GLIMPSES OF GLORY
A sermon preached by
Rev. Dr. Randle R. (Rick) Mixon
First Baptist Church, Palo Alto, CA
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Texts: Mark 9:2-10
Today marks the end of one season of the church year with another beginning on Wednesday. Today marks the end of the season of the church year known as Epiphany. Epiphany, from the Greek for “to manifest” or “to show,” is the season in which we celebrate the coming of the Light into the world. It begins with the journey of the Magi as they follow a distant but uniquely brilliant star to the place where God’s illuminating Word takes on the human form of a baby born to peasant folk. Epiphany is the season in which we catch glimpses of God’s glory as it breaks into the waiting world in the person of Jesus, the Christ, God’s beloved son. Fittingly, this season traditionally ends with one of the gospel accounts of the Transfiguration. The light of that star that shone over Bethlehem’s stable now glows from Christ, himself, in the moment of his transfiguration. As the old hymn sings, “The Light of the World is Jesus.”
We note that we have been here before, on this mountainside, as the stars begin to shine and the moon rises above the summit. This is familiar territory for us, journeying with Jesus to the mount of Transfiguration. It’s an old, old story that may have lost some of its luster through centuries of retelling. But Peter, James and John, frozen in the timelessness of this tale, experience it over and over anew, as a night to remember, a true and significant mountaintop experience. Here heaven touches earth in ways which they had never dreamed, ways for which they are totally unprepared, ways that leave them, mouths gaping, like the proverbial deer caught in headlights. Perhaps, we might yet feel some of that ourselves if we would open to the mystery of that moment once again shared.
What has the writer of Mark’s gospel showed us so far? What glimpses of glory have we had to date? Even before the disciples enter on the scene, we have heard that Jesus “saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove” and the very voice of God sounding as he stepped from the baptismal waters. In Mark’s Gospel, Epiphany begins as God shows God’s self, uttering these revelatory words, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased” (Mark 1:10-11.) We hear same words echoed to a wider audience on the mount of Transfiguration, bringing the season of Epiphany to a close and moving us to a new dimension of discipleship. There the disciples are shown that Jesus is indeed God’s beloved Son and they are instructed to “listen to him.”
But before we get to this moment, Mark has showed us other glimpses of Christ’s glory. We have heard that after forty days of testing in the wilderness, angels ministered to Jesus. We have seen the miraculous response of common fishermen and other peasants who left their daily routines because Jesus said, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people” (Mark1:17.) We have heard how he astounded those in the synagogue in Capernaum with his teaching. We have witnessed him exorcising demons, healing the sick, even lepers. When a group brings their paralyzed friend to him, he pushes the envelope by uttering what appear to be blasphemous words, “Son your sins are forgiven” (Mark 2:5.) We have heard him challenge rigid religious authority and break the time-honored rules. We have seen him calm a great windstorm, stilling an angry sea and we’ve seen him walking on the water. We have seen him feed the multitude with five fish and a small loaf of bread and witnessed his raising young girl from the dead. We have heard him mesmerize crowds with incredible fables and proclaim, with authority, the in-breaking realm of God. We have also found him on his knees, long before sunrise, praying for strength and God’s guidance, and we have been baffled, along with the first disciples, as he has enjoined them to silence about all these miraculous manifestations and glimpses of glory.
These are just some of the highpoints of the first 8 chapters of Mark’s gospel. Clearly, this Jesus is a remarkable man, compelling for many, threatening to others. At one moment, his unfolding life and ministry bring moments of insight and joy for his faithful followers; at others, they are baffled by his behavior and his teaching. We must remember that, more than anything, these disciples had their preordained notions of whom the Messiah was and what he was to do. The signs and wonders that Jesus provided gave them great hope that sooner rather than later he would reveal the fullness of his power, restoring Israel to its former glory, in the process righting every wrong, especially the ones that had been perpetrated personally on them. In that, day they would surely have it better than they had ever had it before. So, you can imagine their confusion and frustration when he “began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again” (Mark 8:31.) This made no sense to them; this was not their messianic vision at all. Kate Huey says that “Peter and the others have high expectations for the Messiah, and suffering and death aren't on the list” (Kate Huey, Sense of the Sacred, Weekly Seeds, iucc.org, 2009.)
Nor were they prepared to hear, “If any want to become my followers, let deny themselves, and take up their cross and follow me.” Hadn’t they already left family and home and livelihood to follow him? Surely the payoff was near. Surely their day was coming soon. They did not want to know that “…those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and that of the gospel, will save it. For indeed what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?” (Mark 8:34-36.) This was not what they signed on for, was it? Undoubtedly, some began to drift away.
Still, the faithful remained. They must have seen something in him, something in his life and ministry, something in his power and authority, something in his compassion and spiritual depth, that compelled them to stay. Looking into his eyes, they still caught glimpses of glory and they desired to come closer, to know more, even to see God more clearly, as he so obviously did. When he invited Peter, James and John to go with him on one of his midnight quests for prayer and spiritual nourishment, they were only too willing to go with him. They wrapped their cloaks about them and climbed the rugged mountain.
