Live As The Transformed
Mark
9:2-9[1]
Ainslee loves to look at her baby pictures. She and I will look at them and while she’ll giggle at what she sees, I will reminisce. Then she’ll often ask, “Is that really me?” She doesn’t recognize the person she once was.
That’s for good reason. Ainslee isn’t what she once was. Babies grow up into toddlers…then little girls and boys…and eventually adults. Many of you assure me this process happens fast though some days seem to go on forever.
We could all look at our baby pictures…and then childhood pictures…and then adult pictures…and see that we’ve changed. We’re not the same as we used to be. Those who have lived through multiple decades are often glad we’re not the same as we used to be…given the funky hairdos and pastel polyester attire of a previous era. Some of us may long to go back to a time before we changed. Maybe a time when our bodies were a different shape…or our aches and pains were less…or maybe when relationships were healthier.
Our text today tells us about a time when Jesus changed. His appearance literally changed before the disciples eyes! This wasn’t a long, drawn-out change over a period of years. It was quick. Mark gives us the impression that in the blink of an eye, Jesus was suddenly different than he had been. His clothes were dazzling white. He had two members of the Old Testament Hall of Fame with him – Moses and Elijah. This didn’t appear to be the poor carpenter from Galilee.
I believe there was also a transformation that happened in Peter, James, and John as a result of this event. They weren’t the same as they were before. Surely they looked at Jesus differently after this experience. Mark tells us they were terrified and one doesn’t have a landmark moment in life like this without it changing how you live in the future. This account in Mark compels me to ask: Have you changed because of your experience of Jesus? If we were to look at pictures of you before Jesus…and after…could we tell a difference? Are the changes in life after an experience of Jesus visible…or more invisible?
Some of
you may be asking, “What kind of change are we really talking about here?” Is it physical, spiritual, emotional, or all
of the above? The Greek word for
‘transfigured’ that we find in verse 2 of our text is metamorfo,w (met-am-or-fo’-o). It means to
change into another form.[2] Jesus was changed into someone different
right before Peter, James, and John. This
Greek word is where we get our English word metamorphosis. You know, caterpillars into butterflies, and
stuff like that. It’s being
significantly and measurably different than you were before.
Paul uses the same word in Romans 12:2 when he
writes, “Do not be conformed to this
world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may
discern what is the will of God-- what is good and acceptable and perfect.” So there’s a sense that when one encounters
Jesus, that life should be different, transformed, and altered from how we were
before Jesus. Are you someone new
because of Jesus?
The Sunday School
class that meets in the Perry Room has been studying spiritual disciplines –
training so that we can grow in our faith.
The author of our material[3]
brought up a character many of us know – Popeye the sailor man. What is one of Popeye’s most famous
sayings? “I yam what I yam.” Popeye wasn’t an incredibly deep guy. He was a simple, sea-faring, pipe-smoking,
Olive Oyl-loving sailor who didn’t pretend to be someone he wasn’t. That’s to his credit. At the risk of over-analyzing a cartoon
character, I think this was also a copout for Popeye. He seemed to say too much, “Don’t get your hopes up. Don’t expect too much. If you get to a good place, stay where you
are because it won’t get any better than it is. I yam what I yam so this is where I’m stuck.” Is that the attitude Jesus wants in the
people he died for? I understand what
the hymn, Just As I Am is saying, but
sometimes I want to write another verse where Jesus says to us, “Get over
yourself and be transformed!” We can
get stuck and that’s not a transformed life!
When Peter experiences the transfigured Jesus, he
first says, “it is good for us to be here” but then he suggests to Jesus that
he build three tents. Biblical scholars
have made connections between Peter’s offer and the Feast of Tabernacles – when
Jewish men and their sons would spend time in temporary huts to remember
Israel’s time in the wilderness – but I think Peter was trying to figure out
how to capture the moment.
“If only I can stay here,” Peter must have thought, “then
everything will be alright.” It’s hard
to blame Peter for wanting to capture this moment. It sounds appealing to me too!
I can also think of many other moments that I would like to endure
perpetually. But the call of Christ on
our lives is not to stay in one moment.
We are to move on in love, in service, and in new experiences. Notice that in verse 8 of our text that this
moment Peter, James, and John were enjoying was gone as quickly as it
came. And now these three needed to
move on in life. They saw Jesus
transformed. The moment must have transformed
them. But now they needed to move on to
new rich experiences with Jesus.
Phyllis Kersten, a pastor in River Forest, Illinois,
writes, “We have choices about how to respond to the mountain top
transfiguration events in our lives. We
can ruin them with ‘if onlys” (if I could stay here longer; if only things
would never change; if only I could relive that experience). We can reminisce about our experiences,
caressing and massaging them as an excuse to disengage from the world. Or we can allow them to prepare us for what
God calls us to do next.”[4]
Let’s be those who look at our experiences of Jesus as
moments that prepare us for the next great moments! As we remember around the table today, let’s remember what Jesus
has done for us so we can move forward as transformed people…not simply look
back at where we’ve been.
Amen