Today’s gospel reading recounts the Transfiguration of Jesus, and that’s what we celebrate in worship today. The Transfiguration is the epiphany, the revealing of the hidden glory of Jesus. It’s the point in each of the gospels where get a glimpse of the full magnificent power and influence that Jesus has. He simply exudes power, to the point that it looks like he’s wearing shiny happy clothes. And then there are his mountaintop associates, Moses and Elijah. You can’t hob-nob with hoitier or toitier folks in the halls of power or in Hollywood. It’s a media event! It deserves strobe lights, red carpets and actresses who wear body-controlling Spanx under their designer gowns. This is something that calls for hoopla. Keep your eyes on your set, friends, for Jesus is a man of wonders. Why he’s almost Barack Obama!
But be careful what you turn your eyes toward. Jesus in the fullness of his glory is a dangerous thing. You’re dealing with big voodoo here. He has the power to heal using a gob of his spit and a simple word. But he’s also been known to come down hard on people trying to make a buck by trading on God. And he has no problem instantly withering a fig tree because it doesn’t please him. He’s God in the flesh and to come into his full glory is something you want to be careful about. When Moses caught a peek of just a tiny bit of God’s bum up on Mt. Sinai, it changed him physically, to the point of having to walking around with a veil covering his face for the rest of his life. Sure Jesus is glorified in the Transfiguration, but don’t for a minute think it has anything to do with “nice” or “pretty.”
The Transfiguration is the Holy Spirit’s great bait-and-switch tactic. It’s like the store clerk who draws you in with pretty baubles and then sells you something different. Jesus the powerful healer-man, the glorious schmoozer of prophets, the holy herald of all things wise and wonderful? That guy is about to go away and toss his divine Oscar in the ditch. He’s about to give it all up of his own accord in order to give you something better.
Peter should have been ready for it. After Jesus had called him up out of his boat where he was mending his nets, Jesus did some pretty cool stuff, things that would make the most driven cynic say, “Sweet!” But there were inklings that Jesus was up to more than just wonders and miracles, power and glory. The guy kept hanging out with prostitutes and sinners, tax collectors and, I’m sorry to say, people like you, who don’t have their poop in a group. Of course that must have been an anomaly, an odd blip on the radar, especially in the face of Jesus’ pals Elijah and Moses on the mountain top. Peter should have known better, though.
A week before the Transfiguration, Peter had been hanging out with Jesus, who asked, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter said, “You are the messiah.” Then Jesus explained exactly what it meant for him to be the messiah. It doesn’t mean power, prestige, success or glory. Jesus gave it to Peter straight. “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” Here at the Transfiguration, Peter wanted to forget what Jesus had said about his coming suffering and death. Peter wanted Jesus’ glory, bright, undiluted and worthy of acclaim. He didn’t want glory to come in terms of Jesus’ ignominious end. Though Peter had gotten a glimpse of what should have been the frightening fullness of who Jesus really is, he didn’t have the whole picture. Both in his confession of Jesus’ identity and at the Transfiguration, Peter had his eyes opened a bit, but he still thought Jesus’ kingship looks like earthly glory rather than the cross. When Jesus chooses to let it all go and show his glory in weakness, in being whipped and scourged and in a last wheezing breath on the cross, it’ll hit Peter like a blow to the solar plexus and knock him out nearly for the count.
On the mountain, a voice comes from heaven: “This is my son, the Beloved. Listen to him!” God isn’t telling Peter to listen in on the conversation going on between Jesus and the prophets. God says to pay attention to what his Son has been saying about the business of dying, for it wasn’t just the cloud on the mountain that Peter would have to face. There was a bank of dark clouds heading straight toward Jerusalem with Jesus, covering up the glitter of religious revivalism and spiritual success with the reality of what’s to come. Listen to Jesus: following him will look nothing like the winning on Jeopardy or American Idol. Our Lord has offered Peter a glory that is wholly unexpected. It will come to this most spur-of-the-moment of disciples when Jesus is arrested and led away for trial. Peter will come face-to-face with his own darkness and sin as he stands in the courtyard of the high priest. A servant girl says to him, “Hey buddy, I know who you are. You’re one of Jesus right-hand guys.” Peter will deny his Lord three times before the cock crows. And hanging on to glory, Peter won’t know what to do with a Lord who dies.
Ah, glory. It’s such a fine thing, but what happens when you have a Lord who gives it all up? How can you hang your faith on glory, when Jesus wants nothing to do with it? If Peter, personally chosen by Jesus, can’t keep his own faith going – even having seen the Transfiguration – it leaves sinners like you and me with a pretty sorry future. Peter’s denial is something we re-enact every single day as we turn away from such an unlikely Lord’s demise, as we seek to protect our futures and save our suburban skins by managing all the details of our lives. Yet we stand with Peter in the dark and accusing courtyards of our lives and await the one thing that can truly bring such an undying faith, that call to dive into death and failure and find our Lord there.
It’s what’s to come in the Lenten weeks ahead of us, for your Lord, God’s only son himself, takes on an upside-down sort of glory as he suffers torment and is crucified for you. His great love is poured out for you that your attention may be turned from yourself, from glitter and glory, from shiny success, to look to him – the humble, drab, torn and wounded one. The depths of his love for a sinner like you are unfathomable and know no end. The disciple who turns away from Jesus will find himself drawn back with the cross. Where there once was a Jesus wearing glowing robes, there will be a naked man crucified as a sinner.
But on the other side of his death, and yours, Peter will see something better than the shining robes he saw on the mountaintop. He’ll see the grave clothes of the risen Jesus and know, truly know, that Jesus’ glory on the cross isn’t something to run away from in fear. He’ll be caught up in it in the midst of his own suffering, loss, guilt and all-too-apparent faithlessness– in the same way that you have been caught up and wrapped up in Jesus’ death and resurrection in your baptism. For it’s there that in those drowning waters that you have been linked to both your Lord’s death and resurrection. You don’t have to deal with mere foreshadowing like Peter did. He stood accused in that courtyard not knowing what was to come, but you have the end of the story in hand. The fullness of Christ’s love for you is poured out for you in the water and the word. And if you’re not yet baptized, let me tell you that same promise and fullness awaits you, along with a pastor champing at the bit to bestow it on you and a congregation waiting to sustain you in it.
Thus God’s word bids you to put away the worldly glory that moves you to seek after short cuts, pipe dreams and the winning number and pray that God would bring on the divine glory that interrupts your expectations, your management plans, your strategies for success. So pray to God to destroy your death with Jesus’ death on a daily basis, so that your baptism becomes a living, breathing thing. In the coming season of Lent, you can look for the divine upside-down glory of Jesus who meets you in your denial and in your tomb to drag you, kicking and screaming maybe, into heaven to spend an eternity with the one whose love for you finds its ultimate glory on the cross: Jesus your bridegroom, Jesus your Savior, Jesus your Lord, Jesus crucified and risen comes for you today, that, in your clouded darkness, you may believe.
