Moses as well.”

But before he even finished speaking a thick cloud enveloped us.  Out of the cloud we heard a voice, “This is my Son, whom I love.  Listen to him.”  When the cloud lifted from us, the other two were gone.  And Jesus was no longer dazzling.  He could be looked on as before.

Stunned, speechless, motionless, we couldn’t make heads or tails of what had just happened.  Jesus walked towards us, then between us, then past us, headed back down the mountain.  We watched until he finally looked back and motioned for us to follow.  And down we went.

This story is a “theophany” – which means a visible manifestation of God.  In a theophany, God’s light and power become manifest in Jesus in a visible way.  The voice from the cloud confirms the visual experience, “This is my Son, whom I love, listen to him.”  This scene allows a peek into the mystery of Jesus’ life that is withheld during his ministry.  Only the voice from heaven at his baptism, and perhaps the dazzling clothing of the angel sitting in the empty tomb – only here do we get a chance to see past the ordinary.

So now you’ve been up the mountain with Peter, James, and John.  But when you’re given a powerful, life-defining experience of God, you can’t take a picture of it.  You can’t freeze it and carry it around.

We’d like to, of course.  Life would be easier, I think.  We’d stay closer to the center of the path that give us life.  It’s kind of like marriage – many people fall in love and have some amazing experience.  You and your lover travel somewhere like Venice and sail through the canals on a gondola.  You eat a wonderfully simple meal of fish in a little restaurant right on St. Mark’s Square as the sun fades over the horizon of the beautiful blue ocean.  You can’t top that.  That’s as good as it gets.  You’d like to bottle it.  You’d like to capture it and recreate that feeling every single day for the rest of your married life.  But you can’t.  Because at some point, one of you gets the flu, or diarrhea.  And at that point you almost can’t remember the gondola ride at all.

Did you notice what Peter wants to do?  He wants to build shelters or tents up on the mountain.  He can’t believe his eyes.  He wonders whether he’s eaten an underdone potato.  Or a hallucinogenic mushroom.  So he rubs his eyes and looks again.  Yep, they’re all still there – Elijah and Moses talking with Jesus.  So Peter assumes that this is going to last.  He thinks they’ve been taken up the mountain to settle in and stay for awhile.  OK, so let’s put up some tents and settle into this life where all doubt and confusion has been removed. 

He’s like our kids, when they spend the night with a friend on a Friday, and sure enough – what do they ask on Saturday morning.  Can he spend the night with us tonight??  It’s so good.  We’ve had so much fun.  Why can’t we do it just one more night?

This transfiguration scene comes right in the middle of Mark’s gospel.  Up the mountain, for just a flash, we see Jesus lit up and dazzling with the light that shines in him.  But only a few see it.  And for just a moment.  For most of us, most of the time, God’s life is hidden in him.  And for that matter, the reality and power of Jesus Christ are hidden under cover of the ordinariness of our lives.  Most of the time, you will have to live as his follower without any clear vision of where he is or what he’s doing.  You will have to move forward and make decisions back down in the valley, plagued by confusion and uncertainty.

The transfiguration of Jesus on the mountain is a wonderful part of Jesus’ story.  It’s just that you can’t stay here.  It’s time to head back down the mountain.  Back down to school, and work, and washing dishes, and doing the laundry, and paying bills, and running errands, and walking the dog.

We can’t stay up on the mountain, but we do have work to do.  In the cloud we heard the voice of God, “Listen to him.”  We followers of Jesus Christ are to cultivate a life of listening.  So are you listening to his teaching?  Or have you given your attention to so many other life shaping voices that his voice fails to register with you?

Some of you are thinking, “I don’t even know what we’re talking about.  Listen to him?  I don’t even know how that’s supposed to happen.  How am I to listen for an ancient Jew or a figure in a Bible story?  He never seems to say anything.”

That’s true, in a way.  He is hidden in the ordinariness of your life.  He blends in, the quiet presence of love so unobtrusive that most do not recognize him.  If you catch him at all, it will be only in your peripheral vision.  But he is neither ancient nor fictional.  He’s the living Christ, crucified, raised from the dead, and glorified.  He permeates all things, so you cannot escape him. 

But he makes himself especially available in the gathered worship of his followers.  He appears in the reading of Scripture.  Especially in the reading of the gospels.  So “Listen to him” means . . . listen to his teaching about God’s kingdom.  Listen to his teaching that the Messiah must suffer, be rejected, killed and then raised.  Listen to his teaching that all who want to follow him will have the same trouble he had with the authorities.  Listen to his call, his loving invitation, to come and be healed, and welcomed, and blessed.

This living Christ, this crucified, resurrected, glorified Christ also appears for us in the meal we share today.  During his ministry he gives us a simple meal in which we find him in the bread and cup we share.  Don’t get me wrong.  It’s not a theophany.  He’s still hidden in bread and cup.  But he has promised to be available to us there.

There is one detail in this story that I don’t want you to miss.  Right in the middle of an extraordinary experience of the radiance of Christ’s glory, the gospel writer describes his dazzling clothes as “whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them.”   Right in the midst of the splendor, our minds are called back to the ordinariness of life.  We have jobs.  Someone’s job is to bleach clothes.  Someone files forms.  Someone sells cars.  Someone prepares food.  Someone cares for children.  Someone raises cattle or crops.  Someone sells insurance or advertising.  Someone teaches.  And the glory of the risen Christ is hidden in the ordinariness of your regular old life.

You will not have time to be up the mountain.  You will have to listen for him back down in the village.  You will have to listen again and again for the surprising news that God’s Messiah and Beloved Son must suffer, die, and be raised from the dead.  You will have to listen to the hard-edged news that there is no easy, comfortable way to follow him.  But if you listen you will hear.  You will hear him welcoming you into a new kingdom of love, into a healed life, into a new family.  Listen to him.