Ministries Sermons School Youth Home
FEBRUARY 3 , 2008
And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James, and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light. And behold, there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. And Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.” He was still speaking when, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” When the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces and were terrified. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Rise, and have no fear.” And when they lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only. And as they were coming down the mountain, Jesus commanded them, “Tell no one the vision, until the Son of Man is raised from the dead.”
Matthew 17:1–9
Peter anticipated it. He anticipated that many would think that the account of Christ’s glorification on the Mt. of Transfiguration was just a fairy tale. So he confronts the naysayers of his day (and ours) with an emphatic statement. He says in 2 Peter 1:16, 18,
For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. ... for we were with him on the holy mountain.1
Eyewitnesses! The apostle John was an eyewitness too. And he wrote in the first chapter of his Gospel, “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory, the glory as the only–begotten of the Father.”2 In saying this, John is surely including the transfiguration as a significant part of Christ’ total glorification.
Our text narrates that event. And so to our text we go. Peter, James, and John see the transfigured Christ, so bright, so brilliant, and so incredible! Suddenly, Moses and Elijah appeared and started talking with him. “This is so amazing,” Peter is thinking to himself. He is flush with wonder. And Peter, being Peter, just has to say something. So he blurts out a quick sentence, saying to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, let us make here three tabernacles: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”3
Peter is filled with wonder and awe. He wants to prolong this ecstatic experience. And so he suggests that he will erect three shelters, one for each of the three glorious persons. He wants this glimpse of glory to remain. He wants to capture the moment by erecting permanent dwellings for them. He wants this moment on the mountaintop to continue.
How like us! In our walk with Jesus, we too, may have mountaintop moments. We may remember, for example, the wonderful way that God answered our prayers, or a time in the hospital (or when we were laid low) when we felt a special closeness to God, or a time in Divine Service when the music, or the sermon, or the reception of the Lord’s Supper moved us to a sense of wonderment.
By nature, we treasure such mountaintop moments. But eventually, just like Peter, we must come down from the mountain. We can’t live there because life has to be lived in the real world, a fallen world. Because of its fallenness, life is filled with sighing and crying. King David knew the tribulations of this life. Filled with sorrow, he cried out, “My heart is in anguish within me” 4 ... “So I said, ‘Oh, that I had wings like a dove! I would fly away and be at rest.’”5
Have you ever felt that way? I know I have. When we walk through life’s valleys, it is then that our Savior throws his arms wide open and says, “Come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”6 Don’t you see? Don’t you see that our daily fears and frustrations, our frequent sighs and sorrows, our ever–present struggles and setbacks are the way things really are in a world infected by sin? Yes, the daily grind is the rule. The mountaintop experience is the exception. Fallenness is the norm. But, if God wills it, he may grant a mountaintop moment from time to time. But only after this life does God promise us the crown of glory.7
But sadly, much of what passes for biblical Christianity today is a perpetual seeking after mountaintop experiences and earthly crowns.
What lies! Common also is the exhortation to listen to the voice of God within you. The idea that the relationship between Christ and the Christian is to be experiential and even rapturously joyful is the common theme of much Christian radio and TV programming today. “If only you will follow these steps,” we are told, “your whole life will begin to change and God will shower his earthly blessings on you.” Well, God may, indeed, shower us with earthly blessings. But he doesn’t promise to do so. To lead people to expect such blessings as the norm is mountaintop theology.
Don’t get me wrong: God can do anything he wants to. But he has not given us any clear promise that this is what he will do. Nor has he given us a Biblical “methodology” as to how to sustain mountaintop moments. God’s plan for permanent life on the mountaintop is our translation from this life (and the kingdom of grace) to eternal life (and the kingdom of glory)!
Please understand: God is in the business of populating heaven!
Mountaintop theology, or the “theology of glory” as Dr. Martin Luther called it, is intrinsically unbiblical.9 Want proof? Think of Jesus. No one ever walked closer to God than Jesus. He really walked the walk and talked the talk. And he got crucified for it! The only crown he got was a crown of thorns. Yes, Jesus knew better than anybody: first the cross, then the crown. Think of his disciples. After Pentecost, these guys turned the world upside down for Christ. Did God bless them? Absolutely! But first came the cross—persecution and a martyr’s death. But upon their earthly deaths, each of them received a God’s promised crown, the crown of life (zoē) put on their brow by Jesus himself.10
What Jesus taught was not the theology of glory, but the theology of the cross, that the Christian life is one of self–denial and cross–bearing. How did he say it? This way: “If anyone wants to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.”11 By nature, we don’t like to hear this. We want to experience mountaintops day after day and Sunday after Sunday. People want to leave church feeling good — not necessarily about Jesus and what he has done for them, but feeling good about themselves. Some people will sacrifice anything, even themselves.
To be sure, we Christians have every reason to be joyful every day. But our joy is centered in Jesus, not in our fickle emotions. To understand why, let’s go back to the mount of Transfiguration.
