Transfiguration of the Lord Sunday, February 15, 2015 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Memories

Shannon J. Kershner
Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 50:1–6
Mark 9:2–9

There on the mountain they saw him,
really saw him, saw his light.
We all know that if we really see him we die.
But isn’t that what is required of us?
Then, perhaps, we will see each other, too.

Madeleine L’Engle

This is a strangely slow interlude in Mark’s Gospel. Mark rarely spends so much time on just one event. He typically writes with a pointed urgency, dropping words and phrases like immediately, right away, at once. And he never lets Jesus stay very long in one place. As Brian Blount writes, “For eight chapters, Mark hauls us on an express train to Jerusalem, pausing just long enough at each station for us to peek out the windows” (Brian Blount and Gary Charles, Preaching Mark in Two Voices, p. 153).

This quick narrative pace is why our mountaintop story might strike us as strange. Here we are, trying to stay up with the action, when suddenly Mark stops the train. And as he stops it here in chapter 9, we don’t just get to peek out the windows. We are actually able to get off and stretch our legs. Mark’s telling of this particular story makes a shift from a story defined by urgency to a story defined by details. We are given details of time (six days later), of space (a high mountain apart), and of color (dazzling white beyond earthly possibility). Therefore, given this abrupt change of style, we must ask the why question. Why did Mark find it necessary to stop the train here, for this moment, on top of this mountain?

I think we find hints on either side of this chapter 9 mountain story. Let’s look at what happens immediately before this story. Right before Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up on the mountain, he gives all of them a reality check about what they should expect during the rest of their time together. Mark writes, “Jesus began to teach the disciples that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, be rejected, and killed, and then rise again.”

This honesty marks an important moment. It is the first time in Mark’s Gospel that Jesus speaks openly to his disciples about what is to come as a result of who he is as our schizomai-minded, boundary-crossing Messiah. It is the first time Jesus lets his closest followers know about the pain and heartache that is right around the corner. So this tough conversation about the cost of faithfulness is what comes immediately before the mountaintop moment.

And then, right after, we again hear Jesus telling the disciples what to expect. Chapter 9:31: “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” Mark goes on to write that the disciples were still very confused by Jesus’ words of suffering and death. This time, though, they were too afraid to ask him to explain. I wonder if they simply could not handle even considering that what Jesus had told them could possibly be true.

So right before they go up and shortly after they come down, the disciples hear tough preaching, things Jesus has not said to them before about the cost of discipleship. Yet placed right in between those stark sermons is this slow interlude on the mountain, this time when Mark stops the train so we can get off, look around, and stand with the disciples, to see what we might see and to hear what we might hear.

First, let’s look at the moment. We know from earlier stories in our scripture that God often hides God’s presence in an envelope of light in order to protect us from being overwhelmed by God’s glory (think burning bush and the pillar of fire). And that happens again in this story. But this time, God lets all God’s glory loose in Jesus. It’s as if, as Barbara Brown Taylor writes, God took the glory off of God’s own face and tucked it inside Jesus, making him one big light (Barbara Brown Taylor, “Glory Doors,” Bread of Angels, p. 5)—shining from every pore, dazzling in his brightness, causing everyone and everything around him to reflect that divine brilliance.

The theological word for it is transfiguration. It is God’s way of saying about Jesus, “Look—it’s really me. See for yourselves.” And then, to drive the point home even more, God places Moses and Elijah—the great lawgiver and the great prophet—beside the luminous Jesus. The two of them are our visual cues that this Jesus, this shining, glorious Jesus, is indeed the fulfillment of all the historical promises God had made with God’s covenant people throughout the generations.

So now, let’s listen to the moment: “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him.” These words ring in our ears, because we have heard them before. We, as readers, overheard God say those words to Jesus at his baptism. Yet here on this mountaintop, God speaks these words publicly for the sake of all disciples. “This one—this same one who has told you that he will suffer, be killed, and then be raised up—this one is My Beloved Child. This one is your Messiah. Listen to him.”

The poetic theological imagination employed in this mountaintop moment leads us to some questions. Why would God choose to give that gift of transfiguration vision to those disciples? Furthermore, why then, right in the middle of tough sermons about the cost of being faithful? Did God hope that vision might shape their lives as they continued to follow Jesus—following him down off of the mountain and then through the betrayal, the suffering, his death? Did God hope the memory of this transfiguration vision might give them courage for what was to come?

And then, why did Mark choose to offer that gift to us? It sure seems Mark slowed down the story on purpose. Was it so that we might have a chance to experience a bit of what those disciples experienced, even if it only unfolds in the space of our imagination? I wonder if Mark wanted to give us the gift of a powerful, God-filled, luminous, transfiguration memory in the hopes of giving us courage for whatever is to come on our journeys of faith. Is that why both the first disciples, and now all of us, have received this gift of transfiguration memory?

I think one clue as to why becomes known through the rest of the story. After that jaw-dropping moment of light and holy voice, things quickly went back to normal. The glory vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. Mark states the return to normalcy with a matter-of-fact bluntness: “When the disciples looked around, they saw no one with them anymore, but only Jesus.” After that glorious shining moment full of blinding possibility and divine promise had passed, the disciples looked around and realized that all they had left was just the worn, tired, flesh-and-bone face of Jesus. The same face they saw day after day. No more light. No more glory. No more holy voice. Just Jesus.

And then as if to add insult to injury, Jesus made all of them head right back down off of the mountain. Down back into all the brokenness, into all the despair, into all the need of the world. Back to the hunger. Back to the thirst. Back to the hurting and the wounded and the despairing. Back to the disbelieving. Back to the cynical. Back to the “that’s just the way it is.”

