"The Thinnest of Veils - The Brightest of Lights" - A Sermon for Transfiguration Sunday

Preaching Text: Mark 9.2-9
Jesus is transfigured before Peter, James & John

O Morning Star, how fair and bright, You shine with God’s own truth and light, aglow with grace and mercy!
Of Jacob’s race, King David’s son, Our Lord and master, You have won our hearts to serve You only!
Lowly, holy, Great and glorious, all victorious, rich in blessing! Rule and might o’er all possessing!

Come, heav’nly bridegroom, light divine, and deep within our hearts now shine; there light a flame undying!
In Your one body let us be as living branches of a tree; Your life our lives supplying.
Now, though daily Earth’s deep sadness may perplex us and distress us, yet with heav’nly joy You bless us.

The Thinnest of Veils

A speaker we heard last Monday night said that in Celtic mythology the space between heaven and earth is very thin, that the presence of God is often separated from us by a thin veil of our own misperceptions. This speaker also said that at times of great significance and importance the veil is stretched to its thinnest limit of all. Those times are when the divine draws closest of all to us: birth and death, those moments when a great goal is achieved or lost, and especially the most famous of all Celtic observances, Samhain – which we celebrate today as the Eve of All Saints, or Halloween.

The Transfiguration of our Lord is not a Celtic mythology written into the Christian story. The fact that Matthew, Mark and Luke all record the Transfiguration tells us that something happened when Peter, James & John followed their master Jesus up into the Galilean hill country. What it was we’ll never know for sure – but we do know that for God, for Jesus and for the disciples who followed him, that something was a something of great importance.

I think it’s safe to assume that we’ve all known ‘mountaintop’ experiences. For some of us in this human race, the phrase is a literal truth: some people actually climb to the top of the highest mountains in order to gaze out at the world below and appreciate its splendor. The crisp, thin air helps our eyes to see distance and detail far greater than normal human experience. With all the obstacles of the valley removed, we see the world with a different point of view; the hills and trees that seemed insurmountable from below are now just bumps and twigs. You see things differently from the top of the mountain; the veil between heaven and earth has never seemed thinner.

Even if you haven’t ever climbed a mountain, the metaphor remains the same; some great experience has come and given you clarity and vision far beyond your normal ability to see and understand. Maybe it’s an experience you pursued, or maybe it’s a circumstance that was forced upon you. One of my fellow pastors this week, a woman, compared the mountaintop experience to the experience of giving birth, something to which only some of you women can relate. But her description made it real for the rest of us: the way your body takes over, the way you cannot control what’s happening to you, the way it is holy because you are giving birth to some part of yourself which will now become a person, a child, the way your life is changed forever by this powerful experience.

Whatever your experience has been, you know that Peter and James and John had something remarkably similar that day in the hill country of Galilee. Their master called them to follow Him into something incredible, something beyond themselves. Their master led them to a place where the veil between heaven and earth was torn apart, and they saw Jesus in all His glory and splendor. And they were terrified.

It’s one thing to have a beloved teacher, someone to whom you pledge your allegiance because you believe that He has truth to impart to you. It’s another thing entirely to see your beloved Rabbi become something angelic and magnificent and wondrous beyond description right before your eyes. It’s another thing entirely to see your beloved Rabbi in consultation with Moses and Elijah, the two great figures of Israel’s history. It’s another thing entirely to come into the presence of the God of heaven and earth.

In the Transfiguration the veil between heaven and earth is gone, and Peter, James & John see what God has intended life to be from the beginning. They see friends so filled with the light of God’s presence that they are radiant. They hear the voice of God descending from heaven and calling them into relationship with God’s Son. Any kind of delusion they might have built to protect themselves from their own failings, from their own mundane lives, from their bondage to sin was gone – burned away by the light of the presence of God in that place. Is it any wonder they were terrified? Sinners who come into the presence of the Holy are guaranteed that death will follow soon after – and even if their bodies didn’t die, their false sense of security in the reality they had known was destroyed by that wondrous light and by the thundering voice of God. Time and space stood still for a moment while Peter, James and John were given a glimpse into the eternity that is God almighty and God’s Son Jesus, the Christ.

