Tuesday, March 5, 2019

Sermon for the Transfiguration of Our Lord (March 3, 2019)


The Transfiguration of Our Lord (March 3, 2019)
Deuteronomy 34:1-12; Luke 9:28-36

            Put yourself in Moses’ place this morning.  Forty years you have been traveling, leading the people of Israel.  Now, they are on the brink of entering the land that God promised them.  A land of their own.  A fruitful land.  A land flowing with milk and honey, as he described it.  Beats the barren desert you’ve been traveling through and camping in.  Beats being enslaved in Egypt, where your people had lived for about 400 years.  Beats being chased by Egyptian armies as you flee.  Thankfully, Yahweh rescued you at the Red Sea, parting the waters for you.  But then, hunger and thirst struck again in the desert.  There was no food.  No water.  You had to rely on manna from heaven.  Quail delivered from the Lord.  Water from a rock.  All this was quite miraculous.  Yet it still was not “home,” the land where your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had lived, the land promised many years prior to them.
            Now, here you are, standing on Mount Nebo, a mountain peak to the east of the Jordan River opposite the city of Jericho.  From there, God lets you see the Promised Land.  This is the goal!  The finish line!  What you have been waiting for!  And yet, it is denied to you.  You can’t reach it.  You can’t have it.  You can’t go in.  Such disappointment.  All you can do is look longingly.  All your hopes and dreams have been taken away from you.
            Why?  Why could Moses not cross the Jordan with the Israelites?  One act of disobedience kept Moses from entering the Promised Land.  There was that moment when Yahweh told him to speak to a rock in order that water might come out and quench the thirst of the Israelites.  But instead of merely speaking to the rock, he struck the rock twice with his staff and said, “Hear now, you rebels, shall we bring water for you out of this rock?” (Numbers 20:10).  It was as if Moses was taking credit for this miraculous event rather than giving glory to God.  And the Lord responded to Moses, saying, “Because you did not believe me, to uphold me as holy in the eyes of the people of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them” (Numbers 20:12).  Can you imagine Moses’ devastation?  Would he have taken the chance to beg God for a “do over”?  “I’m sorry, Lord.  I’m so sorry.  Give me one more chance.  I’ll do it exactly as you told me the next time.”  But it was too late.  The damage had been done.  No Promised Land for Moses.
            Can you relate to Moses?  Think about the plans you have made.  Your goals.  Your projects.  Your hopes and dreams.  If you’re young, you have your whole life ahead of you.  You are excited to start your own personal journey and accomplishing so many things.  But I’m sure you have had your disappointments, too … when certain things have not worked out the way you’ve planned.  Ask us older folks.  We know all about disappointment.  Plans that have gone awry.  Goals not met.  Projects left unfinished.  Unfulfilled hopes and dreams.  Your life has not gone exactly as you had imagined it.  A career path you had planned as taken a different fork in the road … or maybe a sharp left turn … or maybe it was a U-turn.  Disease has invaded your body or the body of a loved one.  Disorder has affected your family, and there are arguments and fights and estrangement.  Death has taken a traveling partner away from you, and you give up on the goals you set together.
            Why do we get so brokenhearted about all these things?  Why do we have this sense of direction, like our life is supposed to mean something, that all this has a point and a purpose?  Why do we feel the desire to be happy and fulfilled?  Why do we get disappointed when our plans go haywire?  If we’re just evolved animals, our life should have no real ultimate meaning.  We’re just here today and gone tomorrow.  No big deal.  Death is the end.  That’s all there is to it.  What’s the point in being disappointed or devastated when our life doesn’t turn out the way we hoped?  We’re just acting on instincts and impulses anyway, right?
            Deep down we know there is more to life than just “getting by.”  Deep down we know that there is more to life than what meets the eye.  All the plans we make, all the goals we have, all the desires for joy inside of us are evidence of a greater joy and an eternal destiny that God intends for us.  He has set eternity in our hearts, the writer of Ecclesiastes declared (Ecclesiastes 3:11).  We are looking forward to the Promised Land of heaven, everlasting life, resurrection, the new heaven and new earth promised to us.
