For
a lot of years, the standard in preaching was the narrative sermon. That’s in fact what I do: I’m a narrative
preacher. I tend to write a sermon as a narrative,
as a story. One reason this works is
that large portions of Scripture are
narratives, and the parts that aren’t . . . well, we narrative preachers turn
them into narratives. For instance, when
we preach the letters of Paul – which tend not to be narrative—we’ll couch the
sermons in terms of a story about Paul or his situation or the
congregation to which he is writing. If
we’re preaching from the prophets—a lot of poetry, not a lot of story –we do
the same thing, we give a history of the prophet or his times or something, so that it tells a story of
some kind. That’s just kind of how we
roll.
And
by and large, it works pretty well: psychologists have known for a long time
that one of the primary—if not the
primary—ways we learn is through narrative. We remember them about ourselves
and our circumstances, or folks we know and their
circumstances. We tell them to one
another, about one another, and we learn from them: Uncle Fred did this and
then this happened, so don’t do that, or do do that, whatever the case may be. And that’s one reason, I suspect, that there
are so many stories in scripture: that’s
how we learn, Jesus knew it and couched his teaching in them, and the authors
of the Hebrew scriptures and the gospels knew it and set down their theology in
large part in narrative form.
And
that’s what we have before us today: a narrative and, like most biblical
narratives, it’s not all it seems on the surface, because Mark, like every
other gospel writer, has ulterior motives. True: he wants to tell the story, he
wants his audience to know what happened, but he has a theological agenda as
well. There have been arguments for
centuries over just what the Gospels are, but one thing for sure: they’re not
just straight history. Mark wants us to
learn something about his conception of the Gospel, about whom he thinks Jesus
is, and what it all means.
A
defining characteristic of a complete narrative is that it has a beginning, a
middle, and an end. In film and theater,
these are called acts: Act one is the set-up:
all the major characters are established, along with the relationships
between them, and usually the setting as well.
Act two is where the action takes place, where a sequence of events that
moves our characters ahead, that changes them in some way—or not—takes
place. Act three is the denouement: the
loose ends are tied up—or not—the characters learn their lessons—or not—and
everyone rides into the sunset. Or not. And narratives in the scripture are no
different: they generally have a beginning, a middle and an end, and that’s one
way we can study them.
Does
our story have this structure? Is it a complete narrative, or just a
fragment? Let’s see: “Six days later,
Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain,
apart, by themselves.” Looks like a
perfectly fine first act to me: the setting is six days later on a high
mountain, the characters are Jesus, Peter, James and John, and they are apart,
by themselves. Everything we need to
know to understand the story has been told us in that one compact, economical
sentence. And being as it’s Mark, that’s
what we expect: Mark doesn’t mess
around, he’s concise and to the point: Jesus, Peter, James and John went up on
a mountain, and they were alone.
He’s
got our interest now, we want to know why the four are up there, where are the
rest of the disciples, and what’s going to happen. And so along comes Act Two which is where all
the action takes place, and the way you can tell where the transition is, where
Act two begins, is that something happens to begin the action, perhaps to alter
the course of the characters’ lives—something happens to set things going. And
what a thing that is: Jesus is transfigured before them, right before their
very eyes – can you imagine? His clothes
became a dazzling white, such as nothing on earth, not Tide or All or All-Temperature
Cheer, could bleach them as white.
That’s the first thing that happens.
The
second thing that happens is that Elijah and Moses appear right alongside
Jesus, and they’re talking with him, and I want you to picture it: it’s like they’re onstage with the spotlights
shining down on them, illuminating them as if they were a rock band or
something, like Mick Jagger or Elton John, because that’s what Moses and Elijah
were to good Jewish boys like James and Peter and John: they were like rock
stars, they were the first and the last, the alpha and omega of prophets, and
they’re talking with their teacher!
And
Peter’s babbling now, he doesn’t know what he’s saying, he just blurts out
something about how good it is to be here, and about making three houses, one
for each of them, and as he babbles along like a tinkling brook, a third thing happens: A cloud comes over
them, and the sky darkens, and a voice comes out of the cloud—and you know what
that means, you know who that is—and it says “This is my Son, the
Beloved; listen to him!” And it all sounds awful familiar, doesn’t
it? Where have we heard these words
before?
And
then comes the transition point, that signals the beginning of Act 3: Suddenly, Mark says, they looked around, and
there was nobody there with Jesus anymore—they’d all disappeared, and this
sends the narrative off in a fundamentally different direction: they come down
from the mountain, and Jesus warns them not to tell anyone what they’d seen, at
least until after the Son of Man has risen from the dead.