His messianic role, his claim to be the very Son of God continued to unfold before their weary eyes. There on the windswept mountain, they saw a new glimpse of glory, a vision of rapture that burst on their sight, surpassing anything they had ever known. Not only was Jesus’ appearance transformed so that “his clothes became dazzling white,” there appeared with him Moses and Elijah. The great lawgiver and the great prophet, the promised forerunners of the Messiah, stood on the mountainside talking with him. In a grand symbolic gesture, the law and the prophets were fulfilled in their presence in the person of Jesus. Did they grasp what they were being shown? Surely not fully. They were dumbfounded, terrified, really. They didn’t know what to say. Finally, Peter makes the deliciously silly suggestion that they patch together three tents and stay right there on the mountainside, bathed in glory. Perhaps he hoped that the fullness of God’s glory was being revealed before their very eyes, so there was no need to return to the real world that they had left down below.
No sooner has uttered his suggestion than the Shekinah, the cloud of God’s presence, covered the mountain, and that same voice, heard at Jesus’ baptism sounds again, “This is my Son, the beloved. Listen to him.” Immediately the cloud vanishes, taking the whole glorious vision with it. Once again it is just Jesus, Peter, James and John, standing together on the mountain among the receding stars and waning moon. As they made their weary way back down the mountainside, they were challenged with the increasingly familiar word that they were to tell no one what they had experienced. But there is now a new dimension to the instruction. Now they are to keep the secret until the Son of Man has “risen from the dead. So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead could mean.”
Because we have 2000 years of familiarity with and speculation about this question to draw on, we are not left in the same quandary that those first disciples faced. We know the story of the Passion; we know the ignominy and the glory of the Cross; we know the record of the Resurrection; we know that the Messiah, the Son of God, turned out to be a very different being with a very different message about a very different realm of God than first followers imagined. Not the least because of the faithful witness of those first followers, we see further and know more than they did or could. Yet, one may also wonder if our wisdom is that much deeper, our vision that much clearer, our desires that much different than theirs. We, too, are only given glimpses of glory. Sometimes this is due to our own shortsightedness and stubborn insistence on having it our way; sometimes it is because no one can truly see the face of God and live. Kate Huey again suggests that “We live our lives mostly down here on the ground, often unaware of the wondrous, transformative power of God at work in the world, even in the life of the church” (Kate Huey, Sense of the Sacred, Weekly Seeds, iucc.org, 2009.) And Bruce Epperly says of this text that “The transfiguration reminds us that Jesus is always more than meets the eye. As God’s beloved child, he radiates the light of creation. But, transfiguration challenges us to remember that we can see more than meets the eye. We can receive divine vision, opening us to the holiness of ourselves, others, and all creation” (Bruce G. Epperly, Process and Faith Lectionary Commentary, Last Epiphany, 2009.)
In some ways we walk a more precarious path than those first disciples. The gods of materialism and rationalism, of science and technology, of military might and abuse of power, of privilege and self-satisfied complacency, of fill in your own blank, call us with their siren songs and it is difficult to know which way to turn. Following some ancient, rabble-rousing, itinerant preacher up a windy mountain in the dead of the night hardly seems like the path to glory. And surely there is no glory in the road that leads to the cross. These are good enough stories, but do they really speak to us today?
But if they don’t, where may we encounter the holy, where will we find ourselves listening for the voice of God’s beloved son, where might we gain true glimpses of glory today? It’s not impossible that, like the disciples of old, we might find ourselves walking some path not unlike the way that led them from the mount of Transfiguration to the Mount of Olives to the Calvary’s mountain and beyond. As we walk, we may also wonder what this is all about. We might even find ourselves questioning what this man who speaks of rising from the dead could possibly mean. This walk is one of the key functions of the season that we enter on Wednesday, the season of Lent.
Light has come, God’s realm has begun to break in, perhaps even into our lives. We have celebrated the Word made flesh, now dwelling among even us. What can this all mean? Glimpses of glory - it’s maddening at times that that’s all we get; at other times even those glimpses are more than we can handle. What sort of glory can there be in following a king who hangs with sinners and troublemakers, who has compassion for the wrong kind of folk, who is lavish and indiscriminate with his healing power, who challenges conventional spiritual practices and religious traditions to the point it gets him executed, who loves his enemies and forgives his faithless followers? We have forty days ahead to ponder these things, to acknowledge our limitations, to confess our sins, to repent, to change, to take appropriate transforming actions if we will.
In considering the change of church seasons and preparation for our Lenten journey, Tom Wright suggests that “…each of us is called to do what the heavenly voice said: Listen to Jesus, because he is God’s beloved son. And as we learn to listen, even if we sometimes get scared and say all the wrong things, we may find that glory creeps up on us unawares, strengthening us, as it did the disciples, for the road ahead” (Tom Wright, Mark for Everyone, p. 117.)