February 14, 2010 - Epiphany Last, Year C (RCL)
Sometimes
it’s the details that get your attention.
Like the green grass
that the people sat on
when Jesus fed the five thousand.
Or that when Jesus fell asleep on a boat crossing the lake, he had his head on a cushion.
Or in today’s gospel,
the fact that Peter and James and John
were sleepy.
And you know how it is when you’re really tired.
everything goes a bit fuzzy.
Things
begin to take on
a kind of surreal quality.
And afterwards
you can’t quite remember
whether they really happened
or were just
part of
a dream.
You lose the ability to think straight.
The simplest decision becomes fraught with complexity.
And you tend to blurt out
whatever comes first into your mind
without that usual internal censorship which decides
is this the right things to say,
and is it the right time
to say it?
Peter and James and John
were sleepy.
They’d been on the road for months, sometimes with Jesus, sometimes sent off on their own
to tell his good news and heal in his name.
Then, when they finally got back, exhausted and at the same time excited
to tell him everything they had seen and done,
the crowds came,
five thousand that they counted,
and that wasn’t including the women and children,
and demanded to be taught
and needed
to be fed.
And even when the crowds went away
it wasn’t over.
Because whenever they could catch a moment of quiet,
Jesus would begin talking
and asking them questions
and telling them things
that they didn’t want
to hear
about crosses and suffering and death.
And they’d been just about to fall asleep
when Jesus had called them, just the three of them,
Peter and James and John,
to come up the mountain
to pray.
And while on the one hand
they felt proud that he had chosen them, just the three of them,
on the other
they would really rather he had left them to sleep.
But they got up, and headed up the mountain, rubbing the sleep from their eyes.
And so it was Peter and James and John who were there
when suddenly Jesus’ clothing became a glowing bright white
and his face looked different
and then there were two men with him,
and they knew that no one else had been around when they began to pray,
and they looked...they looked like
what everyone expected Moses and Elijah to look like, Moses with his veiled face
and Elijah with traces of his fiery chariot,
and Peter blurted out the first thing that came to his mind,
“Master, shall we build three shelters, one for each of you?”
I’ve always heard it said
that the reason Peter did this
was that he wanted to prolong the moment, to keep Jesus and Moses and Elijah there on top of the mountain
for as long as possible,
to catch hold of
that “mountain-top experience.”
But what if
Peter was just tired,
and wanted to get some sleep?
And the only way he could see that happening
is if they put together some shelters
and all of them camped out
for the night.
Of course, as soon as he said it
he realized
that this wasn’t the time
or the place.
And a thick cloud came over,
and a voice suddenly sounded,
and Peter was pretty sure
that this was the end,
the end of the evening
and the end of him.
But the voice didn’t roar, didn’t scold, didn’t condemn.
Instead it said,
“This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”
And the cloud rolled away
and there was nothing at all unusual, Just Jesus there, and James and John,
and Peter thought
that it might be best
just to pretend nothing at all had happened,
and they all went back down the mountain
and back to sleep.
And next morning,
well
it was back to work.
Another crowd, another person in need, another healing.
And we don’t know whether Peter and James and John
even remembered what had happened
let alone understood it,
or just wrote it off as being something they had dreamed.
I suspect it was the latter.
Because next thing that happens, if you read on in the gospel,
is that after Jesus is done with healing for the day,
he gathers his disciples together,
and he tells them to listen up.
He is going to be betrayed.
But they don’t get it:
they don’t understand and they don’t ask him what he means.
They might as well
still be asleep.
“Listen to him”
was what the voice from the cloud, the voice of God,
said to Peter and James and John.
“Listen to him,”
because that was the only way
they would be able to even begin to understand
what was happening
in the days ahead.
Because the transfiguration marked the beginning
of the end;
it’s the point in Jesus’ life
when he turned his attention
from the people of Israel
to the city of Jerusalem,
to the city of Jerusalem
and the fate that would wait for him there.
And unless his disciples listened to him
it would catch them unawares.
Which is what happened.
They didn’t listen,
at least, not carefully enough,
and Jesus’ betrayal and death
did catch them unawares.
It was only afterward
that they remembered what Jesus had said,
remembered how he had foretold
his death,
afterward
that they put together the things they had heard
with the things they had experienced
and came to understand
what his life and death
was all about.
And in the end
as dramatic a scene
as the transfiguration had been
it was not what Peter and James and John saw that mattered most
but what they heard.
“This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”
Sometimes I wish
that we would have another transfiguration.
Not so much because we need that incredible apparition
of Jesus and Moses and Elijah,
as wonderful as that would be,
but because we need to hear those words of God again.
“This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”
Often we think we;re listening to Jesus,
but what were really doing
is just paying attention
to the bits we want to hear.
Like children listening to their parents.
You know
parents say something,
and the kids roll their eyes and go yes, yes.
Are you listening to me?
Yes, I’m listening.
But really
they’re thinking about their plans for the day,
and whether someone in particular likes them,
and if they have any texts.
Some of it gets through - the stuff they want to hear -
but most of the rest
just disappears out
into space.
Might as well
have not
been said.
It can be the same for us.
We like to hear the familiar things, the comforting things.
And so when we read the bible, we seize on our favorite verses.
Love one another,
the Lord is my Shepherd,
for God so loved the world.
But there’s a lot of the bible
that we prefer to avoid,
when we are in effect
rolling our eyes
and saying, “whatever.”
Often on my day off, I end up sitting in front of TV knitting
and watching those Judge shows.
And time and time again, I say to myself, “What were they thinking???!!!”
Of course the answer is, they weren’t. Thinking that is.
And then I think to myself,
if they’d only followed the ten commandments,
this would never have happened.
It’s easy to point the finger.
But I know
that I at least, and perhaps some of you
are just as much at fault.
Maybe not so much the ten commandments,
though it will always be a temptation
to put something else
ahead of God,
but the real problems come
with the words of Jesus.
Blessed are those who mourn.
Love your enemies
and pray for those who hurt you.
Leave everything behind
and follow me.
It’s easier
to use the excuse of sleepiness,
easier
not to listen.
But when we fail to listen
we miss out on so much
that God has in store for us
we miss out on the very things
that will make sense of our lives,
the things that will transform us
and, in the end, the things that will bless us.
And so, as we head into Lent, listen.
Listen to Christ,
his warnings,
his promises,
and know that in listening, and in acting on what you have heard
God will indeed
bless you.
© Raewynne J. Whiteley 2010