Here's Your Sign

This sermon was delivered on Transfiguration of the Lord Sunday, February 18, 2007 at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas.

Exodus 34:29-35
Psalm 99
2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2
Luke 9:28-36

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

The January 2007 issue of Esquire Magazine was its “The Meaning of Life” issue. The cover says the issue includes “wisdom and good advice.”[1] The series of articles that shares this wisdom is called “What I’ve Learned.” The way the interview looked, it was a basic question and answer session, but the way it was written it was impossible to get a feel for the exact questions.
The interview that got my attention was the last name on the cover and what it said about him: “James Watson, who helped discover DNA and still can’t find God.” Hey, I’m a Christian, this gets my attention.

In his interview, Dr. Watson[2] says, “I’ve seen no evidence of a god, so I’m not going to think about one. Being raised nonreligious made you free. You could look at the evidence. Whether being nonreligious or a democrat was more important, I can’t tell you.”[3] Watson finds no evidence of God, but there are those who have seen evidence of God, and on this Transfiguration Sunday we read about their witness.

Transfiguration, what a fancy word. The term comes from the Latin, so it sounds very impressive. It’s really a pretty simple word though when it’s taken apart. “Trans-” is a prefix meaning change. “Figure” refers to the appearance of the individual. So transfiguration means, “A marked change in form or appearance.”[4] But in this case, it means so much more. It means the marked change in appearance is supernatural, a glorified change.[5] This change of appearance isn’t like me shaving my beard, even though that would surely qualify as a marked change. No, this is something more.

The book of Exodus makes it clear that we are unable to look upon the face of the Lord. Moses is said to be in the presence of the Lord, but scripture never tells us they had a face to face. According to today’s reading, Moses leaves the presence of the Lord with the Ten Commandments, the two tablets of the covenant. Upon his return to the camp, the people noticed that there was a change in Moses’ appearance. The skin of his face shone, it shone because he had been talking with God.

So how do the people respond? Scripture tells us they were afraid to come near him. Everyone, even Moses’ brother Aaron was afraid to come near him. Regardless of the reason Moses was calling them to him, they were afraid to come near. Really, can you blame them? Nothing like this had ever happened before; at least scripture had never reported anything like this before. We know why Moses’ face shone, they did not.

The people deserved to be leery of Moses glowing like the dial on my watch.

So Moses called to them, Aaron and all the leaders of the congregation. And they came to him. Moses called them together to share the Good News of the Lord. But imagine the looks on their faces when he was talking. Distracted would describe the look, but I think it would only begin to describe how they looked and felt.

Moses discerned that the change in his appearance was so disturbing to the Israelites that he chose to cover his face while with the assembly. When Moses was with the Lord or when Moses was telling the assembly what the Lord had said, he dropped the veil. Otherwise, this became the only way that Moses could be with the people and appear like a normal man, not the one who had been anointed by the glow of the Lord.

As verse 32 tells us, Moses gave them in commandment all that the Lord had spoken to him on Mount Sinai. But the message almost got lost in the appearance of the messenger. This is the first time this sort of thing was reported in scripture, but it wasn’t the last. Today we are privy to the greatest example of the glow of the Lord, the Transfiguration of Jesus Christ.

This is a miraculous occasion, a time of glory and majesty. This is the perfect time to rest and reflect upon the wonders and grace of life in Jesus Christ. These three men, Jesus’ closest earthly confidants; what are they doing? The New Revised Standard Version says they were fighting off sleep. According to other translations, sleep had won.

But this sight, whether they were fully asleep or not, made them fully awake. Here is their master with Moses, the bearer of the law; and Elijah, the one who would return preceding the Messiah. This is a glorious sight.

Peter responds as only Peter knows how: he wants to do something now! Let’s build dwellings, or shelters or tabernacles or memorials again depending on your translation, one apiece!
Can’t you just see the looks on the faces of John and James? “Huh? What?”[6]

But we can’t really blame Peter; he was so thrilled he had no idea what he was saying. This is Peter’s way. Peter’s response shows again that the message of the transfiguration almost got lost in the appearance of the messenger.

The people of Israel received a sign in the shining face of Moses. Peter, John, and James received a sign when they were allowed to see Jesus transfigured in glory and majesty. And in both cases, with the glow, the listeners received the word of the Lord. Moses shared the word the Lord gave him with the people. Peter, James, and John got one better—they heard the voice of God, words echoed from Jesus’ baptism, “This is my Son, my Chosen,” followed by the command, “listen to him!”

Futurama is a television show produced by the creator of “The Simpson’s.” It’s about a man, Philip J. Frye, who was accidentally frozen in a cryogenic lab at midnight on December 31, 1999 and thawed 1,000 years later. In the episode titled “Godfellas,” Frye’s best friend and roommate, a robot named Bender, is accidentally shot from a space ship’s torpedo tube while it’s traveling at maximum velocity. Since Bender is moving faster than the ship’s top speed, there is no way to catch up and rescue him. Bender floats through space until he passes through an asteroid field and accidentally accumulates a microscopic civilization on his stomach (or what passes for a stomach on a robot), which declares him God, and worships him despite his constant inability to provide for their needs.[7]

After the civilization that lived on Bender destroyed itself, he was distraught. Then he found an eternal omnipotent presence, the cartoon equivalent of the god of the universe. Bender shares his lament with the greater power. He says that no matter what he did, he could not help them. He did something, it didn’t work. He did nothing, and that didn’t work either. Then Bender learned the lesson of quality miracles from the being, “When you’ve done something right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.”

Dr. Watson, the DNA guy, says that he has seen no evidence of god, so he isn’t willing to even think about God. But I like this idea from Futurama. When a miracle is done right, we may not be sure God did anything at all.

We live in a complex and complicated world, we are a busy people. There is always something to take our minds from a restful place and engage us in something new. It’s not that there is no evidence of God, it’s just that in a society of adrenaline junkies that insists on dramatic experiences, we can easily miss the subtle evidence God provides. This could be by design, like the god in Futurama; the discreet signs now seem so obvious to us that we take them for granted.

Peter, John, and James got a sign, didn’t they? They were witness to a miracle that could have made Dr. Watson acknowledge the presence of God. But as Dr. Watson might point out, it has been a long, long time since a moment like this one, and we aren’t likely to see one like it any time soon. Where’s our sign?

Look around…in our prayers we give thanks for the sun and the rain. We offer thanks for mercies received. We thank God for the world around us and a place to worship. We pray for the sick and infirm, many of whom we don’t know individually and thanks be to God that as the church we do know them. We give thanks for the waters of our baptism and the sacramental meal which nourishes the Body of Christ. We give thanks to God for our daily bread. We give thanks for the small miracles around us every day. And even though they are common and ordinary, they are still miracles. The message gets lost again in the appearance of the messenger. Only this time, the appearance is too ordinary to get our attention.

So what should we do? We should do as the Israelites did. We should listen to the word of God all around us. And the word of God comes in wonderful and mysterious ways. It comes in the first light of the sunrise and the last light of the sunset. It comes in the face of those we love, and those who love us. It comes in words of encouragement, words we hear and words we share. It comes to us in the word of God recorded for us to read. It comes to us in the living word of Jesus Christ. We need to listen to the word of God around us. Be still, and listen for the word of the Lord. The voice from the cloud tells Peter, John, and James “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” Listen to the voice, this is the first step. Listen; resting and reflecting upon the wonders and grace of life in Jesus Christ in the arms of the loving God.

As our Psalm teaches, the Lord is great; he is high over all the peoples. Let us confess his great and awesome name for he is the Holy One. The Sovereign God loves justice and establishes equity; executing justice and righteousness. And as God calls Moses and Aaron and Samuel, God calls each of us. God speaks to us. We have our signs, let us follow them. We must now listen for the word of the Lord and answer in word and in deed.

[1] The cover actually says “wisdom and damn good advice,” but I chose to edit my reading for delicate ears.
[2] Ph.D., Indiana University, Zoology, 1950.
[3] Richardson, John H., “What I’ve Learned, James Watson,” Esquire. January 2007, vol. 147, no. 1.
[4] transfiguration. Dictionary.com. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/transfiguration (accessed: February 17, 2007).
[5] Ibid.
[6] Read with puzzled facial expression.
[7] Keeler, Ken, “Godfellas,” Futurama. episode 52, taken from TV.com, http://www.tv.com/futurama/godfellas/episode/125571/summary.html, February 17, 2007.