Sermon Illustrations for The Transfiguration (2018)
Illustration
2 Kings 2:1-12
Elijah and Elisha -- two prophets of God whose names and roles are sometimes confused -- encounter difficulties on the road that God has laid before them. Elijah has work to do, travels to undertake and seeks to fulfill that work AND protect his colleague and protégé Elisha. Elisha will have none of the protection, though, seeking to follow his mentor wherever he goes.
Who are your mentors in your work, your education, or your faith? Chances are that you won’t see them lifted up to heaven on a chariot, as Elisha saw with Elijah. But what and where is your mentor leading you? What are you learning about life, your profession, your calling from your mentor? Elisha learns about the power of God, the power of proclamation, and the righteousness of his mentor. Elisha seeks to be, to become, like his mentor. Elisha seeks to carry the mantle of the prophet, to proclaim the words and actions of God in the world. He risks everything to be who he is called to be. What about us? Are we living into who we are called to be? Are we seeking the wisdom and influence of our mentors so that we can be all we are created to be? Just as with Elisha we have a choice: a choice to follow or turn back. What will our choice be?
Bonnie B.
2 Kings 2:1-12
This is a story to remind us that you are never alone in faith. The mantle, the heritage, is passed on from Elijah to Elisha. What we have is not our own; it was given to us as a heritage of those who went before us. The faith of the Church has been around long before we were. It is as the wise pastor and sociology professor Leon Zinkler once said to a young pastor: “Always remember that the church will still be there long after you are.” George Bernard Shaw also captured well the sense in which we owe who we are to those who came before us: “I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die.”
Scholars of religion have noted that there really is no such thing as private faith. The most primitive religious experience seems to have engaged people in doing rituals in unison as the experience of participating in a larger community (Nicholas Wade, The Faith Instinct, pp. 79-81, 92-96). And in these experiences, neurobiologists observe that in spiritual experience the brain’s parietal lobe which helps us orient ourselves grows dim, so that when relating to God in faith we lose our sense of self (Andrew Newberg and Mark Waldman, Why We Believe What We Believe, pp. 176ff).
In the transfiguration we are reminded that Christ is beyond us, and so is part of and in the community to which we belong, drawing us out of ourselves to be with him and the whole Church and creation, making us more of ourselves than we already are. Famed 20th-century theologian Karl Barth put it well: “He [the Christian] affirms Jesus Christ as his beyond. And it is for this reason that he understands his life here and now as one which is affirmed by his beyond” (Church Dogmatics, Vol. III/2, p. 640).
Mark E.
2 Kings 2:1-12
The wife of one pastor I know followed him everywhere he went. He had churches across the country and also on the mission field, and she was still faithful, but the day he died she could not follow him yet -- until it was her turn to go “home.” We need to follow our Lord until we go home to be with him.
Some of us are so impressed by a person that we want to follow him or her wherever they go: it could be an athlete, a movie star, or even a politician (God forbid). There are some who follow any president wherever he might go. If he “goes” we can weep, even though, like Elisha, we might follow in his footsteps. We might have to get some new clothes!
We are not all prophets, but we can follow our pastor as he or she leads us -- even into danger.
This was probably more true in the mission field, where some were followers even though they might lose their family (because they renounced their family’s faith and became Christian, which was against the law in Nepal until 1992).
We need to follow Jesus wherever he leads us. If we do we will have great opportunities to serve, though we will not have more of the Spirit than he had. We need God’s Spirit in our life! That is the main job of our church.
Bob O.
2 Corinthians 4:3-6
In an Entrepreneur magazine article, Steve Tobak notes that there are a lot of competent, talented, ingenuous people who work hard at their jobs and strive to outperform the competition. He adds, “One more thing they’d all have in common: a specific area of functional expertise. Whether it’s product development, operations, marketing, finance, or an entire market, there is always one thing they do best.” The idea of doing what one does best is not a new one. I heard it described nearly 30 years ago at a leadership conference in Louisville, Kentucky. The CEO of KFC at the time spoke about how KFC had been tempted to expand their menu, but resisted because they wanted to “do chicken right.” The thrust of the message is to keep the main thing the main thing.
I think that’s good business advice, but resounds even more biblically. After talking about how some are not able to receive the message, Paul makes it clear that he and his companions do not shrink away from it. He writes: “For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord.” It is that message that impacts lives. It is that message that is light in a dark world. It is that message that matters. It’s the one thing that matters, and they made it a priority. Do we?
Bill T.
2 Corinthians 4:3-6
In this short passage from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, he suggests that something essential about God’s plan was hidden in plain sight.
In her book Hidden Figures (recently made into a film), author Margot Lee Shetterly wrote about the women who were her Sunday school teachers, who sang in the church choir, and who brought dishes to the church’s potlucks. She knew they worked for NASA, and grew up thinking it was the norm for African-Americans to excel in math and science. Only as an adult did she realize that these women were hidden in plain sight. Their history was largely unknown among the general population, and indeed in danger of being lost.
As Margot Lee Shetterly tells the story, despite the many racial barriers these women had to overcome in the South both before and during the civil rights movement, they were critical not only in developing new aircraft but in sending humans into orbit around the earth and later to the moon and back. Thanks to her book, these women were no longer hidden in plain sight.
Frank R.
2 Corinthians 4:3-6
Tim LaHaye, along with Jerry Jenkins, wrote the 16-volume book series titled Left Behind. These books were published between 1995 and 2007, and sold more than 65 million copies. The Left Behind series revolves around the “end times,” specifically regarding the “rapture” and the time of “tribulation” as recorded in the Bible. During the tribulation, the world will be ruled for seven years by the Antichrist. The Antichrist, in the LaHaye books, is the head of the United Nations who establishes a global government with one religion and one currency. The novels’ hero is the ambassador’s daughter, her pastor, and a journalist who try to save the lost and prepare individuals for the Second Coming. This is when Christ will reign for 1,000 years before the battle of Armageddon. The novels portray Jesus as a firesome warrior who viciously destroys millions of unbelievers in gristly detail, casting Hindus, Muslims, Jews, agnostics, and anyone not a born-again Christian into the fires of hell.
LaHaye got the idea for the series while flying home from a conference on biblical prophecy. From his seat he watched the married captain of the plane flirt with a younger, unmarried flight attendant. LaHaye imagined that the pilot had a Christian wife back home. What would happen, LaHaye wondered, if the rapture -- in which millions of Christians are whisked to heaven, leaving unbelievers fending for themselves on earth -- occurred just then, leaving the pilot behind?
LaHaye was a Baptist pastor who wrote many nonfiction books, but realized he could not skillfully write fiction, even if the novel was based on biblical events. So he asked Jenkins, a sportswriter who also contributed to Reader’s Digest and Parade magazine, to assist him. LaHaye drafted the outlines for the stories based on the biblical books of Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Revelation, and then Jenkins would do the actual writing.
LaHaye believed that the Antichrist had been born during his lifetime and that the end days were near. Regarding the controversial Left Behind series, LaHaye said: “We are using fiction to teach biblical truth.” Though LaHaye died in July 2016, he still held fast to this understanding.
Application: The Left Behind series was controversial and its predictions are still waiting to be fulfilled. But as we are taught by Paul, we need to be concerned about unbelievers.
Ron L.
Mark 9:2-9
I love the transfiguration story -- not just for the encounter Jesus has with the prophets Elijah and Moses, but for the all too human reaction of Peter. Peter is so human, so like each and every one of us. Peter sees the world very rationally. If the prophets are here and we want them to stay, we need to build shelters for them to rest in out of respect and adoration. If Jesus is in conversation with the prophets, Jesus must be pretty special too. And to hear a voice from the heavens, how wonderful and exciting that might have been for Peter, James, and John.
I am sure we have encountered holy moments as well. I know that as a pastor some holy moments are filled with joy: the birth of a child, a baptism service, a wedding, a moment of preaching that transcends my own voice and comes directly from God. But there are also holy moments that are not so joyful: the passing from this world to the next, a struggle that brings new insight, or the acceptance of a yoke of faithfulness that pushes to new points of surrender. These too are holy moments. Imagine the dismay that Peter, James, and John feel when the prophets disappear, when the voice from the heavens ceases, when they are told they cannot share what has happened to them with the others. These, as much as the mountaintop moments, are moments of holiness and grace.
All that is, all we experience, can be grace-filled and holy, not necessarily caused directly by God but occurring in the presence of God, in the presence of the Holy. Let it be so.
Bonnie B.
Mark 9:2-9
John Calvin offers a penetrating insight on what the transfiguration means for everyday life. His point is that a glorified Christ, God’s Son that he is, sees and knows all we do, even when we’re not looking: “We ought to gather from this passage a useful doctrine, that when are not thinking of Christ, we are observed by him; and it is necessary that it should be so, that he may bring us back when we have wandered from the right path” (Calvin’s Commenatries, Vol. XVII/2, p. 79).
Famed 20th-century Catholic theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin offers a prayer that well expresses who our transfigured Jesus is in all his glory: “Lord Jesus Christ, you truly contain within your gentleness, within your humanity, all the unyielding immensity and grandeur of the world.... The incarnation means the renewal, the restoration of all the energies and powers of the universe; Christ is the instrument, the center and the end of all creation, animate and material; through him everything is created, hallowed, quickened” (Hymn of the Universe, pp. 74, 144).
Pope Francis also gives us a deep insight into Peter’s reaction to the event. He claims that the account reminds us that the Holy Spirit is not about to let us overlook this event, how the Spirit may be driving us out of our comfort zones this week: “And we are like Peter at the transfiguration: ‘Ah, how wonderful it is to be here like this, all together!’ ...But don’t bother us. We want the Holy Spirit to doze off... we want to domesticate the Holy Spirit. And that’s no good, because He is God, he is that wind which comes and goes and you don’t know where. He is the power of God, he is the one who gives us consolation and strength to move forward. But to move forward! And this bothers us. It’s so much nicer to be comfortable” (Encountering Truth: Meeting God in the Everyday).
Mark E.
Mark 9:2-9
The disciples followed their leader as Elisha followed Elijah, but when they saw Elijah they were overcome with that revelation. It seemed to make Jesus equivalent with those Old Testament leaders, but God seemed to shout: “Shut up, you guys, and listen to my Son who I sent to you!”
Since Moses and Elijah had died centuries before, I wonder how the disciples recognized them. They didn’t have photo albums in those days!
Muslims and Buddhists revere leaders who are long dead, but Jesus is still living and he can be seen in us Christians -- we hope and pray! God seems to be saying to these other faiths: “Shut up and listen to the words of my Son!”
When we lived in Nepal and visited India, we saw in many stores in both countries all kinds of statues representing their many gods. Some people, like the disciples, would make worship centers for the ones they have been told about by our relatives and friends. It is hard for some to think that there is only one God who may be in three persons, but is still only one. It is our job as Christians to tell others who want to worship other leaders to shut up and listen to the words of Jesus!
Jesus can lead us to see other great leaders, but we must remember to listen to him and worship him only!
Bob O.
Elijah and Elisha -- two prophets of God whose names and roles are sometimes confused -- encounter difficulties on the road that God has laid before them. Elijah has work to do, travels to undertake and seeks to fulfill that work AND protect his colleague and protégé Elisha. Elisha will have none of the protection, though, seeking to follow his mentor wherever he goes.
Who are your mentors in your work, your education, or your faith? Chances are that you won’t see them lifted up to heaven on a chariot, as Elisha saw with Elijah. But what and where is your mentor leading you? What are you learning about life, your profession, your calling from your mentor? Elisha learns about the power of God, the power of proclamation, and the righteousness of his mentor. Elisha seeks to be, to become, like his mentor. Elisha seeks to carry the mantle of the prophet, to proclaim the words and actions of God in the world. He risks everything to be who he is called to be. What about us? Are we living into who we are called to be? Are we seeking the wisdom and influence of our mentors so that we can be all we are created to be? Just as with Elisha we have a choice: a choice to follow or turn back. What will our choice be?
Bonnie B.
2 Kings 2:1-12
This is a story to remind us that you are never alone in faith. The mantle, the heritage, is passed on from Elijah to Elisha. What we have is not our own; it was given to us as a heritage of those who went before us. The faith of the Church has been around long before we were. It is as the wise pastor and sociology professor Leon Zinkler once said to a young pastor: “Always remember that the church will still be there long after you are.” George Bernard Shaw also captured well the sense in which we owe who we are to those who came before us: “I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die.”
Scholars of religion have noted that there really is no such thing as private faith. The most primitive religious experience seems to have engaged people in doing rituals in unison as the experience of participating in a larger community (Nicholas Wade, The Faith Instinct, pp. 79-81, 92-96). And in these experiences, neurobiologists observe that in spiritual experience the brain’s parietal lobe which helps us orient ourselves grows dim, so that when relating to God in faith we lose our sense of self (Andrew Newberg and Mark Waldman, Why We Believe What We Believe, pp. 176ff).
In the transfiguration we are reminded that Christ is beyond us, and so is part of and in the community to which we belong, drawing us out of ourselves to be with him and the whole Church and creation, making us more of ourselves than we already are. Famed 20th-century theologian Karl Barth put it well: “He [the Christian] affirms Jesus Christ as his beyond. And it is for this reason that he understands his life here and now as one which is affirmed by his beyond” (Church Dogmatics, Vol. III/2, p. 640).
Mark E.
2 Kings 2:1-12
The wife of one pastor I know followed him everywhere he went. He had churches across the country and also on the mission field, and she was still faithful, but the day he died she could not follow him yet -- until it was her turn to go “home.” We need to follow our Lord until we go home to be with him.
Some of us are so impressed by a person that we want to follow him or her wherever they go: it could be an athlete, a movie star, or even a politician (God forbid). There are some who follow any president wherever he might go. If he “goes” we can weep, even though, like Elisha, we might follow in his footsteps. We might have to get some new clothes!
We are not all prophets, but we can follow our pastor as he or she leads us -- even into danger.
This was probably more true in the mission field, where some were followers even though they might lose their family (because they renounced their family’s faith and became Christian, which was against the law in Nepal until 1992).
We need to follow Jesus wherever he leads us. If we do we will have great opportunities to serve, though we will not have more of the Spirit than he had. We need God’s Spirit in our life! That is the main job of our church.
Bob O.
2 Corinthians 4:3-6
In an Entrepreneur magazine article, Steve Tobak notes that there are a lot of competent, talented, ingenuous people who work hard at their jobs and strive to outperform the competition. He adds, “One more thing they’d all have in common: a specific area of functional expertise. Whether it’s product development, operations, marketing, finance, or an entire market, there is always one thing they do best.” The idea of doing what one does best is not a new one. I heard it described nearly 30 years ago at a leadership conference in Louisville, Kentucky. The CEO of KFC at the time spoke about how KFC had been tempted to expand their menu, but resisted because they wanted to “do chicken right.” The thrust of the message is to keep the main thing the main thing.
I think that’s good business advice, but resounds even more biblically. After talking about how some are not able to receive the message, Paul makes it clear that he and his companions do not shrink away from it. He writes: “For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord.” It is that message that impacts lives. It is that message that is light in a dark world. It is that message that matters. It’s the one thing that matters, and they made it a priority. Do we?
Bill T.
2 Corinthians 4:3-6
In this short passage from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, he suggests that something essential about God’s plan was hidden in plain sight.
In her book Hidden Figures (recently made into a film), author Margot Lee Shetterly wrote about the women who were her Sunday school teachers, who sang in the church choir, and who brought dishes to the church’s potlucks. She knew they worked for NASA, and grew up thinking it was the norm for African-Americans to excel in math and science. Only as an adult did she realize that these women were hidden in plain sight. Their history was largely unknown among the general population, and indeed in danger of being lost.
As Margot Lee Shetterly tells the story, despite the many racial barriers these women had to overcome in the South both before and during the civil rights movement, they were critical not only in developing new aircraft but in sending humans into orbit around the earth and later to the moon and back. Thanks to her book, these women were no longer hidden in plain sight.
Frank R.
2 Corinthians 4:3-6
Tim LaHaye, along with Jerry Jenkins, wrote the 16-volume book series titled Left Behind. These books were published between 1995 and 2007, and sold more than 65 million copies. The Left Behind series revolves around the “end times,” specifically regarding the “rapture” and the time of “tribulation” as recorded in the Bible. During the tribulation, the world will be ruled for seven years by the Antichrist. The Antichrist, in the LaHaye books, is the head of the United Nations who establishes a global government with one religion and one currency. The novels’ hero is the ambassador’s daughter, her pastor, and a journalist who try to save the lost and prepare individuals for the Second Coming. This is when Christ will reign for 1,000 years before the battle of Armageddon. The novels portray Jesus as a firesome warrior who viciously destroys millions of unbelievers in gristly detail, casting Hindus, Muslims, Jews, agnostics, and anyone not a born-again Christian into the fires of hell.
LaHaye got the idea for the series while flying home from a conference on biblical prophecy. From his seat he watched the married captain of the plane flirt with a younger, unmarried flight attendant. LaHaye imagined that the pilot had a Christian wife back home. What would happen, LaHaye wondered, if the rapture -- in which millions of Christians are whisked to heaven, leaving unbelievers fending for themselves on earth -- occurred just then, leaving the pilot behind?