One,
two, three: they go up the mountain,
stuff happens—some pretty strange stuff, you’ve got to admit—and they go back
down again. Pretty straightforward story,
isn’t it? But to assign meaning to it,
you have to examine not only what happens, but the order in which it happens as
well as when it happens, and to whom.
And the first question to ask is: six days later than what? Mark says it all happened six days later, and
it turns out that it’s six days after Jesus predicts the fulfillment of the
kingdom of God. “There are some standing
here,” he says, “who will not taste death until the kingdom of God has come with
power.” Six days after that—and
note that six is a symbolic number, it’s one day less than seven, the number of
days in which the first creation was
made—six days later, Jesus is hob-nobbing with Moses and Elijah in a blinding
pool of light, and looking at it in our mind’s eye, we can imagine that Jesus
and the two prophets are of a piece, they are equals, no-doubt talking over
weighty things like theology or biblical authority or maybe just the who’s
gonna win Jerusalem Idol that year. It
doesn’t really matter what they’re talking about: Jesus and Moses and Elijah
are together, Jesus is one of them.
And
what happens next is important: a voice comes out of the cloud, and we are
reminded—or we should be—of his baptism.
Here it serves a similar purpose: it tells us who Jesus is. “This is my son,”
says the voice “My beloved.” And the
cloud lifts, and the disciples can see Moses and Elijah—reminding us of Jesus’
place in the line of the Hebrew prophets, reminding us that he’s Jewish after
all, and that he’s right up there with the big guns—they can see that now they
are gone, Jesus he is alone, peerless.
It is as if Moses and Elijah have been subsumed, have been absorbed, and
now there is only God’s son, the beloved.
Jesus is the fulfillment of all their prophecies.
Jesus
is thus revealed by the tableau up on that nameless mountain to be without peer
in the end, and at this turning point, we begin the ending, we begin the final
act, and it’s not up on the mountain, it’s not up there hob-nobbing in little
dwelling-places with Moses and Elijah. Remember that it’s been only six days, not the
perfect, fulfilled seven, and the final act is on earth anyway. So they return to the cares of the world,
they come down from the mountain, to finish up Christ’s ministry on earth.
Not
only is this a straight-up narrative, a story that tells a linear sequence of
events, with a beginning, a middle and an end, but it’s packed with meaning and
symbolism besides. And if we step back
just a little further, and think about when we in the church tell this tale, it might teach us just a
little more. “This is my Son, the
Beloved,” said the voice “Listen to him.”
Unlike at the baptism, where God expressed his pleasure at his Son—I am
well pleased—this time we are told, along with James and John and Peter, to
listen to him. This time, unlike the baptism when the voice speaks only to Jesus,
the disciples are addressed as well: listen
to him, the voice says.
And for the rest of the Gospel, those three in
particular are shown not listening to him: on the road, when James and John ask
him to sit, one at his right and his left, in the Garden of Gethsemane, when
those precise three—Peter and James and John—fall asleep in the garden not
once, not twice but three times. And at
last, when Peter—as predicted—denied the Savior three times before the cock has
crowed twice.
We
in the church put this story here, on the cusp of Lent, on the knife-edge of
the passion, when it is revealed what Jesus means when he says “the first shall
be last and the last first,” we’re right there with Peter and James and John,
sleeping in the garden, right there with Peter, denying him daily. We want to skip the final days, stay up on
the Christmas mountain and never come down, build a little shrine in our hearts
for Jesus and keep him in it.
But
it’s only been six days, not seven—the kingdom has not yet been fulfilled, and
we have work to do down here on earth.
As Christ’s agents on earth, as his salt that preserves and light that
shines, we have work to do in the meantime.
And if there’s anything that brings us back down to earth, anything that
cuts us down to size, it’s Lent. We come
down from the mountain of hope, down from the summit of glory, and straight
into the 40 days, beginning next week right smack dab in the wilderness.
Brothers
and sisters, God comes to us this week, at Christ’s transfiguration, and shows
us who Jesus is as Messiah, as anointed Son, but there’s more to it than
that. Over the next six weeks, we will
see what that means, we will see that it means more than the glory, more than
the coming reign in power and might, that it means suffering and pain and the
ultimate sacrifice for us all. God comes
to us on the mountain, and asks us to come down, where the action is,
where the kingdom is still not yet fulfilled.
And as God does, God speaks to us those words of power: this is my Son,
my beloved, listen to what he has to say, what he has to show us, what his life
has to tell us over these next six weeks.
Amen.
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