Super-Sized Spectacles Of Faith
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In this week’s gospel text, Jesus takes Peter, John, and James up on a mountain with him to pray. The disciples likely expected nothing out of the ordinary -- but as Jesus “was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white.” As if that wasn’t enough of a shock to their system, then the startled disciples saw Moses and Elijah talking to Jesus about “his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.” Predictably, Peter is so flummoxed that his initial reaction misses the point -- but as if to underline the real focus of the transfiguration, God comes to them in a cloud and tells them: “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” What this is really about, of course, is not a gratuitous display of God’s mastery of special effects but a revealing to the disciples present of Jesus’ true inner nature -- and in this installment of The Immediate Word, team member Chris Keating suggests that Super Bowl Sunday (which coincides this year with Transfiguration Sunday) likewise reveals a great deal about America’s true inner nature. But while we may all be awed by the over-the-top spectacle of the Super Bowl (and especially the star-studded halftime show), Chris notes that this all pales compared to the power and glory that God demonstrates on the mountaintop.
Team member Dean Feldmeyer shares some additional thoughts on the transfiguration and the disciples’ reaction to what they’ve experienced. God has to grab their attention in order to focus them on what’s important -- and Dean points out that both the disciples’ initial responses and God’s exasperated reply give us important clues on how to approach the significant religious and/or spiritual experiences in our lives: namely, be awake, stop our activity, and let them speak to us.
Super-Sized Spectacles of Faith
by Chris Keating
Luke 9:28-36 (37-43a)
It’s not just Super Sunday -- it’s a super-sized extravaganza, the zenith of all gargantuan sporting events, America’s highest holy day of the year... complete with celebrities, glamour, 10,000-calorie-per-serving nachos, million-dollar television commercials, and (of course) football.
Whataday. What-an-amazin’ day.
The Super Bowl, and all the hoopla that leads up to it, is nearly a national holiday. This year’s event features a stylistic contrast in the quarterback matchup as Peyton Manning meets Cam Newton, with a side of Beyonce, Bruno Mars, and Coldplay at halftime. It is also the game’s golden anniversary, fittingly hosted by San Francisco’s Golden Gate hospitality. Two teams stretch toward the coveted Lombardi trophy -- but in many ways, it is much, much more than just a game.
Coincidentally, this year it’s also a day when we recall a different dazzling spectacle. Jesus’ mountaintop transfiguration demands our attention this week in a way that surpasses even the best football game. The NFL may have Manning and Beyonce, but they’re no match for the celebrity posse Jesus summons on the mountain. As if his stunning costume change -- no wardrobe malfunction here -- was not enough, Jesus brings along Moses and Elijah for cameo appearances. God’s thunderous theophany caps the show, terrifying the already dumbfounded disciples.
Set down the nachos: here is a glory far surpassing the ersatz hype of the Super Bowl. Jesus’ spectacular moment of transfiguration is the real Super Sunday -- and we’d do well to heed God’s call to pay attention to what is happening. Like the disciples, we might just be “astounded at the greatness of God.”
In the News
The Super Bowl reigns supreme as America’s largest unofficial holiday. Last year, a record-breaking 114 million television viewers tuned in to catch a glimpse of Tom Brady and the New England Patriots beat the Seattle Seahawks in a breathless, down-to-the-wire finish. It was the most-watched program in U.S. history, inflating to nearly 120 million during Katy Perry’s halftime performance and New England’s fourth-quarter comeback.
Football in general, and the Super Bowl in particular, is packed with offerings of food, music, and eye-popping pyrotechnics. It’s a true spectacle. And it is a spectacle that attracts more devout adherents than the largest religious denomination in the United States. As Chad Gibbs points out:
If you don’t believe me all you have to do is take a look around you next Sunday as you sit in your pew. Halfway through the sermon men, women, and children will begin nervously glancing at their watches. If the altar call goes long, some will become visibly agitated, while others will just get up and leave. God is eternal, but kickoff is at noon.
But it’s so much more than football: it’s also the food. Billions of chickens will be sacrificed for their wings. That’s estimated to be enough for three wings for every American (you can have mine; they give me indigestion). Don’t forget about the pizzas, desserts, and enough nacho chips to fill 39 Boeing 747s.
Every religious spectacle must have its own choir, of course, and this year’s Super Bowl is no exception. While waiting for Coldplay’s and Beyonce’s halftime showcase of their new collaborative release (aptly named “Hymn for the Weekend”), you might catch the so-called “Super Bowl Babies” commercial, featuring choir-robed singers chanting about how they were conceived the year their parents’ favorite teams won. What-a-country!
It truly is our national spectacle -- an overhyped combination of sports, celebrity, and money. Sports columnist John McGrath notes that the week leading up to the game is nearly as crucial as the game itself: “The week preceding the Super Bowl is a seven-day circus that celebrates excess, tolerates stupidity, and floods city sidewalks with enough unsavory people to grind the nerves of a Trappist monk,” McGrath wrote in the Tacoma News-Tribune, adding that “I miss it.”
“Spectacle” may sound a bit harsh, but culturally speaking, it’s exactly the right word to describe the Super Bowl. The word is derived from the Latin spectaculum, meaning “show.” Ancient civilizations enjoyed the Olympic Games as a form of spectacle, along with circuses, dramatic offerings, and so forth. Politically, spectacle was seen by Machiavelli as a productive form of social control. Nothing seems to work better than brutal displays of power and glory.
“Today,” writes David Cook, “pro football is the unparalleled giant of the sports world. In 2014 45 of the 50 top-rated television broadcasts were football games.” He continues:
More Americans follow football than follow Major League Baseball, NBA basketball, and NASCAR racing combined. The National Football League earns nearly $10 billion a year in profits, with an expressed goal of $25 billion. During the season, Americans spend more time watching football than going to religious services. Pro football has become the spectacle that unites people in this country more than any other.
Add to that the Christian testimonies and experiences of players like Tim Tebow, Russell Wilson, and Kurt Warner, and football really does begin looking like America’s true religion.
What’s often overlooked is the true cost of that spectacle. There is growing awareness of the long-term damage to the brains of football players from concussive hits. Actor Will Smith’s portrayal of pathologist Bennet Omalu in the recent movie Concussion offers additional grist for discussion. One reviewer suggested that in many ways the movie calls to mind comparisons between the NFL and Big Tobacco, posing the principal question of “just how much God cares about football.”
Many fans aren’t paying attention to the growing body of evidence about chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a neurological condition that has been documented to create suicidal tendencies and severe depression. One blog post put it this way: “Ignorance is far from bliss here. A lot of fans don’t read the research partly because the research is semi-hard to find and partly because it’s hard to explain/understand. There has been a lot of press about concussions. But there hasn’t been an in-depth super-long Sports Illustrated front-page cover of concussions.”
We shrug it off -- either suggesting that players knew about the risks and never complained about cashing the checks, or that real men should tough it out. That is the super-sized myth at the core of our national spectacle. Yet for all of the glory of the game -- for all of its spectacle -- football is just a game. That’s something we should not forget, urges Stephen Cogan:
The NFL for years didn’t let players rest on their concussions. Didn’t have protocols in place to test for concussions. Didn’t limit head shots. Didn’t discourage that kind of targeting. Now penalties are in place for it and fines to discourage defenders. Fans say oh it’s ruining the game. What they don’t get is that this game is nothing. Repeat, it is nothing compared to human life. Forget all the billions of revenue, if players cannot be protected, then the game needs to dissolve because lives are at stake.
In the Scriptures
Like God’s declaration at Jesus’ baptism in Luke 3:21-22, the Transfiguration narrative discloses Jesus’ identity as God’s Son. Any lingering doubts, including Herod’s (see 9:9), are put to rest. Luke reminds us that Jesus conducted his own poll among the disciples (9:18-20), but that he was equally stern in admonishing them to avoid disclosing his identity. Instead, Jesus prepares the disciples for their own transformation by reminding them of the true costs associated with being a disciple.
After sharing all of this, Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up the mountain. It’s a game-changer -- an invitation to spend time alone with Jesus in prayer. Yet this is not an ordinary prayer -- it is the Super Bowl of all prayers, because as he is praying Jesus is changed “and his clothes become dazzling white.” It’s more than a costume: the brilliance of his appearance is confirmation of his divine stature.
The spectacle continues: two men, whom Luke introduces as Moses and Elijah, appear out of nowhere. And while there is no Ed McMahon-type announcer introducing these guest stars, the disciples seem to understand. Moses and Elijah need no introduction. Their appearance, along with the mountaintop light show and accompanying theophany, assure Luke’s readers of the important continuity of Jesus’ mission with the narrative of Israel’s faithful history.
Peter, uncertain of what to do, is not unlike many church leaders. He springs into action. He proposes a building project! It is as if he is saying, “Let’s capture this glorious moment forever.” The stunning sequence concludes with God’s voice thundering over Peter’s anxious squawking. “This is my Son, my Chosen,” declares God. “Listen to him!”
