Sermons

---

Glory!
April 24, 2005
Sermon Series on the Gospel of Luke
5th Sunday in Easter
Rev. Dan Baumgartner
Luke 9:28-36

It’s impossible to read our text for this morning, the story we have come to call the Transfiguration without remembering what came just before it: Peter confesses Jesus as God’s Christ, the Messiah.

Jesus confesses that he will be a Messiah in a peculiar and totally unexpected way: suffering, rejection, death and resurrection. And then Jesus speaks this hard word: “If you want to follow me, deny yourself and pick up your cross daily.” Hardly a smooth recruiting slogan for new believers!

Once you get ordained as a pastor, you get on every religious mailing list in the world. Book promotions, preaching seminars, religious story emails, the latest versions of “2-Minutes a Day to Spiritual Depth”-type stuff. And new products.

A couple of months ago a friend forwarded me an article about a new candle that is out on the market that reportedly “smells like Jesus.” It’s called “His Essence.” It contains myrrh and aloe, spelled out in Psalm 45. The couple in South Dakota that invented them made a batch of 700, but within a couple of weeks had sold 10,000!

Just so you know I didn’t make this up, here’s what the owner said:

“We wanted people to be able to experience Christ in new ways and to be able to read a bible and have that scent…as a reminder that he is with us all the time,”

and

“You can’t see him and you can’t touch him…(but) this is a situation where you may be able to sense him by smelling.” !

This fit right in with a conversation a small group of mine had this week about the tendency these days to try and bring Jesus so close to us, to make him so relevant that He ends up as “Jesus-My-Buddy.”

In fact, as this happens, instead of us growing to look like Jesus, Jesus begins to look a great deal like us. And then you read a story like this…the Transfiguration story from Luke…that just knocks you over, and you find that to be in touch with the living God is something so much deeper and inexhaustible than four easy steps or a candle…that when we are touched by God’s glory it changes us and changes our lives and we find that life becomes relevant because of God rather than the other way around.

Jesus took Peter, James, John and went up on the mountain. What is it about mountains? Mountains seem to stare at us, daring us to try and get to the top. “Why must you climb the mountain? Because it is there” we say. We want to be able to overcome the obstacles and say “I did it! I have succeeded! I conquered the mountain!”

A number of years ago a friend of mine who coached basketball in the ghetto of New Orleans came back to Seattle for the summer and brought a 12-year old young man with him. We hiked up into the Cascades and climbed up what could barely be called a mountain.

When we were ¾ of the way up, LeRon (12-year old) sat down and announced he wasn’t going any farther! We said “Why not?” And he said simply, “Man, this just isn’t fun anymore!” And we were like “Fun?! Who said fun, we want to get to the top!”

Whether the mountain is literal, like that one…or whether it’s figurative, like some hard thing in our lives, mountains are often mainly about us. At least to begin with. And then often, they end up being about God.

In scripture, a lot of amazing things happen around mountains. Symbolically, if God is “up there,” then being up on a mountain gets us closer to God. And that is what we want, I think. I think that’s why we are here this morning. To be in God’s presence together. To touch something bigger than ourselves. It happens a lot in scripture on mountains.

• Take the prophet Elijah from the Old Testament, who had his big showdown with the prophets of Baal on a mountain, Mt. Carmel, where God came as bright fire and consumed the false idols.
• And when that same prophet Elijah fears for his life, he flees and goes again to a mountain, this time to Mt.Horeb (many think Sinai), and God meets him there…not in the wind or fire or earthquake, but God speaks to him. And Elijah is not the only one who hung around on mountains at key times.
• Moses, years before Elijah, the one who led Israel out of slavery in Egypt in the departure called the Exodus, hears from God while he is on the same Mount Horeb, nicknamed “the mountain of God.”
  God appears visibly and speaks through the burning bush, that burns but doesn’t get consumed, and God says “Moses don’t come any closer…the ground you are standing on is holy.”
• Or Moses again, when he receives the ten commandments, goes up on a mountain, Mt. Sinai, as Kelly read earlier. And the glory of the Lord settled on the mountain, a cloud came, the voice of God spoke, and the glory of the Lord looked like a devouring fire.
  And Moses receives on behalf of Israel the Law, the written Word they should live by. And each time that Moses would talk with God after that, his face would shine with this radiance, this brightness, just from being with God. Once he even said to God “show me your glory!”

The glory of the Lord.

It’s a really important word. In the Old Testament, it is a Hebrew word that literally means “weight” or “importance.” To have glory is to be weighty, to be of great importance. To give glory, to glorify is to attach great importance to something or someone.

When it applies to God, glory almost always means

“that which makes God impressive…a visible manifestation of God.”

Radiance, power, splendor. God’s glory is the manifestation of Almighty God and while that God is an intensely personal God, manifested most clearly in Jesus…He is a long way away from being our buddy.

God-things don’t happen just on mountains. But wherever God’s glory hits, we are practically knocked to the ground, one way or another.

In 1979, Europe was split sharply in two between democracies and the communist bloc dominated by Russia. Many countries, including Poland, were controlled by the Soviets and run by local communist parties. A new pope, John Paul II, had become pope just eight months previous, and made it clear that he wanted to visit his native Poland.

The communists in Poland stalled and stewed over whether to allow it, but finally decided to. In the months leading up to his visit, the Polish hierarchy took extreme measures to restrain the Polish people. They infiltrated schools, they cast suspicion on the pope and his visit, they increased their commitment to making atheists out of the youth.

On June 2, 1979, the pope got off the plane in Warsaw. He knelt down on the gray tarmac of the airport, on hands and knees and kissed the ground of Poland. The silent churches of Poland began to ring their bells. Nothing would be the same again.

The government had feared that tens of thousands of people might want to welcome the pope. Over a million came. And when Pope John Paul II preached, he suggested that the people of Poland had been chosen for a great role, that they would be a special “witness of Jesus’ cross and His resurrection.” He asked if the people accepted such a role.

The response of the crowd was thunderous. “We want God!” they shouted together. “We want God!” Men and women living in a repressive, atheistic dictatorship for years, a million strong, roaring “We want God!” Can you imagine being there?! Glory! Glory!

The visible manifestation of God. Jesus is on the mountain and as he prays the appearance of his face changes, his clothes flash a bright white. Something is happening, God is showing himself. Peter, James and John are sound asleep (not the last time), but they bolt upright.

The presence of God is everywhere, Moses and Elijah, long dead, stand shining, with Jesus, all bathed in glory, and it’s in the air and it’s on them. There’s something going on, God is present! Glory!

From your history reading you will remember Harriet Tubman, the remarkable slave woman who almost single-handedly kept the Underground Railroad operating 150 years ago, smuggling slaves out of the South. In 1845 she made her first trip to freedom across the state lines, and this is what she said:

“When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything.” Glory! Glory.

Moses and Elijah stand talking with Jesus. They are perhaps the most recognizable figures of Jewish history, the bringer of the Law and the epitomy of the Prophets stand with Jesus, symbolically the way in which people have followed after God down through so many years, the written Word on the tablets (10 commandments) and the Word spoken through the prophets.

They stand with Jesus, and only in this gospel of Luke does it say what they talk about: they speak of Jesus’ departure, in fact literally they speak of his “exodus!” at Jerusalem. That is, they speak of what Jesus has just told his disciples: that he will undergo great suffering, rejection, be killed and on the third day be raised.

When God’s glory shows up in such powerful ways, we sometimes…do some pretty silly things. Just very human things. We try to encapsulate the majesty and mystery of God into 6 steps, or 8 lessons, or 4 laws.

Or, like Peter, we just start talking.

Or, like Peter again here, we instantly decide to build a building. Maybe to honor God. Or maybe ourselves.

Willliam Golding, whom you may remember as the author of Lord of the Flies, wrote a lesser known novel called The Spire. It takes place around Salisbury Cathedral a cathedral in England that was finished in 1266. In the fourteenth century, an elegant spire, the tallest in England was added to it, at the orders of a strong-willed dean who built it against all the advice of the architects around him.

