“Glimpses”

Transfiguration Sunday

Duane M. Harris

February 19, 2012

Text:  Mark 9:2-9

Title: “Glimpses”

            Every weeknight, RSTLNE are the letters given the winning player in the final round on Wheel of Fortune.  Every winner is given the same letters night after night, week after week.  Each winner, however, gets to choose three additional letters.  The object, of course, is to attempt to find as many letters as possible in order to reveal the hidden word or words.  The person who comes up with the word or words wins.

I’m not a regular fan of the show but one night it was couples’ night.  A Marine and his wife were playing.  Vanna had turned a few letters for the previous couple, but they struck out on their third try.   The Marine and his wife had a streak going.  After each letter was revealed they got a better glimpse.  One piece at a time until they were missing only two letters.  The category was TV personalities or something like that.  Vanna had turned enough letters that you could read:  “Aunt Bea, O _ _ e, Sheriff Andy Taylor.”  It was obvious that the Marine and his wife just didn’t get it.  It looked as if they had begun to get some kind of feel for it, but they just weren’t sure.  The other players, however, had faces that lit up with recognition.  It was absolutely clear when they recognized the answer to the puzzle.  The smiles and small, anxious jumps told the story.  

The faith experience is a bit like that:  something hidden.  We’re given glimpses.  Sometimes the answer is clear: a prayer is surprisingly answered, a call is confirmed, and we’re transformed by it.  Sometimes we’re almost there, but just aren’t sure.  Other times we’re dumb as a stump, and we just don’t get it — like Jesus’ disciples often were, like Peter was in the mountaintop transfiguration experience with Jesus.  He didn’t understand what this was about.

A life of faith is a journey.  It’s not a destination to which we arrive and we’re settled there.  Suddenly we have it all, understand everything fully, have a clear vision of what’s ahead.  The life of faith for most of us is more like an experience of having one letter turned at a time with the knowledge and trust that God seeks and invites us into a relationship which–when we do get it–transforms life for all of us.  When those moments of recognition of the hidden presence of God come, people cannot help but be changed.  It’s what happened to Elijah, Moses, and the disciples who witnessed Jesus’ transfiguration.  After the resurrection, they understood.  They knew Jesus was God’s beloved Son and that it meant he would suffer as the Messiah.  Though just a chapter before –chapter 8 in the Gospel according to Mark–Jesus foretells of his death and resurrection and Peter rebuked him for it.  Jesus responded with a rebuke of his own:  “Get behind me, Satan!  For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”  Sometimes Peter just didn’t get Jesus, but when he did finally know him and who Jesus was–the beloved of God– he was never the same.  His life was completely changed.

It’s what happened to my pastor who became my friend, mentor and eventually my colleague, the Rev. Dalton Bishop.  I was fortunate enough to spend all day with him, his son and daughter-in-law, at a hospital in Holly after he’d suffered a severe stroke not long before his death.  I had the good fortune to tell him I loved him and to say thank you and to follow his ambulance as he was moved to a hospice care center.  He was clear about life-support:  he didn’t want anything.  At 86 years of age he was anxious to see what was awaiting him on the other side of life.  He’d been telling me that for years.  He so deeply trusted the One to whom he had given himself 67 years before that he was unafraid to die.  And it happened on Monday.

Dalton was one of those people who turned letters for me and stood on the mountain with me when I’d get a glimpse of God.  He did that for the many people with whom he spent time.  Dalton gave people glimpses of God.

After he retired and I had finished seminary and had come back to Michigan, we used to meet twice a month for lunch, conversation and prayer, a practice that provided rich moments for both of us.  He was always interested in new thoughts and ideas about God reflected in younger theologians.  I was interested in gleaning from him the wealth of experiences and the well of wisdom he carried with him.  It was good for both of us. 

Over the course of the 24 years we knew each other, there was one string he played upon over and over again:  his conviction about having a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ.  What a gift Christ had been in his life.  To have this relationship completely changed his life!  How much he wanted others to share in it.  How much he gave himself to making that happen for people.

It happened to me.  It happened to me because he gave me glimpses of God.  I asked him once, if you could choose one story to describe God, what would that story be?  He said, “There once was a man with two sons.  The younger son said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the inheritance. . . .  and he went and squandered it all. . . and when he came to himself. . .  he came home . . . . and his father. . . ran to him and put his arms around him . . .  ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.  I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’  But the father ordered the servants to bring a robe, new shoes, and a ring, to kill the fatted calf and throw a party because ‘My son was lost but is found.  He was dead but is alive again.’”

The Father who forgave a repentant child.  That’s the hidden God Dalton trusted with his life and his death.  That is how Jesus Christ treated him.  That is why Christ died and was raised again:  it had to do with God’s incredible forgiveness, God’s love that is beyond measure.

As I said earlier, before Jesus took the 3 disciples up on the mountain in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus told them he would suffer and be killed.  Peter–like anyone who loves someone understandably might do–refuses to accept the predicted early death of his teacher, friend & Lord.   Few of us want to surrender one we love to death.  In spite of Peter’s refusal to understand coming events, Jesus hand-selected him, James and John to accompany him to the mountain top.  There, Jesus was transfigured and the disciples came to see God in him and to hear the affirmation:  “This is my son, the beloved.  Listen to him!”

Peter apparently wants to camp out with Jesus and build shelters for them.  Perhaps the experience is so good, so fulfilling, he wants to continue to enjoy the experience for a while.  I don’t know.  The Gospel of Mark does say, “He did not know what to say, for they were terrified.”  But this experience obviously is meant to help the three experience the Spirit of God in Jesus.  It is meant to give Peter, James and John a glimpse of God in Jesus.  It’s another clue to the final answer. 

William F. Buckley, Jr., the columnist and sailor, debated on Nightline with John Dickson, the blind sailor who attempted a solo crossing of the Atlantic.  Buckley was critical and derisive of Dickson.  But Dickson replied calmly to Ted Koppel:  “His eyes may work, but he doesn’t have much vision.” 

Like Dickson’s understanding of vision, faith is not about physical sight.  People watching Jesus and his hikers descending the mountain that day may have seen four ordinary men just out for a day hike with no idea about the experience they’d just had up there.  And the people who walked in the Big Boy restaurant every evening in Fenten where Dalton frequently enjoyed their fish may have looked at my 86 year old friend and saw just an old man out alone for dinner.  But experiencing the presence of the God changes the whole picture.  Jesus was transformed and so were the disciples when they eventually understood who Jesus was.  

Mountaintop experiences with Christ offer glimpses of God that can lead to transformation.  When we see God not with the limited capabilities of the eyeball, but with the deeper sight of faith, transformation happens.  So watch for the clues.  Jesus is God’s Son, beloved of God, one who has suffered and died in order to save.  Knowing and serving him changes a person.  As we move into the Lenten season, will you and I be aware of the glimpses of Christ around us as we continue this journey of faith together?  Will we allow ourselves to be changed because we have seen God?