Mark 9:2-13
“No Grief, No Glory”
February 19, 2012 - Transfiguration Sunday

         She walked away through the gates. We waved and wept. A year and half ago Beth and I took our daughter Joanna to the University of Chicago. At the end of freshman orientation there is a ritual designed to mark the new beginning for incoming students. After the move into the dorm, the questions answered about financial aid, the speeches and tours of the campus, there’s a final convocation in the chapel. Then parents and freshmen walk north to Hull Gate which opens onto the main quad of the campus. Parents stay behind and the new students walk through the gate.

         Those moments at the gate marked a major change. It was a huge step toward adulthood for our daughter. For us it was the beginning of our empty nest. It wasn’t like we’d never see her again. In fact, she’ll be home now for spring break in just a few weeks. But it was bittersweet, a moment of pride and glory mixed with some pain and tears.

         The event in the life of Jesus we call the Transfiguration is a bittersweet moment of transition. For all its mystery and beauty and glory, it marks the moment when Jesus turned clearly in the direction we will observe in the next six weeks. When Jesus and those three disciples walked up the mountain, it was still possible to imagine that He had come to set up a glorious kingdom on earth in the near future. But when Jesus came down that mountain, His path was clearly set in another direction, for another kind of glory.

         Every little boy of five years or so probably has an image of what happened to Jesus. An on-going film and toy franchise has made most of us at least aware of “Transformers,” cars or planes or other machines which “transform” into intelligent robots. I haven’t seen the latest movie, “Dark Side of the Moon,” but one transformation scene I read about should be no surprise to anyone who has worked in an office. It’s no great stretch of imagination to think something evil really does reside in a photocopier.

         Transformers are ordinary machines which change to reveal something deeper and more powerful within. That’s not a bad description of what happened to Jesus. What appeared to be an ordinary man changed to allow something extraordinary to be revealed. The awesome brightness of Jesus’ divinity, His Godhood, was suddenly allowed to shine through His human flesh.

         Mark is at a loss for words to describe the transformation in verse 3. What he comes up with sounds like a laundry detergent commercial. Even Jesus’ clothing is changed so that its color is so white that Mark can’t imagine any bleaching on earth could produce it. This text itself is another level of the basic fact: Something incredibly beautiful and glorious is framed and hidden in homely, simple words.

         Leaving further attempts at describing Jesus, Mark moves on in verse 4 to tell us about Jesus’ companions during these moments. Elijah was there with Moses. They were talking with Jesus. As usual, Mark only gives a sketch, but in Luke 9:31 we learn what they talking about, Jesus’ “departure,” literally, His “exodus,” which He would accomplish in Jerusalem.

         This scene resembles a scene from Moses’ own ministry. In Exodus 24 Moses goes up on a mountain to meet and listen to God and a cloud covers it. So we have a cloud in verse 7 and the voice of God speaking to them, declaring once again, like at His baptism, Jesus is God’s beloved Son. Moses appears on the Mount of Transfiguration to show that it is a new Mt. Sinai. It’s the place where God was beginning a new covenant with His people.

         That explains why we see Moses here. The disciples were meant to understand that Jesus was bringing them a new exodus, a new deliverance from God, like the deliverance of Israel from Egypt. God used Moses to save His people from slavery. In Jesus He would save them from their sins, make a new covenant written on their hearts instead of on stone.

         It’s harder to understand why Elijah is present. The most common thing we preachers say about this verse—I’ve said it myself—is that Moses and Elijah represent the Law and the Prophets. Bringing them together here shows Jesus is the fulfillment of both great parts of the Hebrew Bible. Both the Law and the Prophets point toward and are completed in the person of Jesus Christ.

         Yet the reality is that Moses was also regarded as a prophet. In fact, in Deuteronomy 18:15, Moses is said to be the model for the great Prophet to come, for Jesus Himself. The deliverance of the Law was itself a great act of prophecy, of speaking God’s Word to God’s people. So what’s the point of Elijah? Why did he show up?

