"Eight Days After"

Luke 9:28-43

Scott Spence, Preacher and Seminary Intern

February 14, 2010

28 Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray.²⁹And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white.³⁰Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him.³¹They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.³²Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him.³³Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, "Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah"--not knowing what he said.³⁴While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud.³⁵Then from the cloud came a voice that said, "This is my Son, my Chosen listen to him!"³⁶When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.

37 On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met him.³⁸Just then a man from the crowd shouted, "Teacher, I beg you to look at my son; he is my only child.³⁹Suddenly a spirit seizes him, and all at once he shrieks. It convulses him until he foams at the mouth; it mauls him and will scarcely leave him.⁴⁰I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they could not."⁴¹Jesus answered, "You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you? Bring your son here."⁴²While he was coming, the demon dashed him to the ground in convulsions. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the boy, and gave him back to his father.⁴³And all were astounded at the greatness of God.

            I am not a detail-oriented person.  This probably does not come as all that much of a surprise to my wife or to my co-workers.  I have been known from time to time to just occasionally misplace things, forget directions, or just have my trains of thought get completely derailed.  If it was not for the parking pass I had to use to get here today I might not have made it here on time.

According to the vocational and psychological exams they make you take in order to be a card-carrying Presbyterian minister, I am more of a systematic or conceptually oriented type of thinker.  I am most comfortable in the world of the abstract or the feeling, and not that of the hard and concrete. Maybe it is a product of a liberal arts education or just the way God fashioned me.  I am just not a details guy.

            I say all of this to let you know that when one of those little details, something that might seem small and insignificant at first glance, just pops up out of nowhere and trips me up, it sticks with me.  I am sure that this happens to you as well.  Something just comes out of nowhere and fixes itself in your brain and you ruminate on it. The veil is now lifted and a new glory now shines.  Details matter-they mean something.

            This veil lifting, this new glory is seen in our Gospel text for this morning.  It is Luke’s story of the Transfiguration of Jesus.  This story also appears in Matthew and Mark, and the church calendar always has Transfiguration Sunday coming right before Ash Wednesday. We go up the mountain, see Jesus transfigured, and then come back down off the mountain and into the valley of Lent together.  The glory of God stays up on the mountain. Pretty clear message, prayerfully considered, worthy of hearing, and in fact, one that is often preached.  If not for one small detail.

           Luke places his story about “eight days after these sayings”, these sayings being when Peter has called Jesus the Messiah and Christ has prophesized his death on a cross. Mark and Matthew place their accounts six days later.  Six days? Eight days?  Math—shmath. Does the difference even really matter?

            A week has seven days.  God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh.  Christ Jesus was crucified on a Friday and was resurrected on Easter Sunday.  These are events we repeat out loud every time we affirm our faith and celebrate every time we gather for worship. 

            And yet we live out our lives not before or during these events but after them.  We are born and we grow and we die after these seven days.  We live in the eighth day.

            So what is life like on the eighth day?  It is the life of the “yes but not quite yet”, a life existing in the tension of knowing about Christ’s return but not when it will occur.  It is a life of great highs and great lows, of great joy and great grief, and a creeping sense of confusion over whether any of this stuff really does matter in the long run.

            I am not just a bunch of molecules randomly gathered together in certain sequence-my life does have consequence!  I matter!

            Society gives us a multitude of options to help us paper over this sense of doubt.  We invest our hope in so many things.  We think that if we pick the right career path or send our kids to the right school, or that if we belong to the right social club or go to the right ball, or if we vote for the right political candidate well then everything will turn out perfectly.  After all- isn’t that what the magazines and the self-help books and the television shows tell us?  Six easy steps to a better you?   

            And yet it does not always turn out that way.  Children frustrate you, your job gives you stress, socializing gives you a hangover and that bum you voted for disappoints you after only a couple of months in office. 

            So we move on to the next thrill, the next big promise, and the next thing that will set us right.  It is like we are sitting in front of a computer terminal just pushing the reboot button again and again and again….  Expecting a different result.

            This is life in the eighth day.

            And this desire to hit the reboot button and find IT-whatever it is is not just restricted to our social lives.  It consumes our faith as well.  Getting to wherever we think God lives, just really getting to know God, living in the moment and feeling the divine, that is what we pursue.  God is out there- we just need to follow the right plan or go on the right retreat and we will find him. 

            Or if we cannot just get God, well then we just make the divine one part of our busy lives.  Spiritual but not religious.  God only lives in church.  The Lord is just another product line, another option amongst many, turned into a form of spiritual Red Bull to perk us up and give us enough energy to make it through the day.  When the rush wears off we start pursuing it again.  This can be faith in the eighth day.

            If you think about it, Peter was kind of ahead of the curve on this one.  Upon seeing Jesus with Elijah and Moses he blurts out that he would like to build dwellings for all three of them to live in.  Here is his big chance- Peter has before him the great liberator of his people, a great prophet, and the Messiah all at the same time. 

            If he can just get them to live on the mountain together well then he can literally have God in a box.  Peter can put the divine on the mountain and come back to it whenever he wants to!  It was indeed good for him to be up there on the mountain.

            Yet Peter does not get his wish.  He does not get to contain God or put God in his back pocket to be brought out and used whenever Peter feels like it.  Nor does he get to push the reboot button and start his life perfectly anew when he gets off the mountain.

And is this not the same for us as well?

            Instead, Peter is shown something entirely different.  On the mountain he sees that not only is the man that he has been following the Messiah, sent to deliver God’s people, he is greater than even Moses!  This is not just a prophet or worker of miracles- He is greater than Elijah! This is God’s Son and God’s Chosen! 

            Dr. Sinclair and I were talking about this moment earlier in the week and he likened it to “The Wizard of Oz” in reverse.  Instead of seeing the Great and Glorious OZ controlled by the man behind the curtain, it is like the curtain has been pulled back on the human-looking Jesus to reveal just a glimpse of the divine!

            But it is also just a glimpse-not something the three disciples or we can bottle up for whenever we need it.  The tumult is over, the storm has passed, and we are still in the eighth day.

            And yet we are not alone.  What else does the voice from the cloud say? “Listen to him!”

            The group of four descends the mountain.  The very first thing they encounter is a crowd surrounding Jesus and a man begging for his son to be healed from evil spirits.  Around him are the other nine disciples, who despite being given the authority over all demons and the ability to heal the sick, have not gotten the job done.  This is not what one wants to encounter after leaving the mountaintop, that is, people wanting something done yesterday and a bunch of subordinates failing to get the job done in your absence.  Goodbye divine, hello eighth day.

            And so we listen to Jesus.  And he lets out some very harsh words, words that are tough to hear from someone we imagine to be our best friend, our pal, our Buddy Jesus.  “You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you?”

            But Jesus does not cross his arms and leave the people that have so very disappointed him.  He does not return to the mountaintop.  He stays and he says, “Bring your son here”.  The boy is healed and the crowd is astounded at the greatness of God. 

            This is a life and a faith for the eighth day.  A God that is not just restricted to the mountaintop, a God that cannot be contained or commoditized.  A God that sends his Son, his Chosen to live and to die and to defeat death itself in order to redeem creation.  A God that can show incredible glimpses of the divine and heal the possessed.  A God that cajoles and critiques but also heals and consoles. 

Listen to Him! And be astounded at the greatness of God. 

Amen.