Peter is invited to pay attention to what is truly transformative. It’s more than the ground-shaking religious experience. Pay attention to what happens next. The disciples go down the mountain and encounter a man who implores Jesus to heal his epileptic son. It is this healing, suggests Luke, which discloses God’s glory. All are amazed, astounded, and led to greater belief -- not only because of the spectacle on the mountain, but because they have responded to God’s invitation. Listening to Jesus, they begin to let his words sink into their ears (cf. 9:43b-44).
In the Sermon
There’s no skirting around Super Bowl Sunday -- but neither is there any particular need to baptize it, either. I’m not suggesting that congregational Super Bowl parties, youth group fundraisers, or participation in events like Souper Bowl of Caring don’t have their place. I am suggesting, however, that the lectionary has provided preachers with a spectacle that far surpasses anything Cam Newton, Peyton Manning, Coldplay, and Beyonce could ever imagine putting together.
The meaning of Transfiguration may be a difficult story for our congregations to grasp. Like Peter, we may understand the excitement generated by “mountaintop” moments of pure, undiluted spiritual energy. But there is more to this than a spectacle of fireworks and special effects. God invites the disciples, as Dean Feldmeyer writes below, not just to “do something” but to stand there and listen. It is through moments of prayer that faithfulness and courage are revealed.
Paul Galbreath notes, “While faith does include defining and transformational moments... Luke connects prayer to the sense of identity and a clearer understanding of God’s call” (Feasting on the Gospels, Luke, Vol. 1,Luke 9:28-43a, p. 269). What’s essential to this moment is the way prayer reveals a call to a deeper understanding of discipleship.
For Luke, it all takes place the next day. That is when the disciples are astounded by God’s glory. The hinge point for this story may be at verse 37. The journey away from the mountain could actually be as transformative as the theophany itself. The pace is different on the way home: “On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain,” Luke tells us. The next day, the day after the game, the day when the sink is piled with dishes, the air still smelling like bean dip, the day after the big moment of glory. The next day, says Luke, is when ministry happens -- prayer on the mountaintop leads Jesus to the encounter of a boy who needs healing. This is what it means to “listen to him.”
It is easy to recount moments of glory. But what happens the next day may be more significant. That is certainly true for the many former football players suffering from CTE -- the glory fades, but the real understanding of what has happened comes later.
And it was at that moment, Luke reminds us, that the disciples were astounded by the greatness of God. It is in the work of coming down from the mountaintop and facing the pressing reality of human misery that the greatness of God shines -- in Jesus, of course, but also in the faith and action of his disciples.
SECOND THOUGHTS
Shaddup... an’ Listen
by Dean Feldmeyer
Luke 9:28-36 (37-43a)
If you’re reading this, it’s probably because you’re a pastor. And if you’re a pastor, it’s probably because at some time in your life you had a significant religious and/or spiritual experience -- something that rocked your being, that touched your soul, that spoke to you in the very depths of who you are.
Or maybe it’s happened for you more than once.
I can’t point to any single big event that took me, shook me, and made me into a Christian. But I can remember dozens of small- to medium-sized experiences.
Like the time at church camp, when on the last night one of our counselors broke that piece of bread off the loaf and held it up in front of my face and said, “Dean, the body of Christ was broken for you.” And for the first time in my life, I got it. Broken and poured out. That’s what this whole Christianity thing is all about. Broken and poured out, just like Jesus was and just like the bread and grape juice are... and just like I am called to be. Broken and poured out.
Or there was the time when I stood among 700 pastors and we sang “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name” while an orchestra and a pipe organ played, and I felt the presence of God in that hall so powerfully that my breath caught in my throat and I had to stop singing for a few bars.
Or there was that time when I stood at the front of the church and looked into my wife’s eyes and said, “I will.” Or the times when I saw my children emerge into the world screaming and crying -- first my son, and then two years later my daughter -- and how they both went suddenly silent when the doctor laid them on their mother’s stomach.
Or the sermon I heard preached about a passage of scripture that I’d read a hundred times but never saw that way until I heard that sermon and I heard a voice in my head say, “That’s it. That’s what this is about.”
Or... well, you get the idea. We’ve all had those moments.
In fact, we’ve probably had more of those moments than we realize -- but some of them just went zinging by right over our heads because we didn’t recognize them or know what to do with them when we did recognize them.
Poor Peter, James, and John.
That’s what happened to them in the gospel lesson for Transfiguration Sunday.
They Have Been to the Mountaintop
In this story, Jesus takes them -- Peter, James, and John -- up onto the mountaintop to pray with him. (Look out! Mountaintop alert -- something important always happens when a mountaintop is brought into play.)
And sure enough, something important does happen.
Suddenly Jesus’ clothes turn dazzlingly white and something about his face changes. They can’t exactly put their finger on how it is that his face changed, but it did.
And then who should show up but Moses and Elijah, only the two most important prophets in the history of Judaism. And they start having this conversation with Jesus about his soon-to-be-accomplished departure from this world and the three of them are standing in this bright light.
Before long they wrap up their conversation and the two prophets get ready to go, but before they can leave Peter speaks up and everything kind of goes off the rails.
Now, before we let Peter have his say, let’s stop and consider for a moment what has just happened. I believe we can say that if this happened to any of us we would classify it as a “significant religious and/or spiritual event” in our lives, right?
I mean, come on -- Moses and Elijah and Jesus all together? If that doesn’t qualify as a significant religious and/or spiritual event, I don’t know what does. This is the kind of thing that the word “awesome” was invented for. It’s transcendent. It’s amazing. It’s possibly life-changing. This goes down in the books right next to the heavenly host showing up on that hillside and singing to the shepherds that “Unto us a child is born” song. And it has happened to Peter and James and John because, thankfully and even though we are told they were very tired, they did not fall asleep.
Application No. 1
You have to be awake and alert if you want to benefit from a significant religious and/or spiritual event that happens in your life. You almost have to be expecting it, but at the very least you have to be ready for it when it happens.
Peter, James, and John saw this awesome thing because they weren’t asleep.
How many wonderful things, awesome things, amazing things have we missed because we weren’t looking, because we didn’t believe or expect them to happen?
Luke’s first lesson in this text: WAKE UP!
The wonderful, the awesome, the amazing, is happening all around you all the time. If you want to see it, hear it, benefit from it, you have to wake up and be awake to it when it happens. (Insert appropriate metaphorical illustration here.)
Peter Speaks Up
Now Peter steps to center stage and just makes a mess of everything. He has stayed awake, so that’s in his favor, and he has received this very special and powerful significant religious and/or spiritual event.
The problem for Peter is that he doesn’t know what to do with it. So he does two things, both of which, as we shall see, are wrong.
First, he evaluates it: “Master, it is good for us to be here.” I don’t know about you, but I suspect that Jesus didn’t need for Peter to tell him whether or not this experience was a good one. He probably has that figured out, and his answer is probably an affirmative one.
Peter, though, can’t help himself. He falls back on the familiar. He comes into a new situation and he evaluates the situation. Is it safe or dangerous? Helpful or harmful? Sugar-free or fattening? Regular or caffeine-free? Cheap or expensive?
Application No. 2
The problem is that you can’t fully experience a thing and evaluate it at the same time. You can’t enjoy a thing that is supposed to be enjoyed if you are judging it instead. You can’t be saddened by a thing that is sad if you are too busy evaluating it.
Some things in life are not meant to be judged; they’re just meant to be experienced: great art; great music; good food; fine wine; love; hope; faith; Jesus.
If we insist on evaluating everything that comes to us in life, we might just as well be asleep because we’re going to miss all the good stuff. (Insert appropriate metaphorical illustration here.)
Busy Being Busy
After evaluating, Peter makes his second mistake: he gets busy doing stuff.
Once he has determined that this is experience is a good one, then he has to do something. He has to get busy. He has to call a meeting and make a motion and get it passed and create a task force or a committee or something and then have another meeting to come up with a plan. Then he has to recruit some help and put together a budget and design a logo and invent a catchphrase and...
Or maybe he’ll just go the easy route and organize a pot luck dinner.
Whatever he does, you can count on it being something religious.
When a significant religious and/or spiritual event happens to us, that’s our second instinct after evaluating it. We want to do something religious: sing a hymn; serve communion; create a committee; have a pot luck dinner; go down to the inner city and do something for the poor.
Peter decides to build three little lean-tos for the three main characters.
Luke, who obviously is embarrassed by Peter’s behavior, tells us that Peter was kind of out of it and didn’t know what he was saying. I like Mark’s version: “He said this because he didn’t know what to say and he was scared.” Like many preachers I know, when Peter doesn’t know what to say, he talks. He just fills the air with words, floods the room with oratory, hoping some if it will find a home.
But before he can even start, a big dark cloud comes over the whole scene, blotting out everything and being kind of scary, and we hear this big deep voice (God is always a bass or baritone sounding not unlike James Earl Jones) come rumbling out of the cloud -- and this is what he says:
“Peter?.. shaddup.”
Okay, that isn’t exactly what he says -- but it’s pretty close. It’s what is written between the lines.
“This is my son, the Chosen. Stop running around. Stop talking. Shaddup... and listen to him.”
