Stephen Baldwin
NT: Luke 9
Lost in a Cloud
Have you ever woken up, all snug in
your bed on a cold wintry morning, perfectly content after a good night’s
sleep, secretly wishing you could stay right there all day long? You know you can’t, because of work or kids
or doctor’s appointments or chores, but you want to hold onto that moment as
long as possible. Before you go out into
the cold and chaos of the world, you want to savor the warm sensibility of your
bed. Have you ever felt that way?
I imagine that’s precisely how
Peter, James, and John felt on the mountain in today’s reading. They had left the chaotic crowds in the
valley below and gone with Jesus up on the mountain for some R&R. After sitting down to pray, they’d fallen
asleep…or nearly fallen asleep, the text isn’t crystal clear. It was no wonder they were tired. They’d been working double shifts for months
on end, traveling the countryside with Jesus, helping every widow and orphan
along the way.
Like we’re want to do when we straddle wake and
sleep, the line between dreams and reality grows dangerously thin. Are they dreaming? Are they awake? Can this be?
Do they really see their teacher Jesus, glowing and shrouded in white,
surrounded by the two greatest Jewish men to ever live?
“Is that….no.
It can’t be,” I imagine Peter saying.
“You know, I think that’s Moses,” says James.
“And Elijah!” John adds.
Like someone lying in a warm bed on a cold morning,
they just sat there, lost in the
moment. They watched the three men, Jesus (their rabbi, who said he was the
son of God but they weren’t totally convinced, not yet anyway), Moses (who brought God’s law to the
people years ago and was basically the Jewish George Washington—the
original founding father), and Elijah
(God’s most famous prophet who had been whisked away to heaven without
explanation generations ago). It had to
be surreal. On this Super Bowl Sunday,
it would be like throwing a football around in your backyard with Joe Montana
& Johnny Unitas. I imagine the
disciples rubbing their eyes, pinching each other to see if this was all a
dream.
Moses and Elijah began to vanish
from sight, and Peter cries, “They don’t have to leave! We’ll set up tents so they can stay.” Peter wanted to stay. He wanted to hold onto that moment--tightly,
rather than descend the mountain into the chaotic crowds which surely awaited
them.
Suddenly, the weather changed, which
you know can happen quickly on ridge tops and mountains. A cloud of fog envelopes them, and a voice
cried out, “This is my son. Listen to
him!” Surely, they must have rubbed
their ears, still wondering if this surreal day was a dream.
As quickly as the cloud came, it vanished. Moses and Elijah vanished too, and only
Jesus was left with his disciples. He
never responded to Peter’s offer to put up tents, perhaps because he didn’t
plan to stay long. The next day, they
went back down the mountain. R&R was
over. As soon as they came down, the
crowds met them, bringing their diseased and dismembered for Jesus’ healing
touch. No one spoke of yesterday’s
events, for Jesus had told them to keep quiet.
And it’s no wonder. Who would’ve believed them? Moses had been dead for hundreds of
years! Elijah was taken up by God in a
cloud, and the Jewish priests taught that he would only return in preparation
for the messiah! It would’ve been the
perfect chance for Jesus to prove he was the son of God, as the fulfillment of
the law Moses brought and the prophecy Elijah gave so many years ago, but he
told them not to say a word. And they
didn’t.
Have you ever woken up, all snug in
your bed on a cold wintry morning, perfectly content after a good night’s
sleep, secretly wishing you could stay right there all day long? Before you go out into the cold and chaos of
the world, you want to savor the warm sensibility of your bed. What a wonderful feeling that is for us, and
what a wonderful feeling it must have been on the mountaintop for Jesus. He stayed for another day, perhaps to pray a
little more and rest a bit…but mostly to savor the moment.
When the time came to go back, no sooner had the
crowd come into sight than a man came begging for help. He said he asked the disciples to heal his
daughter, but they failed.
“You faithless and perverse
generation!” Jesus barks. “How much
longer must I be with you and bear with you?”
If the disciples had been scared by the voice from the clouds, this side
of Jesus must have terrified them. Who
is he angry with? Is he angry at the man
for bothering him…the disciples for failing to help the child before…or at the
whole lot of them for all their begging and pleading and misunderstanding? Whatever the reason, it’s not enough to keep
him from doing what he does. He heals
the child.
Mountaintop experiences are supposed
to provide clarity. When you see
everyone and everything from above, it’s supposed to make it all clear. Today we’ll all watch the Super Bowl from the
comfort of our couches and cameras over top the field, and we’ll be able to see
exactly where Peyton Manning should throw the ball and where Cam Newton’s
running holes are. But if you’ve ever
played on the field, you know that it’s not that clear when you’re in the thick
of it.
Neither is life. Sometimes even on mountaintops, the fog of
life clouds our vision. We can’t see
clearly. Peter, James, and John could
see Christ’s glory on the mountain, which simply means they could see God’s
presence in him as if he was glowing. If only for a day, they could see it. But as quickly as it appeared, it vanished. What were they to make of it? What are we to make of it? What does transfiguration mean for us?
My
favorite preacher, present company excluded—Barbara Brown Taylor—says it means this: “Today you
have heard a story you can take with you when you go. It tells you that
no one has to go up the mountain alone. It tells you that sometimes
things get really scary before they get holy. Above all, it tells you
that there is someone standing in the center of the cloud with you, shining so
brightly that you may never be able to wrap your mind around him, but who is
worth listening to all the same--because he is God's beloved, and you are his,
and whatever comes next, you are up to it.” Amen.
