Creekside Church Sermon of February 6, 2005 "Not Like Us" Matthew 17:1-9	Rev. David Bibbee
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Will Rogers said, "…you can always joke about a big Man that is really big. But don't ever kid about the little fellow who thinks he is something, cause he will get sore. That's why he is little." Read the life stories of "high-impact" people, and you'll see that their strength was expressed in humility. Jesus was humble. Abraham Lincoln was humble. So were Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Mother Teresa.

"Whoever humbles themselves will be exalted, and whoever exalts themselves will be humbled," Jesus said. But how do we become humble? If you strive to be humble, are you humble? Is humility caught, or is it taught? I'm not sure, but one way is the experience of being humbled.

Every Thanksgiving we go to Ohio to enjoy the holiday with good friends and their families. For TWIG, it rivals Christmas on the, "things looked forward to" scale. Thursday afternoon is devoted to food. Thursday night is devoted to music. My friends and I played together in bands. We sit in a circle with our guitars and play tunes for two or three hours. Each year the circle grows bigger as other musicians drop in to pick along.

At the risk of not sounding humble, we are pretty good. Gauging from the quality of the picking, strumming, and singing, we are definitely "above average." This past Thanksgiving a guitarist named Jim Volk joined us. Jim was right up there with the rest of us. About an hour into the session, someone asked Jim to play something from his new CD. "CD? Did you say, CD?" He played a song called, "The Lion and the Geese." (play CD)

After a moment of stunned silence, Vaughn said, "Well boys… I think we should call it an evening." The guitars went back into their cases, and I sat there muttering to myself, "How did he do that?" Jim wasn't in a different league from the rest of us. He was in a different universe! I thought I knew a thing or two about playing guitar, but after listening to a master, I knew how little I know. I had been… and we had been humbled.

It felt a little like that memorable exchange in the 1988 Vice Presidential debate between Dan Quayle and Lloyd Bentsen. Quayle likened his experience to that of John F. Kennedy, and Bentsen pounced. "Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy." I heard a voice say, "David, you're no John Volk." I had witnessed greatness, and humbly assumed the place reserved for those who "play at" playing the guitar.

File today's gospel text under "M" for, "mystery." In the presence of Peter, James, and John, Jesus' appearance was altered in a way that defied description. He underwent a metamorphosis that changed him from flesh and blood to a being of light. The focus of Epiphany is upon the revealing of Jesus to the world. Beginning with the visit of the Wise Men, Matthew peeled back the layers of Jesus' identity to convince his Jewish readers that Jesus was indeed the Messiah they had hoped for.

The transfiguration is a beginning and an end. It comes at the end of Epiphany and at the beginning of Lent, and prepares us for God's strange logic. The One bathed in radiant glory-- God's beloved Son, has a date with a humbling death.

The text begins, "After six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John up to a high mountain." Six days is a significant detail. For six days Jesus had ministered to the masses. During this time he served a sit down dinner for 4,000 people. He needed a break. "Six days" also corresponds to the six days of creation in Genesis. Do you recall what God did at the end of day six? God rested. God needed a breather and took a day off. After six days of ministering, Jesus needed a day off. He took the disciples to a remote mountaintop to rest, regroup, and be renewed. You also know that whenever someone in the Bible climbs a mountain, a God encounter is sure to follow.

Like Moses' appearance was changed after his meeting with God, Jesus face was changed. It shined like a thousand suns. His clothes turned radiant white. Company came calling-- Moses and Elijah, the great lawgiver and the greatest prophet. No one was privy to their conversation. It doesn't say how Peter knew it was Moses and Elijah since they had never met.

Peter was a "don't-just-stand-there-DO-SOMETHING" guy. Unsure of how to act at such a moment, Peter started making tents for the guests. Then a heavy fog rolled in. It blanketed the mountaintop-a cloud with a voice in it, echoing the words heard at Jesus' baptism. "This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased-listen to him." In Mark and Luke, only Jesus hears the voice. But Matthew says that Peter, James, and John all heard it.

Like Moses lying face flat before the burning bush, the disciples were face down, awestruck by what they were seeing and hearing.

