The Rev. Dayle Casey
The Chapel of Our Saviour
Colorado Springs, Colorado
February 26, 2006

Last Sunday after the Epiphany – Year B
2 Kings 19:9-18
2 Peter 1:16-21
Mark 9:2-9

It’s the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, and here we are this morning with Jesus and his disciples in the ninth chapter of the Gospel according to Mark. It all started back at Christmas, this manifestation of Christ to the world. It started with Jesus being born in Bethlehem. It continued with his being baptized in the River Jordan. And then, during the past two months, we’ve seen a lot of other things that would point to Jesus as Messiah. We’ve heard Mark tell us how Jesus cast out an evil spirit from a man in the synagogue, how he cured Simon’s mother-in-law and healed a leper and a paralyzed man, and how he taught with authority, like one who knows what he’s talking about.

Sundays, of course, have hit only on the highlights. If, in our private reading, we have also read through all of the first eight chapters of Mark, we have seen and heard much more. We’ve heard Mark tell about other cures and miracles Jesus did, about how he healed a man with a withered hand, and another who was deaf, and a woman who had been hemorrhaging for years. And we’ve also heard how Jesus calmed a storm with a word, and how he walked on the sea.

Now imagine, if you will, that you are Simon Peter this morning, and that you have not just read about all this, but you have lived through it with Jesus. Imagine that it was you six days ago to whom Jesus turned and asked, “Peter, who do you think I am?” And you say, “Well, some of the folks are saying that you must be John the Baptist. And others say that you must be Elijah, or one of the prophets.”

But Jesus won’t let you off the hook that easily. He says, “Yea, but who do you say I am?” And you say, “Well, I’ve seen enough. I say that you are the Christ, the anointed of God. I’ve seen enough to convince me of that.”

And then Jesus says to you, “Well, you’re right, Peter. But before it’s all over, the son of man will suffer grievously, and be rejected and put to death, and after three days will rise again. And if you or anyone else are going to follow me, you’ll have to come with me through my rejection and my death. You’ll have to give up the life you have, and take up a cross. The only way you can follow me to the glory that God has for me is to follow me through self-renunciation and suffering and death itself, through the giving up of self for the sake of the world.”

You would rebuke Jesus, of course, because that’s what Peter did. You have just this moment identified Jesus as God’s own anointed in the world, but you tell him he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. “How can that be?” you ask. “You are God’s own chosen. You have the power to do all these marvelous things we’ve seen you do. You must be wrong. Surely, Lord, if you can save all these others, you can save yourself, and us!”

But Jesus then rebukes you, and says, “Get behind me, Peter. You are Satan! The way you are talking is satanic. The way you are talking is not God’s way, but man’s.”

That, briefly, is how Peter got to the point of the Transfiguration, the place where we find him this morning. And it’s how we all arrive here at the same place on this Last Sunday after the Epiphany, this Sunday before Lent begins. Like Peter, we’ve heard enough and seen enough about Jesus to convince us that he is the anointed of God, Messiah, the Christ. But what’s all this about giving up our lives, about giving up the way we’ve been living and thinking, about having to take up a cross and suffer and die? Surely that’s not what happens to the anointed and chosen of God!

It is at this point that Jesus takes Peter and James and John up a mountain, and there they see Jesus transfigured. They see Jesus with Moses and Elijah. They see him shining with a brilliance that could only be the brilliance of the glory of God himself. They see him as he is and as he will be. And then, suddenly, all the glory is gone! And now the disciples see only Jesus, only Jesus the human being, only Jesus they way they had always known him. And they go back down the mountain, back to the same old life and world they all know.

But they had had a vision of Jesus’ glory, a confirmation of who he is. This One who has all this power – the power of God himself, the power to heal, the power to calm the natural forces of the world – this One really is who they had come to believe he might be. They had even heard a voice from the cloud confirm it: “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.”

“But I don’t ‘get’ it,” says Peter. “How can this be? We’ve had this vision and confirmation. We’ve seen Jesus’ glory, but he keeps talking about giving it all up, and about suffering and dying. How can it be that God’s own Son must suffer and die?”

