Sermon on Luke 9:28-36

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

As it often happens, the disciples are confused.

It started as a nice little hike up a mountain, but then some really strange stuff starts happening.

1.     First of all, Jesus starts glowing.

2.     Then, Elijah and Moses show up.

3.     Then, a talking cloud rolls in.

4.     Then, all the strange stuff goes away as quickly as it had appeared.

Like I said, there’s a lot going on here that they don’t understand.

And, honestly, I’ve never really understood this story.

It is truly a weird story. Jesus starts glowing like he’s in a bleach commercial.

Then, he’s talking with the most famous prophets in Jewish tradition—who’ve been dead for a very long time, by the way.

Finally, God’s voice from heaven says to listen to Jesus, like he’s going to make some great proclamation or share some profound teaching, and he doesn’t say anything. And, yeah, it was probably a more general “listen to him,” but it still seems like kind of a letdown after such a dramatic declaration.

It’s always felt like I’ve been missing something here.

But maybe the point of this story isn’t to understand it.

I’ve heard many a literature teacher bemoan students’ desire to “understand” a poem. Poet Billy Collins has a poem about this very problem. It’s called

“Introduction to Poetry”:

I ask them to take a poem

and hold it up to the light

like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem

and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room

and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski

across the surface of a poem

waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do

is tie the poem to a chair with rope

and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose

to find out what it really means.

Maybe what I try to do with the story of the Transfiguration is beat it with a hose to find out what it really means.

In contrast, I love the poetry of T.S. Eliot, even though I don’t understand at least 3/4s of it. I love it because even as I read lines I don’t understand, I suddenly find myself weeping or I’m completely out of breath or my heart is pounding.

I love it, not because I understand it, but because I feel it.

Maybe the point of the story of the Transfiguration is not to understand it, but to feel it.

It’s appropriate that Transfiguration falls in February this year, as it so often does. February is Valentine’s Day, right now Messy Church is focusing on love, and we even got heart-shaped cookies from the stewardship team last week. There’s a lot of love going on this month.

And the story of the Transfiguration is, at its core, a story about love.

About a Liberator who has been proclaiming freedom to captives, good news to the poor, healing to our broken world, and bringing about the Reign of God. Now, Jesus is talking to Moses and Elijah about his “departure,”—the word is related to “exodus,” like the exodus of the Hebrew people from Egypt that God led through Moses. God is, once again, about to set people free. And this time, it’s all of us.

This is the turning point. This is when everything changes. Right before this, Jesus asked his disciples who they thought he was, and Peter got it right—“The Messiah of God.” Now, that belief is being confirmed, and the next step for Jesus is to undergo the death and resurrection he knows he is about to endure. And he does it because of love.

The hosts of the podcast Nerds at Church pointed out that there’s a difference between “transfiguration” and “transformation.” Transformation suggests a total change—inside and out. Transfiguration is only an “outside” change. Inside, Jesus is still the same. At his core, he is love. He is God’s Chosen. And everything he does is for the sake of those whom he chooses out of love: us—all of humanity.

In this story about love, we see our Jesus in all his magnificence: glowing, surrounded by revered figures of faith, with the voice of God declaring Jesus’ authority from the heavens. And the disciples are totally confused. In fact, they won’t say anything about this to anyone until things start to make more sense.

I, too, still find a lot of details in this story perplexing. But I also know that if I think I understand everything about God, then I am stuffing God into a box of my own making. One of the wonderful things about God is that there is so much we don’t understand—so much we get to learn and question and grow in understanding about.

The wisest people I know are the first to admit what they don’t understand. They have a healthy humility about their limits and the limitlessness of God.

When we come across things we don’t understand, we can be like Peter and try to find a solution, try to find something to do so that we don’t have to wrestle with the mystery any longer.

Or, we can abide in wonder at the dazzling, perplexing works of our God who loves us more than we can ever fully grasp.

The same God who freed the Hebrew people from Egypt freed you through the cross and empty tomb. All out of love for you.

Imagine Jesus saying this to you: “You are free, because I love you.”

When we remember that at the core, God is love, we can embrace the mysteries of faith, even sometimes frustrating ones like the Transfiguration. We don’t have to try to torture a confession out of it. We don’t have to figure out every detail. We don’t have to follow Peter’s example and try to come up with something to “do” in reaction to this story.  

We can simply allow ourselves to be loved, just as we are.

We can revel in being loved by our Creator, who made us good, who loves us no matter what.

We can rest in the infinite mysteries of our Liberator, who died on the cross and rose again because he loves us so much.

At its core, the story of the Transfiguration is about love.

And at your core, you are loved.

Forever and ever. Amen.