The theological word that describes this event is "theophany" It is a life-changing encounter with God. Someone suggested that this text should instead be called a "Christophany," or, an experience that reveals the heart of Jesus' identity. No one had to tell the disciples the appropriate response. They fell flat, eyes sealed tight, tongue-tied, and undone by the mystery and majesty of the moment. When the cloud lifted, Moses and Elijah were gone. As Jesus and the disciples went down the mountain, he told them not to tell a soul what they had seen. They probably couldn't do it if they tried for lack of words to describe it.

The church goes to great lengths trying to explain the incarnation. We were told that before we could draw close to God, God first drew close to us. The fullness of God became fully human. God pitched a tent among us, and visited us through a humble birth in an obscure village. He breathed the air we breathe. He knew joy and sadness, pleasure and pain, triumph and temptation. He ate and drank, and needed a good night's sleep from a hard day's work. He cried when his friend, Lazarus, died. He hollered when he smashed his thumb with a hammer. The omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Creator of the cosmos humbled himself to demonstrate the depths of his love for us.

We take Jesus' teachings seriously and strive to live by them. We try to apply them to our lives. We search for parallels with current events and draw comparisons with our own experience. We boil the gospel down to manageable proportions so we can, well… so we can manage it. The bedrock belief of Christianity is that the Word became flesh and lived among us full of grace and truth. Jesus is God with us. He identifies with us. From the manger to the grave, he experienced everything which we experience. Jesus is with us through the thick and thin of life.

But the Transfiguration story defies being reduced to a practical application. You can't apply it issues like "managing your anger" or "harmony in the home." Many preachers use it to show that mountain top experiences must yield to the return to the valley and the daily grind where we serve the needs around us.

This is just a portion of the story. Matthew's message is that Jesus is not like us. Jesus is God, and sometimes the best we can do is fall down before him in worship. Jesus is a friend, but he is more. He is the Lord of life. His presence inspires many moods, but casualness is not one of them.

I remember an observation by the writer Annie Dillard who said; "On the whole, I do not find most Christians sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea of the power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning."

Being sensible of conditions. Much of the time we aren't very sensible

A movie called "Pleasantville" debuted in 1998. It was about a town where everything was black and white. The people of Pleasantville knew nothing about color. Life was black, white, and shades of gray. Their colorless existence was the status quo. Everyone seemed content with it, living a "Leave It to Beaver" life in which everyone knew their place. One day, a teenager turned into a person of colors in a world of black and white.

Others became curious and discovered that they too could learn to live in color. One by one, the people of Pleasantville were transformed by discovering their passion which had been repressed in order to maintain their lifeless, but safe black and white world. The mayor reflected the attitude of the town when he said, "We are safe for now because we are in the bowling alley."

Jesus came to give us abundant life. He painted life in colors people had never seen. To those willing to follow, he promised a transformed, transfigured life. In one scene of Pleasantville, the black and white Dad comes into his black and white home and finds that his wife isn't there and there is no dinner on the table. She discovered her passion in life, took a risk, and saw the world in a whole new way.

In ways that can't be predicted, we see things that defy description and can't be shoved into our hip pockets. At times Christ reveals himself in transfigured splendor and we are humbled in the knowledge that Christ is not like us. Should it happen to you, don't try to figure it out, interpret it, or apply it to something practical like building tents for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. LET IT BE. Have faith in what Jesus promised, though it can't be logically proven. Have trust, though we are constantly told to conform our lives to the facts. Believe, though you don't understand.

A rabbinical student went to hear three lectures by a famous rabbi. His friends later asked him, "How was it?" He said, "The first talk was brilliant, clear, and simple. I understood every word of it. The second lecture was even better, although more deep and subtle. I didn't understand much of it, but it was clear the rabbi did. The third was without question the finest. It was a great and unforgettable experience. I understood nothing, and the rabbi didn't understand much, either."

Christians have important truths to tell the world. But some experiences no one can talk about. I love how Barbara Taylor puts it:

"If we insist on trying to talk about it, then something unforgettable may happen in the air around our words, but it will not be because we understand them in any rational sort of way. The experience will be one of worship and awe-which involve a different kind of understanding."

When our reasoning and understanding fall about a billion miles short of grasping the truth, we are humbled… in the best sense of the word. On top of a mountain, Peter, James, and John had their circuitry fried. A voice from a cloud said, "This is my beloved Son-listen to him," and they were on the ground, filled with fear and awe. Then Matthew inserted this little detail-"Jesus came and touched them, saying, 'Rise, and have no fear.'"

What a wonderful consolation when we stand before the profound mysteries of life.

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