         We heard this morning from II Kings 2 that Elijah was taken up from earth in a whirlwind. He didn’t die, but went straight to heaven. But that was also true of Enoch in Genesis 4:23. Why isn’t it Elijah and Enoch, rather than Elijah and Moses? What is Elijah doing here? We’ll come back to that question.

         For right now, though, let’s look at how Peter responded to it all. Like many of us, he speaks before he thinks. Verse 6 tells us they were so scared he didn’t know what to say, but in verse 5 he’s got something to say anyway. Peter’s idea is to capture and prolong the moment. “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here.” This happening is so spectacular, so incredibly good that it would be well, it seems to Peter, to stick around awhile and enjoy it.

         Peter’s proposal is to put up tents, three “dwellings,” one each for Moses, Elijah and Jesus. It’s not as stupid as it sounds. Living in tents was a key part of Jewish history and faith. The Israelites lived in tents when God brought them out of Egypt. God made Himself present in a tent, in the Tent or Tabernacle that He commanded them to build there in the wilderness. And more than a thousand years later, there was still an annual festival of tents, when Jews would make a shelter outside their homes and live in it for a few days.

         So Peter’s idea for tents there in the mountain wilderness was a thoroughly Jewish, thoroughly sensible proposal. Part of the Feast of Tabernacles is the welcoming of guests. What greater guests could be welcome than these three? God Himself lived in a Tabernacle in the wilderness. Now that Jesus was seen shining with the glory of God, why should He not be housed again in a tabernacle? No, it wasn’t really dumb at all. It was just wrong.

         That’s why God interrupts Peter’s plan for a mountaintop retreat with a cloud and a command. After identifying Jesus as His Son, God says, “listen to him!” Then in verse 8 it’s all over. The cloud is gone. Moses and Elijah are gone. There’s only Jesus. So Peter quits looking around for tent poles and they start down the mountain.

         Remember that command, “listen to him!” What’s the first thing Jesus tells them after that? It’s there in verse 9, “he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.” That’s the point God meant them to listen to, but they found it totally confusing. Verse 10 says, “they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead could mean.”

         For us it’s all pretty clear. “Rising from the dead” means rising from the dead! Jesus was going to die and rise again in three days. But for Peter, James and John, it just didn’t make any sense, especially after what they had seen on the mountain.

         Think about it. Imagine that you’ve got a threesome for golf. Just as you are starting the course, someone walks up and asks to join you. He looks pleasant enough. So you invite him along. For the first couple holes, everything seems normal. He hits the ball pretty well and observes good golf courtesy. You quit worrying that you might have asked along some jerk and start to think of him as one of you.

         On the third hole, though, the new guy reaches into his bag and pulls out a club you know from pictures in a catalog is worth a couple thousand dollars. He tees up, then fires a drive that sails at least 300 yards. Reaching the green, he lines up a fifty foot putt and knocks the ball in like it’s five feet. The three of you stare at him. Who is this guy? Some pro you’ve never heard of? A reincarnation of Arnold Palmer or Jack Nicklaus? Who is he?

         But then your thoughts turn in another direction. There’s a match play tournament coming up in a month. With this guy on the team you have a foursome that’s sure to win. But just as you start to broach the subject, he looks at you all and says, “You can’t tell anyone about this. I’ve only got a few months left.” What’s it mean?

         That’s how it was for those disciples. Peter had already decided that Jesus was the Messiah. We learned that just before this, in chapter 8, verse 29. Now, here on this mountain, they see that He’s not only the Messiah, but something more. He shines with the glory and power of God. They start envisioning deliverance from the Romans, great victories to come, all kinds of glory in which they will have a part. Then Jesus tells them again what He’s already told Peter, “Don’t tell anyone.” And He talks about dying.