Those of you of a certain age will remember that about twenty-five years ago there was a phenomenon called “Rubik’s Cube.” Those of you graduating from high school this year will ask, “What’s Rubik’s Cube?’’ Anyway, Rubik’s Cube was a puzzle, a puzzle in the shape of a cube, designed by a man named Rubik. It was a kind of three-dimensional Sudoku puzzle where you shuffled colors rather than numbers. The cube was actually a cube of cubes, with three rows of three smaller cubes on each face of the large cube, which makes, I believe, twenty-seven smaller cubes in all.

Each of the faces of the smaller cubes was one of three different colors. And the whole thing was physically designed in such a way that you could move all twenty-seven of the smaller cubes around without the entire cube falling apart. And there were a few people in the world who could manipulate this large cube of twenty-seven smaller cubes until all of the smaller cubes lined up in matching colors.

Or so I was told. I was told, I mean, that there were some people who could actually solve the puzzle. But I was never able to do it.

I knew there was a solution. I read a book about it. And I watched some kids on television put the puzzle together in less than one minute. But I worked for hours without ever once coming close to solving it. I just didn’t “get” it. I never “visualized” the solution, even though I knew there was one.

Somehow, those who could solve Rubik’s Cube had “seen” the solution. They had a vision of it in their heads. The solution could be explained, and it could be believed by those, like me, to whom it had been explained, but it could not be understood or accomplished until the solution had been “seen,” until one had a personal experience of the solution.

Some just seemed to see the solution intuitively. To them, it just somehow made sense; it fit together for them the way math or music or grammar make sense to some people immediately.

But there was one 13-year-old, I remember, a young man named Patrick Bossert, one of the ones who could solve the puzzle in less than a minute, who solved Rubik’s Cube the old fashioned way. He earned it. Bossert could put the cube together in fifty-three seconds, and he said he learned to do it by practicing. He practiced four hours per day for weeks, until he himself personally “saw” the solution.

Louis Agassiz, the 19th-century Swiss naturalist, had a gift for detailed description of animals and plants. He could see things on a fish, for example, that others missed. Agassiz received his ability the same way as Patrick Bossert, the old fashioned way, through practice. Agassiz didn’t just look at a fish to observe it. He sketched it with a pencil. And in the sketching he always found things that days of more passive observation would miss. Agassiz used to tell his students that “a pencil is the best of eyes.”

The glory of God is something like that. Peter believed that Jesus was the Christ. He had seen the healing power of Jesus, he had seen Jesus’ power over the forces of nature, and he believed that no one could do those things unless he was of God. He had even had his belief confirmed for him on the mountain, in his vision of Jesus with Moses and Elijah. And he had heard a voice from the heavens tell him, “This is my Son, my beloved.”

But then, the very next moment, Jesus was, well, so ordinary again. Just an ordinary man, standing there by himself saying that it was time to go home. And the vision fled Peter, the certainty evaporated, especially when Jesus talked about having to suffer and die, and all that.

Peter loved the glory. He was himself full of ecstasy under the spell of the mountain-top experience of the radiant Jesus, the experience of Jesus in splendor. Peter valued the certainty that this was Messiah, the One who had come to save him and all Israel. Who wouldn’t? So Peter said what most of us would say: “Smile, Lord! Let’s hold it right there. Let’s get this on a CD. In fact, let’s just build us some tents and stay right here. This is as good as it gets. Let’s not go back down the mountain to town. They can do without us. In fact, they won’t even miss us. Let’s just skip the suffering and the cross, and the dying you’ve been talking about.”

“But that’s not the way,” says Jesus. “That’s not the way of God, Peter. That’s the way of Satan. God’s world is down there in town. It’s a suffering and dying world, and it’s the world God loves. And it needs to be comforted and led and redeemed. That’s God’s way with the world, because he loves it, if you can believe that. Believe it or not, despite the vision you just had, the glory of God is not here on this mountain. What you saw here is only a vision, a glimpse of the truth, a glimpse of the real thing. The solution, the final glory of God, is downtown where God loves the real world.”