But we might contemplate if as the disciples walked back down into the trenches of their lives, if they decided they would intentionally remember what they had just experienced together. Did they decide they would help each other remember that transfiguration vision on that mountain? Each day, when the alarm went off too early or the police sirens blew down their street too chaotically or the beeps on the hospital heart monitor chimed too erratically or the oxygen tank whirred too loudly, in the middle of all that—each day, were they going to pause and remember what they had experienced: a revealing of the promise of glory and hope and all-embracing divine presence—a presence they had seen clearly shining in Jesus? Or not?

I think they initially chose the “not.” For when we read the rest of Mark’s Gospel, it sure seems as though they forgot the whole thing. Judas betrays him. Peter denies him. They all run from him. As we read the rest of their stories, it appears that fear and defeat shaped their lives much more powerfully than the memory of the brilliance and shining divine presence revealed on the mountain. Their transfiguration vision seemed to become completely overshadowed and almost overcome by the deep trenches and despair of a Good Friday world. At least for a good while, the disciples chose not to remember.

But those first disciples were not the only ones to fight that battle, were they? We face it too. Every single day, when our alarm goes off and the police sirens sound and the heart monitors beep and the oxygen tanks whir and the children cry and the cell phone rings and the refrigerator is empty and the school bus comes and the “L” is late and the sharp wind is cold and the snow is gray, every single day we, like those first disciples, are called to decide what memories, what stories, Whose story, will shape our lives and the way we live them.

Every single day we decide what kind of a world we live in. That decision holds power, and I believe it can either give us courage for risky and faithful discipleship or drain it away. Will we choose to make the claim that we live in a transfiguration world? A world that is, as Barbara Brown Taylor writes, wonderfully porous? A world in which God’s glory pulses just beneath the surface of things and every once in a while leaks in through some of the holes, bathing us and everything around us in a brilliant light of transfiguring promise, Easter hope, and all-embracing divine presence? Will that be the choice we make?

Or will we choose to assert, either on purpose or out of apathy, that we live in a world where everything is flat and exactly as it seems, with no light, no holes, no fullness (Barbara Brown Taylor, Bread of Angels, p. 7), no promise of divine presence, and certainly no honest hope? That is one of our everyday spiritual battles on the discipleship train as we keep following Jesus through the trenches of regular life and ministry, just like it was a battle for Peter, for James, and for John.

Please allow me to get personal. One of the honest blessings of serving as a pastor, especially in a congregation like Fourth Church, is that I get to see this choice laid bare almost every day. Perhaps it happens to you, too. I just know that every day I am confronted with stories that could easily tip me one way or the other. Sometimes those stories are the ones we all hear and share—like the violent deaths of the three young Muslim students in Chapel Hill or the death of the aid worker Kayla Mueller or reports about the internally displaced children in Syria and in the Ukraine. But sometimes the stories come to me through confidential prayer cards, written by folks who are living right on the edge of danger and despair, whose handwriting reveals a frantic urgency. Sometimes the stories come from conversations in my office or in coffee shops about new diagnoses or broken relationships or lonely lives. Pastors have the privilege of hearing lots of stories.

And in the face of these kinds of stories, I have days when I have to make an honest decision. In the face of such “down the mountain” stories, am I going to live in a flat world where everything is exactly as it seems, with no holes, no light and no fullness, no promise of divine presence, and certainly, no honest hope? Is that the storyline I am going to give the power to define my life and my work? Am I going to follow the way of those early disciples whose transfiguration memory was almost overcome by fear and Good Friday?

Or, by God’s grace, is it possible for me to trust one more time that God is somehow present in all of that brokenness, pain, and danger; in all of those Good Friday deep trenches, not making it all go away, even if that is what I would choose, but somehow, working out a transfiguring kind of healing, a healing I may or may not understand or even agree with, yet being done regardless? Can I imaginatively go back to the mountain, close my eyes, and reground myself in a world in which God’s glory pulses just beneath the surface of things and every once in a while leaks in through some of the holes and promises it is not over yet? That God is still at work, and I get to play a part in that work, just like you do, and that God does some of God’s best work in the dark, and Easter always rises. Which storyline, I ask myself, Whose storyline, what memory is going to shape me that day?

As it did with the disciples, I really do believe that the choice I make directly affects how I live, because when I can choose to remember the transfiguration vision, memory, then I am more open to seeing that light leaking into our world. I am more open to noticing the joy of the man who had experienced homelessness for decades finally holding the keys to his own place. I am more open to hearing with gratitude the experience of our volunteers at Sunday Night Supper who came during the blizzard to serve our guests not just food and drink, but also grace and dignity. I am more open to make time to meet Eboo Patel of the Interfaith Youth Core and to imagine how we at Fourth Church can help them live out their mission of making interfaith cooperation a social norm. I am more open and able to be more present and real as a mother and wife, as a pastor, as a person.

I think one gift Mark gives us with his account of the strange transfiguration story is to point out that every single day you and I have the option of making a different choice than the one those first disciples made. We don’t have to so quickly forget what God has shown us in Jesus. We can choose to remember and lean into God’s promise of a porous, God-leaking, divine, hope-infused world and let that faith-based reality shape us and how we act and think each day.

Or we can choose to do as those first disciples seemed to do. We can choose to quickly forget about any promise of glory or newness or Divine presence. We can choose to only see a world where everything is flat with no light, no holes, no fullness. We can choose to only see a world where Good Friday seems to hold all the power and the trenches of daily life are just about overwhelming.

Sisters and brothers, that is our battle every single day. That is our choice every single day. Whose story, what memory, will shape our lives? Will it give us courage for discipleship or leak it out? Will we choose to live in a porous transfiguration kind of world or not? That choice is ours to make every single day—and, on some days, every single hour. But I am pretty sure that the Gospel-writer Mark hoped we might remember. Perhaps that hope is why he stopped the train.