         It’s not so much the rising that the disciples don’t get. It’s the dead part. If Jesus is the Messiah, why should He die? If He can stand on a mountain and converse with Moses who died and yet lives, and with Elijah who never died, why should He worry about dying? So they fasten on that figure of Elijah that they’ve just seen and put the question in verse 11 to Jesus, “Why do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?”

         They’re referring to the general Jewish understanding of Malachi 4:5. God says that He will send Elijah before the day of the Lord comes. It’s one of the reasons that, in a Passover Seder, Jews still pour a coup of wine for Elijah. He will come first, then the Messiah.

         There is also a Jewish tradition that at a circumcision ceremony you put a chair out for Elijah. In I Kings 19, Elijah twice says that God’s people have broken His Covenant. So the story goes that God declared that Elijah would attend every circumcision to witness that the Covenant was in fact being kept.

         Elijah is a key figure in the Jewish mind. He’s the “angel of the Covenant” in later Jewish language. He comes before the Messiah and he is the witness who establishes the keeping of the Covenant. By focusing on Elijah, the disciples are trying to distract Jesus from His talk of death, to remind Him of the glory that’s coming.

         Jesus answers them in their own terms. He knows very well the glory that’s promised, the kingdom returned to Israel, the restoring “of all things,” as He says in verse 12. He tells them they’re right. They’ve understood that part of the prophets correctly. “Elijah is indeed coming first…” But then Jesus points them to another prophecy they had been ignoring. “How then is it written about the Son of Man, that he is to go through many sufferings and be treated with contempt?”

         Jesus’ question is to get His disciples to start thinking about other passages in the Hebrew Scriptures, passages like Psalm 22, which predicts the Crucifixion, like Isaiah 53, which speaks of God’s Servant suffering and wounded. He wants them to see that His glory doesn’t come without grief.

         Yes, Elijah didn’t have to die in the Old Testament, but when Elijah appears again the story is different. Our last verse, verse 13, is Jesus correcting the disciples’ notions even about the forerunner to the Messiah. “I tell you that Elijah has come, and they did to him whatever they pleased…”

         If we go back to verse 4, there’s a clue that might resonate for us here. The way Mark puts it, Elijah is with Moses. He’s sort of second place. He’s the sidekick. As the joke went in a television show I watched recently, what always happens to sidekicks? They get captured or killed. Both things happened to the “Elijah” to whom Jesus is referring. As Matthew 17:13 tells us explicitly, Jesus was talking about John the Baptist.

         It’s almost as confusing and difficult for us as it was for those first disciples. But the point is that even “Elijah,” who didn’t have to die the first time around, suffered and died at the hands of evil people in the person of John the Baptist. It makes sense to talk about the Messiah having to die, because even Elijah has to die. There’s no glory without grief.

         Jesus came down the mountain headed for the Cross. That’s what He was trying to tell His disciples as they asked Him the question about Elijah. That’s why the Transfiguration is the point in the church year when we stop looking back at the glory of Jesus’ birth, at the brilliance of His epiphany to the magi and His baptism, at the wonder of His miracles, and we start looking to the road ahead, the road that leads to Jerusalem and through the Cross.

         So this Sunday marks the end of Epiphany. Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, a time to remember our sins and to enter into spiritual discipline which connects us with Jesus’ own disciplined journey to His death. We pray, we make sacrifices, we serve others, doing what we can to live like Jesus did. Like Elisha following Elijah, we pick up Jesus’ mantle and seek to live in His Spirit and power.

         This spiritual journey is a hard one. It’s full of pain, struggle and grief. Yet like Elisha who saw God’s fiery horses and chariot, like Peter and James and John who saw the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ as Paul says, we also know there is glory ahead. There’s a hill with a Cross, but there’s a garden with an empty grave. There’s grief, but there’s glory. Let’s accept the grief, and not miss the glory.

         Amen.

Valley Covenant Church
Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
Copyright © 2012 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj