"Listen"

Rev. Matthew Miller

FROM THE GOSPELS Matthew 17:1-9 Click here to watch the Sermon "Listen."

There are two things that happen when Jesus takes Peter and the brothers James and John up the high mountain of our reading this morning. The first is so big and obvious and overwhelming that it could literally blind us to the second.

Jesus and the disciples that follow, have been all over the countryside of Galilee together watching and learning from him. It’s been an education in the miraculous. Crowds have been fed their fill on a few meager provisions, storms have been stilled, and all manner of people have been cured of disease and set free of the demons that torment them. Then one day they’re all hanging out and Jesus asks, “So, what are your hearing from people? What are they saying? Who do they think I am?” They give the standard answers, happy to be providing the teacher with a little feedback. Then he asks what they think. Crickets.

They should know, shouldn’t they? But this is one answer you don’t want to get wrong. And like clockwork Andrew’s brother, Simon pops up with an answer. Not everybody likes to go first. Some people like to bide their time, take the temperature of the room, wait to see what everyone else is doing before they have their say, or take the next step. Not Simon. He is first to drop his net when Jesus says, “follow me,” first to step out of the boat when Jesus is on the water, and will be first to pick up his sword when the soldiers eventually come for Jesus. He will also be one of the first to deny he knows anything about him when the time comes- but that is a story for another Sunday. For now, he is the first with an answer, and it is an answer that earns him the nickname that will stick with him for the rest of his life and beyond- Peter. Before there was Dwayne Johnson, there was Peter; the rock.

You can almost hear the music swell for the feel-good moment when the student gives the answer that shows how much he has learned from his teacher. Only this is a Jesus story, and Jesus stories by their very nature disrupt all the made-for-TV clichés that we’re so used to.

That feel-good moment leads right into a feel-bad moment as Jesus begins talking about how being the Messiah and the Son of God means a fair amount of suffering in the future.

Peter protests, he tells Jesus that is not at all how the Messiah story is supposed to go- and Jesus turns right around and lets Peter know that when he’s the Messiah he can tell the story his way but until that time he needs to get out of the way. Awkward. For six days. That’s less than a week. Unless, of course, you’ve just been called out as Satan by someone you think is the Messiah and the Son of God, in which case six days likely felt like an eternity. Every account of what happens next, whether it’s told by Matthew, Mark, or Luke begins in this same way.

As if walking up a mountain isn’t hard enough, this walk is made heavier by the weight of Jesus’ words how he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering and be killed. It is the same weight carried by a family after they receive the diagnosis that foretells great suffering. It is the weight that comes with the word, ‘terminal’.

Like anyone, Peter wanted a second opinion. He wanted some alternative that would allow him to follow Jesus without all that, without the pain and the sorrow and the losing of one’s life. And that is when the first thing on that mountain happens; something so transcendent it sounds like something only a Hollywood special effects team could achieve. Suddenly they are seeing Jesus, literally, in a whole new light. His face shines like the sun, his clothes are dazzling white. There is a brilliance about him that is like nothing they have seen and the word that is used for this version of him is ‘transfigured’: meta-mor-pho-the.

He doesn’t become something else. They recognize him as Jesus, but in an entirely new way- in the company of Moses and Elijah. It is an amazing vision. Not long ago, a friend was talking

about going into his child’s Kindergarten class and seeing a bulletin board with pictures of what the students wanted to learn in school that year. Most of the statements were along the lines of, “behave,” “learn to sit still,” “follow the rules,” “listen to the teacher.” But one child had drawn a remarkable picture with the words, “I want to know why the ocean shines like fire.”

Indeed. There are times when there is more to the world around us than we usually see; more than the everyday that we’re used to, times when the familiar clichés get shattered and the joy and wonder of what has been in front of us the whole time shines through. There are times when the ocean shines like fire.

And there are times when the truth of our words catch fire as well and we can see what they truly mean. Jesus takes Peter and James and John up that mountain weighed down by what was said about how the Messiah must suffer, and shows them just what it means to call this Messiah the Son of the living God. All three see it for themselves. They see the same teacher they’ve followed every day for the past few years for who he truly is. They see him in his rightful place alongside Moses, the giver of the law, and Elijah, one of Israel’s greatest prophets.

This is exactly what Peter was talking about. This is what he meant. If only he could hang on to this, memorialize it somehow. Let’s build on this, he exclaims, establish a presence. Who needs Jerusalem when you’ve got this? Who needs suffering when you’ve got this? Who needs all that talk of darkness and death when you’ve got all this light?

And that’s literally when the clouds roll in, and a voice announces, ‘This is my son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased.’ If that sounds familiar, it should- it’s the same thing Jesus heard at his baptism. Only that was before he ever met these three, so it gets repeated for their benefit- divine confirmation that this Jesus truly is God’s beloved Son. But there is more. “Listen to him,” the voice adds. As in, listen to what he has to say. Listen to what he has to say about Jerusalem. Listen to what he has to say about suffering. Listen to what he has to say about death and what happens after that.

It’s so easy to get caught up in the ecstatic visions of this illumined Christ. Once we see something like that, we tend to want to forget what was said about all that suffering.

Listen to him, says the heavenly voice, because you can’t have one without the other.

You can’t have the glorious, radiant, anointed Son of the living God without the Son of Man who meets his fate and the fate of all who walk in the way of love over empire, in Jerusalem.

And the good news is that the pain to come is not simply suffering for suffering’s sake. There really is something more to this Son of Man than just another Jewish martyr hung on a Roman Cross. It’s a lesson we have to learn and re-learn, and the coming season of Lent is one of the ways we do that. Throughout the history of the Christian church there have been those mystics who want to live and dwell in the glory of this transfigured Christ, who, like Peter, want to build great cathedrals to this vision. And there have been those who insist that the path of true faithfulness is found at the margins of the world working for justice, laboring to right the world’s wrongs for the least of these. But the truth is that you simply cannot have one without the other. We may be invited up the mountain, to see and experience the glory of God that is like a special effect in which the ordinary world is set ablaze like the bush calling out to Moses in the wilderness but is not consumed. But the mountain is not where we are called to live.

We must walk the road to Jerusalem. There is no other way to follow Jesus.

And to walk that road means to risk our hearts and our lives to the suffering that will surely come. The only way to do that, the only thing that gives us the courage to keep going when we

are overwhelmed by pain and the sadness the daily onslaught of outrage and atrocity is the vision of glory that we have glimpsed on the mountain. Not as a spiritual bypass that lets us check out from the world and pretend that all the horribleness isn’t happening, or having an impact. But because we simply cannot manage the one without the other.

Which brings us to the second, smaller, but no less remarkable thing that happens on that mountain. As the three lay shaking in fear at the voice from the heavens, they come to the realization that listening to Jesus means they’re going to have to follow him

on the road to Jerusalem. Then they look up to see the familiar face of their teacher, and no one else. And with those heavenly words still ringing in their ears, “Listen to him,” Jesus touches them and says, “Get up and do not be afraid.” Get up and do not be afraid of the powers that rely on threats of force and violence to keep people compliant. Get up and do not be afraid that the challenge looms so large and we feel so small. Get up and do not be afraid of what’s coming because as scary as it looks, it’s what comes after that that will make all the difference. That is the truly special effect revealed on that mountain: that the Lord of Glory, the dazzling, brilliant Son of the Most High God is the same one who is able to touch us when we are filled with fear and trembling.

More than the magnificent spectacle of it all, what makes this story worth telling is how something so simple can be filled with such grace and glory. All it takes is the touch of his hand to save us from all that we are afraid to face. All it takes is a glimpse of such glory to prepare us for the road ahead.