Growing up it did not take much for my father to get my attention, especially when something had gone wrong. I could see it in his face before he spoke. During those times, I was quite attentive, as you might imagine, so I would miss nothing he said. My very behind depended on it!
When we are afraid, there is something about how our attention becomes so, well, attentive! It is as if there is an automatic survival response system that becomes fully alert and our senses fix in rapt attention to our situation. Survival and anxiety and fear all play into this system.
From our gospel reading this morning we can only imagine the fear Peter and James and his brother John must have felt. The day had begun innocently enough. They had been taken by Jesus, whom they trusted completely, and led up a high mountain. They were alone there, with him.
Then suddenly and unexpectedly, Jesus was transfigured before them. “His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white.” Just as suddenly, Moses and Elijah appeared to them and began talking with Jesus. They must have shouted, “Where did these guys come from, what’s going on, should we run or what!”
Peter, wanting to make sense of what was happening, tried to ground these sudden and unexpected changes to something that made sense to him. He offers to build a place out of the sun and the wind and the extreme conditions for Jesus and Moses and Elijah. Peter was trying to control the scene and perhaps his own sanity.
Then, BAM, while he was speaking, God showed up! God showed up in the form of a bright cloud. And from that cloud God spoke, saying, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased, listen to him!”
Peter and James and John were laid out on the ground after this, they were overcome with a fear they had never thought possible.
Admittedly, this scene would change any ones understanding of fear.
How could these relatively new apostles, who were still trying to understand who Jesus was, ever pay attention to what God was saying in the midst of such fear? They must have thought their world had come to an end. Even if they understood what was going on, how could they find comfort knowing who Jesus was if power such as this were in him, the power of God, a power that brings people from the beyond, a power that brings God to speak to mortals.
There is, of course, something otherworldly about Jesus. But, being his disciple could get you killed! How could anyone possibly be safe following Jesus up to any mountain top or anywhere else for that matter after this?
Lord, we want desperately to follow you, but we don’t want to die in the process. At least not until we understand who you truly are. Isn’t that the key? Our ultimate safety just might depend on our understanding who Jesus truly is and who we will become in return if we live our life listening to him and accept his call to come and follow him.
So, we try. Jesus underwent a metamorphoses, his human nature began to be affected by his divine attributes. Moses and Elijah show themselves so we will know Jesus’ life is aligned with God’s law and God’s prophets. These were the folk Jesus was being compared too, yet there was more to come. God trumps everything. God shows up too.
It was God, speaking from a bright cloud, who in his great love for his Son, clothed Jesus with glory and encouraged him with a bracing re-affirmation of his continued love, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased”. One reason God says this is so Jesus will be comforted, will get up and not be afraid of his fast approaching agony there on the cross. Next week is Ash Wednesday. Next week Lent begins.
God was showing us that Jesus and the apostles need not be afraid for God is a God of love. Jesus and the apostles need not remain overcome to the point of falling down in their life because when God shows up, we can have courage, our God is a God of hope.
God’s message to the disciples gives us this hope. God tells us, listen to my Son, my beloved, listen to his teaching about who I am, so you will know who you are to be.
So, we try. This story is a foretaste, a glimpse of our future, where we will be receiving Gods’ love, receiving God’s grace, receiving God’s peace and then, the most radical thing, giving these same gifts away. Giving them away to a world hungry for peace, for love, for justice for all.
But, we must be prepared for the shock to our system and our life when we finally begin to sense the power of who our God is. Our shock will be immediate and sudden when we truly know God. Yet, just as suddenly, Jesus will respond to calm us because of his love for us. This is the good news that is at the heart of the Christian life. Jesus calms us because Jesus loves us.
While we know this is true we cannot ignore our fear. Our very behinds may depend on it. Jesus’ disciples were perhaps the most fearful of all. In one case, they were innocently out fishing, it was what they did for a living. Jesus is with them asleep, the winds rise. It seems all is lost. They are afraid. In another, the women coming out of the tomb feel all is lost, they have discovered Jesus’ body is missing. They too are afraid. Often Jesus tells his followers, “Don’t be afraid,” but they experience fear anyway, especially in the presence of Christ, and perhaps we do too.
We become anxious when our normal life becomes abnormal even in the smallest ways and our brains revert to fight or flight or hide mentalities. This is normal and all too familiar.
Yet, New Testament fear is not your normal kind of fear. With Jesus, if we want to follow him we must be on fullest alert to pay attention, to take up our own cross and to follow him. When we sense his demands on our lives, the narrow way to which he calls us, then we become afraid and our attention must be absolute. It is essential, because we do not really know the way. But Jesus assures us, I am the way, and the truth and the light.
So, we try. We try and we begin to see that our God, who comes to us in Jesus Christ, is a living God. We see his loving, but demanding face, and we sense the dangerous journey that lies ahead when we follow him, when we devote our fullest attention to him. That attention then brings Jesus to us. Remember, he loves us. He will touch us and say, get up and do not be afraid, for I am with you, this day and for the rest of your life, in this world and the next. I am with you.
I’ve said before, we come to church hoping to come into real and direct contact with our living Lord. We come knowing that if we do have a glimpse of Jesus, if we do feel the warmth of his presence in our hearts, we will have to give up any notions that our life will ever be the same. We’ve had glimpses enough to know that when the Holy Spirit really gets a hold of us, well, we in return, cannot get enough of that same spirit. When we begin to live in holy union with Jesus, we want more, until we are consumed with Jesus’ being in our lives and ours in his.
As Methodist Bishop, William Willimon says, “Church is about the possibility of a threatening, though life-changing encounter with the Risen Christ. Church is about seeing God’s way and will in our world – a way so very different from our ways - and then having to say yes or no to walking that way.”
The truth of who God is, known to us in Jesus Christ and brought into communion with us in the Holy Spirit, scares people to death. For believers like me and you, why, we gather each Sunday knowing this is the truth, we have encountered Jesus here, and we are scared of life. Life without Jesus that it is.
As Willimon says, “Jesus has appeared to us in all of his radiant glory. He has reassured us, told us to rise and follow him, promised to be with us every step of the way, no matter what the journey holds.”
We follow him because this story this morning about the Transfiguration of Jesus before his disciples on a mountaintop, where God speaks, is actually a story about each of us.
The face of God is seen in the transfigured Jesus. We who are believers know about Jesus being God as well as man. We too, on our own journey, have discovered God in Jesus Christ and believe he is our Lord and our Savior, we believe we are to be his disciples for we believe he is our God.
So, we try. We try, remembering the wise counsel we have received. We cannot escape the light God will shed on our path. We cannot escape God, Immanuel among us. God will find us in our homes and in our work-places. God will find us when our hearts are broken and when we discover joy. God will find us when we run away from God and when we are sitting in the middle of what seems like hell. So “get up and do not be afraid.”
Get up and do not be afraid, and share this radiant hope with the world, follow Christ. Get up and be not afraid, for Jesus is the Son of God, beloved, with him God is well pleased, and if we will listen to him, God will be well pleased with us too.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen
Additional helps:
“Feasting on the Word,” David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, Editors, Year A, Volume 1, pg. 456.
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