Listen to HIM

This sermon was preached by Pastor Ted Carnahan on the Transfiguration of Our Lord, March 2, 2025.

Grace, mercy, and peace be with all of you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

You know, I think it's tempting for us to look at a story like the story from Luke's Gospel here of the Transfiguration and become too familiar with it. It's easy for us to become sort of... It's something that comes around every year. We talk about the Transfiguration of our Lord. We talk about this idea of this transformation of Jesus. And this transformation, it becomes very pedestrian. It becomes something that's sort of normal. But you have to remember that in the story of the Transfiguration, what happens is something that is so shocking to Peter and James and John, especially Peter, that he doesn't know what to do with it.

He's got Jesus around, learning from Him. He's teaching them with authority. He's doing miracles. He's casting out demons. He's healing the sick. And then they go up the mountain. And there, Peter, James, and John get to see something that no one else got to see. They got to see a physical manifestation of the glory of God. His face begins to shine like the sun. He's dazzlingly white. He shines and radiates the glory of God.

And then, to underscore the point, we have the two most important figures of the Old Testament arrive to have a conversation with Him. And that's even more shocking because here's Moses, the great lawgiver, the man through whom God rescued His people from slavery in Egypt and brought them into the Promised Land through the Red Sea by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. And this miraculous man, this prophet, this lawgiver, this priest, Moses, has guided them. And now he is in person having a conversation with Jesus.

And if that weren't enough, then comes Elijah. Elijah, the great prophet of the Old Testament, the powerful wonder worker, the man who shows God's going care and challenge to the people of Israel. And here they gather and they begin to talk to Jesus about something. In particular, it tells us that they began to speak of His departure, which He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.

People of God, Moses and Elijah know that what's coming next for Jesus is His departure, which is to say His death on a cross. Now, Peter and James and John are weighed down with sleep, but they are able to stay awake. And because they stay awake, because they're able to pay attention, they see something that nobody else gets to see. They get to see Jesus and Moses and Elijah having a conversation about what Moses pointed to in the law, in the fullness of time, that there would have to be one who would be the great sacrifice to take away the people's sins. What Elijah pointed to when he talked about the great need for people to obey God and God's faithfulness to them, even when Israel was unfaithful.

Jesus as More Than a Prophet or Lawgiver

Jesus stands here with the two of them. And it's easy for us to get the wrong idea. They want to be a guru on a mountaintop. Literally, in this case, He's a teacher, a rabbi on a mountaintop. They want to say He's a great leader, a great teacher. He's a man like Moses or Elijah or Samuel or another one of the prophets. A man who was teaching great things about God. And if that's your take on Jesus Christ, then you have missed His message entirely. Because Jesus standing on this mountaintop this day, on the mountain of transfiguration, transformed so that His glory literally shines from His skin and His clothes, is not just another one in the same mode as Moses or Elijah.

God's Declaration from the Cloud

And God wants to make sure that we all understand that, which is why the cloud comes and envelops them. And God's voice speaks out of the cloud and says, "This is my Son, my chosen." You know, word order really matters. In some languages, it matters more than others. In English, emphasis matters a lot. For example, if my wife sends me to the store and then I come back and she says, "I didn't tell you to buy a dozen eggs," the word emphasis changes the meaning.

• "I didn't tell you to buy a dozen eggs." Somebody did, but it wasn't me.
• "I didn't tell you to buy a dozen eggs." Well, then she didn't tell me to do that.
• "I didn't tell you to buy a dozen eggs." She told my daughter to do it.
• "I didn't tell you to buy a dozen eggs." I told you to buy a dozen pounds of ground beef for a barbecue.

The word emphasis matters.

Greek, the original language of the New Testament, is different. Word order really matters more than emphasis. And when Jesus is standing on the mountainside with Moses and Elijah beside him, God speaks out of the cloud and said, "This is my Son, my chosen." And then he says, "Him listen to."

That's a weird way for us to say it in English, which is why it's not translated that way. But there's a difference between saying, "listen to him," and saying, "listen to him." And the latter is what God is saying to us in our reading today. Jesus is the Son of God. And held up against Moses and Elijah, God is showing that the one whom you should listen to is Jesus.

