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“Well-Kept Secrets”, Rev. Melissa St. Clair, 3/2/14

“Well-Kept Secrets”

A sermon preached at

Heart of the Rockies Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

Fort Collins, CO

by the Rev. Melissa St. Clair

Matthew 17:1-9

March 2, 2014

 This Sunday, the last before we observe Ash Wednesday and enter into the 40-day wilderness known as Lent, which prepares us for the communion of Maundy Thursday, the suffering of Good Friday, the anticipation of Holy Saturday, and the hope and hallelujah of Easter Sunday, this Sunday is Transfiguration Sunday.  When you hear the story, it may seem like a strange interlude right smack in the middle of Jesus’ public ministry, but this declaration of who Jesus really is, God’s own beloved son, is:

• an important affirmation of Jesus’ baptism
• a significant connection to the line of prophets that has gone before him, and
• a reminder that Jesus’ story has yet to be fully known

Let’s enter into the story together as it’s written in Matthew’s gospel.

READ MATTHEW 17:1-9

Just a few weeks after my 21^st birthday, I packed a gigantic duffel bag full of running clothes, jeans, and t-shirts and jumped into the gray Jeep of one of college cross country teammates and his roommate.  We drove a half-day from Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, to Columbus, Ohio, where we stayed for two days so I could attend my best friend from high school’s graduation.  We drove another full day, crossed the Mississippi, and spent the night in Salina, Kansas.  This “valley girl” – I mean that in a literal sense – had never seen so many miles of what seemed to me to be absolutely nothing.  Trees, mountains – that’s what civilization looks like.  The next day we crossed into Colorado, greeted by that “colorful” sign, still baffled by the lack of, well, any real geographical features, it seemed to us.  One moment we were singing together to Incubus, reveling at just how…expeditiously…one could travel with lack of said features and the next we were gasping a collective breath of thinner air (who knew we were actually going uphill all that time??)  The Rocky Mountains materialized right before our eyes, seemingly out of nowhere.

I’m not sure what it’s like driving in from the West, but unless you were born here, I’m guessing you have, at some point, had that feeling, too – awe, amazement, as Anne Lamott would say in the book we’ve been reading together on Wednesday mornings – WOW.   Just wow.

s voice comes.   For many of us, the mountains are holy ground because of their beauty and the views they offer.  For those living in the ancient world, mountains were holy because they were thought literally to hold up the dome of the heavens.[1]

So it’s no surprise that when Jesus leads his disciples – his followers, his friends – when they head up that high mountain, something pretty spectacular happens.  It’s hard to say what the disciples were expecting when they set out. Jesus often went to the mountains to pray, to retreat from the crowds.  If that’s what they had in mind, then they were definitely in for a shock.  Over the years, scholars have tried to make sense of what really happened on that mountain – theories ranging from an event that actually happened just as it’s described in scripture to a vision to a dream to a purely symbolic story.[2] Regardless of explanation, it’s clear that whatever happened had a pretty significant impact on those who witnessed it – the disciples fall to the ground, overcome with fear.  They were terrified, according to the accounts of the same story in Mark and Luke.

And rightly so.  Transfiguration is literally, metamorphoses, that is, a major change in the appearance or character of someone or something.[3]  Change is terrifying for many of us.  Maybe all of us.  The change that Jesus undergoes on this mountaintop is holy – he “glows with the transcendent glory reserved for heavenly beings.” The disciples have seen the fully human side of Jesus; now they catch more than a glimpse of his divinity.  The disciples would’ve known what this Jesus-turned-fireball signified – in the Jewish tradition, the kind of radiance Jesus exuded was attributed to many who had gone before him – Adam, Abraham, Moses, to name a few.[4]

This radiance, the mountains – these aren’t the only common threads woven through the tapestry of this story. The six days that elapsed between Jesus sharing about his suffering by way of the cross and this encounter on the mountain echo the six days that Moses was on Mount Sinai.  And to rewind even further, those six days at the beginning of creation that anticipate the seventh day when God’s creative work was fulfilled and God rested.  In Matthew’s gospel, after six days “Jesus himself is the embodiment of the seventh day,” the fulfillment of God’s redeeming work.[5]

How would you have felt having witnessed this scene?  You’ve heard Jesus predict his suffering.  You’ve seen and probably felt (?) what you know to be his divinity in a blinding blast.  You’re feeling sunburned, maybe, and afraid, for sure.  If you’re Peter, you immediately try to memorialize the moment.  Let me just build those dwellings, Peter begs.  Permanency in the midst of radical change can bring comfort, yes? And yet what is God’s response to Peter’s idea?  While Peter is still speaking – he doesn’t even get the chance to finish – God interrupts.  Listen to him, the God of the cloud says.  Now everyone’s reaction is the same – they hit the deck.  They’re afraid.

