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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Even if the Broncos and the Panthers are not our favorite teams, we probably are at least aware thatlater today they are playing in the fiftieth Super Bowl. For two weeks the hype has been building over these two teams, and, to some extent, veteran quarterback Peyton Manning and relative newcomer Cam Newton have resting on this game their fame or reputation, or, we might say, their glory. The Gospel Reading for today, the Transfiguration of our Lord, speaks of glory in that sense of “reputation”, as well as glory in the senses of “power” and the “divine mode of being”. In fact, St. Luke’s Divinely‑inspired account of Jesus’s Transfiguration that we heard is the only account of His Transfiguration to use the word “glory”, and not only in regards to Jesus but also in regards to Moses and Elijah. This morning as we reflect on the Gospel Reading, we will realize that Jesus shares His glory with Moses and Elijah and also with us, and so this morning we reflect on the Gospel Reading under the theme “Shared Glory”.
Since today is the last Sunday of this year’s Epiphany Season, we have jumped forward in St. Luke’s Gospel account to what is the greatest revelation of the glory of God from the flesh of the man Jesus Christ. Yet, even if we had the other four Sundays that in some years occur in the Epiphany Season, we still would not have gotten all the way up to the verses right before today’s Gospel Reading, verses that are important for understanding today’s Reading. In those verses, Jesus brought forth Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Christ of God; Jesus told the disciples that He must suffer many things; and Jesus called them to deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow Him, adding that there were some standing there who would not taste death until they saw the Kingdom of God (Luke 9:18-27).
Then, about eight days after those sayings, Jesus took with Him Peter and John and James and went up on the mountain to pray. As He was praying and the disciples perhaps were sleeping, the appearance of Jesus’s was face was altered, and His clothing became dazzling white. (Although St. Luke does not use the term “transfigured”, he nevertheless describes Jesus’s face becoming like that of another nature, in fact, Jesus’s divine nature as true God, also radiating out through His clothing.) Moses and Elijah appeared in glory and were talking with Jesus about His departure, or “exodus”, which Jesus was about to accomplish, or “fulfill” at Jerusalem. (The two men appear together in the last chapter of the Old Testament [Malachi 4:4‑6] and both had had somewhat unusual departures from their earthly lives—we heard of Moses’s in today’s Old Testament Reading [Deuteronomy 34:1-12], although there is also a tradition that Moses perhaps later was “translated” to heaven [confer Jude 9], where Elijah was carried up by a whirlwind [2 Kings 2:11].) And, the three awake disciples see Jesus’s glory and the two men standing with Him, arguably try to delay the men’s departure from the scene without realizing what that delay would mean, and hear God the Father’s voice from a cloud both identify Jesus as His Son, His Chosen One, and tell them to listen to Him.
We usually “excuse” Peter’s attempt to delay anyone’s departure from the mountaintop by saying he did not yet understand, as Jesus had said, that for both Jesus and His followers the path to true glory was through suffering. In so excusing Peter’s guilt, to some extent we make our own guilt worse, for we have the benefit of the full revelation of Jesus’s death, resurrection, and ascension. Yet, do we not also have different ideas about glory? Maybe we think our glory is in the legacy we might leave behind (sort of like a quarterback’s having won a Super Bowl), in our church’s buildings or the number of people in them, or in our personal fitness or health. Do we not also wrongly try to avoid or delay suffering? Not that we should seek suffering, but maybe we somehow doubt that God will use it ultimately for our good and bring us through it. Do we not also speak without knowing what we are saying instead of listening to Jesus? Maybe we also have no idea what the consequences would be of action we might prefer for God to take, or maybe just do not like what God has to say. Truly, we sin in these and countless other ways, for we are sinful by nature. And, because of our sinful nature and our actual sins, apart from faith in Jesus Christ, we deserve eternal torment in hell.
Yet, out of God’s great love for us, God put the punishment we deserve on His own Son, His Chosen One. So, as with Moses and Aaron and Samuel before us, as we sang in today’s Psalm (99), God answers us when we call to Him—when we call to Him both in sorrow over our sin and in faith that trusts Him to forgive our sins. God answers such repentant calls by forgiving our sin—our sin of different ideas about glory, our sin of trying to avoid or delay suffering, our sin of speaking without knowing what we are saying instead of listening to Jesus, or whatever our sin might be. God forgives all our sin, and He forgives it for the sake of His Son, His Chosen One.
That Son was chosen to bring justice and righteousness to the nations (Isaiah 42:1). As today’s Epistle Reading made clear (Hebrews 3:1-6), the Son has greater glory than Moses, or Elijah, for that matter, for the Son had glory with the Father before the world existed (John 17:5). Such glory is God’s majesty as a perfect Being and supreme Ruler (ESL #1391; confer 2 Peter 1:16-19), His reputation, power, and divine way of being (Kittel, TDNT 2:247). That God has such glory should not be all that surprising, but in today’s Gospel Reading the disciples see such glory from the man Jesus, in whom the divine and human natures are personally united. St. Luke had previously told how the glory of the Lord had shone around the shepherds at Jesus’s birth (Luke 2:9), and this is the only other time such divine glory is expressly related to Jesus before His resurrection (Kittel, s.v. dovxa, TDNT 2:248-249). At Jesus’s Transfiguration, He shows forth such divine glory from the same body that was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary, from the same body that He let suffer and be crucified on the cross for us. That death for us was God’s plan—testified by Moses and Elijah and the whole of the Old Testament, confirmed by the Father’s voice, and later accomplished, or “fulfilled”, in Jerusalem, to where, soon after the events of today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus set His face to go (Luke 9:51). Jesus had the right idea about glory, did not avoid or delay His suffering, and listened to the Father and spoke with perfect knowledge. Jesus also made up for our failures to do those things and countless others. As we repent and believe, Jesus’s “exodus” delivers us from our slavery to sin, out of this world, to the Promised Land of heaven.
As the Father directs us, we who repent and believe listen to Jesus. We listen to Jesus speak to us in His Word read and preached. We listen to Jesus speak to us in His Word applied with water in Holy Baptism, where we are adopted by grace as God’s children, His chosen ones. We listen to Jesus speak to us in His Word that forgives our sins in individual Holy Absolution. And, we listen to Jesus speak to us in His Word combined with bread and wine in Holy Communion, to give us His Body and Blood and so also the forgiveness of sins. As all the Old Testament people of the exodus brought into God’s covenant by circumcision ate the Passover lambs and manna, so all of us New Testament people of the greater exodus brought into God’s covenant by baptism eat of the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world, the true bread that came down from heaven and gave His flesh for the life of the world (John 1:29, 36; 6:33, 51; 1 Corinthians 10:1-4). We eat His flesh and drink His blood and so have eternal life and will be raised up on the last day (John 6:54).
So hearing Jesus speak to us, we are forgiven and made holy, and we try to lead holy lives: with the right idea about the path to true glory through suffering. When we fail, as we do, we turn in repentance and faith, and so we live every day in God’s forgiveness and forgiving one another. Like us, Moses and Elijah were forgiven sinners, and the disciples in today’s Gospel Reading saw them appear in glory, even as Jesus appeared after His resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:5-8). At the resurrection of all flesh, Jesus likewise will transform also our lowly bodies to be like His glorious body (Philippians 3:21). The glory we will have then far exceeds any earthly ideas we have about glory (including Super Bowl glory), and the glory we will have then is not even worth comparing to the suffering we experience here and now (Romans 8:18). First, however, before we share that glory, by God’s grace we complete our journeys to glory through the sufferings of this life, including the penitential season of Lent that begins this coming Ash Wednesday.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +