Peak Moments

2 Peter 1:16-18, Mark 9:1-8

February 10, 2002

Wherever, you are Gary, I want to thank you.

The last time I saw Gary, he was in ninth grade. He was in a youth group I worked with in West L.A. Gary was a good kid, as ninth grade boys go, but he had his lesser moments. His low is when he arrived at youth group sick as a dog. It wasn’t anthrax. It was vodka -- an open bottle left by a friend’s father in the cupboard and finished off that afternoon.

It didn’t take Gary long to empty his stomach. The dry heaves, however, went on and on. There Gary lay on the sofa in the church library. I sat next to him, rubbed his back, and assured him that he wasn’t going to die -- and "Hey, I’d been a dumb kid too." -- but never that dumb.

Now there was a beautiful young woman who worked with the youth group who was there with me. I’d been trying to get her to go out with me without success. But something about the way I was with Gary caused her to see me in a different light. The next time I asked her out, she said yes. This June we’ll celebrate our 27^th anniversary.

So wherever, you are Gary, I want to thank you.

Carol just needed her eyes opened. We all need that – because sometimes we only see what we expect to see.

It is like an experience I had trying to find a book. I went to Crown Books in Simi Valley to find a copy of the classic "Lorna Doone." There were two people behind the counter -- an older woman who was busy with paper work and a younger woman who wasn’t busy with anything except polishing her multiple body piercings and running her hands through her day-glo orange hair. I approached her and said, "Excuse me. Could you tell me where I might find a copy of Lorna Doone?

Obviously unfamiliar with anything not written in the last year, she looked at me in shock and said, "Lord of Doom"!?!.

The older woman quickly took over.

Well I had learned my lesson about confronting certain people with ancient writings. So just a week later I went to Borders to find a CD of Richard Rogers’soundtrack for Victory at Sea. The girl at the music counter could have been the twin to the one at Crown Books. But there was no one else to ask. I decided to speak slowly and loudly. "Excuse me. I am looking for a CD. It’s a soundtrack to an old television series called "Victory at Sea." It’s written by a man named Richard Rogers.

She looked at me and replied, "Actually, we have three different CDs of Victory at Sea. My own favorite is the first volume of this new two volume set. I think it has the most majestic music."

Boy, had I had my eyes opened.

This morning we are looking at an experience for three of Jesus’ disciples. It starts as an eye opening experience and ends with an ear-opening command.

It must have been late afternoon as Jesus led His inner circle of disciples, Peter, James and John up the higher elevations of Mt. Hermon to pray. Mt. Hermon rises some 9,000 feet above sea level and 11,000 feet above the Jordan Valley. It’s the only high mountain around. From the summit you can see all over Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria -- or so I’m told. The view from the top is presently enjoyed only by U.N. soldiers who are posted at the summit to keep the modern Israeli’s and Syrians apart.

Jesus make this long climb with His most intimate disciples because they need to be encouraged. Just six days before at Caesarea Phillipi, at the base of the mountain, Jesus had jolted them with the reality of the coming cross and the necessity of suffering.

Jesus had asked who they believed He was. Peter answered with his great confession: "You are the Christ" Then Jesus began to teach them that He must suffer many things, and be rejected and killed, and after three days rise again. Peter objected, and received a stinging rebuke from Jesus. "Get behind me Satan."

You can’t completely blame Peter. This revelation of the coming cross was totally out of sync with the disciples Messianic expectations. It was confusing and depressing. The Lord realized that it needed to be balanced with some positive realities.

Mark tells us, "After six days Jesus took Peter, James and John with Him and led them up a high mountain, where they were all alone" Luke adds the detail that they "went up to pray." The time began with prayer and continued in prayer.

I’m sure the disciples prayed along with Jesus. But Jesus could always out pray the disciples stamina. We see this again in the Garden of Gesthemane. Peter James and John become "very sleepy" and doze off.

