"You Can't Stay Here" - Sermon for Transfiguration of Our Lord Sunday Year A

You Can’t Stay Here
Transfiguration of Our Lord A
February 23, 2020
Grace, Waseca, MN
Matthew 17.1-9

I want you to imagine something for a moment. You are visiting a friend several months after his or her wedding. When you get settled in you ask, “So, how’s married life?” In response, your friend says, “It’s great; let me show you!” Your friend proceeds to pull out the wedding album and talks gushingly about the wedding several months earlier. You would think it a bit strange, wouldn’t you? You know that the reality is that after the wedding comes the necessary and good but hard work of marriage. Marriage is not lived in the wedding. The same is true about life-events. After the miracle of birth comes the sleep-deprived nights, feedings and diaper changes. After graduation from high school, college or tech school comes the work-a-day world and “adulting.”

In our Gospel reading for today, Jesus takes his “executive team,” Peter, James and John, up on a mountain. We don’t know why the four of them go up there. (Maybe it’s for a retreat?) In the blink of an eye, they experience an incredible event: Jesus’ transfiguration where he and his clothing are turned dazzling white; his confab with two legendary pillars of faith, Moses and Elijah; and God’s terrible voice from heaven. The last is too much for them and they fall to the ground, overcome with awe and fear. Then Jesus, compassionate and understanding, says “Get up and do not be afraid.” In other words, “We can’t stay here.”

 We can’t stay here. The four descend the mountain into the valley on a road we already know. Six days prior, Jesus has made the first of his four passion predictions regarding his suffering and death. So, on the way down the mountain into the valley, he reminds them again that the road they travel leads to the cross. At this point, they have no idea what that really means, but they know enough to be sure they’d rather stay on the mountain. Yet, Jesus leads them down the mountain because they can’t stay there. They need to walk the good and necessary but hard road of discipleship.

Wherever we are in our lives and whatever watershed moments we’ve experienced, we know that we can’t stay there. As a congregation, as much as we’d like, we cannot recapture our glorious past nor can we wistfully enshrine it as some golden age. When I was selling window treatments and upholstery in my previous career, I would occasionally visit a home that had a “parlor” with fancy window treatments and clear plastic slipcovers on the furniture. One look told me that the room was never used. It was almost like a museum; the only thing missing was the velvet rope across the entrance. But congregations are not museum pieces. We are constantly on the road of discipleship because our God is a living, active God always on the move.

The good news is that we don’t walk the road alone. God is always with us on the road. In fact, God is always way ahead of us. One day I got a call from Brian Junker, a Winona funeral director, asking me to do a funeral for a non-member. The deceased had a vague Lutheran connection, but no affiliation. He told me that the family wanted a Lutheran pastor to do the service but they had one request. He said, “the family didn’t want someone to preach at them.” Brian concluded by saying, “So, I thought of you.” I think it was a compliment. I set up an appointment to meet the family, but I struggled with how I was going to bring God into the conversation. After all, I am a Lutheran pastor. Yet, when I arrived, they were already talking about God. I didn’t have to bring God with me because God was there already.

Whatever road we travel, God is both always with us and somewhere ahead of us arriving before we get there. There will be moments of exhilaration, but as a congregation, you are on a good and necessary and hard road because you cannot stay in the past nor can you preserve it like some museum piece. On this road there will be intense conversations and difficult decisions. It’s a road into an unknown future, but what is known is that God is with you. The better news is that because you are also Beloved of God, just like Jesus, you can do the things necessary. You can’t stay here, but you travel the road because resurrection and new life are ahead. Amen.

For an audio version of this sermon click here.