Years ago, Ann and I listened to a young person talk about an election campaign then happening. “It doesn’t matter who we vote for,” she told us. “Nothing will ever get better again.” I have to say that, at one level, I share that young person’s assessment of whether the election of any person significantly changes our world for the better.
Only a spiritual renewal, one in which people respond to the Word of the Gospel, turn from sin, and follow Jesus Christ each day will cause us, as individuals and societies, to act differently toward one another. The fact that we human beings still haven’t figured out to live together in love under the reign of God is discouraging. Even for people who claim no belief in God. We all are born with God’s Law on our hearts, meaning that we know that sin, selfishness, and death aren’t the way God intended us to live. Ultimately, it was discouragement over the gap between God’s goodness and our evil to which that young person gave expression.
And she isn’t alone, though some try, on their own, to make the best of it. Like people who say, “The world is going to hell. But I’m going to get what I can for me and my family.” Not, “The world is going to hell and I’m going to trust in Christ and share Him with whoever I can.” Not, “The world is bad, so I’m going to love my family and forgive those who sin against me.” Not, “I’m going to pray that God’s kingdom will come.” No, these people think, “Things are bad and I’m going to get as much good as I can, other people be hanged. Then I'll die." It’s statements and attitudes like these that can, if we’re honest, point us to the fact that it isn’t just the politicians preventing the world from getting better. It’s us too!
The first followers of Jesus Christ had observed many epiphanies--many manifestations of His deity--over the course of His ministry. We’ve seen many recounted by the gospel writers this Epiphany season. Because of Jesus’ epiphanies, the first disciples pinned their hopes for a better world on Jesus.
For five hundred years, God’s people--the Jews--had suffered from discouragement. It had been that long since God had spoken through the prophets, through whom God had promised a Messiah, a Christ, an anointed King. Through those centuries, they endured injustice, foreign domination, the enslavement of a grace-less religion, and punishement for their own sin, idolatry, and self-righteousnss. Many had given up hope that God would ever act. But now, with the advent of Jesus, the veil of despair began to lift. Was God’s kingdom close at hand, after all? Was Jesus the Messiah, the Christ, God’s anointed king, come to make things right?
Eight days before the events recounted in this morning’s Gospel lesson, one disciple, the apostle Peter, was moved by the Holy Spirit to claim Jesus as “God’s Messiah.” [Luke 9:20] Jesus told Peter and the other apostles, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.” [Luke 9:22] The disciples must have felt that the small embers of hope just being brought to flame by Jesus were being doused by His cold wet blanket.
Popular thought said that the Messiah--the Christ--would conquer foreign foes and ensure an era of financial prosperity. (The very things we expect of politicians, by the way.) The Christ, they thought, would govern justly and everyone would live happily ever after. But Jesus understood that the people of His homeland--the people of the world, including you and me--are oppressed by much more than foreign threats or economic challenges, more than poverty or terrorism. All of those ills and many more come from a deeper human problem, the problem that Jesus came to conquer. That problem is sin, our inborn alienation from God, and death, the common enemy of every human being, that springs from sin. “The wages of sin is death,” the Bible tells us.
Jesus was telling Peter: “You’re right. I am the Messiah. And this is what the Messiah does. He bears the weight of Your sin and death on the cross, taking the punishment you deserve, so that as you daily you repent and believe in Me, you have eternal life in the kingdom of God.” The kingdom of God exists for all eternity, starting here in the hearts and wills of people who follow Jesus. Being a member of this kingdom today won’t erase the sins or tragedies of this fallen world. It’s still poisoned by sin and death. But being a member of this kingdom today will give us the faith and courage to live the Christian life: to love God, to love neighbor, to serve others with no expectation of return payment, to call others to follow Jesus with no expectation that they will say yes, to pray in Jesus’ name for both those we love and for those who hate us.
When the risen Jesus lives in us by faith, we can take a world going to hell in our arms and love it with the love of Christ. When you know that the story ends beyond the gates of death with eternal life with God, it changes how you do today! But when you’ve lived for five centuries with discouragement like Jesus’ people had and you’re told that your favorite myth about the Messiah is false, that He will conquer our enemies by death and not warfare before He rises from the dead, you need encouragement.
And so, our lesson tells us that God the Father supplied it! Our lesson tells us that Jesus’ entire visage was changed, transfigured, and that the blazing light of His deity was on full display! What a sight it must have been for the discouraged eyes of Peter, John, and James! The holiness, grandeur, and light of God emanating from every pore of Jesus’ earthly body. Throughout His life up to this point, Jesus had concealed the grandeur of His deity and now, for just a moment, let these three apostles see Him for Who He really is, God the Son, so that later, they could encourage others weighed down by discouragement or a sense of defeat in the face of our sin and death. God was assuring the three disciples (and us) that despite the cross that awaited Jesus--that awaits everyone of us who confesses our sin and follows Jesus, that He’s still God and that the Messiah, after claiming His throne, will reign eternally over all who, by His grace, endure the discouragements of this world, by believing in Him.
Later, Peter wanted to build three booths or tabernacles, one each for Jesus and Moses and Elijah, who were talking with Jesus. Peter wanted to capture this moment and live up on that mountain while the dying, discouraged world went on down below. But God, who Peter was looking at in Jesus, is bigger than all the boxes we try to put Him in. And so God the Father tells Peter, John, and James: “This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him.” (Luke 9:35) Here, God is telling us all: “Jesus is all you have been looking for. This is the one to whom Moses and Elijah were pointing in Old Testament times. This is your king, God in the flesh.” Jesus was and is the Messiah toward whom all of human history had been moving. And Jesus was and is the death of our discouragement and the Author of all lasting hope!
For people discouraged by life, the events of the first Transfiguration Sunday give hope. They must have helped Peter, John, and James and the disciples they led through the pain of Good Friday and Holy Saturday. “Yes,” they could have said, “Jesus has died, but we saw Him on the mountaintop. We know that He is God. But hold on. Hold on!”
Both Peter and John would speak of the Transfiguration years after it happened. “For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty,” Peter would say in 1 Peter 1:16-18. “He received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.’ We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.” And John says of Jesus at the beginning of his gospel, “We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)
And when they saw the risen Jesus, the Holy Spirit would help them to put the pieces of the mystery together. They would understand that the sinless Messiah had to die so that when He rose, He could offer discouraged and otherwise hopeless sinners like you and me an everlasting kingdom filled with the righteousness and peace and presence and love of God.
Take courage in the midst of this world’s darkness, hold on tightly to Jesus, and listen to Him. It’s in Him that encouragement, forgiveness, life, and hope are found. In Jesus alone. Amen
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