In the dean’s eyes, it was a diagram of prayer, built in obedience to a vision from God. Those around him saw it as nothing more than a monument of egocentric pride and stubbornness. For the entire book, it’s unclear which motive was the predominate one. You have to be careful when you build buildings, and know why you are actually doing it.

Peter, seeing that Elijah and Moses are going to leave says

“Wait! Lord! It’s so good to be here, let’s stay here! Long-term! We can build a building…in fact, three of them, one for each of you! And if we stay up here, we don’t have to worry about all that suffering and death stuff you were just talking about!”

There’s a little humor here, because while he was still talking (clearly Peter loved to talk!), the cloud came and overshadowed them and they were terrified.

But the cloud just means there’s more glory around. God is there, like he was on the mountain with Moses. Like he was on the mountain with Elijah. Like he was here in this sanctuary last week, as some of our young people shared the story of their walk with Jesus and were baptized or anointed, and we sat, some of us with tears rolling down our cheeks and the room got brighter and our hearts grew full and we knew God’s glory! glory.

God was there, the glory of God like Luke tells us it was when Jesus was born,

“Glory to God in the highest, a Savior has been born.”

The glory of God when Jesus was baptized in the Jordan and the Spirit descended and a voice came from God:

You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased,” affirming Jesus humility and identity.

And now the same voice and almost the same words, but now to the disciples:

“This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” Glory.

We don’t control when the glory of God shows up. But maybe we can find something better to do than fill the space with words, or start drawing up blueprints for a building which may be more of a tribute to us than to God.

Maybe we could sit silently. Maybe we could open our hearts and enjoy the moment. Maybe we could just be attentive to God instead of trying to box up his glory. Maybe we could allow God to touch us. And if we did, we’d have some things to take back down the hill with us…because we will go back down.

If Peter, James and John (we) are paying attention, they might take this with them (one point sermon):

The One they are to listen to…is Jesus.

Very simple.

But Peter may have come close to screwing this up.

“We can build three booths, one for each of you!”

Peter seems to put Elijah, Moses and Jesus on the same level. In the same way, many people in our day would put Jesus on the same level as other figures, whether Mohammed, Buddha, Gandhi or whoever.

As soon as Peter puts them together, Jesus rises above them. As great as Moses and Elijah were, as profound the Law and the prophets…in the end, the voice of God says not “Listen to them!” but “This is my Son, my Chosen. Listen to him!”

That doesn’t mean the Old Testament, Moses and the Prophets are not important, but that Jesus alone is the Savior. Only Jesus is transfigured. In the end, only Jesus is left, alone.

The early church father Jerome comments on this passage: “ I saw Moses, I saw the prophets, that I might understand that they speak of Christ…They are gone now that I might not remain in the law and prophets but arrive, through the law and prophets, at Christ.”

The church of Jesus Christ, Peter, you, me…need look no further, need find nothing missing, need uphold no other impressive person, need not find its answer and power anywhere else but in Jesus Christ, the Living Christ. Glory.

It’s at the end of another gospel, John’s gospel, that the resurrected Jesus goes down to the beach near where these same three, Peter, James and John are fishing. They don’t recognize him at first, and so he calls out to them

“Children, do you have any fish?” And they sheepishly say “No.”

And Jesus says,

“Cast the net on the other side of the boat.”

And they do, and they catch so many fish their net is about to break. John and Peter recognize that it is Jesus, back among them. And suddenly nothing else matters. Peter jumps into the water to get near Jesus, the others bring the boat, then Peter hauls the fish in, 153 of them!

And there on the beach, amidst sand and rocks, stories and laughter and so many slippery fish that it threatens to overcome them in all of God’s extravagant abundance, it begins to sink in that Jesus is who he said he was, that he accomplished on the cross what he said he would, and that the word spoken on the top of a mountain could be trusted:

“This is my Son, the Chosen. Listen to him!”

Glory.

I want to just invite you to sit silently for a few moments, and let this story from scripture roll around in you a bit, listening to see what God might put on your heart…

Sermons