297 Only Jesus

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Only Jesus”, originally shared on February 7, 2024. It was the 297^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.) 

   Have you ever thought that if God would give you a really clear sign, your faith would really be strong? Today we’re going to find out why that probably would not be the case.

   We’ve had some pretty terrible weather this past week. We were told it was coming. We were told to avoid traveling in it if possible. We were told not to try to drive through flooded areas. Yet, we saw flooded out and stalled cars throughout the storm. Why?

   I saw a roadside banner online once that said, “This year, thousands of men will die from stubbornness.” And under it, someone had spray painted, “NO WE WON’T.”

   Have you ever gotten into a discussion that got so heated that you knew you were wrong, but you felt like you’d backed yourself into a corner and you couldn’t get out of it?

   I wonder if that’s the way that Peter felt at the end of Mark 8:27-38.

   One day, Jesus was walking along with his disciples when he asked them, “Who do people say that I am?” His disciples answered with some popular theories. Then Jesus asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter said out loud what many had been thinking and hoping, but no one had had the nerve to say, “You are the Messiah.”

   Jesus was the anointed deliverer that God’s people, the Jews, had been waiting for for around 1,000 years. No one wanted to say it. They didn’t want to get their hopes up by admitting it. But now, there it was. And Jesus told the disciples not to tell anyone about him.

   Then Jesus told them that he would suffer, and be rejected by the Jewish authorities, and be killed, and after three days rise again.

   Peter was shocked and he took Jesus aside and rebuked Jesus for saying this.

   And Jesus seriously rebuked Peter and told Peter that he was missing the big picture.

   Then Jesus told the crowd with his disciples that sacrifice was central to being a follower of Jesus and that if they were ashamed of Him, He would be ashamed of them when He returned, in the glory of his Father with his holy angels.

   And He said, “Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.”

   So, if you were Peter, how would you be feeling? Betrayed? Confused? Angry? Would you double down, or wait and see what happened next? If you were Jesus, what would you do?

   Six days later, Jesus takes Peter and two of his disciples to a mountain top that gave them a vision of eternity.

   “Six days” is how Genesis describes God’s Creation of everything that exists. God created it out of nothing.

   Something good was about to happen again after six days. We and Peter and James and John were going to get a clear sign from God. Would it make their faith strong? Did it make ours’? Let’s see.

   Six days later, this happened, in the reading from the Gospels that will be shared in the vast majority of churches in the world this coming Sunday, Mark 9:2-9.

   It begins with verses 2-3,

2 Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, 3 and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them.

   Mark is the shortest and simplest of the four gospels. It uses the most basic vocabulary in its original language. It has the most common touch, as in this detail not found in any of the others, where what impressed Mark was not that Jesus’ face shown like the sun, but that Jesus’ clothes became dazzling white, like in the laundry commercials, only more dazzling than anyone on earth could bleach them.

   Jesus shows Peter and James and John who he is in his heavenly glory. He is transfigured before them. And while they are still trying to process this, he reveals to them who he is in his earthly mission, in Mark 9:4,

4 And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus.

   Moses was the person through whom God gave the religious Law that defined the life of God’s people.

   Elijah was the great prophet, a person through whom God spoke to God’s people.

   Together they represented the Law and the Prophets, aka what were then known as the Scriptures, and are known to us today as the Old Testament.  And, though long dead, they are talking with Jesus!

   Then Peter speaks up again. Maybe Peter thinks that this is his chance to make up for his previous embarrassment but, things don’t quite work out that way, in Mark 9:5-7,

5 Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” 6 He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. 7 Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”

   Peter, who we already know is often the impulsive one, seems to be still trying to figure out what this all means. He proposes that the three disciples build a housing development, three dwellings for Moses and Elijah and for Jesus. He wants to keep them there. He wants to preserve the moment.

   He’s like people who hold their phones up to record a concert or some other life event, but who aren’t really present in that moment. They remove themselves from it. Jesus wants the disciples to experience the message there in that moment.

   But, in their defense, they may have just been scared.

   The disciples knew their Bible, and they knew that people don’t just enter into the divine presence of God and live.

   Then, before Jesus can respond to them, we see the meaning of the Transfiguration in verse 8,

8 Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

   “Only Jesus.” The Law and the Prophets were not there, only Jesus. Jesus is the fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets. Only Jesus.

   The disciples were having a mountain top experience. They had been told that Jesus was going to suffer and die at the end of the previous chapter, in Mark 8. Now they were being given the big picture of what it all meant. That’s what mountain-top experiences do.

   The traditional site for the Transfiguration is Mt. Tabor, about 9 miles from Nazareth. It’s not much of a mountain, but it stands out on the plain near Nazareth. I climbed it when I was a student on a semester abroad in college and it’s no big deal. I climbed it in the rain, though, and when I got to the top, the Greek Orthodox monastery there was not taking in tourists. So, I climbed down in the rain. I did not have a mountain top experience.   

