Now this is more like it!  We’ve got Jesus’ face shining like the sun.  His clothing bright white.  On a mountain top!  Playing host to two of the biggest names in Judaism, Moses and Elijah.  Finally!  Jesus is getting the respect he is due!

Peter is so wowed by the whole scene, he wants to set up shop right there.  This kingdom of heaven Jesus has been talking about?  It’s arrived!  Let’s set up tents. Let’s get this party started.  After all, Jesus is King!  Peter looks around and says, this is a good place.  On a mountaintop with an entourage of VIP’s.  What a perfect place to headquarter the kingdom of God.  We can make this our base of operations from now on!

Peter doesn’t get very far in his plans, though, before he is stopped short by a bright cloud.  A voice spoke from the cloud saying, “This is my much-loved Son, the one who makes my heart glad.  Listen to him!”

And with that, Peter’s grand visions come to an abrupt halt.  He goes from being on cloud nine, thrilled with ideas of glory—to falling flat on his face, humbled and afraid.  They had just arrived in this magical place.  Things were going so well!  How could it all come crashing down so quickly?

Today is Transfiguration Sunday, when we traditionally look at this unusual story as we prepare to begin the season of Lent this coming Wednesday.  We know that this mountain top experience marked a moment of transition for Jesus, the moment when his ministry went from being focused on serving the people in his region, to becoming focused on the cross so he could serve all of humanity.  The mountaintop experience was given to Jesus as a gift, a foretaste of glory divine, to help him through the coming time of trial.  The mountain top experience was also given to Peter, James, and John—and to us—as a gift, a foretaste of glory divine meant to help keep us nourished through difficult times.

But it is a very unusual gift, isn’t it?  We’ve spent two months now working in the book of Matthew.  Just when we thought maybe we were starting to get Jesus figured out, along comes this miraculous event.  We’re used to Jesus performing miracles.  But this time, the miracle was performed on him.  What are we to make of this story?

When we started this series on the book of Matthew, my hope was that we would glean from this gospel some useful tools for our faith toolbox.  We talked about Jesus calling us the salt of the earth, and how important it is for us to care for our own souls so we don’t lose our saltiness.  We talked about getting a Worry Eater, and focusing on Jesus as our best friend instead of letting darkness and worry be our best friend.  We talked about the importance of both mercy and righteousness, and living from that sacred overlap.  The book of Matthew has a lot of practical wisdom to help us keep our faith strong during challenging times.

And practical wisdom is important.  About twice a month, I listen to worship services from other churches, and I always love it when a sermon is practical.  Give me something I can use this week!  Give me something to make faithful living easier to execute, or at least easier to understand!  I call them Bento Box sermons.  Have you ever heard of a Bento Box?  It’s a modern lunch box.  I bought this one for myself.  It has three compartments to make packing your lunch easier and more attractive.  It has a big compartment for the main dish, and two smaller compartments for fruits, vegetables, dessert or salty snack.  Fill up the compartments with different foods, and you’re on your way to a balanced meal.  The lid of the Bento Box even has a built-in spoon and fork!  Talk about practical!

But practical can only take us so far.  I find myself craving more than just simple solutions.  I hunger and thirst for reminders that there is something—or more accurately Someone—who is bigger than all we see and know in the world, who doesn’t fit into my Bento Box, and who is always at work for good! I find myself craving evidence of that prevenient grace Methodists like to talk about, evidence that God is at work behind the scenes, surprising us with glimpses of glory if only we have eyes to see.  Last week I mentioned the book The Sacred Overlap by J.R. Briggs, and he offers a word to explain our situation:  simplexity.  We need simple faith, simple routines, simple solutions to make life more manageable.  But we also need complexity.  We need the most sophisticated knowledge available to tackle our problems, and we need to be reminded that the most Sophisticated Being in the universe is on our side, at work for good, and made 100% of love.

So yeah, I like my Bento Box lunches.  But I also like dinner in a fancy restaurant with tablecloths!  I crave the complicated as well as the simple!  Simplexity.  What a great way to explain our faith.  Last week when I talked about the Venn Diagram, someone mentioned to me after church that we actually have had a Venn Diagram on display for several weeks in our sanctuary.  I had never noticed that before, but our green parament lecturn cloths have a symbol of the Holy Trinity that looks a lot like a Venn Diagram.  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit each have their own circles.  But they overlap.  God in Three Persons, three distinct personalities and ways of working in the world—but one essence.  One being.  Blessed trinity.  It’s as simple—and as incredibly complex—as that!

 

This week I heard about, bought, and read a book called The Four Habits of Joy-Filled Marriages by Marcus Warner and Chris Coursey.  The authors claim that you can improve your marriage significantly in just fifteen minutes a day using their four simple steps.  Bento Box marriage enrichment:  I like it!  But the practical can only take us so far.  The back of the book asks, “What separates happy marriages from miserable ones?  Surprisingly it’s not communication.  It’s not conflict resolution.  It’s actually how often you experience joy.  When joy is inconsistent, problems are more likely to overwhelm you.  When you experience joy regularly, problems feel manageable, and your marriage stays strong.”  Turns out the four simple steps hinge on a very complex phenomenon:  joy.  The authors argue that their techniques are based on brain science, but the techniques only work if we are willing to put our trust in the power of love, which is a reality much bigger than we can explain.  Simplexity.  We need both the simple and the complex–the God we know and understand, and the God that is the Mysterious Other.  Worship happens when we encounter God in this sacred overlap.

