Sermon based on Luke 9:28-36 for Transfiguration Sunday at Hope Lutheran Church.
On July 20, 1969, the world became a very different place. Astronaut Neil Armstrong hopped off the ladder of the lunar module Eagle and put the first footprint on the surface of the moon. From that point on, generations of people would point to that event as the pinnacle of human achievement and subsequently wonder why everything is not easier by comparison. If we can put a man on the moon, for example, then why can’t we cure cancer? End world hunger?
In their book The Moonshot Effect: Disrupting Business as Usual, Lisa Goldman and Kate Purmal define a moonshot as an aspirational project that harnesses humanities gifts. It’s a turn away from business as usual, and involves, new processes, audacious innovation and collaborative teamwork.
Think of the massive numbers of people, men and women with slide rules and those first plucky astronauts at NASA who invested their lives in the Apollo 11 mission and its predecessors, and you get the idea. A moonshot goal looks impossible on the surface but determined people with a clear vision can make what seems impossible --- a reality.
In today’s gospel, what is termed Transfiguration Sunday, the disciples of Jesus did not seem all that interested in going to the moon, but that did not stop them from aspiring. If you remember, they had left behind their former occupations to follow a traveling rabbi around Galilee because they were compelled by his vision of the kingdom of God. For first-century Jews, that moonshot vision was not the peaceable kingdom of Isaiah, but the social justice like the message found in the Old Testament prophets like Amos or Joel. Their visions were gritty and political. For many of them, someday their Roman occupiers would be overthrown, God’s anointed king and messiah set on the throne, and God’s presence returned to the temple; Jerusalem as the capital of a reunited kingdom, a beacon to the world. It was a vision of freedom from oppression with peace and security for all.
It seemed like an impossibility given the number of Roman spears that patrolled the roads and streets. But then again, there was this Jesus who seemed to fit the mold of the kind of leader who could make it happen. He had performed amazing miracles, drawn huge crowds, was anti-elite and somewhat popular with the people. Maybe he was the one who could shoot the moon, reverse their fortunes and transform their nation.
As we are often reminded, it didn’t take long for Jesus to profoundly upend and transform that vision. Earlier than this point in our Gospel from Luke, Jesus had asked his disciples who they thought he was, and Peter answered, “The Messiah of God” (v. 20). In response, Jesus, as you remember however, would define the Messiah’s mission in far more graphic terms than Peter and his mates could have imagined. Before being fitted for a crown, Jesus would need to embrace a cross. Jesus would need to empty himself completely into and through death. It was an unimaginable scenario. It was an upside, turn around moonshot.
Now eight days later, the transfiguration the disciples experienced in a new light was twofold; a transformative vision of Jesus and their place in the world.
Let’s review the first aspect of the transfiguration. As I mentioned, eight days after Jesus had asked his disciples who did they think he ways, Jesus pulls his executive team of Peter, James and John aside and takes them up on a mountain for a retreat. The little detail of “eight days” is important because it indicates that it was a new week which, biblically speaking, is a sign that something new is about to happen --- a sign of the new creation (v. 28). For on this unnamed mountain, Jesus gives them a glimpse of his ultimate moonshot if not universe shot idea by revealing his own heavenly glory.
While Jesus was praying, his face and clothes were transformed into a kind of heavenly brilliance (v. 29). It’s an image that recalls a similar account of Moses’ meeting God on Mount Sinai (Exodus 34). Moses’ face became so brilliant that he had to cover it with a veil afterward. But have you ever wondered about this other piece, the presence of Moses and Elijah. How did the disciples know it was Moses and Elijah with Jesus? It wasn’t that they were wearing nametags like one would on a corporate retreat!
Instead, those disciples knew their Scriptures and the tradition. According to Deuteronomy, Moses died and was buried by God before the Israelites entered the Promised Land, but some traditions had said that Moses hadn’t died at all and, like the prophet Elijah, had simply been taken up into heaven (Deuteronomy 34:1-8; 2 Kings 2). Moses and Elijah, many believed, would someday return as forerunners of the Messiah. If Jesus was the real Messiah, as had been discerned, then it made sense that these two glorious figures should appear beside him in his glory, representing the Law and the Prophets.
The key here, however, is not so much the appearance of the two towering figures of the Old Testament, or Jesus all in bright newness, but the conversation. The author of Luke says they were speaking of Jesus’ “departure” which would soon to take place in Jerusalem (v. 31). The Greek word for “departure” is --- “exodus.” It is of course before Bob Marley so this exodus that is being discussed is Jesus’ mission in the larger context of the biblical story.