The Veil of the Law and the Freedom in Christ

And in our reading from 2 Corinthians today, we are not acting with timidity, but with great boldness. Why? We're not going to be like Moses, who put a veil over his face to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of the glory that was being set aside. Paul says that there was a veil over their minds. In fact, the veil continues to this day every time they hear the reading of Moses. The great lawgiver has come and he gives you a law. And that law is not intended to show you how you will please God and thereby earn his love.

In fact, if you think about Moses for a second, think about the Ten Commandments, you rewind in your mind back to Exodus chapter 20. What is the beginning of the Ten Commandments? Now, if you've been studying or you remember confirmation class, you'll immediately want to answer, "You shall have no other gods before me." And you're technically right, but you're wrong. Because before God gives even the first commandment to Moses, what does he say? He says, "I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, out of the house of Egypt, out of the land of slavery." And then he says, "You shall have no other gods before me." Before even law number one has come, God already announces to Moses what he has already done for them. Before they lifted one finger to be faithful to the God of Israel, God chose them. Before in Abraham, God remembered them in sending Moses and God rescued them from the hand of Pharaoh through ten plagues and rescuing them through the Red Sea and then eventually into the Promised Land.

And so when we hear the reading of the law of Moses, it is easy for us to have our minds veiled too, thinking that the law, and keeping the law of God, is the means by which we are saved. But Jesus is different. In fact, Paul puts it this way, when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. The veil which has us captive to this idea that keeping the law with its many requirements is the relationship with God. The law that says, do and do and do some more. And yet, compared to the holy standard of God, you have never done it. And instead, Jesus has already done for you all that is necessary.

The Finished Work of Christ

When Jesus goes to what Luke calls his departure in Jerusalem, going to the cross, the words that he utters from the cross tell us exactly what is done with the law and its many requirements. Jesus says, "It is finished." It's over. It has been satisfied. Your requirements under the law, which you could never have kept, have been satisfied in the person and work of Jesus Christ. His innocent death upon the cross, glorious resurrection from the dead, and his departure from Jerusalem in the ascension, to stand even today and intercede for you at the right hand of God.

So the people who go up the mountaintop thinking that they're following a rabbi in a long list of rabbis and good teachers, gurus and lawgivers, legislators like Moses and prophets like Elijah, Jesus is not just a prophet or a lawgiver, but that Jesus is the chosen one. He is the Son of God, not merely a servant of God. And that God tells us, "Listen to him." And then in the midst of that shadow, hearing this word, God takes away Moses and Elijah. And when the cloud clears off, the only one left standing on the mountaintop is Jesus Christ.

The Purpose of Mountaintop Experiences

And when they go down from the mountain, they have received a gift, a gift that will carry them through difficult and dark days ahead. You know, the problem with a mountaintop experience is not that it's not a good, valuable thing. I've had many mountaintop experiences in my life, a few of them literally at the top of mountains, but mostly just in the amazing things that happened. Children are born. When you have worship that's just powerful and speaks to your heart, absolution spoken that tells me, "Oh, my sins really are forgiven." I've had a lot of mountaintop experiences in my life. I hope you have too. They're valuable, but they are not valuable because we are to stay on the mountaintop, which is why Peter's offer of, "Oh, let me build some booths and we'll stay up here a while," is rejected by God who sends the cloud.

The point of a mountaintop experience is not to give you an idea of what you should make your life look like in this world. This world is broken and fallen. This world is riven by sin and death, and that's not going to change this side of eternity. But what it does do is it gives you strength and something to cling to when you come down off the mountain and you walk through the valley, even the valley of the shadow of death. You walk the difficult road of being a follower of Jesus in a world that hates him, as you do battle against the flesh and the devil and the world.

The mountaintop experience does have its value because you get to see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, and you get to cling to that reality as you come down into your ordinary life and you experience all that life is trying to do to destroy your faith in Christ. This is why we gather regularly for worship. We worship and we receive a small mountaintop experience here at the altar as we receive the body and blood of Jesus, and it strengthens us to live in this world. That's the value of the mountaintop.

Conclusion

And so the mountaintop is not something that we cling to, but it's something we give thanks to God for, and then we go down the mountain and we go into ordinary life and we love and serve our neighbors. May you know the peace that comes from our Lord Jesus Christ. As we get ready for the season of Lent, may you do battle against the flesh and the devil and the world. And may the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and minds strong in Christ Jesus our Lord to life everlasting. Amen.