Lord, when You look on us in love, at once there falls from God above a ray of purest pleasure.
Your Word and Spirit, flesh and blood refresh our souls with heav’nly food. You are our dearest treasure!
Let Your mercy warm and cheer us! Oh, draw near us! For You teach us God’s own love through You has reached us.

Almighty Father, in Your Son You loved us, when not yet begun was this old earth’s foundation!
Your Son has ransomed us in love to live in Him here and above; this is Your great salvation.
Aleluia! Christ the living to us giving life forever, keeps us Yours and fails us never!

The Brightest of Lights
Mark notes that Jesus was the brightest of all lights on that mountain that day. Jesus’ clothes were more dazzlingly bright than anything on earth had ever been. Was that light burned into their eyes? Did Peter say such remarkably silly things because the choice was either speak or die? We don’t know. We know that Jesus became on that day the brightest of all lights – He was transfigured from the poor homeless teacher and carpenter into the glorious Son of God, the mighty one who speaks with Moses and Elijah as an equal. The veil was torn and Jesus was shown for everything that He truly was.

But was He changed? Did Jesus become something different in that moment of transfiguration? NO. The voice from heaven did not say, “This was my beloved Son.” The voice from heaven did not say, “This is now my beloved Son.” The voice from heaven said, “This IS My beloved Son.” Jesus is the beloved Son of God. Jesus has always been the beloved Son of God. Jesus always will be the beloved Son of God. The mountaintop didn’t make Jesus anything different – the mountaintop changed Peter, James & John, but it did not change Jesus one iota.

The cloud of God’s presence comes to Peter, James & John to help them see. The voice of God, thundering out of that cloud, is a light to help them see Jesus clearly. And the brightest of lights on that mountain was not Jesus in full glory, splendor and magnificence: the brightest light came when the cloud was gone, when Moses and Elijah were gone, when the veil between heaven and earth snapped back into place and ‘they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.”

Mountaintop experiences are more than we can possibly contain within ourselves. Mountaintop experiences are times when our vulnerability is at its highest because the veil between our lives and the life of God is pulled away and our bondage to sin and death is burned away by the splendor of God’s presence. In this life we cannot withstand the holiness of God’s unrestrained power and presence – and so God sends a light into this world that we can embrace. God sends a light into this world that can call us into relationship and life. God sends a light into this world who can tell of God’s great and unchanging love for us. God sent Jesus into the world to give all the splendor and magnificence of God in a form and person we could see and love. That bright light in our darkness is Jesus: homeless, frail, human Jesus, who bears within Himself all the power and majesty of His Father’s great creative love.

Peter, James & John were given a great gift that day on the mountain, but that gift was not the light of Jesus’ magnificence; it was the walk down the mountain with their good friend Jesus. The gift was a messiah who stayed with them in their darkness, giving himself fully into the world so that the world might be brought out of darkness. The gift was only Jesus, as He was, God’s powerful Son and Peter, James & John’s loving, surprising, challenging teacher and friend. Jesus’ love for his friends was the light that sustained them through all darkness – and it is the light of that love that holds us in the valleys we walk when we aren’t on the mountain with Jesus in all his splendor.

What a gift we have this day – to see Jesus in all His splendor and to know that He is also our dearest friend and greatest treasure. What a gift we are given today – to know that when our time on the mountain is over, Jesus will walk with us into the valleys and plains of our lives and accompany us through all of our experiences, whether we rejoice on the mountain, despair in the valley, or simply slog our way through the flat, boring plains. In Him the veil between heaven and earth is pulled aside, because heaven is found where God loves – and only Jesus loves us in all our mountains, valleys and plains. Thanks be to Jesus, our fair and bright Morning Star. Amen.

What Joy to know, when life is past, the Lord we love is first and last, the end and the beginning!
He will on day, oh, glorious grace, transport us to that happy place beyond all tears and sinning!
Amen! Amen! Come, Lord Jesus! Crown of gladness! We are yearning for the day of Your returning.

Oh, let the harps break forth in sound! Our joy be all with music crowned, our voices gaily blending!
For Christ goes with us all the way – today, tomorrow, ev’ry day! His love is never ending!
Sing out! Ring out! Jubilation! Exultation! Tell the story!
Great is He the King of glory!