   The disciples did have a mountain top experience, and then Jesus makes a very strange request. No. He gives them an order, in Mark 9:9,

9 As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.

   Not only does Jesus not want to let the disciples stay on the mountain top, not only does He not want them to bask in God’s affirmation of Jesus, Jesus does not want the disciples to tell anyone about what had to be the greatest experience in their lives!

   Why? Why not have them tell everyone about this experience. Wouldn’t it validate who Jesus was. Wouldn’t it make his path easier? And theirs?

   No, that’s not how faith works. It’s not built upon signs.

   The three disciples couldn’t have received a clearer sign from God, and yet their faith was not made strong. They never seemed to get the point when Jesus was teaching. Every one of them denied they even knew Jesus at the end, and Peter denied him three times!

   Jesus did lots of miracles. And he had thousands of followers when he was providing free food and medical care. But what happened to them when it all stopped? Those who witnessed miracles didn’t have a stronger faith. Jesus’ “church growth” graph dropped to zero.

   I read a story once about a preacher who had delivered a sermon on the struggle of serving God in the world in the army of the Lord.

   Afterward, a man came out of the worship space to shake the preacher’s hand and said, “I too have served here for many years in the army of the Lord.”

   The preacher said, “Really? I don’t remember seeing you at worship before, or in any of our community activities or ministries.”

   The man leaned forward and whispered, “I’m in the secret service.”

   Don’t be that guy.

   We are not spies. We are ambassadors.

   There is no secret for us to keep.

   We live on the “after” side of “until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”

   We live mostly in the valleys of life where we are called, equipped, and sent to serve, where things change and grow and are transformed.

   We live to proclaim Jesus: crucified, risen, and coming again. We proclaim a life of faith!

   Faith didn’t completely come to the disciples until the Day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was poured out on God’s people, and they had not tasted death when, as Jesus had promised at the end of Mark 8, they saw that the kingdom of God had come with power.

   Remember when, in Luke 16:19-31, the rich man was in Hades and Lazarus, the homeless guy who had lived at his gate, was at the side of Abraham and the rich guy asked Abraham to send Lazarus to warn his brothers about Hades? Abraham replies, “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”

   We encounter the one true living God through the Bible by the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Faith comes through hearing the word of God. It transforms our lives; we change and we grow.

   The whole Bible is Spirit-filled, and we are filled with that same Spirit that comes through the encounter with the living transformative presence of God in the reading of the Bible.

   Do you plan to watch the Super Bowl this Sunday?

   When you watch football, do you yell at the screen, “A penalty? That’s not a penalty!” or “It’s a run play! A run to the right!”

   It’s easy to know what’s going on when you’re not on the field.

   Do you watch the gameshow, “Jeopardy”? Do ever find that you know the answer to a question and none of the contestants do, so you’re yelling at the screen “Spore!  It’s Spore!”

   Every question is easy when you know the answer.    

   But you know that they can’t hear you, right? So why do we do it? Because we can’t believe that the people we see don’t know what we know.

   The same is true of the Christian faith. God doesn’t keep us on the mountain top. God sends us into the world. Because there are increasing numbers of people who don’t know what we do.

   One of the members of the church I served in San Dimas led the American expedition to climb Mr. Everest in the early ‘90’s. His wife did the logistics.

   It took a year of paying fees to various officials and agreeing to carry out some of the trash left by previous expeditions before they got approval.

   They trained at a base camp with their team and then they made the climb. Late on the final night, they were within 1,000 meters of the top. Everyone on the team was exhausted and/or sick, and they were almost out of oxygen. But they were close to their goal and only one man had to reach the summit for it to be considered a successful expedition. So, one man agreed to strike out to make it to the top, and our member kept in contact with him by radio.

   The climber reported that he could take a step, and then he would have to rest for several minutes before the next step, but he kept going like this until he reported that he was almost out of oxygen.

   He called to ask what he should do. Should keep going or should he come back and climb down the mountain with the team?

   If our member told him to keep going, he might make it or he might die. If he told him to come back, his mission would be a failure within 1,000 meters of the summit.

   What do you think you would do?

   Our member told him to come back. He sacrificed his goal for the sake of a human life.

   Jesus gives us a vision of his heavenly glory and his earthly mission on the mountain of the Transfiguration.

   He took Peter and James and John and climbed down that mountain. And he died on the cross.

   To the world, Jesus’ mission was a failure. But to God, Jesus, fully God and fully human being, sacrificed his own life for the sake of the world to restore the living relationship with the one true living God for which we were created.

   Jesus saved the world. That is what we proclaim because we see what the world doesn’t see. Because we know what the world doesn’t know. And because we have received the gift that God offers to all people.

   It’s Jesus. Only Jesus.