 

 

Our scripture lesson today reminds us that God does not fit into any Bento Box.  Peter, James and John had spent three years with Jesus, they thought they knew what he was all about, and when they got the top of that mountain, they thought they had seen Jesus’ work come to completion.  This was the Jesus they had in mind!  Which is somewhat surprising, because just six days before, as Matthew points out, Jesus had spent a lot of time explaining to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things, and that he must be killed, and on the third day be raised to life.  Peter was appalled, and Jesus uttered that heart-wrenching line none of us ever want to hear, “Get behind me, Satan!”  Jesus harshly rebuked Peter for resisting God’s plan.  Jesus told the disciples they must deny themselves and take up their cross.  Which is another way of saying, you must be willing to suffer and be humiliated and be put to shame as opposed to being raised up and admired and adored.

It was on the heels of that teaching that Jesus selected Peter, James and John to witness the transfiguration.  At first they misunderstood the situation.  We love a complex, mysterious God when God does what we want God to do!  They were thrilled to see Jesus radiant and surrounded by faith hall of famers.  But God’s ways are not our ways.  God’s plans are not our plans.  The path we would choose for ourselves would spare us from suffering, 100% of the time.  But the Transfiguration story reminds us not to get seduced into wanting our will.  There is no easy path to glory.

On Wednesday, we begin the season of Lent.  Lent in and of itself is something of a mystery.  It is a liturgical season that is never mentioned in the Bible, but got its start in 325 with the Council of Nicaea.  Christians from all over gathered to hammer out doctrines of our faith.  They wisely saw that Christianity is about more than just believing the right things.  It is about doing the right things.  And about having right relationships.  They lifted up the Resurrection as the central event in Christianity, and observed that some season of preparation would be important so we can be ready to really celebrate and take in the miracle of Easter.  They landed on 40 days of preparation because Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness, preparing his public ministry.  And there are other examples of 40 day periods in the Bible, preparing for a new reality, such as Noah and 40 days of rain, Moses fasting for 40 days on Mt. Sinai before receiving the Ten Commandments, and Elijah fasting for 40 days on Mt. Horeb.

Lent was set as the 40 days before Easter, not including Sundays.  People often wonder why that is, and to me, this is an example of the complexity I crave.  Long before we had brain research that said people need frequent experiences of joy in order to be healthy, the Church said, we can’t go for forty days without joy!  God told them that, and centuries later, the science confirms this holy wisdom.  The season of Lent is a special time of spiritual preparation, which is good.  But was never meant to be a season without joy.  To guarantee that, Sundays are not included in the days of Lent because every Sunday is a celebration of the Resurrection.  Every Sunday should be a day of Sabbath joy, of being reminded that God is Love, and God is happy to have you as part of God’s family, and God wants to connect with you and bless you.

The season of Lent is not without joy, but it also reminds us that there is no easy road to glory.  Christians have historically dedicated the season of Lent to practices that will help them identify with Jesus’ time in the wilderness and his suffering.  Practices like fasting, giving to the poor, and repentance are important spiritual undertakings.  This is why Lent is often regarded as a somber, depressing time.  Which is sad, because the word “lent” itself means to lengthen—as in, the days are getting longer!  Lent should be a season that helps us be LESS depressed, not more!  But this will only happen if we learn to experience the joy that happens when we surrender our own wills, and seek to more faithfully fulfill God’s will.  It is a joy to make sacrifices when those sacrifices connect us to the Mysterious Other who loves us—and the world– completely.

Just before the pandemic started, we had a chili supper and hosted two United Methodist pastors from Kentucky who are part of the Red Bird Mission we support every year as one of our Missions of the Month.  They introduced us to a phrase, “Glory Sightings”.  Times when we see evidence of God at work in mysterious and surprising ways.  The story of the Transfiguration was a Glory Sighting of epic proportions for Peter, James and John.  They did nothing to earn this privilege.  That they were witnesses was as gift from God to them.  As exciting as glory sightings can be, though, the Transfiguration story is a reminder to us that, we don’t have God all figured out.  Even when God lets us in on something miraculous, there is more going on than we can see or know.  And it’s not the end of our sufferings.  But don’t let this scare you!  When Peter, James and John fell on their faces in fear, Jesus touched them, he reassured them, and he told them to stand up.  That is what God’s perfect love does.  It casts out all our fear, so that even when we don’t understand what’s going on, we can still trust that God is with us and at work for good.  It’s as simple, and as complex, as that.

On this Transfiguration Sunday, as we look toward Lent, and even further out on the horizon, Easter, let us remember that we need both the God that fits into our Bento Boxes—and the God that doesn’t.  May we be transfigured into people willing to deny ourselves and take up our crosses as we follow Jesus on the road to glory.  Amen.

 

 

Benediction:  Lord Jesus Christ, Most Merciful Redeemer, Friend and Brother, help us this day and everyday to see Thee more clearly, to follow Thee more nearly, to love Thee more dearly, for Thy Name’s sake. Amen.