Behold, the transfigured Jesus! His face shines like the sun itself. His garments glisten white as light, not because they themselves possess any splendor, but because they cannot contain the majesty of our Lord's radiant human body. What was happening was that Jesus’ deity was shining through his humanity. The Holy Spirit is his Father. Mary is his mother. That makes him 100% God and 100% man. He is the God–man, the unique person in whom all the fullness of the Deity dwells bodily.12 In this glimpse of glory, Peter, James and John, and we through them, learn that Jesus is God–in–human–flesh. God, the Father, confirmed this on the mountaintop, for he said of Christ, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well–pleased; listen to him!”13
St. Matthew tells us that Moses and Elijah were talking to Jesus. As eyewitnesses, the three apostles were privileged to see the transfiguration and, now, to hear the conversation. What a striking scene! Moses, the great lawgiver, had died 1500 years earlier. Elijah had been taken to heaven bodily without tasting death about 800 years earlier—yet both were here and very much alive on this mountaintop. Here we see dramatic confirmation that there is life after this life.
St. Luke alone tells us the subject of the discourse on the holy mountain. Jesus, Moses, and Elijah were talking about his great mission. St. Luke writes, “[They spoke of] his departure which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.”14 In the original, Luke says that “they spoke of his exodus.” Yes, the subject of their talk was his exodus, i.e., his death, resurrection, and, his ascension. This is the greatest and highest theme in heaven and on earth. And the three apostles got a remarkable preview of all of this on the mountaintop.
So then, in the life of Jesus, the cross precedes the crown. The cross precedes his exodus back to heavenly glory. The cross is what our Lord's life was all about. That's what Moses and Elijah were talking about. That's what Peter, James, and John were to understand. That, too, is what we must see. Our faith does not rest on feeling good about ourselves. Our faith rests not on whether we feel saved but on the fact that Christ’s death is our salvation. If we want the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation, we need Christ alone, the real Christ, namely, (1) Christ crucified; (2) Christ arisen, and (3) Christ ascended!
There’s an old story about a man who visited a church. He arrived early, parked his car, and got out. Another car pulled up near him, and the driver told him, “I always park there. You took my place!” The visitor went inside for Sunday school, found an empty seat, and sat down. A young lady from the church approached him and stated, “That's my seat! You took my place!” Again, the visitor said nothing. After class, he sat down in the sanctuary. Another member walked up to him and said, “That's where I always sit. You took my place!” The visitor moved without saying a word. In his sermon, the pastor said emphatically, “Jesus took your sins on himself. He took your place and died for your sins.” Suddenly the visitor stood and his appearance suddenly changed. Blood and horrible scars appeared on his hands, feet, and side. Shrieks came from everywhere. Everyone knew who it was. Then someone cried out, “What’s happened to you?” The visitor replied, “I took your place.”
Indeed, Jesus took your place and mine on the cross. In so doing he atoned for our sins, thereby earning our salvation. But unlike the story I just told, Jesus does not promise to come to us visibly until the last day. But he does come to us. He comes to us whenever we read, hear, or study his Word. He comes to us when we kneel before his table to forgive our sins and nourish our faith.
Every Sunday something greater than a mountaintop experience takes place right here. In the Word and in the Sacrament, Jesus distributes to you and me the medicine of forgiveness and salvation. Yes, he forgives sinners and calls them saints. You can't see the transaction. You must simply trust his promise when he says to his children, “I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish.”15 Believe it and you shall receive it! And when you leave his house today, you may not feel good about yourself, but you should feel good about what Jesus has done and continues to do for you.
Yes, my friends, we have a mountaintop of a God who, in his Son, was transfigured, who in his Son, died on Mt. Calvary, and who, in his Son, rose from the dead that we might be in the highest realms of heaven forever. May God grant us this highest of all mountaintops for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
Soli Deo Gloria!
Endnotes
1 See 2 Peter 1 1:16-18.
3 See Matthew 17:4, NKJV.
4 See Psalm 55:4, ESV.
5 See Psalm 55:6, NKJV.
6 See Matthew 11:28.
7 See Revelation 2:10 and 2 Timothy 4:8.
8 In John 10:10, Jesus says, “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” The word life, here, does not refer to one’s earthly life. The word for life in this verse is zoē which refers to spiritual and eternal life. If Jesus had meant abundant earthly life he would have used the word bios. In fact, bios appears only twice in the Johannine corpus, in 1 John 2:16 and 1 John 3:17. The cognate verb bioō appears only once in the New Testament in 1 Peter 4:2. The apostolic Scriptures, i.e., the New Testament, are preeminently concerned with the inner, spiritual life (the new life in Christ) and not with the affairs, needs, and desires of this life.
9 The “theology of the glory” and “theology of the cross,” were terms used by Martin Luther. He taught that the “theology of the cross” is to be preached as pertaining in this life. To preach the “theology of glory” as pertaining to this life is unbiblical and even heretical. For a good summary of the difference between the two, see http://www.issuesetc.org/resource/journals/v2n1wlkn.htm.
10 In Revelation 2:10, Jesus says, “Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life [zoē].”
11 See Matthew 16:24, NKJV.
12 See Colossians 2:9.
13 See Matthew 17:5, Mark 9:7, and Luke 9:35.
14 See Luke 9:31.
15 See John 10:28.
© Copyright 2008 by Redeemer Lutheran Church. All rights reserved.