There is a story about a doctor who was treating a small boy who was sick. The doctor wanted to be sure that the boy took his medicine, so for encouragement he prescribed pills that were sugar coated. But after several days the boy was still no better, and when the doctor saw the boy again and observed him taking his medicine, he found that the boy was licking off the sugar coating and throwing the pill away.

Do you want just the sugar? Do you want the glory of God without the trial of life and death? Do you long for summer without the slush of the melting spring snows? Would you just as soon God granted you resurrection without the passion? Would you just as soon jump from the Last Sunday after the Epiphany to the joyous liturgies of Easter, from the “Alleluias” of Christmas and Epiphany to the “Alleluias” of Easter, without the “downer” of Lent and Good Friday, without its minor-key hymns and their constant reminder that Jesus was actually hanged on a cross with nails through his hands and feet, without their constant reminder of the fact of sin that needs confession?

If so, you’ve got a lot of company. That’s where Peter stood, too.

The only trouble is, it can’t be done. The only trouble is, that’s not where Jesus is. Because there goes Jesus now; he’s already on his way back down the mountain to the cross, back down the mountain to his real glory, back down the mountain to his glory to be accomplished not through some magic, but by heading back to town where he will drag his cross up the hill of Calvary. Because the glory we just had a vision of, the glory of God, is a glory of things to come, not of things as they are on this mountain top this morning.

If we would be with Jesus in his glory, with Jesus as he really is, with Jesus as God, with Jesus as the Lover of the world, then we’ve got to go back down the mountain and follow him through to the cross as well. There just is no other way. Because that is the way of God. One simply can’t jump from winter to summer without the mess and slush of spring. One can’t jump from today to Easter without the blood and pain of Lent and Good Friday. I know some of you are going to try to do so, because we human beings always try, not only in our liturgies, but also in our lives.

Peter’s vision of Jesus’ glory on the mountain was the confirmation of Peter’s hope, the confirmation that the future is what he hoped it would be. But before the future lies the present. Before the future lies the trip back to town with its beggars and lepers to touch, with its blind and suffering to love, the “clean” and the “unclean.” Before the future lies the present with its wars on terror, and its fears of security breaches. Before the future lies the present with its sinners and hostile crowds and police and soldiers and just plain old everyday ne’r-do-wells and other difficult people, the present with ourselves and all the world that God loves that is so different from the mountain top.

How was Peter to negotiate all that? How are we to negotiate it? How are we to receive and keep the hope that Jesus is who we believe him to be when Lent and the cross sit squarely in front of us on the road ahead?

“The old-fashioned way,” answers Jesus. “Practice. Pick up your pencil and sketch it. Pick up your cross, and follow me. Practice hours per day for weeks, for years if that’s what it takes. Just do it.

“All that you’ve seen of me so far,” says Jesus – “the miracles, the healings, the teaching, even the vision on the mountain top this morning – all that is like reading so many books about Rubik’s Cube, or like reading so many textbooks about Spanish, or like just looking at a fish. It’s all true, but it’s also all second-hand and abstract. You’ll do better if you actually start speaking Spanish; you’ll do better if actually pick up the power of God yourself, and use it.

“Pick up your pencil and sketch it. Pick up your cross and walk the way, and you will “see” it the way God sees it – that the way of God is not the way of man, that the way to Easter lies only through Lent, that the way to God’s glory lies only through Jerusalem and Calvary.”

The calendar of the Church year is a marvelous instrument. It’s a reminder that we can’t go from Christmas and the babe in the manger to Easter and the risen and glorified Christ except by way of Lent, except by way of his crucifixion and death. We can’t get from where we are, with the Jesus of the cures and the miracles and the great teachings, to the glory of eternal life, except by following him to Calvary, except by giving life away.

The Transfiguration is not itself the way. The Transfiguration stands along the way. It’s one of the “Aha!” moments of life. It’s one of the visions that convince us that Jesus just might be who we believe him to be, a glimpse of our hope for the future. But the Transfiguration is just a glimpse; it’s not the thing itself. And Jesus says that faith, finally, is both the test and the way. “Come on. Put your best eyes on. Pick up your cross and come with me.”

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.