Transfiguration of Our Lord (B) — 2 Kings 2:1–12; Mark 9:2–9
Bethany and Faith Lutheran Churches, Reading, PA
In my sermon two weeks ago, I talked about knowing God versus truly loving God. I mentioned that the only ones in the Gospel of Mark who actually recognize Jesus are the demons and unclean spirits. Everyone else, even his closest disciples, are out to lunch.
Today would seem like an exception to the rule. Peter, James, and John are up on a mountain with Jesus, and they get to actually see Jesus transfigured before them with their own eyes. They truly get to know all of it, everything about who he truly is. The Messiah of David. The Holy One of God. The Power and the Glory, the King of Kings, the Light of the World, that the darkness cannot overcome.
Of course, Peter is a dopey about it. He always is. He’s so overcome that he has no idea what to say. In that situation, usually the best thing to say is “nothing.” But he asks to set up tents and stay there forever. He wants to dwell in this vision, live in it, never let it end.
Instead, Jesus orders them not to tell anyone what they had seen. Not only must you walk away from it, Peter, you can’t even talk about it.
In fact, Jesus says this many times throughout the Gospel of Mark. Tell no one who I am. Keep your mouth closed. Keep it to yourself. Probably not the best thing for a small congregation, yearning to draw more people into its community, to hear. The exact opposite of evangelism. What’s going on?
We’re going to have to wait seven more weeks to get the full answer. But I think the Old Testament reading can give us a hint now. Here we have the end of the story of the prophet Elijah, and the start of his friend Elisha’s saga. It’s not helpful that the Bible gives us two prophets whose names are impossible to keep apart.
Elijah is a great man, remembered as the most incredible of Israel’s prophets, a worker of miracles who spoke out against the king’s errors and destroyed the idols that encroached on Israel’s true worship. But spoiler alert: As the story begins, we learn that God is about to take him to heaven in a whirlwind. The Bible itself gives away the ending.
They are in the town of Gilgal, and Elijah announces that God is calling him to visit Bethel, and Elisha must stay behind. Elisha refuses, so off they go, traveling to the town where their ancestor Jacob once saw a vision of angels going up to heaven and coming back down again. When they arrive, some lesser prophets visit Elisha and tell him that his teacher and friend is about to be taken away from him. But it seems that Elisha also has peeked at the last page of the story. He already knows.
Elijah goes on to Jericho, where the Israelites first proclaimed victory in the land God gave them. The victory took place not by sword and spear, but by God’s mighty hand and outstretched arm alone. And again, Elisha refuses to be left behind, and they travel, and the prophets come out, and Elisha silences them. He already knows.
And again, Elijah is determined to travel to the Jordan River, where Israel first entered the Promised Land. In those ages far past, Joshua instructed the priests to carry the Ark of God’s presence into the river. When they did, the water held back, so that God could cross the river on dry land–along with all the people–sort of like it did for Moses. Here, Elijah simply hits the water with the cloth mantle around his neck, and it separates for his sake as well.
It is in this place–where the Israelites finished their journey of wandering in the desert for forty years, where they began the new journey of becoming God’s own nation–that Elijah’s story comes to its end. He passes his mantle, the sign of his power, to his student and friend, and then he is pulled away by flaming horses, and caught up in the air on the wind, and carried into heaven. The end of his story, but also I suppose, the beginning of a wonderful new story of Elijah, one that we don’t get to hear. At least, not yet. Perhaps one day in eternity, you will meet him and think to ask.
It is also the beginning of Elisha’s story, as he takes up the mantle and returns to Israel. The chapter continues beyond our reading today by telling us that the lesser prophets come out again to talk to Elisha. “Your master has been taken away by the wind!” they say. “Maybe God has dropped him onto a mountain or valley somewhere. Should we go out to look for him?” Against Elisha’s will, they send fifty strong men out into the countryside to look, but they don’t find him. Of course not. Elijah has been taken into heaven.
Elisha knows that. But these other prophets do not. They haven’t gone on the journey. They haven’t seen God’s presence–not at Gilgal or Bethel, not at Jericho or the Jordan. They may have known Elijah would be taken away–they said as much–but did not know what God is really up to. Elisha has seen God’s saving work in the whole journey of Israel, and in his own journey, too. He has seen the flaming chariots of Israel and their horsemen. He knows what Elijah was, and he knows what he is now, and he knows what God is, and was, and is to become.
As one little other illustration, I have to say that when I started writing today’s sermon, I had a very clear idea of what my point was. This would be a sermon about how our language shapes our understanding. How dwelling in the Word of God and the words of worship and prayer is God’s way of making us who we are. You’ll notice that I haven’t said anything about that so far. Instead, this has turned into a sermon about the journey, and more subtly about entering into the journey of Lent.
Well, I suppose the other stuff will make a nice sermon for another day. The journey of writing has put me in a different place. I have not a small amount of hope that the Holy Spirit is behind this.
Peter and James and John stand on the mountain, and everything changes for them. Or at least, it starts to. They see Jesus, the Power and the Glory, shining right in front of their eyes. They know what he is, and what he will do. It’s all there in front of them.
Except they’re wrong about it all. Jesus has told them he’s going to be killed and will rise again. He’ll say it twice more before the end of their story. But they won’t believe him. It doesn’t make sense. Jesus, transfigured before them, is too powerful and too glorious to be killed. Their imaginations aren’t big enough to see how his journey will play out.
So Jesus orders them to tell no one what they saw. Keep it quiet. You do not know the end of the story yet. You do not yet understand that it is the beginning of a wonderful new story, of Jesus, of Elijah, of Peter and James and John and all of us. One that demands to be heard, that cannot be kept to yourself–once you know where it goes. These disciples, you and I, we think we have seen the end. But it is only the beginning of what God is doing. There are new wonders yet to come. Amen.