            Moses had more than just one sin of which he was guilty.  But it was that one act of disobedience of which we spoke earlier that kept him out of the Promised Land.
            You and I have many acts of disobedience for which we are guilty and for which we must repent.  All of them will potentially keep us out of the eternal Promised Land of heaven.  And often, our consciences are bothered by one particular sin that eats at us, we can’t forget about it, we keep thinking about it and wondering, “Is this the one act of disobedience that will keep me out of the Promised Land of heaven?”
            One sin kept Moses out.  And yet, in today’s Gospel reading, Moses appears with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration … in the Promised Land.  He made it there after all.  He got to plant his feet there along with the prophet Elijah and with the Lord Jesus, with Peter, James, and John looking on.
            After this moment of glory on the mountain, Jesus “set his face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51) where he would die for the sins of the world.  Jesus died for the one sin of Moses and for all his sins.  Jesus died for the sins of Elijah.  Jesus died for the sins of the three who got to view that glorious sight on the mountain.  Jesus died for your one sin that gnaws at your soul and for all sins which would keep you out of the eternal Promised Land.  Moses was forgiven. Elijah was forgiven.  The apostles were forgiven.  And you are forgiven.
            That glorious sight on the mountain – Jesus’ divine nature shining through his human body, and Moses and Elijah appearing alive with Jesus – is a preview of the glory of eternity and the resurrection of all flesh.  It’s no longer about the land.  It never really was.  The Promised Land of Canaan – or Palestine as the Romans called it – was only a foretaste of the heavenly land, the heavenly Jerusalem, the eternal house of God that all the patriarchs and prophets were looking forward to.  The author of Hebrews wrote, “These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.  For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.  If they had been thinking of that land from which they gone out, they would have had opportunity to return.  But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one.  Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city” (Hebrews 11:13-16).
            You and I live in the light of the finished work of Jesus … his death and resurrection.  By baptism and by faith we receive the blessings and benefits of his death and resurrection … the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation.  Yet there are still some things that we see and greet from afar.  We still live in this broken world of sin.  We don’t yet see the victory of Jesus over sin with our own eyes.  Here, before the altar, we stand on Mount Nebo, and get a glimpse of our homeland in the body and blood of Jesus.  Jesus is with us here, standing right with us, in his divine glory, hidden under the bread and the wine.
            In our previous hymnal, one of the offertories we would sing before the Sacrament of the Altar went, “Let the vineyards be fruitful, Lord, and fill to the brim our cup of blessing. Gather a harvest from the seeds that were sown that we may be fed with the bread of life.  Gather the hopes and dreams of all.  Unite them with the prayers we offer.  Grace our table with your presence and give us a foretaste of the feast to come.”  When I was at seminary, we used to make fun of those words, “Gather the hopes and dreams of all.”  “What does that even mean?” we would ask.  But you know, the older I get, the more I’m beginning to understand those words.  We all have hopes and dreams that go unmet and unfulfilled.  And some of us are getting to the end of our lives where we’ve run out of time to finish our plans, meet our goals, complete our projects.  Those hopes and dreams, whatever they may be for each of us, are buried deep within us.  They are evidence of those larger hopes and dreams that God has placed within our believing hearts, that we are destined for more than just getting by and surviving in this life on this side of the veil.  In Christ Jesus, God gathers your hopes and dreams and unites them with the prayers we offer here and says, “Whatever your hopes and dreams, I have bigger plans for you.  Eternal plans.  A plan to give you hope and a future in the glory of my eternal Promised Land.  In the resurrection, you will stand there with Moses, Elijah, Peter, James, John, all the apostles, all the departed saints, all your baptized believing loved ones who went before you.  Look to the Mount of Transfiguration to be reminded of your heavenly destiny.  And look to the altar where I gather your hopes and dreams and give you a foretaste of the feast to come.”
            Amen.

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