Application No. 3
That’s the third lesson that we are taught from this text: “Shaddup and listen.” The proper response to the experience of Jesus as the Christ is not to worship him, not to idolize him, not to praise him, not to have coffee with him, not to sing about him or write a poem about him. The proper response is simply to “listen to him.”
And this is not just “ear drum” listening we’re talking about here. This is soul listening. This is listening all the way down to the center of our being, so that what we hear can change and mold and shape us into what God wants us to be.
Paul Tillich put it like this: “Do not ask for the name [of God] now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted” (from “You Are Accepted,” in The Shaking of the Foundations).
Don’t just do something, stand there. And accept the fact that you are accepted. (Insert appropriate metaphorical illustration here.)
And Then What?
Luke says that the cloud lifted and they were there alone with Jesus only. And for the time being, they didn’t tell anyone about their experience.
They didn’t run down the mountain and tell everyone, “Wow! You shoulda been there. It was awesome!”
No, they keep it to themselves for a while.
They let it marinate in them. They ruminate about it, think about it, let it haunt them so that when the time is right, when Jesus calls upon them to be his witnesses, the experience of the mountaintop will be more than just something that once happened to them.
It will be part of who they are. It will be part of their DNA.
And when the time comes for them to speak of it, they will speak with confidence and authority.
May God grant such confidence and authority to all of who have come to know Jesus Christ and who dare to speak God’s holy name.
ILLUSTRATIONS
From team member Ron Love:
2 Corinthians 3:12--4:2
The recently released movie The Finest Hours tells the story of the Jonas blizzard of 1952 and how the coast guard, in a small wooden vessel, went into a monster nor’easter to rescue 32 men stranded aboard a halved oil tanker. Chris Pine plays coxswain Bernie Webber, whose tiny boat was able to rescue the men with 60-foot waves crashing about them. Pine expressed what he learned from playing that part in these words: “I just think it says a lot about our capacity. Our capacity for great evil, obviously, just look at the papers. Or incredible things.”
Application: Paul instructs us to act with great boldness in doing incredible things -- the same kind of boldness in doing good as a coast guard boat heading into a monster nor’easter on a rescue mission.
*****
2 Corinthians 3:12--4:2
Marie Kondo has written two best-selling books -- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and Spark Joy -- about how we can enjoy life more if we tidy up our surroundings. When she began her quest of tidying up, Kondo looked for things to throw away. Then she realized that she had the quest wrong. Instead tidying up should be an exercise -- in her words, “you have to find things you want to keep, things that spark joy.”
Application: Paul instructs us that when we are able to remove the veil of clutter and surround ourselves with the joy of God’s Word, then we will have freedom.
*****
2 Corinthians 3:12--4:2
In her own words, the real message of Marie Kondo’s books is: “When you organize things, you can put your life in order too.”
Application: Paul instructs us that when we are able to remove the veil of clutter and surround ourselves with the joy of God’s Word, we will be able to put our lives in order. Then we will know freedom and joy.
*****
2 Corinthians 3:12--4:2
Because of Twitter, Shiloh Keo is on his way to Super Bowl 50. Keo was out of football in December, with no team to play for. But when the Broncos acquired Josh Bush, Keo sent a tweet to Denver Broncos defensive coordinator Wade Phillips. Keo’s tweet read, “Didn’t want to pick me up, huh?” Phillips responded, “u know how much I think of u.” Keo and Phillips knew each other, having both worked together previously for the Houston Texans. But that one tweet was enough to start a conversation, and with more injuries Phillips brought Keo onto the playing field. Originally Keo wanted to text Phillips, but not having his phone number his wife Keanna suggested Twitter, so Keo sent a tweet.
Application: We can only hear the message if our minds are not hardened, just as Phillips was willing to receive a tweet from a disenfranchised player.
*****
2 Corinthians 3:12--4:2
According to USA Today, Cam Newton is the most criticized player in the NFL. Newton realizes this, and attributes it to both his touchdown antics and to being African-American. At a recent media session Newton defended himself, saying: “It’s like, here I am, I’m doing exactly what I want to do, how I want to do it, and when I look in the mirror, it’s me.”
Application: When we look into the mirror, we need to see not only our own reflection but also that of Jesus. Only then should we want to say, “It’s me.”
*****
2 Corinthians 3:12--4:2
The Justice Department has penalized 80 banks in Switzerland for helping Americans evade taxes by hiding income. These banks had upward to 34,000 accounts that held as much as $48 billion. The penalties imposed were more than $1.3 billion. Former federal prosecutor Jeffrey Neiman said, “To call Switzerland a wasteland of bank secrecy is probably an understatement at this point.”
Application: Only when the veil is removed can we see the truth.
*****
2 Corinthians 3:12--4:2
Denver Broncos coach Gary Kubiak always speaks to his team on the night before a game. Then he selects one player to end the evening with an inspiring message. The night before they played the New England Patriots in the AFC championship game, the coach selected linebacker DeMarcus Ware to speak. Ware went into the weight room to compose his thoughts. There on the wall he saw the phrase, “Iron Sharpens Iron.” Ware had his theme. He spoke to his teammates on how they had made it this far with injuries, and how he has been in the NFL for 11 years and this was his first chance to go to the Super Bowl. Ware then said of his teammates, “We melted down that metal. The only way you’re going to make metal hard is if you get it done.” With the defeat of the Patriots, the Broncos are on their way to Super Bowl 50.
Application: When we speak with boldness, we can remove the veil of minds that are hardened.
*****
Luke 9:28-36 (37-43a)
The recently released movie The Finest Hours tells the story of the Jonas blizzard of 1952 and how the coast guard, in a small wooden vessel, went into a monster nor’easter to rescue 32 men stranded aboard a halved oil tanker with 60-foot waves crashing about them. Casey Affleck plays the oil tanker’s chief engineer, Ray Sybert, who was able to keep the ship afloat until the coast guard rescue boat arrived. Affleck admits that the ocean scares him. This is especially true after a boat he was on stalled in Costa Rica while he was on vacation. Of that experience, Affleck said: “It was far enough out you couldn’t see land. Your mind starts churning what the possibilities could be. You’re instantly panicked. Thinking sharks, dehydration, death.”
Application: When the people saw the boy possessed by a demon they panicked at the unknown, just like Affleck on that stalled vacation boat. This is why we need the assurance of Jesus’ presence.
*****
Luke 9:28-36 (37-43a)
With the Carolina Panthers going to the Super Bowl, the team’s players were suddenly faced with a new reality -- family and friends besieging them for tickets. But what family and friends do not understand is that the players only get 15 tickets each, and they have to pay $1,800 for them all. The players have to be firm and say no to many extended members of their family and friends who are not as close as they thought. Offensive lineman Trai Turner has repeatedly changed his phone number, because people were coming out of the woodwork asking him for tickets.
Application: It is easy not to understand something that we assume is different, such as thinking that players having an unlimited number of Super Bowl tickets. So it was for Peter and John and James, who could not understand the Transfiguration of Jesus and who assumed it was proper to build three dwellings.
*****
Luke 9:28-36 (37-43a)
Fourteen cadets at The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina, have been disciplined for a skit that was disrespectful to African-Americans. Several freshmen were told to dress in white slacks with white pillow cases over their heads for a skit called “Ghosts of Christmas Past.” After a picture of the seven freshman cadets in the skit appeared in social media, an outcry went forth as the cadets appeared to be members of the Ku Klux Klan. Citadel president Lt. Gen. John Rosa said the freshmen were not aware of how they appeared until the photograph became public. Rosa said even though they did not intend to be offensive and did not understand, they and those who orchestrated the skit had to be punished.
Application: On the mountaintop Peter and John and James did not understand what was taking place until Jesus explained it to them.
***************
From team member Robin Lostetter:
Luke 9:28-36 (37-43a)
Transfiguration Church
Heidi Neumark tells a powerful story of transfiguration in her memoir Breathing Space: A Spiritual Journey in the South Bronx. She details the transformation of the church she served for almost 20 years. Aptly named Transfiguration Lutheran Church, the community was struggling, barely surviving, when she arrived. Standing amid poverty and the myriad problems that can accompany such a demon -- crime, drug abuse, lack of education and opportunity, lack of hope -- Transfiguration mostly kept its doors shut tight to the world around it.
The work of Jesus rebuking the unclean spirit was example enough for Neumark. “When Peter and the others came down from the mountain,” she writes, “they found a father and a child gasping for life. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the boy, and gave him back to his father. And they found transfiguration. And so it is. When the disciples of this Bronx church unlocked the doors of their private shelter and stepped out into the neighborhood, they did meet the distress of the community convulsed and mauled by poverty. But they also discovered transfiguration as a congregation in connection with others.”
-- from Heidi Neumark, Breathing Space: A Spiritual Journey in the South Bronx (Beacon Press, 2003), p. 269, as told by Lori Brandt Hale in “Theological Perspective on Luke 9:28-36 (37-43)” in Feasting on the Word: Year C, Volume 1 (Westminster John Knox Press, 2009)
*****
Luke 9:28-36 (37-43a)
The Discipline of Prayer
“Listen to him!”
Prayer is a word that describes a relationship. Disciplines of prayer provide patterns for attending to God throughout the day. They open us to the divine dialogue through intentional encounter with the Trinity. The prayer disciplines open our gaze and hearing to God. In his book The Way of the Heart, Henri Nouwen quotes Theophan the Recluse: “To pray is to descend with the mind into the heart, and there stand before the face of the Lord, ever-present, all seeing, within you.” Prayer is sustained less by duty than by a desire to connect and grow in intimacy and communion with the holy Three. But prayer also moves us up and out into our world. In Love in a Fearful Land, Nouwen also writes, “Prayer is the way to both the heart of God and the heart of the world -- precisely because they have been joined through the suffering of Jesus Christ.... Praying is letting one’s own heart become the place where the tears of God’s children merge and become tears of hope.”
-- Adele Ahlberg Calhoun, Spiritual Disciplines Handbook: Practices That Transform Us (InterVarsity Press, 2005), p. 203
*****
Luke 9:28-36 (37-43a)
From Mountaintop to Valley
Peter Jenkins, author of the best-seller Walk Across America, decided to walk across the U.S. to find out what life was all about. It is a powerful image -- even the movie Forrest Gump did a parody of his epic quest.
Something great happened to him during his travels, something he never anticipated; he was given faith! While traveling through Alabama he came across a huge revival. He decided to attend, and at some point God’s Word grabbed him. When the invitation was given to become a Christian, Jenkins walked down the aisle.
He heard a lot of people trying to explain to him what just happened. He heard words like: “Born again...”; “Saved...”; “The Lord led you here tonight...”; “Praise the Lord...”; “Ain’t God good?”
Mary, the woman who first spoke to him, said: “Peter, this great elation that you’re feeling now -- you are feeling great elation, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Peter replied.
(Well), “at this moment it may seem like these great feelings are going to last forever, but they won’t,” she told him. “Being a Christian is not based on feelings. You’re on a mountaintop now, but someday, sooner or later, you’ll be far away from these great feelings. You may even wonder if all this ever happened.
“Your Christian walk is based on faith, not feelings,” Mary explained. Peter had never thought about that. As he put it, “I was so thrilled that there could be good feelings mixed in with faith that I really didn’t care about her opinions.”
More than 20 years have passed since that revival. “I was on a mountaintop that night,” Peter reflected. “The feelings lasted a long time, but that mountaintop hasn’t lasted all these years. Maybe I’ve been on more mountaintops than some, but I’ve also climbed, sometimes crawled, out of some awfully steep valleys too.”
-- Brian T. Henderson, from “Living Between the Mountaintop Experiences”
WORSHIP RESOURCES
by George Reed
Call to Worship
Leader: God reigns; let the peoples tremble!
People: God sits enthroned upon the cherubim.
Leader: God is great in Zion and exalted over all the peoples.
People: Let us praise God’s great and awesome name.
Leader: Extol God our God, and worship at God’s holy mountain.
People: Extol God, for our God is holy.
OR
Leader: Come into the presence of our God to worship.
People: We bring our praises to our awesome God.
Leader: God comes among us and dwells within us.
People: We celebrate God’s presence with us.
Leader: God desires to be known in all the world through us.
People: As bearers of the Christ Spirit, we will share God’s love with all.
Hymns and Sacred Songs
“O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing”
found in:
UMH: 57, 59
H82: 493
PH: 466
AAHH: 184
NNBH: 23
NCH: 42
CH: 5
LBW: 559
ELA: 886
W&P: 96
AMEC: 1
Renew: 32
“Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty”
found in:
UMH: 64, 65
H82: 362
PH: 138
AAHH: 329
NNBH: 1
NCH: 277
CH: 4
LBW: 165
ELA: 413
W&P: 136
AMEC: 25
STLT: 26
Renew: 204
“Open My Eyes, That I May See”
found in:
UMH: 454
PH: 324
NNBH: 218
CH: 586
W&P: 480
AMEC: 285
“Be Thou My Vision”
found in:
UMH: 451
H82: 488
PH: 339
NCH: 451
CH: 595
ELA: 793
W&P: 502
AMEC: 281
STLT: 20
Renew: 151
“My Faith Looks Up to Thee”
found in:
UMH: 452
H82: 691
PH: 383
AAHH: 456
NNBH: 273
CH: 576
LBW: 479
ELA: 759
W&P: 419
AMEC: 415
“Holy Spirit, Truth Divine”
found in:
UMH: 465
PH: 321
NCH: 63
CH: 241
LBW: 257
ELA: 398
“Pues Si Vivimos” (“When We Are Living”)
found in:
UMH: 356
PH: 400
NCH: 499
CH: 536
ELA: 639
W&P: 415
“Tú Has Venido a la Orilla” (“Lord, You Have Come to the Lakeshore”)
found in:
UMH: 344
PH: 377
CH: 342
W&P: 347
“Open Our Eyes, Lord”
found in:
CCB: 77
Renew: 91
“He Is Lord”
found in:
CCB: 82
Renew: 29
Music Resources Key:
UMH: United Methodist Hymnal
H82: The Hymnal 1982 (The Episcopal Church)
PH: Presbyterian Hymnal
AAHH: African-American Heritage Hymnal
NNBH: The New National Baptist Hymnal
NCH: The New Century Hymnal
CH: Chalice Hymnal
LBW: Lutheran Book of Worship
ELA: Evangelical Lutheran Worship
W&P: Worship & Praise
AMEC: African Methodist Episcopal Church Hymnal
STLT: Singing the Living Tradition
CCB: Cokesbury Chorus Book
Renew: Renew! Songs & Hymns for Blended Worship
Prayer for the Day / Collect
O God who is glorious and awesome: Grant us to grace to see your glory revealed in Jesus and to understand that your glory is also in us; through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
OR
We worship you, O God, for your glory and your awesome presence. Open our eyes by the power of your Spirit, that we may see the glory of Jesus. Open our hearts, so that we may understand the glory of your Spirit that dwells in us. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
Leader: Let us confess to God and before one another our sins, and especially our failure to be in awe.
People: We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. You are our creator and our salvation, and yet we act as if we could take you or leave you. Sometimes we act as if you did not exist, and other times we act like we can manipulate and use you for our wants. We do not know how to respond to your splendor, nor do we know what to do with your presence within us. We tend to ignore the awesome glory of your Spirit that dwells within us. Forgive us, and renew us so that we may not only offer due worship to you but that we might with boldness make your presence known to others. Amen.
Leader: God is awesome and wondrously present within us. God desires nothing more than to bless us and heal us as we bless and heal others in God’s name.
Prayers of the People (and the Lord’s Prayer)
Praise and worship are yours, O God, for all of your awesome glory. You are the light and hope of all creation.
(The following paragraph may be used if a separate prayer of confession has not been used.)
We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. You are our creator and our salvation, and yet we act as if we could take you or leave you. Sometimes we act as if you did not exist, and other times we act like we can manipulate and use you for our wants. We do not know how to respond to your splendor, nor do we know what to do with your presence within us. We tend to ignore the awesome glory of your Spirit that dwells within us. Forgive us, and renew us so that we may not only offer due worship to you but that we might with boldness make your presence known to others.
We thank you for the many ways in which you have shown your glory and presence to us. We thank you for your constant presence that seeks us and our salvation. We give you thanks for the gift of your Spirit at creation and that you have breathed into us.
(Other thanksgivings may be offered.)
We pray for all who are in need. We remember that many are unaware of your awesome presence that dwells within them. Many feel so far removed from you and the power of healing that dwells within them. Help us to share that power with them, so that they may know it resides in them as well.
(Other intercessions may be offered.)
All these things we ask in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ, who taught us to pray together, saying:
Our Father . . . Amen.
(or if the Lord’s Prayer is not used at this point in the service)
All this we ask in the Name of the Blessed and Holy Trinity. Amen.
Children’s Sermon Starter
If you don’t have a geode, go and get one. (They are wonderful to use.) A geode is a rock that is ugly clay on the outside and brilliant crystals on the inside. You can usually buy them open so that you can see the inside. Hold the geode so only the clay shows. This is us. We are dirt. We are earth creatures. We are mortal. (Turn the geode over.) But inside is the wondrous glory of God’s Spirit that dwells in us. We need to act so that others know God’s glory is within them too.
CHILDREN’S SERMON
Prayer
by Robin Lostetter
Luke 9:28-36 (37-43a)
Something special happened in today’s gospel reading, and it happened when Jesus took three disciples up on a mountain to pray with him.
Now, we don’t often go on a special trip to pray, do we? And we can pray anywhere, right?
So tell me, what do we do when we pray? (Expect all sorts of answers, from “bow our heads” to “ask for something.” But surely there will be some answer that will fit into “we talk to God,” whether it is asking for something or telling God how we feel.)
Yes, we do all those things, and we talk to God. But you know what God said on that day? He said, “Listen!” He said, “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him!” And that’s really good advice for prayer.
Prayer is like a conversation with God, and a conversation is between two people. You can’t have a conversation if only one person talks, right? So part of prayer is being very quiet and listening for God. You may not hear an answer to your question right then, but if you get into the habit of listening -- many times a day, like when you’re looking at a beautiful picture or the first snow of the year, or sitting in front of your Christmas tree, or watching your pet sleeping -- those are good times to listen for God.
Shall we pray? And this time I’m going to start us, and then be quiet, and then end with “Amen.”
Dear God, we’re listening............ Amen.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Immediate Word, February 7, 2016, issue.
Copyright 2016 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
Team member Dean Feldmeyer shares some additional thoughts on the transfiguration and the disciples’ reaction to what they’ve experienced. God has to grab their attention in order to focus them on what’s important -- and Dean points out that both the disciples’ initial responses and God’s exasperated reply give us important clues on how to approach the significant religious and/or spiritual experiences in our lives: namely, be awake, stop our activity, and let them speak to us.
Super-Sized Spectacles of Faith
by Chris Keating
Luke 9:28-36 (37-43a)
It’s not just Super Sunday -- it’s a super-sized extravaganza, the zenith of all gargantuan sporting events, America’s highest holy day of the year... complete with celebrities, glamour, 10,000-calorie-per-serving nachos, million-dollar television commercials, and (of course) football.
Whataday. What-an-amazin’ day.
The Super Bowl, and all the hoopla that leads up to it, is nearly a national holiday. This year’s event features a stylistic contrast in the quarterback matchup as Peyton Manning meets Cam Newton, with a side of Beyonce, Bruno Mars, and Coldplay at halftime. It is also the game’s golden anniversary, fittingly hosted by San Francisco’s Golden Gate hospitality. Two teams stretch toward the coveted Lombardi trophy -- but in many ways, it is much, much more than just a game.
Coincidentally, this year it’s also a day when we recall a different dazzling spectacle. Jesus’ mountaintop transfiguration demands our attention this week in a way that surpasses even the best football game. The NFL may have Manning and Beyonce, but they’re no match for the celebrity posse Jesus summons on the mountain. As if his stunning costume change -- no wardrobe malfunction here -- was not enough, Jesus brings along Moses and Elijah for cameo appearances. God’s thunderous theophany caps the show, terrifying the already dumbfounded disciples.
Set down the nachos: here is a glory far surpassing the ersatz hype of the Super Bowl. Jesus’ spectacular moment of transfiguration is the real Super Sunday -- and we’d do well to heed God’s call to pay attention to what is happening. Like the disciples, we might just be “astounded at the greatness of God.”
In the News
The Super Bowl reigns supreme as America’s largest unofficial holiday. Last year, a record-breaking 114 million television viewers tuned in to catch a glimpse of Tom Brady and the New England Patriots beat the Seattle Seahawks in a breathless, down-to-the-wire finish. It was the most-watched program in U.S. history, inflating to nearly 120 million during Katy Perry’s halftime performance and New England’s fourth-quarter comeback.
Football in general, and the Super Bowl in particular, is packed with offerings of food, music, and eye-popping pyrotechnics. It’s a true spectacle. And it is a spectacle that attracts more devout adherents than the largest religious denomination in the United States. As Chad Gibbs points out:
If you don’t believe me all you have to do is take a look around you next Sunday as you sit in your pew. Halfway through the sermon men, women, and children will begin nervously glancing at their watches. If the altar call goes long, some will become visibly agitated, while others will just get up and leave. God is eternal, but kickoff is at noon.
But it’s so much more than football: it’s also the food. Billions of chickens will be sacrificed for their wings. That’s estimated to be enough for three wings for every American (you can have mine; they give me indigestion). Don’t forget about the pizzas, desserts, and enough nacho chips to fill 39 Boeing 747s.
Every religious spectacle must have its own choir, of course, and this year’s Super Bowl is no exception. While waiting for Coldplay’s and Beyonce’s halftime showcase of their new collaborative release (aptly named “Hymn for the Weekend”), you might catch the so-called “Super Bowl Babies” commercial, featuring choir-robed singers chanting about how they were conceived the year their parents’ favorite teams won. What-a-country!
It truly is our national spectacle -- an overhyped combination of sports, celebrity, and money. Sports columnist John McGrath notes that the week leading up to the game is nearly as crucial as the game itself: “The week preceding the Super Bowl is a seven-day circus that celebrates excess, tolerates stupidity, and floods city sidewalks with enough unsavory people to grind the nerves of a Trappist monk,” McGrath wrote in the Tacoma News-Tribune, adding that “I miss it.”
“Spectacle” may sound a bit harsh, but culturally speaking, it’s exactly the right word to describe the Super Bowl. The word is derived from the Latin spectaculum, meaning “show.” Ancient civilizations enjoyed the Olympic Games as a form of spectacle, along with circuses, dramatic offerings, and so forth. Politically, spectacle was seen by Machiavelli as a productive form of social control. Nothing seems to work better than brutal displays of power and glory.
“Today,” writes David Cook, “pro football is the unparalleled giant of the sports world. In 2014 45 of the 50 top-rated television broadcasts were football games.” He continues:
More Americans follow football than follow Major League Baseball, NBA basketball, and NASCAR racing combined. The National Football League earns nearly $10 billion a year in profits, with an expressed goal of $25 billion. During the season, Americans spend more time watching football than going to religious services. Pro football has become the spectacle that unites people in this country more than any other.
Add to that the Christian testimonies and experiences of players like Tim Tebow, Russell Wilson, and Kurt Warner, and football really does begin looking like America’s true religion.
What’s often overlooked is the true cost of that spectacle. There is growing awareness of the long-term damage to the brains of football players from concussive hits. Actor Will Smith’s portrayal of pathologist Bennet Omalu in the recent movie Concussion offers additional grist for discussion. One reviewer suggested that in many ways the movie calls to mind comparisons between the NFL and Big Tobacco, posing the principal question of “just how much God cares about football.”
Many fans aren’t paying attention to the growing body of evidence about chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a neurological condition that has been documented to create suicidal tendencies and severe depression. One blog post put it this way: “Ignorance is far from bliss here. A lot of fans don’t read the research partly because the research is semi-hard to find and partly because it’s hard to explain/understand. There has been a lot of press about concussions. But there hasn’t been an in-depth super-long Sports Illustrated front-page cover of concussions.”
We shrug it off -- either suggesting that players knew about the risks and never complained about cashing the checks, or that real men should tough it out. That is the super-sized myth at the core of our national spectacle. Yet for all of the glory of the game -- for all of its spectacle -- football is just a game. That’s something we should not forget, urges Stephen Cogan:
The NFL for years didn’t let players rest on their concussions. Didn’t have protocols in place to test for concussions. Didn’t limit head shots. Didn’t discourage that kind of targeting. Now penalties are in place for it and fines to discourage defenders. Fans say oh it’s ruining the game. What they don’t get is that this game is nothing. Repeat, it is nothing compared to human life. Forget all the billions of revenue, if players cannot be protected, then the game needs to dissolve because lives are at stake.
In the Scriptures
Like God’s declaration at Jesus’ baptism in Luke 3:21-22, the Transfiguration narrative discloses Jesus’ identity as God’s Son. Any lingering doubts, including Herod’s (see 9:9), are put to rest. Luke reminds us that Jesus conducted his own poll among the disciples (9:18-20), but that he was equally stern in admonishing them to avoid disclosing his identity. Instead, Jesus prepares the disciples for their own transformation by reminding them of the true costs associated with being a disciple.
After sharing all of this, Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up the mountain. It’s a game-changer -- an invitation to spend time alone with Jesus in prayer. Yet this is not an ordinary prayer -- it is the Super Bowl of all prayers, because as he is praying Jesus is changed “and his clothes become dazzling white.” It’s more than a costume: the brilliance of his appearance is confirmation of his divine stature.
The spectacle continues: two men, whom Luke introduces as Moses and Elijah, appear out of nowhere. And while there is no Ed McMahon-type announcer introducing these guest stars, the disciples seem to understand. Moses and Elijah need no introduction. Their appearance, along with the mountaintop light show and accompanying theophany, assure Luke’s readers of the important continuity of Jesus’ mission with the narrative of Israel’s faithful history.
Peter, uncertain of what to do, is not unlike many church leaders. He springs into action. He proposes a building project! It is as if he is saying, “Let’s capture this glorious moment forever.” The stunning sequence concludes with God’s voice thundering over Peter’s anxious squawking. “This is my Son, my Chosen,” declares God. “Listen to him!”
Peter is invited to pay attention to what is truly transformative. It’s more than the ground-shaking religious experience. Pay attention to what happens next. The disciples go down the mountain and encounter a man who implores Jesus to heal his epileptic son. It is this healing, suggests Luke, which discloses God’s glory. All are amazed, astounded, and led to greater belief -- not only because of the spectacle on the mountain, but because they have responded to God’s invitation. Listening to Jesus, they begin to let his words sink into their ears (cf. 9:43b-44).
