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TRANSFIGURATION
February 3, 2008
Matthew 17:1-9
Daniel 12:1-4
Dr. Harry Ironside was an evangelist living in the San Francisco area. One Sunday evening he was on a street corner giving his testimony when a locally famous atheist approached and challenged him to a debate at the Academy of Science Hall, ‘Atheism versus Christianity’. “You Christians never want to debate based on facts, just your feelings. This will be about facts. Are you interested?”
Dr. Ironside responded without hesitation. “Absolutely! Let’s deal exclusively with facts. So, here are the requirements. You will bring with you to the debate two people. The first is a man who used to be down and out. I don’t care if he was a drunk, a criminal, or a victim of sexual perversion. For years he had to try and free himself from his behavior, but he just couldn’t. Then, he heard you speak about atheism and his heart and mind changed. The sins he once loved he now hates, and righteousness and goodness are now the ideals of his life. He is an entirely new man, a credit to himself and an asset to society – all because of atheism.”
“Secondly, you must bring one woman who was once a characterless outcast, spoiled by men’s evil passions, living a ruined and wretched life. She, also, heard you speak about atheism. She said, ‘This is just what I need to deliver me!’ She fled her former life and today has won her way back to an honored position in society, living a clean, virtuous, happy life – all because she is an atheist.”
“For my part, I will bring with me 100 men and women who lived in the same sinful degradation, but changed because of the miraculous saving power of Jesus Christ. Real people, real lives, real change – just the facts.” The atheist waved his hand at Dr. Ironside and walked away. There was no debate.
The three laws of thermodynamics tell us that nothing can remain exactly as it is, everything must change. There are only three possibilities; the object can deform – become something less complex than it was (like when a beautiful car turns to rust), it can conform – be changed to the shape and function of something else (press your thumb into clay and the clay conforms to your thumbprint), or it can transform – become something more complex, more intricate, something higher than it was before. Which brings us to today’s Gospel lesson, the Transfiguration of Jesus.
Jesus takes Peter, James and John to Mt. Hermon with him, where they are witnesses to his physical transformation to a higher being. We tend to focus almost exclusively on the humanity of Christ, a man who hungered, thirsted, cried, and bled. On the mountain top the three Apostles were able to see Jesus as the Shekinah glory of God (Exodus 40:34-35, Isaiah 60:2, Romans 9:4). They are able to see a Jesus who is perfectly pure and holy. Quite frankly, we have a very hard time understanding what pure holiness is like. We live in such a sinful world that we can’t relate to true perfection, true purity, or true holiness.
A. W. Tozer writes, “Our noblest heroes are soiled heroes, all of them. So we learn to excuse and to overlook and not to expect too much. We don’t expect all truth from our teachers, and we don’t expect faithfulness from our politicians. We quickly forgive them when they lie to us and vote for them again. We don’t expect honesty from our merchants. We don’t expect complete trustworthiness from anybody. And we manage to get along in the world only by passing laws to protect ourselves not only from the criminal element but from the best people there are who might in the moment of temptation take advantage of us. This kind of world gets into our pores, into our nerves, until we have lost the ability to conceive of the holy.”
The Apostles were allowed to see holiness made manifest, the perfection of Jesus Christ. And, they were allowed to see into the future. One day we will all shine with that kind of perfection. Many of you are familiar with the Shroud of Turin. It is the burial cloth of a man who had been scourged, then crucified. Many believe it is the burial cloth of Jesus himself. The portrait of his lifeless body has been permanently ingrained onto the cloth. No one knows exactly how. It is not painted on, and it is not the result of decomposition.
My senior year at the Air Force Academy I was in an honors physics class taught by Dr. John Jackson. He was part of the only team ever allowed to scientifically analyze the shroud. His area of specialty was nuclear and irradiative physics. A small group of us were allowed to help him with the data. In his final conclusion he said, “The only way I can explain the image on this cloth is if the body wrapped inside went nuclear – but without generating any heat. True cold fusion.” That must be what Jesus looked like on the mountain. Both the prophet Daniel, and Jesus himself tell us that we will have bodies that glow like that after our resurrection (Daniel 12:1-4, Matthew 13:43).