LaHaye was a Baptist pastor who wrote many nonfiction books, but realized he could not skillfully write fiction, even if the novel was based on biblical events. So he asked Jenkins, a sportswriter who also contributed to Reader’s Digest and Parade magazine, to assist him. LaHaye drafted the outlines for the stories based on the biblical books of Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Revelation, and then Jenkins would do the actual writing.
LaHaye believed that the Antichrist had been born during his lifetime and that the end days were near. Regarding the controversial Left Behind series, LaHaye said: “We are using fiction to teach biblical truth.” Though LaHaye died in July 2016, he still held fast to this understanding.
Application: The Left Behind series was controversial and its predictions are still waiting to be fulfilled. But as we are taught by Paul, we need to be concerned about unbelievers.
Ron L.
Mark 9:2-9
I love the transfiguration story -- not just for the encounter Jesus has with the prophets Elijah and Moses, but for the all too human reaction of Peter. Peter is so human, so like each and every one of us. Peter sees the world very rationally. If the prophets are here and we want them to stay, we need to build shelters for them to rest in out of respect and adoration. If Jesus is in conversation with the prophets, Jesus must be pretty special too. And to hear a voice from the heavens, how wonderful and exciting that might have been for Peter, James, and John.
I am sure we have encountered holy moments as well. I know that as a pastor some holy moments are filled with joy: the birth of a child, a baptism service, a wedding, a moment of preaching that transcends my own voice and comes directly from God. But there are also holy moments that are not so joyful: the passing from this world to the next, a struggle that brings new insight, or the acceptance of a yoke of faithfulness that pushes to new points of surrender. These too are holy moments. Imagine the dismay that Peter, James, and John feel when the prophets disappear, when the voice from the heavens ceases, when they are told they cannot share what has happened to them with the others. These, as much as the mountaintop moments, are moments of holiness and grace.
All that is, all we experience, can be grace-filled and holy, not necessarily caused directly by God but occurring in the presence of God, in the presence of the Holy. Let it be so.
Bonnie B.
Mark 9:2-9
John Calvin offers a penetrating insight on what the transfiguration means for everyday life. His point is that a glorified Christ, God’s Son that he is, sees and knows all we do, even when we’re not looking: “We ought to gather from this passage a useful doctrine, that when are not thinking of Christ, we are observed by him; and it is necessary that it should be so, that he may bring us back when we have wandered from the right path” (Calvin’s Commenatries, Vol. XVII/2, p. 79).
Famed 20th-century Catholic theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin offers a prayer that well expresses who our transfigured Jesus is in all his glory: “Lord Jesus Christ, you truly contain within your gentleness, within your humanity, all the unyielding immensity and grandeur of the world.... The incarnation means the renewal, the restoration of all the energies and powers of the universe; Christ is the instrument, the center and the end of all creation, animate and material; through him everything is created, hallowed, quickened” (Hymn of the Universe, pp. 74, 144).
Pope Francis also gives us a deep insight into Peter’s reaction to the event. He claims that the account reminds us that the Holy Spirit is not about to let us overlook this event, how the Spirit may be driving us out of our comfort zones this week: “And we are like Peter at the transfiguration: ‘Ah, how wonderful it is to be here like this, all together!’ ...But don’t bother us. We want the Holy Spirit to doze off... we want to domesticate the Holy Spirit. And that’s no good, because He is God, he is that wind which comes and goes and you don’t know where. He is the power of God, he is the one who gives us consolation and strength to move forward. But to move forward! And this bothers us. It’s so much nicer to be comfortable” (Encountering Truth: Meeting God in the Everyday).
Mark E.
Mark 9:2-9
The disciples followed their leader as Elisha followed Elijah, but when they saw Elijah they were overcome with that revelation. It seemed to make Jesus equivalent with those Old Testament leaders, but God seemed to shout: “Shut up, you guys, and listen to my Son who I sent to you!”
Since Moses and Elijah had died centuries before, I wonder how the disciples recognized them. They didn’t have photo albums in those days!
Muslims and Buddhists revere leaders who are long dead, but Jesus is still living and he can be seen in us Christians -- we hope and pray! God seems to be saying to these other faiths: “Shut up and listen to the words of my Son!”
When we lived in Nepal and visited India, we saw in many stores in both countries all kinds of statues representing their many gods. Some people, like the disciples, would make worship centers for the ones they have been told about by our relatives and friends. It is hard for some to think that there is only one God who may be in three persons, but is still only one. It is our job as Christians to tell others who want to worship other leaders to shut up and listen to the words of Jesus!
Jesus can lead us to see other great leaders, but we must remember to listen to him and worship him only!
Bob O.