In the Sermon
There’s no skirting around Super Bowl Sunday -- but neither is there any particular need to baptize it, either. I’m not suggesting that congregational Super Bowl parties, youth group fundraisers, or participation in events like Souper Bowl of Caring don’t have their place. I am suggesting, however, that the lectionary has provided preachers with a spectacle that far surpasses anything Cam Newton, Peyton Manning, Coldplay, and Beyonce could ever imagine putting together.
The meaning of Transfiguration may be a difficult story for our congregations to grasp. Like Peter, we may understand the excitement generated by “mountaintop” moments of pure, undiluted spiritual energy. But there is more to this than a spectacle of fireworks and special effects. God invites the disciples, as Dean Feldmeyer writes below, not just to “do something” but to stand there and listen. It is through moments of prayer that faithfulness and courage are revealed.
Paul Galbreath notes, “While faith does include defining and transformational moments... Luke connects prayer to the sense of identity and a clearer understanding of God’s call” (Feasting on the Gospels, Luke, Vol. 1,Luke 9:28-43a, p. 269). What’s essential to this moment is the way prayer reveals a call to a deeper understanding of discipleship.
For Luke, it all takes place the next day. That is when the disciples are astounded by God’s glory. The hinge point for this story may be at verse 37. The journey away from the mountain could actually be as transformative as the theophany itself. The pace is different on the way home: “On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain,” Luke tells us. The next day, the day after the game, the day when the sink is piled with dishes, the air still smelling like bean dip, the day after the big moment of glory. The next day, says Luke, is when ministry happens -- prayer on the mountaintop leads Jesus to the encounter of a boy who needs healing. This is what it means to “listen to him.”
It is easy to recount moments of glory. But what happens the next day may be more significant. That is certainly true for the many former football players suffering from CTE -- the glory fades, but the real understanding of what has happened comes later.
And it was at that moment, Luke reminds us, that the disciples were astounded by the greatness of God. It is in the work of coming down from the mountaintop and facing the pressing reality of human misery that the greatness of God shines -- in Jesus, of course, but also in the faith and action of his disciples.
SECOND THOUGHTS
Shaddup... an’ Listen
by Dean Feldmeyer
Luke 9:28-36 (37-43a)
If you’re reading this, it’s probably because you’re a pastor. And if you’re a pastor, it’s probably because at some time in your life you had a significant religious and/or spiritual experience -- something that rocked your being, that touched your soul, that spoke to you in the very depths of who you are.
Or maybe it’s happened for you more than once.
I can’t point to any single big event that took me, shook me, and made me into a Christian. But I can remember dozens of small- to medium-sized experiences.
Like the time at church camp, when on the last night one of our counselors broke that piece of bread off the loaf and held it up in front of my face and said, “Dean, the body of Christ was broken for you.” And for the first time in my life, I got it. Broken and poured out. That’s what this whole Christianity thing is all about. Broken and poured out, just like Jesus was and just like the bread and grape juice are... and just like I am called to be. Broken and poured out.
Or there was the time when I stood among 700 pastors and we sang “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name” while an orchestra and a pipe organ played, and I felt the presence of God in that hall so powerfully that my breath caught in my throat and I had to stop singing for a few bars.
Or there was that time when I stood at the front of the church and looked into my wife’s eyes and said, “I will.” Or the times when I saw my children emerge into the world screaming and crying -- first my son, and then two years later my daughter -- and how they both went suddenly silent when the doctor laid them on their mother’s stomach.
Or the sermon I heard preached about a passage of scripture that I’d read a hundred times but never saw that way until I heard that sermon and I heard a voice in my head say, “That’s it. That’s what this is about.”
Or... well, you get the idea. We’ve all had those moments.
In fact, we’ve probably had more of those moments than we realize -- but some of them just went zinging by right over our heads because we didn’t recognize them or know what to do with them when we did recognize them.
Poor Peter, James, and John.
That’s what happened to them in the gospel lesson for Transfiguration Sunday.
They Have Been to the Mountaintop
In this story, Jesus takes them -- Peter, James, and John -- up onto the mountaintop to pray with him. (Look out! Mountaintop alert -- something important always happens when a mountaintop is brought into play.)
And sure enough, something important does happen.
Suddenly Jesus’ clothes turn dazzlingly white and something about his face changes. They can’t exactly put their finger on how it is that his face changed, but it did.
And then who should show up but Moses and Elijah, only the two most important prophets in the history of Judaism. And they start having this conversation with Jesus about his soon-to-be-accomplished departure from this world and the three of them are standing in this bright light.
Before long they wrap up their conversation and the two prophets get ready to go, but before they can leave Peter speaks up and everything kind of goes off the rails.
Now, before we let Peter have his say, let’s stop and consider for a moment what has just happened. I believe we can say that if this happened to any of us we would classify it as a “significant religious and/or spiritual event” in our lives, right?
I mean, come on -- Moses and Elijah and Jesus all together? If that doesn’t qualify as a significant religious and/or spiritual event, I don’t know what does. This is the kind of thing that the word “awesome” was invented for. It’s transcendent. It’s amazing. It’s possibly life-changing. This goes down in the books right next to the heavenly host showing up on that hillside and singing to the shepherds that “Unto us a child is born” song. And it has happened to Peter and James and John because, thankfully and even though we are told they were very tired, they did not fall asleep.
Application No. 1
You have to be awake and alert if you want to benefit from a significant religious and/or spiritual event that happens in your life. You almost have to be expecting it, but at the very least you have to be ready for it when it happens.
Peter, James, and John saw this awesome thing because they weren’t asleep.
How many wonderful things, awesome things, amazing things have we missed because we weren’t looking, because we didn’t believe or expect them to happen?
Luke’s first lesson in this text: WAKE UP!
The wonderful, the awesome, the amazing, is happening all around you all the time. If you want to see it, hear it, benefit from it, you have to wake up and be awake to it when it happens. (Insert appropriate metaphorical illustration here.)
Peter Speaks Up
Now Peter steps to center stage and just makes a mess of everything. He has stayed awake, so that’s in his favor, and he has received this very special and powerful significant religious and/or spiritual event.
The problem for Peter is that he doesn’t know what to do with it. So he does two things, both of which, as we shall see, are wrong.
First, he evaluates it: “Master, it is good for us to be here.” I don’t know about you, but I suspect that Jesus didn’t need for Peter to tell him whether or not this experience was a good one. He probably has that figured out, and his answer is probably an affirmative one.
Peter, though, can’t help himself. He falls back on the familiar. He comes into a new situation and he evaluates the situation. Is it safe or dangerous? Helpful or harmful? Sugar-free or fattening? Regular or caffeine-free? Cheap or expensive?
Application No. 2
The problem is that you can’t fully experience a thing and evaluate it at the same time. You can’t enjoy a thing that is supposed to be enjoyed if you are judging it instead. You can’t be saddened by a thing that is sad if you are too busy evaluating it.
Some things in life are not meant to be judged; they’re just meant to be experienced: great art; great music; good food; fine wine; love; hope; faith; Jesus.
If we insist on evaluating everything that comes to us in life, we might just as well be asleep because we’re going to miss all the good stuff. (Insert appropriate metaphorical illustration here.)
Busy Being Busy
After evaluating, Peter makes his second mistake: he gets busy doing stuff.
Once he has determined that this is experience is a good one, then he has to do something. He has to get busy. He has to call a meeting and make a motion and get it passed and create a task force or a committee or something and then have another meeting to come up with a plan. Then he has to recruit some help and put together a budget and design a logo and invent a catchphrase and...
Or maybe he’ll just go the easy route and organize a pot luck dinner.
Whatever he does, you can count on it being something religious.
When a significant religious and/or spiritual event happens to us, that’s our second instinct after evaluating it. We want to do something religious: sing a hymn; serve communion; create a committee; have a pot luck dinner; go down to the inner city and do something for the poor.
Peter decides to build three little lean-tos for the three main characters.
Luke, who obviously is embarrassed by Peter’s behavior, tells us that Peter was kind of out of it and didn’t know what he was saying. I like Mark’s version: “He said this because he didn’t know what to say and he was scared.” Like many preachers I know, when Peter doesn’t know what to say, he talks. He just fills the air with words, floods the room with oratory, hoping some if it will find a home.
But before he can even start, a big dark cloud comes over the whole scene, blotting out everything and being kind of scary, and we hear this big deep voice (God is always a bass or baritone sounding not unlike James Earl Jones) come rumbling out of the cloud -- and this is what he says:
“Peter?.. shaddup.”
Okay, that isn’t exactly what he says -- but it’s pretty close. It’s what is written between the lines.
“This is my son, the Chosen. Stop running around. Stop talking. Shaddup... and listen to him.”
Application No. 3
That’s the third lesson that we are taught from this text: “Shaddup and listen.” The proper response to the experience of Jesus as the Christ is not to worship him, not to idolize him, not to praise him, not to have coffee with him, not to sing about him or write a poem about him. The proper response is simply to “listen to him.”
And this is not just “ear drum” listening we’re talking about here. This is soul listening. This is listening all the way down to the center of our being, so that what we hear can change and mold and shape us into what God wants us to be.