Until the time when our bodies are transformed, we must concentrate on transforming our lives. Change is inevitable, we must not deform or conform, we must transform. In Christian vernacular we call this regeneration. And, it’s not optional (John 3:7). The Lord God says, “Be holy, because I am holy” (1 Peter 1:15-16). How do we go about regeneration? The starting point is to admit that mankind is not ok, mankind is sinful. The philosopher Immanuel Kant was not a believer. Yet, even he came to believe that we are born into this world as evil. And, unless a higher power transforms us, we naturally gravitate towards ultimate evil – from which there is no redemption. The prophet Jeremiah agrees. “The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse-- who can understand it? (17:9)”
The second step is to realize that we are included in that condemnation (Romans 3:23). There are two ways we can respond to the realization that we are fallen. We can either see ourselves as victims who need to protest and vent our bitterness. Or we can see ourselves as sinners who can be forgiven, which is a source of liberation. That liberation launches us on the path of regeneration. It is the start and the sustenance of our change. At this point a true Calvinist says, “There is absolutely no good in you, and you will have to rely on exclusively on God to change you.” A true Arminian says, “God wouldn’t ask you to change if he didn’t already believe you have it in you.” I think the truth lies somewhere in between. We can transform, but only if we respond to the Holy Spirit and the will of God.
I believe the Holy Spirit constantly nudges, prompts, encourages, and ‘speaks’ to us about change. We must be willing to listen to the Spirit. Jack Deere (no relation to John) says be careful when you start listening to the Spirit. God speaks out loud many times in the Bible and, “The voice comes when the divine ministry about to be performed is extraordinarily difficult to accept or believe, or when the task about to be undertaken is so hard that it will require clarity and assurance.” He’s right. God speaks out loud at the Transfiguration, and the impact of his words send Jesus down the mountain, directly to Jerusalem, to die a horrible death for the very people who hate and crucify him. When we decide to pursue regeneration the Holy Spirit may ask us to do some very, very difficult tasks in the name of love.
When we know what we have to do, and why we have to do it, will that make changing our lives easier? Probably not. The Apostle Paul wrestles with change. He keeps asking, “Why don’t I just do the right thing? I know what is good, why don’t I always do good? Why do I keep wanting to do wrong? What’s wrong with me? (Romans 7:15-24)” What is wrong, is that we have to measure ourselves against the standard, and the standard is the perfect glory of God. Which is why regeneration is a lifelong journey. And, we need to understand that God has promised he is going to change us, whether we seek the journey or not (2 Corinthians 3:18). It’s probably better if we participate.
I love St. Augustine. He was a very deep thinker, and he spent a huge portion of his life beating himself up for not being farther along the journey. He was constantly asking himself tough questions. “Why is it that the more we live to make ourselves happy, the more unhappy we become?” “Why do I spend more time living in sin, trying to fit in with my fellow man than trying to live righteously and please my God?” He finally decided the problem is that he didn’t have a deep enough concept of holiness. He didn’t place a high enough value on the fact that he was created in the image of God, and God is holy.
That night, on the mountain top, Peter, James, and John were firsthand witnesses to pure holiness. They got the chance to see what God is, and what we will become. And, it launched each of them on their personal journey of change, their journey of regeneration. It is the same journey we all must make.
In 1979 Lee Strobel was an ardent and outspoken atheist. He was also a reporter for the Chicago Tribune. He found a stash of secret documents that proved the Ford Motor Company knew the Ford Pinto would explode into flames if hit from the rear at more than 20 mph. He proved that Ford decided not to make changes to the car, in order to make more profit. He was the only one with the documents, and he broke the exclusive story.
A few days later he received a phone call from a lawyer representing families of people who had died in fiery Pinto crashes. The lawyer asked to borrow the documents for his clients’ cases. Strobel refused, because he was afraid another reporter might get hold of the papers and he would lose complete control of his exclusive story. The lawyer asked him several times, “Don’t you care about the suffering these families have been through? You are the only one who can give them justice.” Strobel refused to answer the question, because his career was more important to him than their suffering.
There was a long pause in the phone call, and then the lawyer said, “I will arrive at O’Hare airport tomorrow. I’ll have a briefcase filled with five thousand dollars in cash. You give me photocopies of the documents, I’ll give you the briefcase. Nobody will know.” As Strobel traded copies for cash he asked himself, “What kind of man am I?”
He attended all of the victim’s trials. He heard stories of suffering and loss. He saw a major U.S. Corporation try to tap dance around their deliberate decision to put profit ahead of human life. And, he agonized that he had disregarded the victims – with the single goal of his own fame and fortune. He made the decision that he had to change, that he would change, no matter what the cost. He spent the next several years fruitlessly trying to change, and failing – again and again. Until he gave Christianity a chance. Today, Lee Strobel is the Pastor of the largest church in Chicago.
And so, this sermon ends where it began. The proof of God is in the transforming, the regeneration, the changing of human life. We serve a pure and holy God, who calls us to be holy as well. We have seen the truth in the person of Jesus Christ, we must listen to the Spirit, and follow his example.