Transfiguration of Our Lord

February 22, 2009

Sermon by Pastor John Marboe

The Holy Gospel according to St. Mark. (Mark 9:2-9)

Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” He did not know what to say for they were terrified. Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.

The Gospel of the Lord.

In the latest issue of the Highland Villager, our own neighborhood newspaper, there was an article, an editorial, actually, by a contributing writer whose name is Bill Stieger, and he editorialized on the excesses of our media culture. What grabbed my attention was his commentary on Oprah Winfrey. Apparently, she did it again. She got snookered by an author who was less than truthful. And you will recall that not so long ago she promoted a book called “A Million Little Pieces,” by James Frey, in which he had exaggerated his own experience with addiction and recovery.

But this time, more recently, it was a tale of Holocaust survivorship, a memoir titled “Angel at the Fence,” by Herman Rosenblat. Oprah promoted the book and the Rosenblat story on her show, but now it turns out the story is not true. It’s a fraud, and the publisher has canceled the publication.

But what got my interest was this editorial by Stieger, and here was his comment. He says:

“I feel bad for Oprah. She’s a well-meaning, intelligent woman, but she’s obsessed with stories of people who survive fantastic ordeals and come out better for them in the long run. Oprah needs to read some other writers, like Anton Chekhov, for example. The characters in Chekhov’s stories reflect life as it is. We don’t often win in the end or come out better following imprisonment or the death of a loved one. Good literature elicits our wonder and sympathies by reflecting on human loss and tragedy.”

It’s not just Oprah’s problem. Oprah is fabulously popular, not to mention rich, because we love this kind of story, too. We love a happy ending, perhaps precisely because it is better than reality.

I like to tell bedtime stories. In the latest episode, Toivo, The Wonder Dog—Toivo just happens to be the name of our dog—but in this story, Toivo, The Wonder Dog, is a little orphaned dog who has learned to survive by his wits on the streets of a big city. He makes friends by helping people and saving their lives, using his amazing powers of vision and strength. Most recently, he broke up a robbery at a store and apprehended the robbers until the police could come and take him away. And then he went straight from there and saved a damsel in distress, who invited him to come and stay with her in her apartment, where she fed him good food and gave him a cozy bed to sleep in.

We like stories. We like these kinds of stories that put our minds at ease for the moment and help us fall asleep, maybe to forget the monsters under the bed. But they’re not stories that are meant to reflect reality. They are meant to ease the fears and stresses of life in the real world.

What kind of stories are Bible stories? What kind of a story is the Gospel of Mark, the one we’re reading from today and during this season? Is the Gospel of Mark, for example, a kind of a bedtime story? Is it a story designed to make us feel better, but that really doesn’t square with the real world of our experience? There are some rather famous critics of Christianity that have suggested this.

Friedrich Nietzsche, son of a Lutheran pastor, by the way, called Christianity “Socratism for the masses.” And he was no fan of Socrates. What he meant by that was he felt Christianity tends to teach people to love an idealized world instead of this earthly world in which we live. To the extent that Christianity does this, I think that’s a fair critique. Karl Marx, also born of a Lutheran, called Christianity “The opium for the masses,” by which I think he meant something similar to Nietzsche. Both suggested that the Bible can be used like a lullaby, or a bedtime story—a kind of “There, there, everything will turn out okay in the end”—that makes people less awake, less alive, less engaged in life here and now. And this is a critique worth serious consideration.

It’s worth asking whether stories such as the one before us this morning of Jesus’ transfiguration and dazzling appearance on a mountain are real. And by real, I don’t mean whether it actually happened, which is almost always the wrong question to ask of the Bible. By real, I mean does it, like a Chekhov play and unlike a bedtime story, reflect reality, the real world in which we live and move and have our being?

So let’s review the story. Jesus takes three disciples up a mountain, and he begins to shine in a kind of glorious radiance. And there he has a conference with Moses and Elijah, two of the greatest prophets in the Bible. A cloud then descends and surrounds them, and a voice declares, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” And then very suddenly it’s over. Moses and Elijah disappear, and they head back down the mountain.

Now, on the face of it, this might appear to us a straightforward glory story. Jesus has arrived at the pinnacle of spiritual success, if I can use those terms. He’s radiant with enlightenment; he communes with God and with saints directly. He is declared God’s Son and God’s unique prophet in the world. This is where a good bedtime story would end. “The end. Sweet dreams.”

But Mark so does not end there. This is but a brief shining moment on the way down into shadow and tragedy. The sequence of events from here on in Jesus’ life is one we would happily avoid. He goes to Jerusalem. There is a secret plot to kill him. One of his closest friends betrays him into their hands. He is arrested, abandoned by his companions, beaten, publicly humiliated, and tortured to death. And in contrast with the clarity of that moment on the Mountain of Transfiguration, where God declares “Jesus, my Son,” we have a picture instead of abandonment, of failure, of humiliation, of pain, and finally of a tragic death. We live between these two extremes. The real world exists between these two extremes.

This week, I had the joy of speaking with two couples that are preparing to be married. They’re in love. And, you know, it’s almost like their countenance radiates it. I visited also members in the hospital who just gave birth to their second child, a little boy, who survived dangerous complications, but he came through it healthy and whole. And they were radiant. Every single life is a miracle. You are a radiant miracle. If I had eyes to see the beauty and the glory of God present in each and every life, I swear I would need sunglasses. Sometimes I think I do see a bit.

But on the other end, I spoke this week with a man whose daughter has become addicted to painkillers. And the pain, the agony in his eyes as he told me, said far more than any words could have. Others face incurable disease; others face the death of one’s vibrant relationship. Joblessness, or the threat of it, has people really scared. Sickness, sadness, depression, fear, pain, emptiness, loneliness, anger, violence, want, desolation, poverty, unfairness, injustice, are all part of the human drama, too. Life leaves wounds. But Jesus is our brother in all of it, in the fleeting glimpse of God’s glory and in the tragedy.

Mark ends his Gospel in a unique way. Unlike the other Gospels, Mark does not end his tale of Jesus with a glorious resurrection. He rather follows several women to the tomb, where they encounter an angel at the front of an empty tomb. And the angel tells them that “Jesus has risen. Now go and tell the other disciples about it.” But instead of doing that, the Gospel tells us that they flee from the tomb in fear and amazement, and that they say nothing to anyone for they are afraid. And the Gospel ends right there.

The ending is neither triumph nor tragedy. It’s hopeful, but it’s not certain. It’s not conclusive. It leaves us wondering what will happen next. This is the life of the Spirit. This is life in Christ. It is dazzling light, it is brutally painful. It’s everything in between. But it is always miraculously made new again.

No bedtime story, this.