All for Love

Mark 9:2-8; 1 John 4:8

The Transfiguration is an odd moment in the gospel narratives of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. It is a moment that is totally and completely mystical, something otherworldly, and also something that the Gospels tend to avoid. Read through them--they root all of Jesus’ work and ministry in the very real world of 1st Century Palestine--Jesus meets real people suffering and enduring life as it is with the very real and actual problems that come with such a life. The Transfiguration is none of that. There on a mountain--where else?--Jesus glows like a ray gun--literally ablaze with the apocalyptic fire of God shining in him and through him, joined by two spectral companions--Moses and Elijah--not resurrected, not ghosts--but something holy/wholly other. The whole scene is baffling.

Befuddlement.

A standard issue human predicament and state of being. 

Poor Peter babbles away about raising tents, throwing a picnic, and having an old-time camp revival because he does not know what else to say and feels that he must say something or do something. 

God does that to us.

God confuses us.

God makes the world make no sense whatsoever, especially when and where God intervenes and interrupts life as we know it. 

God does that.

Why?

Because God loves us.

See? Still baffling...

What possible good does it do for all of us to be baffled by God?

Because as we are baffled, befuddled, and perhaps bemused by the presence of God, we are open to a realization that is absolutely essential if we are to be the people we need to be.

To be people formed in and through Christ, we need someone or something to knock us off kilter to see the profound nature of God’s work and presence within the world.

Most of us live each day with a glib understanding that the world works through a process of cause and effect--A happens; B results. If a mass of cold air slides into a mass of warm air, there will be thunder, lightning, and rain. If we choose to consume a pint of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream every night, we will gain weight. If the stock market crashes, the economy will fall into a slump. If the Chicago Cubs win the World Series, the world will end. See? The whole cosmos works by cause and effect--learn the causes, anticipate the effects, and we can muddle our way through life. Until things stop making sense. A child has a heart attack. A tsunami washes away a fishing village, but spares a nuclear power plant. The stock market crashes, but the robber barons running it lose nothing. A sports team wins and a week later not only is the world still intact, no one remembers the starting lineup. Our simple system for comprehending the world does not work. So then what happens? Then, a good many of us reach for God. If God makes no sense, and we find the world makes no sense, then maybe faith makes sense.

The Transfiguration brings the disciples to a crucial moment in their journey with Christ. Jesus posed the question for them--”Who do people say that I am?” and followed it with, “And who do you say that I am?” The point of these questions is exactly the same--on whose terms are people coming to Jesus? Theirs or God’s? How they answer determines everything. The disciples are like everyone else. They see Jesus’ work, they see the results, they make their assumptions. But those assumptions are going to get in the way. To see Jesus as God intends for him to be seen will take the removal of all of those assumptions. They must see Jesus clearly for who he actually is, not whom they wish him to be or want him to be. The Transfiguration wipes away the layers of assumption, presumption, and  hunger that colors their perception.

Now comes a crucial question for us--are we any different?

John leads us into a full appreciation of where we need to be in the presence of God. 

It is all about love.

God is love, therefore, if we are to be with God, we need to be people of love, but  not love as we would have it to be, or as we want it to be, or even as we need it to be, but love as God defines it, embodies it, and makes it. This is the core of life as God created it. 

To see that, we need a transfiguration--we need to have all the layers of all our own terms swept away. We need to set God’s terms as the terms by which we live.

How?

Take Jesus’ standard and apply it.

How?

Live by love.

How?

First, take seriously each and every encounter with another person. Here is the playing field for love. That means meeting someone, and then not saying or doing anything, but listening. Listen to what they say. Listen to their presence before you. Do they look tired? Do they say they’re tired? Do they look happy? Are they excited? Folks say a lot without saying anything. Nothing kills a moment faster than leaping in with a word or deed we assumed was right without taking the other person seriously. Nothing opens a moment more quickly than speaking or acting in direct response to what we heard someone actually say they needed. 

Second, realize that we have nothing to gain if we do not give of ourselves. Love that is true and actual gives more than it receives, and really does not care that that is so. The giving is so fulfilling, so moving, and so compelling that all else fades in comparison.

As we realize this dynamic of love, we begin to comprehend how God does intervene, interact, and interrupt. God does so having heard his human children. God knows, understands, and responds to what we need, even if we are not sure of those things ourselves. God spares nothing in meeting us in this great love--God gave his Son to us even while we were far from God because there was nothing more compelling to God than giving so we might be full, free, and found.

So, one of the strangest moments in the gospels becomes one of the most telling. Here is God as God. 

Will we meet him?