Victorious Living through Christ pt6 "When God Is Revealed", First Congregational UCC, Rock Springs, WY

Victorious Living through Christ pt 6
“When God is revealed”
First Congregational UCC & (Mt of Olives Lutheran), Rock Springs, WY 3/6/2011
Based on Exodus 24:12-18 & Matthew 17:1-9


This is the last Sunday of Epiphany, and this coming Wednesday we start the long journey to the Hill of Golgotha, as we celebrate Ash Wednesday; the official start of the Lenten season. The whole season of Epiphany has been one of “revealing” to the world who Jesus was and what his mission on earth was about. This mission of course was to reveal the Glory of God to a world that so frequently loses sight and to let the world know the depth of love God has for us.
One of the definitions of Epiphany is: a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple commonplace occurrence or experience. Scripture is filled with many “epiphanies”. One such epiphany occurred with Moses as he encountered God on the top of Mount Sinai, and waited for the Tablets that contained the Law, as read from the book of Exodus this morning.
Another epiphany came by way of three outsiders of the Hebrew race; we call the ‘wise men’ or ‘kings of the East’. As the three men approached Jerusalem looking for the new born king of Israel, Herod had a new understanding of his limited reign and lack of knowledge of God’s plans, as laid out in scripture.
This morning’s reading in Matthew speaks of the most dramatic epiphany to date in the lives of Peter, James, and John, as they travel up the mountain with Jesus, leaving the rest of the disciples at their camp. While they were up on the mountain, a great light suddenly appeared around them, and they saw Jesus enveloped completely within this light. Then they saw both Moses and Elijah alongside Jesus; Jesus seemed to be having a conversation with them both. Then a voice came from heaven, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!” Then as Jesus and the three disciples start their way down from the mountain, Jesus tells them, “not to say anything about what they had witnessed until after he has been raised from the dead.”
Over the life of the Christian Church, we have come to know this story as the “Transfiguration of Christ!” As I read and re-read this story of what happened on this mountain top, I come away with a lot of questions. Questions such as: Why did Jesus only take Peter, James and John on this particular journey? Why was it Moses and Elijah who appeared and spoke with Jesus, and not God personally? Why did God think it necessary to speak to the three disciples during this occurrence, and once again say how “pleased” Jesus has made God and that the disciples needed to “listen to what Jesus tells them?” And why did Jesus want these guys to keep silent about what they had witnessed until after his death and resurrection?
Last weekend, Jonathan Firme and I, spent our time with 40 Confirmands at our conference retreat center, La Foret, located near Colorado Springs. The major focus of this time together, was to help the youth explore various images of God, and to give them permission to start expanding their concepts of what God looks like, and to ignite their interest of asking questions of how God works in their life’s.
At one of the secessions the story of Jesus’ first miracle was discussed; another epiphany story. In the story, Jesus, his disciples and his mother were guests at a wedding banquet, where the wine starts to run short. Jesus’ mother urges Jesus to take care of this problem. Jesus is not willing to help, so being a good Jewish mother, Mary tells the servants to do whatever Jesus tells them to do. Being forced into dealing with this problem, Jesus then directs the servants to fill ceremonial barrels with water, then to take a pitcher of water from one of the barrels to the host where at that point the water had become wine. Jesus did all this while staying seated. After the wedding, Jesus then tells his disciples that they will perform greater miracles than that. That story has stayed with me during this week as well as the question that I posed to the group at large and then again to the three confirmands that went from this church, “What type of miracles can we recognize that we have either already preformed or are able to perform that are greater than what Jesus has done?” After all, as a minister, I have yet to turn water into wine. I have never been able to walk on water, and I have yet to heal anyone or bring someone back from the dead. So what miracle am I as a disciple of Christ able to do that by Jesus’ standard would be greater than what he did during his ministry?
That is a question that I am going to let you struggle to find the answer, as I think it is a personal question and only you will be able to find the answer for yourself.
Many times the epiphanies in our lives’ come through what we would call a mountain top experience. For the three disciples it came with Moses and Elijah visiting with Jesus. I think the reason why Moses and Elijah are the two visiting with Jesus, is Moses was the one who brought Israel up out of Egypt, out of slavery and has always been referred to as their redeemer; Elijah is representative of the prophet who never died, but rather was taken up to God in the firer chariot. So in this mountain top experience you have the giver of the law from God and the prophet who was delivered from death and was expected to return before the messiah came, thus a fulfillment of the prophet writings.
I have been preaching a sermon series called, Victorious living through Jesus, which is based on the AA 12 step program. This week I am combining step 6, “Being entirely ready to have God remove all the defects of character” and step 7, “Humbly asking Him to remove our shortcomings.” You might ask where does this figure into the story of Jesus’ transfiguration.
I would like to share with you a conversation that I had early in my week with my secretary. We entered into a discussion on the topic of “faith” versus “knowing”. For some people, faith is good enough in order to move forward in their walk with God. For others, those I like to call, concrete thinkers, those who need actual proof in order to believe in God, like doubting Thomas, faith just leaves too much of a gap to believe in. When Thomas was finally able to put his hands into Jesus’ wounds, he then was able to believe, this was Thomas’ epiphany, and this was the point where Thomas was able to ask Jesus to remove his shortcoming of “doubt.”
Peter, James and John all three had a physical encounter with an event that most likely took away any doubt about who Jesus was. My personal epiphany came at 32,000 feet when I had an audible encounter with God, which I have shared with some of you; and from this encounter, there is no doubt in my mind about the degree of love that God has for me. There will be people who will say, my experience can be explained by the lack of oxygen being so high in the atmosphere. It doesn’t matter whether anyone believes what my experience was, because for me it has moved me from operating beyond faith into the understanding of a fact, and it took away my defect which was in doubting the love of God for who I am. I think the reason why Jesus told Peter, James and John not to say anything about what they experienced until after Jesus died and was resurrected was because, no one would have believed them before hand. Possibly, they were still in disbelief.
The point of an epiphany is that through a new revelation, or perspective of life, we are able to move forward in a way that we would not be able to do prior to that epiphany. Before we are able to ask God to remove those things within our lives that keep us from moving forward in our lives, allowing us to become successful in our spiritual walk with God, we need to have our own personal epiphany; our own transfigurational event.
I would like to share a prayer that I have used many times that I think can help us put into perspective the concept of living our life in a transfigurational understanding. It goes like this: Do not pray for easy lives; pray to be stronger women and men. Do not pray for tasks equal to our powers, but for power equal to our tasks. Then the doing of our work will be no miracle – we will be the miracle. Every day we will wonder at ourselves and the richness of life which has come to us by the grace of God. The epiphany found in Christ is that we go beyond whom we are and with the help of God, we are able to overcome many adversities in our life when we let God take away those things that hold us back, and we then become the miracle, which becomes the blessing to this world. Amen