Sermon for the Transfiguration of our Lord Christ in the Liturgy Or How to Read the Sermon on the Mount
Theme: Did you not enjoy the sermon? Shucks. Try again next week. In the meantime, Christ is nevertheless giving you ALL His gifts in the Christian liturgy. Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! Amen. In today’s Gospel, Jesus comforts and gladdens His disciples by being with them. First, Jesus shines in their presence with such divine brightness and warmth that Peter rejoices, “Lord, it is good that we are here.” Then, after the disciples were terrified by the voice from the cloud, “Jesus came and touched them, saying ‘Rise, and have no fear.’” With His Words and with His actions, Jesus brings His Christians comfort and peace. Dear Christian friends, The Sermon on the Mount Sounds Like Law and Condemnation For the last several weeks, the Gospel for each Sunday has come from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Taken at face value, each of these Gospel readings has been brutal, to say the least: · It began five weeks ago, on the Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany, when we heard the Beatitudes. Among other things, Jesus said to us, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). If you feel certain that your heart will never be pure enough for you to see God, you can at least take comfort in the knowledge that my heart is more impure than yours. · The next Sunday, on Epiphany 5, we heard Jesus say, “Let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” These Words are fraught with condemnation, especially when I think about all the negative things people routinely see in me. My not-so-good works quite possibly outweigh the good works people get to see and I am not sure that my impatience, my anger, and my self-righteous indignation do all that much to give glory to my Father in heaven. · The Gospel for Epiphany 6, again from the Sermon on the Mount, only made matters worse. “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away… and if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away” (Matthew 5:29, 30). If my sin could be solved with the amputation of only a hand and an eye, I would certainly do it. But sin is much bigger than that, and before long I would have to cut off my two hands, two eyes, two ears, my tongue, my feet, my head and my heart as well. That might be too much to ask, Jesus. · Two weeks ago, Jesus destroyed any chance for me to redeem myself: “You… must be perfect,” He said, “as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). · Last week was just the icing on the condemnation cake: “Do not be anxious about your life,” said Jesus. “Which of you… can add a single hour to his span of life?” said Jesus. “Do not be anxious about tomorrow,” said Jesus (Matthew 6:25, 27, 34). Has Jesus watched the news lately? Jesus’ Transfiguration Will Help You Identify the Gospel in His Sermon on the Mount I am reminding you of the Gospels from the past five weeks—all of them drawn from the Sermon on the Mount—because today is the Transfiguration of our Lord. The Gospel for today will help you to understand what was happening to you while you were hearing all those frightful, condemnatory things from the Sermon on the Mount these past weeks. In today’s Gospel, Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.” He was still speaking when, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” When the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces and were terrified. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Rise, and have no fear.” There are several important parallels between today’s Gospel that takes place on this mountaintop and the sermon our Lord previously preached on a mountaintop. These parallels will help you immensely as you struggle to read and to hear, not merely the Law, but especially the Gospel in our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount. · First parallel: In both cases, a heavenly voice speaks to you. Here at the Transfiguration, it is the frightful voice of the heavenly Father speaking from the sky. At the Sermon on the Mount, it was the voice of your heaven-sent Lord Jesus—no less divine, but equal to the Father with respect to His divinity. Jesus did not frightfully boom from heaven during the Sermon on the Mount, as the Father does here in today’s Gospel—but surely you can agree that Jesus said some horribly frightful things there. (Who wouldn’t feel afraid by such divine commands as “Blessed are the pure in heart” and “You… must be perfect,” and “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away”?) · Second parallel: In both cases, God wants you to focus your attention upon Jesus. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus (God the Son) continually directed and re-directed your attention back toward Himself when He repeatedly and emphatically declared, “You have heard it said… but I say to you” (examples are Matthew 5:21-22, 27-28, 31-32, 38-39). · The third parallel is your moneymaker. The third parallel between the Transfiguration of our Lord and His Sermon on the Mount will help you locate the richest and dearest Gospel comforts in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Here is the third parallel, as it is expressed in today’s Gospel: When the voice stopped speaking, “Jesus came and touched them, saying, ‘Rise, have no fear.’” o Here on the Mount of our Lord’s Transfiguration, Jesus’ bodily presence with His disciples calmed the fear that had gripped them when the heavenly Words were spoken to them. o At it is at the Transfiguration, so it is with the Sermon on the Mount: Frightful things were indeed spoken. Yet Jesus was there, bodily present with those who heard His terrifying message. In the same way that Jesus’ presence calmed and comforts the disciples in today’s Gospel, so also does His bodily presence calm and comfort all who hear the heavenly Words that were spoken at the Sermon on the Mount. I will admit that the Sermon on the Mount sounds like it is entirely Law and condemnation. Yet the Gospel is right there, seated among the people, calming them with His presence and comforting them with His forgiving touch. § Even when He speaks harshly, as in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is still the one who came to you, “not… to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him” (John 6:17). § Even when the reality of sin becomes unavoidable—as it does for anyone who honestly reads the Sermon on the Mount—this sermon was still preached by “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29) and the One Whom God made to be sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21) and the dearest friend of sinners. § The very lips that spoke the Sermon on the Mount to you are part of the same Body that was pierced in crucifixion, on account of which you now have forgiveness and for life. Christ in the Liturgy There is practical, every Sunday benefit for you in all of this. When you compare the Transfiguration of our Lord with His Sermon on the Mount, you can begin to see that there is more to the Sermon on the Mount than law and condemnation. Even though most of the Words in that sermon do not sound very comforting, those Words are still spoken by Jesus, whose presence cannot help but comfort and console His Christians. Beyond opening your eyes to the Sermon on the Mount, the comparison I have drawn for you today will help you with your every Sunday worship. I hesitate to compare my weak and boorish preaching to the pure and unalloyed way my Lord preaches. But I do preach the Word of God, so perhaps a small comparison will be bearable, at least for the sake of teaching. The comparison is this: · You probably have come away from the sermon on many Sundays, not feeling like there was much in it for you. Maybe you thought the sermon was somewhat comparable to the Sermon on the Mount in that it sounded like a lot of law, but not much Gospel. Maybe the sermon did even less than that for you. · Be that as it may, your Lord Jesus is here with you, even when the sermon strikes you fearful or strikes you cold. Surrounding the sermon every Sunday is the Christian liturgy of the Church. The liturgy unfailingly brings you the benefits of Jesus’ presence and peace, even if you should not get very much from the sermon that was preached. The sermon itself may sound as though it is all Law, but Jesus is here with you in the comprehensiveness of His rich Gospel: o forgiving your sins in the absolution at the beginning of worship; o reminding you of your baptismal adoption by God, His Father and yours, in the opening invocation; o comforting you with the familiar psalms and hymns and spiritual songs that you join your fellow Christians in singing; o giving you His body and blood in Holy Communion; o dismissing you in peace; o promising and assuring you in the closing benediction that, as you leave this Mountain of Transfiguration, your God Himself travels faithfully down the pathway with you. ___________________________________________________________________ 'CAT 41 Sermons & Devotions' consists of works that are, unless otherwise noted, the copyrighted property of the various authors; posting of such gives members of this list implied consent for redistribution _with_attribution_ unless otherwise specified by the author (as long as no charge is made for the work and it is not made part of a compilation), as well as for quoting or use in a congregational setting _with_or_without_attribution_. 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