Paul Tillich put it like this: “Do not ask for the name [of God] now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted” (from “You Are Accepted,” in The Shaking of the Foundations).
Don’t just do something, stand there. And accept the fact that you are accepted. (Insert appropriate metaphorical illustration here.)
And Then What?
Luke says that the cloud lifted and they were there alone with Jesus only. And for the time being, they didn’t tell anyone about their experience.
They didn’t run down the mountain and tell everyone, “Wow! You shoulda been there. It was awesome!”
No, they keep it to themselves for a while.
They let it marinate in them. They ruminate about it, think about it, let it haunt them so that when the time is right, when Jesus calls upon them to be his witnesses, the experience of the mountaintop will be more than just something that once happened to them.
It will be part of who they are. It will be part of their DNA.
And when the time comes for them to speak of it, they will speak with confidence and authority.
May God grant such confidence and authority to all of who have come to know Jesus Christ and who dare to speak God’s holy name.
ILLUSTRATIONS
From team member Ron Love:
2 Corinthians 3:12--4:2
The recently released movie The Finest Hours tells the story of the Jonas blizzard of 1952 and how the coast guard, in a small wooden vessel, went into a monster nor’easter to rescue 32 men stranded aboard a halved oil tanker. Chris Pine plays coxswain Bernie Webber, whose tiny boat was able to rescue the men with 60-foot waves crashing about them. Pine expressed what he learned from playing that part in these words: “I just think it says a lot about our capacity. Our capacity for great evil, obviously, just look at the papers. Or incredible things.”
Application: Paul instructs us to act with great boldness in doing incredible things -- the same kind of boldness in doing good as a coast guard boat heading into a monster nor’easter on a rescue mission.
*****
2 Corinthians 3:12--4:2
Marie Kondo has written two best-selling books -- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and Spark Joy -- about how we can enjoy life more if we tidy up our surroundings. When she began her quest of tidying up, Kondo looked for things to throw away. Then she realized that she had the quest wrong. Instead tidying up should be an exercise -- in her words, “you have to find things you want to keep, things that spark joy.”
Application: Paul instructs us that when we are able to remove the veil of clutter and surround ourselves with the joy of God’s Word, then we will have freedom.
*****
2 Corinthians 3:12--4:2
In her own words, the real message of Marie Kondo’s books is: “When you organize things, you can put your life in order too.”
Application: Paul instructs us that when we are able to remove the veil of clutter and surround ourselves with the joy of God’s Word, we will be able to put our lives in order. Then we will know freedom and joy.
*****
2 Corinthians 3:12--4:2
Because of Twitter, Shiloh Keo is on his way to Super Bowl 50. Keo was out of football in December, with no team to play for. But when the Broncos acquired Josh Bush, Keo sent a tweet to Denver Broncos defensive coordinator Wade Phillips. Keo’s tweet read, “Didn’t want to pick me up, huh?” Phillips responded, “u know how much I think of u.” Keo and Phillips knew each other, having both worked together previously for the Houston Texans. But that one tweet was enough to start a conversation, and with more injuries Phillips brought Keo onto the playing field. Originally Keo wanted to text Phillips, but not having his phone number his wife Keanna suggested Twitter, so Keo sent a tweet.
Application: We can only hear the message if our minds are not hardened, just as Phillips was willing to receive a tweet from a disenfranchised player.
*****
2 Corinthians 3:12--4:2
According to USA Today, Cam Newton is the most criticized player in the NFL. Newton realizes this, and attributes it to both his touchdown antics and to being African-American. At a recent media session Newton defended himself, saying: “It’s like, here I am, I’m doing exactly what I want to do, how I want to do it, and when I look in the mirror, it’s me.”
Application: When we look into the mirror, we need to see not only our own reflection but also that of Jesus. Only then should we want to say, “It’s me.”
*****
2 Corinthians 3:12--4:2
The Justice Department has penalized 80 banks in Switzerland for helping Americans evade taxes by hiding income. These banks had upward to 34,000 accounts that held as much as $48 billion. The penalties imposed were more than $1.3 billion. Former federal prosecutor Jeffrey Neiman said, “To call Switzerland a wasteland of bank secrecy is probably an understatement at this point.”
Application: Only when the veil is removed can we see the truth.
*****
2 Corinthians 3:12--4:2
Denver Broncos coach Gary Kubiak always speaks to his team on the night before a game. Then he selects one player to end the evening with an inspiring message. The night before they played the New England Patriots in the AFC championship game, the coach selected linebacker DeMarcus Ware to speak. Ware went into the weight room to compose his thoughts. There on the wall he saw the phrase, “Iron Sharpens Iron.” Ware had his theme. He spoke to his teammates on how they had made it this far with injuries, and how he has been in the NFL for 11 years and this was his first chance to go to the Super Bowl. Ware then said of his teammates, “We melted down that metal. The only way you’re going to make metal hard is if you get it done.” With the defeat of the Patriots, the Broncos are on their way to Super Bowl 50.
Application: When we speak with boldness, we can remove the veil of minds that are hardened.
*****
Luke 9:28-36 (37-43a)
The recently released movie The Finest Hours tells the story of the Jonas blizzard of 1952 and how the coast guard, in a small wooden vessel, went into a monster nor’easter to rescue 32 men stranded aboard a halved oil tanker with 60-foot waves crashing about them. Casey Affleck plays the oil tanker’s chief engineer, Ray Sybert, who was able to keep the ship afloat until the coast guard rescue boat arrived. Affleck admits that the ocean scares him. This is especially true after a boat he was on stalled in Costa Rica while he was on vacation. Of that experience, Affleck said: “It was far enough out you couldn’t see land. Your mind starts churning what the possibilities could be. You’re instantly panicked. Thinking sharks, dehydration, death.”
Application: When the people saw the boy possessed by a demon they panicked at the unknown, just like Affleck on that stalled vacation boat. This is why we need the assurance of Jesus’ presence.
*****
Luke 9:28-36 (37-43a)
With the Carolina Panthers going to the Super Bowl, the team’s players were suddenly faced with a new reality -- family and friends besieging them for tickets. But what family and friends do not understand is that the players only get 15 tickets each, and they have to pay $1,800 for them all. The players have to be firm and say no to many extended members of their family and friends who are not as close as they thought. Offensive lineman Trai Turner has repeatedly changed his phone number, because people were coming out of the woodwork asking him for tickets.
Application: It is easy not to understand something that we assume is different, such as thinking that players having an unlimited number of Super Bowl tickets. So it was for Peter and John and James, who could not understand the Transfiguration of Jesus and who assumed it was proper to build three dwellings.
*****
Luke 9:28-36 (37-43a)
Fourteen cadets at The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina, have been disciplined for a skit that was disrespectful to African-Americans. Several freshmen were told to dress in white slacks with white pillow cases over their heads for a skit called “Ghosts of Christmas Past.” After a picture of the seven freshman cadets in the skit appeared in social media, an outcry went forth as the cadets appeared to be members of the Ku Klux Klan. Citadel president Lt. Gen. John Rosa said the freshmen were not aware of how they appeared until the photograph became public. Rosa said even though they did not intend to be offensive and did not understand, they and those who orchestrated the skit had to be punished.
Application: On the mountaintop Peter and John and James did not understand what was taking place until Jesus explained it to them.
***************
From team member Robin Lostetter:
Luke 9:28-36 (37-43a)
Transfiguration Church
Heidi Neumark tells a powerful story of transfiguration in her memoir Breathing Space: A Spiritual Journey in the South Bronx. She details the transformation of the church she served for almost 20 years. Aptly named Transfiguration Lutheran Church, the community was struggling, barely surviving, when she arrived. Standing amid poverty and the myriad problems that can accompany such a demon -- crime, drug abuse, lack of education and opportunity, lack of hope -- Transfiguration mostly kept its doors shut tight to the world around it.
The work of Jesus rebuking the unclean spirit was example enough for Neumark. “When Peter and the others came down from the mountain,” she writes, “they found a father and a child gasping for life. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the boy, and gave him back to his father. And they found transfiguration. And so it is. When the disciples of this Bronx church unlocked the doors of their private shelter and stepped out into the neighborhood, they did meet the distress of the community convulsed and mauled by poverty. But they also discovered transfiguration as a congregation in connection with others.”
-- from Heidi Neumark, Breathing Space: A Spiritual Journey in the South Bronx (Beacon Press, 2003), p. 269, as told by Lori Brandt Hale in “Theological Perspective on Luke 9:28-36 (37-43)” in Feasting on the Word: Year C, Volume 1 (Westminster John Knox Press, 2009)
*****
Luke 9:28-36 (37-43a)
The Discipline of Prayer
“Listen to him!”
Prayer is a word that describes a relationship. Disciplines of prayer provide patterns for attending to God throughout the day. They open us to the divine dialogue through intentional encounter with the Trinity. The prayer disciplines open our gaze and hearing to God. In his book The Way of the Heart, Henri Nouwen quotes Theophan the Recluse: “To pray is to descend with the mind into the heart, and there stand before the face of the Lord, ever-present, all seeing, within you.” Prayer is sustained less by duty than by a desire to connect and grow in intimacy and communion with the holy Three. But prayer also moves us up and out into our world. In Love in a Fearful Land, Nouwen also writes, “Prayer is the way to both the heart of God and the heart of the world -- precisely because they have been joined through the suffering of Jesus Christ.... Praying is letting one’s own heart become the place where the tears of God’s children merge and become tears of hope.”
-- Adele Ahlberg Calhoun, Spiritual Disciplines Handbook: Practices That Transform Us (InterVarsity Press, 2005), p. 203
*****
Luke 9:28-36 (37-43a)
From Mountaintop to Valley
Peter Jenkins, author of the best-seller Walk Across America, decided to walk across the U.S. to find out what life was all about. It is a powerful image -- even the movie Forrest Gump did a parody of his epic quest.
Something great happened to him during his travels, something he never anticipated; he was given faith! While traveling through Alabama he came across a huge revival. He decided to attend, and at some point God’s Word grabbed him. When the invitation was given to become a Christian, Jenkins walked down the aisle.
He heard a lot of people trying to explain to him what just happened. He heard words like: “Born again...”; “Saved...”; “The Lord led you here tonight...”; “Praise the Lord...”; “Ain’t God good?”
Mary, the woman who first spoke to him, said: “Peter, this great elation that you’re feeling now -- you are feeling great elation, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Peter replied.
(Well), “at this moment it may seem like these great feelings are going to last forever, but they won’t,” she told him. “Being a Christian is not based on feelings. You’re on a mountaintop now, but someday, sooner or later, you’ll be far away from these great feelings. You may even wonder if all this ever happened.
“Your Christian walk is based on faith, not feelings,” Mary explained. Peter had never thought about that. As he put it, “I was so thrilled that there could be good feelings mixed in with faith that I really didn’t care about her opinions.”
More than 20 years have passed since that revival. “I was on a mountaintop that night,” Peter reflected. “The feelings lasted a long time, but that mountaintop hasn’t lasted all these years. Maybe I’ve been on more mountaintops than some, but I’ve also climbed, sometimes crawled, out of some awfully steep valleys too.”
-- Brian T. Henderson, from “Living Between the Mountaintop Experiences”
WORSHIP RESOURCES
by George Reed
Call to Worship
Leader: God reigns; let the peoples tremble!
People: God sits enthroned upon the cherubim.
Leader: God is great in Zion and exalted over all the peoples.
People: Let us praise God’s great and awesome name.
Leader: Extol God our God, and worship at God’s holy mountain.
People: Extol God, for our God is holy.
OR
Leader: Come into the presence of our God to worship.
People: We bring our praises to our awesome God.
Leader: God comes among us and dwells within us.
People: We celebrate God’s presence with us.
Leader: God desires to be known in all the world through us.
People: As bearers of the Christ Spirit, we will share God’s love with all.
Hymns and Sacred Songs
“O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing”
found in:
UMH: 57, 59
H82: 493
PH: 466
AAHH: 184
NNBH: 23
NCH: 42
CH: 5
LBW: 559
ELA: 886
W&P: 96
AMEC: 1
Renew: 32
“Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty”
found in:
UMH: 64, 65
H82: 362
PH: 138
AAHH: 329
NNBH: 1
NCH: 277
CH: 4
LBW: 165
ELA: 413
W&P: 136
AMEC: 25
STLT: 26
Renew: 204
“Open My Eyes, That I May See”
found in:
UMH: 454
PH: 324
NNBH: 218
CH: 586
W&P: 480
AMEC: 285
“Be Thou My Vision”
found in:
UMH: 451
H82: 488
PH: 339
NCH: 451
CH: 595
ELA: 793
W&P: 502
AMEC: 281
STLT: 20
Renew: 151
“My Faith Looks Up to Thee”
found in:
UMH: 452
H82: 691
PH: 383
AAHH: 456
NNBH: 273
CH: 576
LBW: 479
ELA: 759
W&P: 419
AMEC: 415
“Holy Spirit, Truth Divine”
found in:
UMH: 465
PH: 321
NCH: 63
CH: 241
LBW: 257
ELA: 398
“Pues Si Vivimos” (“When We Are Living”)
found in:
UMH: 356
PH: 400
NCH: 499
CH: 536
ELA: 639
W&P: 415
“Tú Has Venido a la Orilla” (“Lord, You Have Come to the Lakeshore”)
found in:
UMH: 344
PH: 377
CH: 342
W&P: 347
“Open Our Eyes, Lord”
found in:
CCB: 77
Renew: 91
“He Is Lord”
found in:
CCB: 82
Renew: 29
Music Resources Key:
UMH: United Methodist Hymnal
H82: The Hymnal 1982 (The Episcopal Church)
PH: Presbyterian Hymnal
AAHH: African-American Heritage Hymnal
NNBH: The New National Baptist Hymnal
NCH: The New Century Hymnal
CH: Chalice Hymnal
LBW: Lutheran Book of Worship
ELA: Evangelical Lutheran Worship
W&P: Worship & Praise
AMEC: African Methodist Episcopal Church Hymnal
STLT: Singing the Living Tradition
CCB: Cokesbury Chorus Book
Renew: Renew! Songs & Hymns for Blended Worship
Prayer for the Day / Collect
O God who is glorious and awesome: Grant us to grace to see your glory revealed in Jesus and to understand that your glory is also in us; through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
OR
We worship you, O God, for your glory and your awesome presence. Open our eyes by the power of your Spirit, that we may see the glory of Jesus. Open our hearts, so that we may understand the glory of your Spirit that dwells in us. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
Leader: Let us confess to God and before one another our sins, and especially our failure to be in awe.
People: We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. You are our creator and our salvation, and yet we act as if we could take you or leave you. Sometimes we act as if you did not exist, and other times we act like we can manipulate and use you for our wants. We do not know how to respond to your splendor, nor do we know what to do with your presence within us. We tend to ignore the awesome glory of your Spirit that dwells within us. Forgive us, and renew us so that we may not only offer due worship to you but that we might with boldness make your presence known to others. Amen.
Leader: God is awesome and wondrously present within us. God desires nothing more than to bless us and heal us as we bless and heal others in God’s name.
Prayers of the People (and the Lord’s Prayer)
Praise and worship are yours, O God, for all of your awesome glory. You are the light and hope of all creation.
(The following paragraph may be used if a separate prayer of confession has not been used.)
We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. You are our creator and our salvation, and yet we act as if we could take you or leave you. Sometimes we act as if you did not exist, and other times we act like we can manipulate and use you for our wants. We do not know how to respond to your splendor, nor do we know what to do with your presence within us. We tend to ignore the awesome glory of your Spirit that dwells within us. Forgive us, and renew us so that we may not only offer due worship to you but that we might with boldness make your presence known to others.
We thank you for the many ways in which you have shown your glory and presence to us. We thank you for your constant presence that seeks us and our salvation. We give you thanks for the gift of your Spirit at creation and that you have breathed into us.
(Other thanksgivings may be offered.)
We pray for all who are in need. We remember that many are unaware of your awesome presence that dwells within them. Many feel so far removed from you and the power of healing that dwells within them. Help us to share that power with them, so that they may know it resides in them as well.
(Other intercessions may be offered.)
All these things we ask in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ, who taught us to pray together, saying:
Our Father . . . Amen.
(or if the Lord’s Prayer is not used at this point in the service)
All this we ask in the Name of the Blessed and Holy Trinity. Amen.
Children’s Sermon Starter
If you don’t have a geode, go and get one. (They are wonderful to use.) A geode is a rock that is ugly clay on the outside and brilliant crystals on the inside. You can usually buy them open so that you can see the inside. Hold the geode so only the clay shows. This is us. We are dirt. We are earth creatures. We are mortal. (Turn the geode over.) But inside is the wondrous glory of God’s Spirit that dwells in us. We need to act so that others know God’s glory is within them too.
CHILDREN’S SERMON
Prayer
by Robin Lostetter
Luke 9:28-36 (37-43a)
Something special happened in today’s gospel reading, and it happened when Jesus took three disciples up on a mountain to pray with him.
Now, we don’t often go on a special trip to pray, do we? And we can pray anywhere, right?
So tell me, what do we do when we pray? (Expect all sorts of answers, from “bow our heads” to “ask for something.” But surely there will be some answer that will fit into “we talk to God,” whether it is asking for something or telling God how we feel.)
Yes, we do all those things, and we talk to God. But you know what God said on that day? He said, “Listen!” He said, “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him!” And that’s really good advice for prayer.
Prayer is like a conversation with God, and a conversation is between two people. You can’t have a conversation if only one person talks, right? So part of prayer is being very quiet and listening for God. You may not hear an answer to your question right then, but if you get into the habit of listening -- many times a day, like when you’re looking at a beautiful picture or the first snow of the year, or sitting in front of your Christmas tree, or watching your pet sleeping -- those are good times to listen for God.
Shall we pray? And this time I’m going to start us, and then be quiet, and then end with “Amen.”
Dear God, we’re listening............ Amen.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Immediate Word, February 7, 2016, issue.
Copyright 2016 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