As you remember, in the days of Moses, the Israelites were set free from slavery in Egypt --- an amazing achievement for which they had prayed some 400 years. Their freedom, that Exodus, was signified and subsequently remembered by the Passover meal and the blood of the sacrificed lamb that saved them from death and pointed the way to new life and a promised land.
Jesus was about to initiate a new exodus, but in this case, this exodus would deliver all of humanity from the enslaving power of our human brokenness and death itself. That deliverance would require a new Passover and a new once-for-all sacrifice as Jesus himself became the Lamb. This was Jesus’ universe shot mission and destiny: the salvation of the universe. All that Moses and Elijah represented, the witness of the Law and the Prophets, had been pointing to this goal.
Therefore, in this revelation of glory, we learn along with the disciples that the Jesus is to empty himself completely, give it all away, and die as any human must. He will not go there because it is easy, but because it is hard --- to borrow a phrase from former President John F. Kennedy. It is a challenge Jesus is willing to accept out of love, one Jesus is unwilling to postpone and one that he will win for all of us. It’s the ultimate “universe shoot,” but one that will be accomplished by the very God who put the moon, the earth and this vast universe there in the first place!
That of course leads to the second aspect of this transfiguration. Let me return to the Apollo mission. For as much as we may like to think about the human achievements of landing on the moon, tang and Velcro, there was another significant episode that happened in a subsequent journey with Apollo 17, the last Apollo mission. It is a picture taken on December 7, 1972 of the earth. The picture is commonly known as the Blue Marble. It is a picture of the earth from the perspective of the astronauts. It shows this spaceship earth traveling through the universe that God has created, fragile, without boundaries. It is the most reproduced image in history.
Those disciples were told that upon his death and resurrection, they were free to share what God intended through Jesus. Those disciples were the first to get to the mountain top, but as much as we may like to focus on “heaven” and let our imaginations run wild, their eyes were turned back down over their shoulders down that mountain, at the blue marble, all creation, and the valleys that do not reflect God’s love and forgiveness. That image taken by Apollo 17 was the first of the whole planet and showed the oneness and fragility of creation.
The disciples still don’t get this universe shot view right away. In the next scene, there is the dilemma about casting out a demon, which they can’t seem to accomplish (vv. 37-43). And in the next they are arguing cabinet positions in the coming administration (vv. 46-48). It will take the death and resurrection of Jesus to bring things into focus and help them realize that God’s project was more audacious than anything humans could ever conceive.
To know that Christ has died, Christ is raised, and Christ will come again reminds us that anything is possible. We are each in our own way, grudging, cantankerous, doubting, individualistic, mean-spirited, yet forgiven and loved. We are followers of the one who has beaten sin and death and given us the freedom not only to imagine God’s kingdom of ultimate peace, redemption and renewal. Equally we are to live out this vision in the present on this little blue marble in the vast universe.
When we look at the world as it currently is and what seems to be an increasingly broken way of life, and its deeply flawed leadership, we remember that this is not the way things will always be. We live and work in the present in light of the future made possible by the death and resurrection of Jesus. To that end, Jesus invites us to dream of our own universe shots for the places we live and serve. Often, we have dreams, ideas and goals that are too small --- goals that are better suited for a stat sheet or in our bank accounts.
Jesus, however, invites us to dream of the transformation of the world and the community around us. For example, as this church transition’s into the future, what kinds of universe shots do we have? How fast this congregation can become the next mega-church? How many energetic people with vans full of children with hours and days of volunteer time they want to give? Those are stat sheets.
Instead, can we imagine the living Christ running loose, toward equity and justice and love and forgiveness? It was God who raised a man from the dead and “seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named, not only in this age but in the age to come.” (Ephesians 1:20-21). This is the Christ, the Son of the living God, about whom the voice on the mountain declared, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him” (v. 35).
As we follow Jesus, there is no universe landing too imaginative, too daring, too audacious for us to consider. Didn’t Jesus say, “Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and if you do not doubt in your heart, but believe that what you say will come to pass, it will be done for you” (Mark 11:23)? The transfiguration was a twofold sign of God's grace and compassion. When times are difficult, as when the disciples move off that mountain toward Jerusalem with Jesus, the memory of their encounter with God, and God's own witness to Jesus, will help them follow on the way. It does the same for us by giving us a vision of not only what will be, but where we are. Amen.
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