Listen to Him! (A Transfiguration Sunday Sermon on Mark 9:2-13)

Below is a sermon that I preached on February 14, 2021, for the church I am interning at this year. I hope it brings encouragement to you as the Lenten season begins. If you prefer to watch, see the bottom of the post for the video.

Good morning, friends. Some of you know me, because we have sat in on one (or many) Zoom meetings together. I haven’t met others of you, sadly, because of the socially distanced times we are in. In either case, though, I am delighted to be here this morning to share a word. I have been a seminary intern here since last September and have been immensely thankful for the opportunity to serve alongside you. My prayer this morning is that the Holy Spirit would use this time to draw us into a deeper understanding of who God is and how it is we are to respond in living out our lives as God’s people.

I mentioned a quote earlier from N.T. Wright that “those who have seen the glory can never be the same again.” In Mark’s telling of the transfiguration, the main point of the whole event is to emphasize Jesus’ true identity and to instruct the disciples, and us, to listen to Jesus. It is a moment of God’s glory revealed. It’s such a significant moment, that it found its way into all of the synoptic gospels. We see accounts of the transfiguration of Christ in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Some bible scholars think that it didn’t make it into the Gospel of John because the entire gospel of John is a gospel of glory. In other words, Jesus is always a transfigured Jesus in the Gospel of John. He is even introduced in terms of glory - in John 1:14, for instance, it says “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”

In Mark, though, we have a different presentation of Jesus’ story. The opening chapter of Mark includes Jesus’ baptism, when the “heavens are torn apart” and Jesus hears a voice from heaven say, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased” (Mark 1:10-11). Notice that here, the message from God is about Jesus’ identity, but is addressed to Jesus. “You are my Son...with you I am well pleased.” Jesus is the one who sees the heavens torn apart and Jesus is the one who is told that he is God’s Son. Those around Jesus, presumably, do not see this happen. Fast forward to chapter 9, and now we as the audience of Mark’s Gospel hear God’s voice for the second time. This time, God’s voice is not just speaking to Jesus, but to the disciples. “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” (Mk. 9:7). Notice the shift from “you are my son” to “this is my son.” So, God is verifying Jesus’ identity to the disciples who have trekked up the mountain with Jesus.

This verification of Jesus’ identity happens in several ways. First, Jesus is transfigured - his clothes become brilliantly and blindingly bright. Then Elijah and Moses appear, the physical manifestations of the Law and the Prophets, hugely important chunks of the Old Testament. This is all quite terrifying to Peter, James, and John. And, Peter does what he usually does when he’s afraid in the gospels, he starts talking. One of my best friends is like this - we will be watching a scary movie together and he talks himself through each and every scary scene, telling the characters not to open that closet door, not to go out to their car alone. I think here, though, the terror the disciples are feeling is one of, yes, fear, but also awe. This scene is filled with amazing images and if one of us found ourselves on a mountain with Jesus, and giants of the faith began to appear around us, I think we would be struck with fear and awe as well. One scholar notes that “the real sense of being in the presence of God is often not ecstasy and delight but a holy awe and even terror, for at such times human weakness and sin stand in sharp contrast to the holiness and omnipotence of God” (Robert Stein, Mark, p. 418, 2008).

If all that wasn’t enough, though, a cloud overshadows them and from the cloud comes God’s voice declaring Jesus’ identity clearly and unmistakably to the disciples. We might have a question for the Bible here - why is this all needed? We’re nine chapters into this gospel, the disciples have seen Jesus’ miracles and heard his teachings, don’t they know who Jesus is at this point? Well, the answer is no. A few short verses ago, in Mark 8:29, it seems like Peter knows who Jesus is. When Jesus asks the disciples who they say that he is, Peter answers, “You are the Messiah.” But, in Mark 8:31-33, just a few short verses after that, when Jesus begins talking about the suffering he must undergo on the cross, Peter rebukes him. Peter clearly misunderstands who Jesus is and what he must do. Jesus responds, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

So, clearly, the disciples need to hear the words, “Listen to him!” But, can I just say that we often need these words too? We can be so stubborn and set in our ways about many things, and think of ourselves as experts on a plethora of subjects. Politics, how to coach a football team better than the coach of our favorite NFL team does, how our nephew/cousin/friend/neighbor/church friend is messing up their life and if they just listened to us, then they would be better off. The truth is, though, that we often have things to learn ourselves, and even if someone else really does need our help and advice, the best way to actually get through to them is to listen intently to them.

I remember taking a class on Counseling during college, and we read a book called Just Listen, written by psychiatrist and business coach Mark Goulston. As I read, I was struck by how little listening I actually did in my life even though I thought of myself as a good listener. Goulston emphasizes how much we want to talk and do to fix problems - we tell those we supervise what to do, we tell those with problems what they need, we even tell God what God needs to do in our prayers, and we often have ideas about what the poor need to do to fix their situation. However, listening is an action so seldom taken. It is oftentimes hard for us to listen, but it is listening that gives us a true sense of where the other person is at when we want to help them. It is listening that, when we went to engage in justice work, gives us a sense of what justice even would look like for those who have been wronged. It is listening to our own inner life that can help us understand what’s going on with us when we’re in a funk, or experiencing grief or pain or sorrow. The primary vocation of a disciple, of a Christian, is to listen to Jesus - this is how we even know what it means to be a Christian.

But, like the disciples, like Peter, we can often unknowingly refuse to listen to the words of God, to listen to the Son of God even when he’s standing right before us. We may find ourselves listening to the voices of worry and fear, rather than the Word of God. I have found myself in this situation many times, afraid of the unknown, worried about the future, and telling God all the things God should do to resolve that. It is here in Mark 9, where we, like the disciples are instructed plainly to “Listen to Jesus!”

When we listen to Jesus, we hear the command to love our neighbor. We hear the words of Jesus telling us that his way is a way of suffering, but also a way of life. When we listen to Jesus, we oftentimes are blessed by the unexpected and are drawn into a much greater story than the one we are telling ourselves. When we listen to Jesus, we begin to recognize his voice in even unexpected places.

It was listening that was the greatest blessing to me when I spent time with homeless friends in Portland. I was there to help them with their laundry, but I was the one who received the gift. Listening to their stories led me closer to Jesus, and put my life in perspective in ways that giving them advice about how to drag themselves up by their bootstraps never could. My understanding of what brought them to where they were had been so off - I had so severely misunderstood them from afar. Driving home on those Sunday afternoons, I felt nearer to God than I had the rest of the week. The things that surrounded my life most of the time, my comforts, my concerns, my stuff, seemed like rags next to the gift of relationship exchanged at the laundromat. The Holy Spirit was working through these relationships to bring me to a new place of listening to Jesus. I had learned from a young age that listening to God happened at church, while reading my bible, in my prayer life...all these things are true, but now I was learning to listen to Jesus in my relationships, especially the ones where I thought I was the one bringing a gift or an offering to God. I thought of myself as the one serving others, but I found myself receiving so much.

In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is only called the “Son of God” a handful of times. Twice by God (Mark 1:11; 9:7) and twice by demons (Mark 3:11; 5:7). The only time a human recognizes Jesus as the Son of God in the whole Gospel of Mark is when the Roman centurion is watching Jesus take his last breath at the cross and responds, “Truly this was the Son of God” (Mark 15:39). At no point do the disciples call Jesus the Son of God - they spend a lot of time getting it wrong, not truly recognizing Jesus for who he is or thinking Jesus should do one thing or another, setting their minds “on human things” rather than on divine things. The only human character who recognizes the Messiah-King as the Son of God is an unexpected person in an unexpected place. A Roman centurion staring at the crucified body of Christ sees Jesus as the Son of God. A villain to many in the first century sees in the great suffering of God the true identity of Jesus.

I wonder if this is a lesson to us to not only look for God where we expect to find God - at church, in our normal “spiritual activities” - but to also be “listening to Jesus” in the places and from the people we don’t expect to hear him.

Jesus goes where his disciples do not want him to go and asks them to follow. When Peter rebukes Jesus, he is rebuking Jesus’ path of suffering. We would likely do the same if we received Jesus today. But, I believe, if we listen to him, we will encounter suffering, but we will also encounter the glory of God. We will come up against things in our world and society we do not wish to see or experience, people suffering wrongs that we wish didn’t exist, but we will also find God there, and unexpected gifts of grace from the people and in the places we least expected to find them.

The transfiguration of Jesus happens on the mountain and, perhaps, we have mountaintop experiences of our own in which we saw the glory of God, things that carry us through in times of trouble. But, as I continue to learn, we also see the glory of God in the suffering of God, in our own suffering, in our collision with the suffering of others. It is in these places, if we’re listening, that we find yet again God’s surprising gifts of grace. We find ourselves, if we’re listening, grateful for God’s Word that finds ways to break through and provide hope when we thought there was none to be found. We find, if we’re listening, that even when we think we are the servants, the gift-givers, the true disciples that we are actually receiving much greater gifts in return and learning things from those we expect not to know who Jesus is. Jesus’ Transfiguration gives us another chance to gaze upon the glory of God and welcomes us into a life of listening to Jesus, wherever we may find him speaking. Amen.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/1d10c2_d6f2b5c35718430cb3640013d4cbe8a1/480p/mp4/file.mp4