A Glimpse of Glory - Sermon for the Transfiguration of Our Lord

 The Transfiguration of Our Lord

February 14, Year of Our + Lord 2021

Our Redeemer and Our Savior’s Lutheran Churches

Custer and Hill City, S.D. 

A Glimpse of Glory

    And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became radiant, intensely white, as no one on earth could bleach them.

      Jesus took Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain, in order to complete His Epiphany, His revelation of Himself.  He has shown Himself to be a Miracle worker.  An authoritative Preacher.  The Messiah,  the long promised Savior of Israel.  And now, on the mountain, Jesus reveals that He is God in the flesh, the Son of God, the second person of the Holy Trinity, that deepest of all mysteries, that the One True God is the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. 

    After the mountain, after the Transfiguration, Jesus would begin in earnest His long walk to the Cross.  There He would reveal how He would save, what exactly He had come into our world and taken on our flesh in order to do.  He came to save mankind from our sin by taking the punishment we deserve onto Himself.  By dying, by being crucified as the worst of criminals, disgraced and rejected by His own people, Jesus revealed the horror and depth of sin, our sin.  But even more importantly, he died to make it right.  The wages of sin is death, and so Jesus pays for all sin with His death.  He sacrifices His life, the life of the Son of God, which is of infinite value.  This sacrifice opens the way to heaven for us, through His Body and Blood.

      At the Transfiguration, before He plunged into the valley of the shadow of death, Jesus gave Peter and James and John a glimpse of the glory to come.  Jesus showed them the glory of Heaven, in His own transfigured body, before He led them to Calvary, in that same body.  There they would see Hell unleashed on that body which so recently shone with the light of heaven.  Before the long Lenten Path, which is lined with sorrow, and filled with the bitter recognition of our guilt and sin, we too, need to see the glory that is, and is to come, in Jesus Christ.  We need to see Jesus, with his clothes radiant, intensely white, as no one on earth could bleach them. 

      We need to see the radiant clothes of Jesus, because our own garments are soiled.       

     When you get a new white shirt, it is a fine thing.  Not a spot on it, perfectly white.  But of course, it doesn’t last.  We sweat, we work, we eat, we live, and no matter how hard we might try to keep them clean, our new white clothes get dirty.  So we wash and bleach and scrub, and they look pretty good.  But not the same.  Never quite the same white as brand new white.  Even just washing a new shirt dulls the shiny bright white-ness.  And of course, sometimes we stain our clothes, with grease, or blood, or grass, and these stains never quite come out.  Now, you may be careful when you work and eat, and you may manage to avoid big, gross stains.  But there is no one that keeps the shiny white of perfect spotlessness. 

     Not in your laundry, and not in your life.  Jesus loved His Father with all His heart, soul, and mind.  He gladly lived His life in perfect accord with the Father’s will.  As a good Son, He submitted willingly to His Father in all things.  His life was spotless.  But yours isn’t.  You turn away, rejecting the Father, when His commandments don’t meet your desires.  He says: “Do not covet;” you say:  “I want it, I must have it, it’s my right.”  He says “Wait, receive your reward in heaven;” you say “I want glory now.”  God says “My Way;” you say, “I’ll make my own way.”   

     Jesus loved His neighbor as himself.  He worked through long days and nights healing and teaching and casting out demons.  And then Jesus died in order that you might live.   You, on the other hand, are willing to get along with your neighbor, even help him out a little, as long as he plays by your rules, and doesn’t ask too much of you, or disappoint you, or make you uncomfortable.  But if your neighbor becomes an imposition, if his needs must be met from your resources, what then?  Do you say “everyone for himself.”  “I made my way, you make yours?”   Or maybe you say “He’s really just lazy.  I’d only be encouraging his laziness if I helped him out.” We all have our own ways for justifying our lack of love, toward God, and our neighbor. 

     But our excuses don’t change reality.  You don’t measure up to what God expects.  Neither do I.  You can’t.  I can’t.  Our garments, even our best, righteous deeds, seen in heavenly light, are filthy rags.  You can scrub them, bleach them, try with all your might.  But they still fall short of God’s glory.  They still fall short of the perfection which being in the presence of God demands.  Your deeds cannot stand in the light of heaven. 

     Jesus knew this, and for this reason He led Peter and James and John up onto a high mountain.  He bore them up really, because they couldn't go on their own.  Jesus bore them up into heaven, to show them, and you, His glory.  To show them a Man whose garments shone with perfect righteousness, the righteousness of God: radiant, intensely white, as no one on earth could bleach them. 

     Peter and James and John were scared out of their wits, and rightly so, for they too wore filthy rags.  They had no right to be there.  If they had any question about this, there were Moses and Elijah, Lawgiver and Prophet, to remind them of the Law which they hadn’t obeyed, and the Way of God which they hadn’t followed.  Peter and James and John, like us, had no business being there, dressed in their filthy rags of unrighteousness.   

     And yet, Jesus brought them up on the mountain.  To show them what was ahead.  To let them see that men would stand in the flesh before the glory of God.  Not on their own merits.  Not based on the whiteness of their own garments.  No, men and women will stand in the flesh before the glory of God because the Man, the perfect Man, the Man who is also God, Jesus Christ, He would go first.  He was worthy to enter heaven in the flesh, because He was righteous in all things, perfectly pure and white in all His garments, the perfect, righteous, sinless Son of God. 

     But Jesus, the Messiah, the Savior, did not come just to prove His own glory.  His glory has never been in doubt.  No, He came and worked, and preached, and suffered, and died, and rose, in order to forgive, in order to save, in order to share His glory with sinners, like you and me.  So He would not stay on the mountain, radiant in His glory.  No, as good as it was to be there, Jesus knew that Peter and James and John, like you and me, could not stay there, on account of our filthy rags.  So Jesus came down from the mountain, to wash away your sin in His own blood, to take away your filthy garments and give you His garment, His perfect righteousness.  Now, by Christ’s righteousness, Peter and James and John, and you, can now stand in glory.   

     Before the plunge into the valley of the shadow of death, Jesus showed Peter, James and John His glory.  They were given this vision of glory to sustain them as they walked with Jesus on the road to Calvary, and also to teach them what it all meant.  That Jesus came down from glory, and went to the cross, in order that His Righteousness could be credited to us.  In order that His glory could be our promise. 

     Next Wednesday we enter Lent, and retrace the long road to Calvary.  As we go, our own dirty garments, our own sin, must be brought into the light, in order that we may be cleansed, forgiven and raised to new life in the Easter miracle.  The road can be hard.  But we too may look back, and forward, to the Transfiguration, to those radiant garments, intensely white, as no one on earth could bleach them.  They are the perfect, sinless garments of Jesus Christ.  He died and rose to give them to you.  In Christ, you are forgiven, and have the sure promise of seeing the glory that today we see by faith. 

      May this hope of heavenly glory, won for you by Christ Jesus, be your true joy when life goes well, your light when the way forward is dark, and your focus and confidence in every circumstance, forever and ever, Amen.