And Jesus’ reaction to it all?  He leads Peter, James, and John back down that mountain and orders them to tell no one about what they’ve seen.  In Mark’s gospel, not only does Jesus order them to tell no one what they’ve seen – but Mark goes a little bit further.  He is sure to note that the disciples actually heed that command. They keep the matter to themselves (Mark 9.9).  In Luke’s version, Jesus doesn’t even have to tell the disciples to be mum about it – they just “[keep] silent and in those days [tell] no one any of the things they had seen” (Luke 9.36).

It’s a secret we’ve been keeping ever since.

I don’t mean that we don’t go telling people about the time Jesus was transfigured, although, speaking for myself at least, I can’t remember the last time I brought that up at a dinner party.

But how often do we really share the story of Jesus’ transformation?  About how our relationship with God through Jesus Christ has transformed our lives?  The disciples get a free pass here – they didn’t know the whole story yet.  And many believe that that’s why Jesus told them to keep quiet.  It’s one thing to follow a guy who’s changing people’s lives for the good – healing them, making them feel valued and included in ways they hadn’t felt before.  It’s another to follow someone who is suffering, someone who is unpopular, someone who is misunderstood, someone who isn’t like us.  Jesus might not have wanted them to go around telling everyone that they had seen him in his divine glory because he was already being mocked for who he told people he was.  He knew his suffering was yet to come.  And, more importantly, he knew that this story wouldn’t be fully understood until the chapter about resurrection was written.

Jesus’ story – and as ones who follow after him, our story – is one of transformation.  Knowing Jesus, living out the ministry he calls us too – we can’t enter into that relationship, with all of its suffering and all of its glory, without being changed.  Transfigured, even.

But it can be hard to tell that story.  It might feel a lot like that e-word we talked about a few weeks ago.  Evangelism.  And yet the story is ours to tell.  Telling our story doesn’t mean whacking people upside the head with it.  It doesn’t mean using it to judge others and their stories, it doesn’t mean using it to elevate ourselves above others or exclude others.

It does mean taking the time to think about our stories, about how we have been shaped by the God of Jesus, about how following after him has helped make us who we are.  We can’t tell our story to others unless we know our stories within ourselves first.  And that’s an easy place to get caught up.  Because, really, truly how many of us fully know and understand and can articulate the ways we’ve experienced God in our lives?  If we had to know the whole story, if we had to have it all figured out, we’d have no choice but to remain silent, as Jesus commanded the disciples on that first Transfiguration Day.

But we don’t.  We don’t have to have all the answers.  We don’t have to have it all figured out before we can start to share our story, Jesus’ story.

We don’t even have to tell the story ourselves.

I believe we tell the story – of Jesus, of the gospel, of how it’s transformed our lives – I believe we tell this story best when we’re living together in community.  That’s what we’re doing right now, isn’t it?  And when we’re on mission trips together and when we’re sitting around tables together after worship and at potlucks, and when we’re laughing and singing and praying and reading and crying together.

That’s why it matters that you’re here.  “Lord, it is good for us to be here,” Peter says at a moment when he surely didn’t fully understand what was going on but knew that it was something important to see.  That’s why it matters that you show up, no matter where you are on the journey.  And that’s why it’s so important that you invite others to be a part of this – and I’m not talking just to worship, but to anything and everything that we do as church – so that others, so that they too can witness the story for themselves and add to it with their own, and so that we all can be part of the conversation about what it all means.

When the disciples came down from the mountain that day, you know what Jesus did?  He went right back to healing, to preaching, to teaching, to blessing people, even little children. That’s the Jesus we know.  That’s the story we’ve entered into. That’s the story we must continue to write.  Together.  With the ones we know and love and the ones we haven’t yet met.  Because that’s the story that has changed lives.  That’s transformation.  That’s transfiguration.  That’s the power of our story.