The Gospels do not indicated which disciple awakened first. Whoever he was, he was wide awake in an instant and then shook the others awake. Verses 2 and 3 tells us: "There Jesus was transfigured before them. His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them." Matthew says, "…His face shone like the sun, and His garments became as white as light." Luke says it was "White as a flash of lightning." John, who was there, would later write, "…we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth."

What is going on here?

The Apostle Paul reminds us in Phillipians 2:6-8 that "although Jesus existed in the form of God, He did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men."

Jesus gave up the prerogatives of deity. He was veiled in humility in His incarnation. But on the mountain our Lord is invited by His Father to step back into eternity and experience His full deity and glory once again. For a brief moment the veil of Jesus’ humanity is lifted, and His true essence shines through.

What does it mean?

One thing the transfiguration shows us is who Jesus really is. And it also shows us that whether Jesus went to the cross or not, the Kingdom is in His hands. We have to die to step across the boundary of time into eternity. But Jesus did not need to die. He could have stepped off this earth back to heaven and He would have been the sovereign ruler of the universe. But that way He couldn’t have saved you and He couldn’t have saved me. So after He stepped into eternity, He then stepped back into time and space and walked toward the cross as the Passover lamb who came to take away the sin of the world.

That’s love.

As Peter, James and John watch spellbound, they are given something else to wrestle with: "And there appeared before them Elijah and Moses, who were talking with Jesus" How Peter, James and John recognize them, I don’t know. I doubt that they wore name tags. "Hi, I’m Moses." Maybe they addressed each other by name in their conversation.

Why Elijah and Moses? Moses was the great lawgiver, and Elijah was the great prophet. Moses was the founder of Israel’s religious life, and Elijah was the restorer of it. Together they were an ultimate summary of the Old Testament.

What were they and Jesus talking about? Luke tells us in his account: "They spoke about Jesus’ departure, or exodus, which He was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem"

Most sermons I have heard on this passage assume the experience on the mountain was a positive one that can be compared to the emotional "high" that we sometimes experience in worship or prayer. The mountain becomes a metaphor for "mountain top" experiences and positive times in the presence of God that you may experience at Forest Home or at a Women’s Retreat. But while there was a fantastic encounter with God, the content was anything but positive and joyful. The subject on this mountain was death.

Jesus, Moses and Elijah are talking about the cross and Jesus’ death. The tense indicates that this was an extended conversation. If there was ever a time for silence, this was it. But Peter always has something to say when there is nothing to be said.

A man was having a friendly argument with his wife when she asked him, "why did you marry me?" "I was just stupid," he teased. She said she was happy to hear that. He asked her why marrying her because he was stupid made her happy. She said, "People get divorced all the time because they fall out of love, but I’ve never heard of anybody falling out of stupid."

Well Peter on the mountain is in no danger of falling out of stupid.

Peter said to Jesus, "Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters – one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah." Remember that this event took place six days after Peter received the traumatic "Get behind me Satan" rebuke. And we can imagine that for six days Peter has been praying that he will be more careful the next time he talks. This speech at the transfiguration illustrates the super-caution Peter tries to exercise. Every word is important: "Lord (the right way to begin), "it is so good that we are right here!" (a harmless observation, trying to be positive), "if it is your will" (Peter really does want to do the right thing this time – the Lord’s will, not his own), "I will make three booths here – one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." Peter puts Jesus first: "One for you," he says first, and only then "and one for Moses and one for Elijah."

What is Peter up to? Some think that Peter’s motive is to bring about the promised glory immediately and avoid the cross. But I think we should credit Peter with wanting to say the right thing.

However, once more, instead of waiting to follow Jesus’ word, Peter is too eager to speak. Peter has not learned that leadership in the church is not first of all a matter of doing things for Jesus. It is first of all letting Jesus speak and then doing the things He says.

The Lord’s only answer is silence. But "a cloud formed and began to overshadow them; and they were afraid as they entered the cloud."

I don’t blame them. The Old Testament reveals that a luminous cloud, the shekinah glory, was a sign of the presence of God. This was the cloud which passed by Moses as God covered him in the cleft of the rock with his hand – so that Moses only saw the afterglow. This was the cloud which covered the nearly finished Tent of the Meeting and so filled the Tabernacle with God’s glory that Moses could not enter it. It was the same cloud that filled Solomon’s Temple on dedication day so that the priests could not enter the Temple.

It had been six hundred years since anyone in Israel had seen the shekinah glory. Now Peter, James and John are in the cloud which Moses was not even permitted to directly see. But Jesus is with them, and they can stand radiant in the shekinah glory!

Then "a voice came from the cloud: ‘This is my Son whom I love. Listen to Him!’"

This was the voice of the Father, who said almost the same thing at Jesus’ baptism. This was not the disciples’ imagination. Years later Peter would write: "We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For He received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to Him from the Majestic Glory, saying, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with Him I am well pleased.’ We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with Him on the sacred mountain."

"Listen to Him!" is God’s command. The Law and Prophets are only partial expressions, but Jesus is the final statement. "Listen to Him!" Matthew says that when the three heard the voice from Heaven, "they fell face down to the ground, terrified. But Jesus came and touched them. ‘Get up,’ He said, ‘don’t be afraid’"

"Suddenly, when they looked around, they no longer saw anyone with them except Jesus." The shekinah was gone. Jesus’ skin and clothing no longer glowed. Moses and Elijah had disappeared, the voice of the Father was still, and the three disciples saw only Jesus.

This is what all our experience, all our theology, all our work should come down to -- seeing only Jesus!

Let’s talk about seeing.

I chanced on a wonderful book by Marius von Senden, called Space and Sight. When surgeons discovered how to perform safe cataract operations, they operated on dozens of men and women who had been blinded by cataracts since birth. Von Senden collected accounts of such cases. Many doctors had tested their patients’ sense perceptions and ideas of space both before and after the operations. The vast majority of patients had no idea of space whatsoever. Form, distance, and size were so many meaningless syllables.

For the newly sighted, vision is pure sensation unencumbered by meaning. Von Senden reports: "The girl went through the experience that we all go through and forget, the moment we are born. She saw, but it did not mean anything but a lot of different kinds of brightness."

For many newly sighted people, it’s all too much. It oppresses them to realize the tremendous size of the world, which they had previously conceived of as something touchingly manageable. Some of them refuse to use their new vision.

Others, however, delight what they can now see. A little girl visits a garden. "She is greatly astonished, and can scarcely be persuaded to answer, stands speechless in front of the tree, which she only names on taking hold of it. Of a patient just after her bandages were removed, her doctor writes, "The first things to attract her attention were her own hands; she looked at them very closely, moved them repeatedly to and fro, bent and stretched the fingers, and seemed greatly astonished at the sight." A twenty-two-year-old girl was dazzled by the world’s brightness and kept her eyes shut for two weeks. At the end of that time she opened her eyes again. She did not recognize any objects, but, "the more she now directed her gaze upon everything about her, the more it could be seen how an expression of gratification and astonishment overspread her features. She repeatedly exclaimed: "Oh God! How beautiful!’"

"Oh God! How beautiful!’" That’s what Peter should have said on the mountain.

Like these newly sighted people, these three disciples had the privilege of having their spiritual cataracts removed in order to see Jesus as He is. The Apostle Paul had the same experience on the Damascus Road so that He wrote: "Once we looked at Christ from a human point of view but we look at Him in this way no longer."

When did you have the same experience? When was the first time you saw Jesus for who He really is? When was the first time you knew that He is much, much more than an a character in an old story or, for some of you, with the way you were raised, a swear word? When did you first see Him not only as the Lord but as Your Lord? When did you decide to obey God and listen to His Son?

If you haven’t had that transformation, maybe it will happen between now and Easter. Great things do happen when we open ourselves to God’s word.

Today is the beginning of our worship and small group emphasis on the last chapter of Jesus’ ministry from the Transfiguration to the Resurrection. I hope that you are in a small group and that you will be regular in worship. For in this time we will look up to "see only Jesus" and we will, indeed, listen to Him.