"Life Shaped By the Cross" The Transfiguration of Our Lord Last Sunday After the Epiphany The Conversion of St. Paul January 25, 2015 Matthew 17:1–9
As a Christian, your life is shaped by the cross. There are many things that shape who you are. Your parents, your experiences, your choices, your beliefs. But there is one thing as a Christian that shapes who you are and your life in this life and forever. It is the cross. This is what Jesus is showing us in the Gospel reading today. In the Transfiguration Jesus is not showing His glory, He is showing us the cross. That is, He is showing us that our life is shaped by the cross, not by His glory. We see this first in Jesus bringing only three disciples up the mountain. Jesus showed His glory to only three people. On the cross, His suffering and death were displayed for all to see. On the Mount of Transfiguration Jesus’ face shown like the sun. His clothes were white as light. Matthew says that He was changed in form. You can only imagine what the disciples were thinking and feeling in seeing this! Then Moses and Elijah show up. An amazing sight is followed by another amazing and strange sight. What is Jesus showing us? What we are we learning from Jesus’ display of heavenly glory and Moses and Elijah appearing and talking with Jesus? The answer is the opposite of what we think. This is shown by Peter’s reaction. Lord, it is good that we’re here! This is how life is supposed to be! Let’s set up shop right here on the mountain. We’ll make tents for You and Moses and Elijah. We’ll just stay here and bask in Your glory! We’re so much like Peter. Our life is shaped by glory. We want what God has promised us in heaven now. We want the glorious Kingdom to be set up right here on earth. God shows us something different, though. Even while Peter was speaking a bright cloud came upon them. Then a voice out of the cloud! This is something they had experienced before, when Jesus was Baptized and God the Father spoke from heaven. But when He spoke now the disciples were terrified. They fell down on their faces. A life shaped by glory is answered by God in swift measure. What you see is not what you’re going to get. The brief glimpse of glory you see of your Lord is not the glory that will shape you. So God spoke to them, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased, listen to Him!” Did you notice that when Jesus was transfigured before them that He didn’t say anything to the disciples? Did you see that when He did talk it was with Moses and Elijah? Matthew doesn’t tell us what they were talking about, but one wonders if Peter, James, and John heard any of it. Peter, as usual, starts blabbing away. Instead of taking it in, beholding, listening, he thinks, This is great! We gotta stay here! I know, Jesus, let’s just hang out here, this is where it’s at! This is why God the Father speaks. This is My Son. He is My beloved. He is the one in whom I am well-pleased. Just listen to Him. Don’t talk. Don’t presume to know what ought to shape your life or how it ought to be. Just listen to Jesus. And so Jesus came over to them and touched them. He said to them, “Get up, don’t be afraid.” They lifted up their eyes and they saw no one but Jesus only. Moses and Elijah were gone. Jesus was back to normal. The cloud vanished. Everything was quiet. There was only Jesus standing before them. Get up. Don’t be afraid. This is what Jesus told them after His Father said to them, “Listen to Him.” Do not cower in fear at the voice of the Father. Yes, He is trying to disabuse you of your false notions of who you are and how your life ought to be and so His judgment will come down on you. But His words to you are, This is My Son. He is the one I’ve given you. Listen to Him. So what did He say that we ought to listen to? Get up. Don’t be afraid. The glory God gives you is not in this life. The glory He gives you is in the life to come. That we see from the glimpse of it when Moses and Elijah were with Him as He radiated His glory. In this life your life is shaped not by glory but by the cross. Get up. Don’t be afraid. We’re going down the mountain and I will go to the cross. And they did. It’s funny, the disciples still didn’t get it. They heard the voice. They heard God telling them, This is My Son, listen to Him. But they didn’t. They didn’t want Jesus to die. They thought it was all over when He was arrested and crucified. They thought their life should be shaped by glory. They thought it should be shaped by a Lord who would live and display power and continue to show glory by miraculous healings and driving out demons and, of course, the kind of glory they witnessed when He was transfigured. What had Jesus told them? As they were coming down the mountain of Transfiguration, He commanded them to tell no one the vision until the Son of Man had been raised from the dead. In other words, the glory they witnessed up on the mountain meant nothing without the cross. Their life would be shaped by their Lord suffering and dying on the cross and rising from the grave. After He rose from the grave they remembered. They remembered what He had said. They then knew that their life was shaped by the cross. From then on they saw that they were called to serve, just as their Lord had come to serve them. After the cross and the empty tomb they realized that He had shaped them into who they were. It was only on the other side of the Mount of Transfiguration where they saw the true glory of their Lord, the bleeding and suffering and dying of their Lord on the Mount of Calvary. Could they ever had imagined at the time, standing there looking up at Him on the cross, to say, Lord, it is good to be here? Looking back at the cross, the disciples saw how their Lord shaped their lives by that very cross. So many centuries later, you and I ought to see the same thing. Being here in this place, where that very Gospel is proclaimed, we can say, Lord, it is good that we are here. We will stop here each week and rest for a while. We will hear the Gospel proclaimed, Christ and Him crucified for the forgiveness of our sins. We will bask in that glory of our Lord. We will listen to Him as our Heavenly Father has commanded us to do. We will listen to our Lord as He shapes our lives by His cross, His suffering, death, and resurrection. We will listen to Him as He tells us to get up from our troubles, our sins, our guilt, and not be afraid. We will go forward, knowing as the disciples did that our lives really aren’t our own. That we really shouldn’t be looking for glory, or a nice place to set up a tent and be removed from all the sin and sorrow and evil of the world. That we rather should be content in the cross, the suffering we endure in this life that will give way to glory that cannot be comprehended in this life. That we should see in our suffering an opportunity to have greater understanding and compassion for those who are struggling and not being able to bear up under the weight of their struggles. We would like a life shaped by glory. But this is a life shaped by ourselves, which turns us in on ourselves, away from Christ, and away from our suffering neighbor. Life shaped by the cross is life shaped by our Lord. Life that is humble and walking the path of suffering. But it is life that is life in Christ, life in which we are always being forgiven and strengthened and renewed. The glory will come. For now, we are content with what our Lord was content with, the cross. For now, we rest in Him and His eternal love given in His cross. Amen. SDG -- Pastor Paul L. Willweber Prince of Peace Lutheran Church [LCMS] 6801 Easton Ct., San Diego, California 92120 619.583.1436 princeofpeacesd.net three-taverns.net It is the spirit and genius of Lutheranism to be liberal in everything except where the marks of the Church are concerned. [Henry Hamann, On Being a Christian] _______________________________________________ Sermons mailing list Sermons@cat41.org http://cat41.org/mailman/listinfo/sermons
