In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

Transcription

1 THE ENDING THAT ISN T March 2, 2014, The Transfiguration of the Lord Matthew 17: 1-9 Michael L. Lindvall, The Brick Presbyterian Church in the City of New York Great God, an eternity beyond us and yet as close to us as our own breath: be present to us here and now, incarnate in language both holy and human. May these words of Scripture read to us ancient and cryptic as they may be unfold like flowers before us in all their beautiful and life-bearing truth. And now may the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. Amen. The story of Jesus is told four times in the Bible, once in each of the four Gospels. Each of them, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, can be divided rather neatly into part one, part two, and part three. Part one of each focuses on the story of Jesus life and work: his birth, his baptism and temptation in the wilderness, his call to followers, his teaching and healing, his conflict with the religious authorities of the day. The story that Amelie just read to us the story of the Transfiguration comes near the end of part one of Matthew s Gospel. Soon after this story, Jesus will enter Jerusalem and all that lies in wait for him parts two and three. Part one of the Gospel covers a time period of two, maybe three years. Most of part one takes place in Galilee. Part two of each Gospel tells the story of the last days of Jesus life, the six days from Palm Sunday when Jesus enters Jerusalem to his death on Good Friday. Part three is Easter and the several days just after. The first part is usually called The Ministry; the second part is called The Passion, from the Latin word meaning suffering. The third part is the story of The Resurrection. Now here s a curious fact: Parts two and three, just that one last week, run nearly as many pages as part one, which covers two or three years. This seems an odd narrative disproportion. But it s important. It s a clue to this sermon

2 With this part one, part two, part three business in mind, I want to invite each of you into an exercise of the imagination this morning. I want you to imagine that it s almost 2,000 years ago and you don t know anything about the story of Jesus. You don t know there s a part one and a part two and a part three. You don t know what Jesus said, what he did, how he died, or what happened after that. You never heard of Good Friday or Easter. Imagine it s the year 86AD, and you live in the large city of Antioch on the Syrian coast. Imagine that you re a lapsed Greek pagan or maybe a non-practicing Jew. But you re spiritually hungry. You re a first century religious seeker. Imagine that you ve become intrigued with some of your neighbors in Antioch called Christians. Antioch actually was one of the first centers of Christianity. You re drawn to the way these Christians love each other. You re fascinated with their triumphant attitude toward life and death. Their very way of being is unlike anything you ve ever seen. So you decide to go to one of their meetings, a meeting probably held on a Sunday evening. (Sunday was a workday back then.) Remember, when you walk through the door, you ve been drawn by what you have seen in them, but you don t know a thing about their Jesus. On the night you visit, you find that these Christians are taking turns reading aloud to each other a brand new book just out, a book they call the Gospel of Matthew. They seem to already know the basic story, but you re hearing it for the first time. You listen intently as the tale unfolds: the story of his exceptional birth, the story of his baptism and temptation in the wilderness, the Sermon on the Mount, his parables, his compassionate healings. Finally as the evening matures, the tale comes to what finally looks like the conclusion, an obvious dénouement, the climax of the story, a perfect ending. Amelie just read that perfect ending. Jesus takes several of his followers to a mountaintop where they have a mountaintop experience. The visage of their great teacher is somehow transfigured. Moses and Elijah are there, human emblems of the law and the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures, and finally a voice from the heavens confirms the whole sweep of the story that you just heard read: This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well-pleased; listen to him

3 What a satisfying ending! If you didn t know, everything you d heard so far that night would lead you to guess that this was the tale s happy conclusion. It s a confirmation of who this great teacher was, this one through whom the divine light of truth shines. It seems like the ending until you hear them read verse 9: As they were coming down from the mountain, Jesus ordered them, Tell no one about this until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead. Dead!? Raised!? There s obviously more to come. This is the ending that isn t! Actually, if you had been listening closely, Jesus had hinted about death and resurrection a chapter earlier, but nobody paid much attention. It s getting late into this Sunday night in ancient Antioch and you ve had a long day, but a cool breeze is blowing off the Mediterranean, and now you re more intrigued than ever. The next part of the story, part two, suddenly moves to Jerusalem. In that fabled city south of Antioch, you hear how Jesus faces seething hostility. Part two wends through a labyrinth of conniving and corruption, jealousy, plots and bribes all of it sadly believable. And, finally, it comes to an only too predicable end an execution. You know about crucifixion. The Romans do it to their enemies all the time. As you listen to part two, you say to yourself, Well, tragic it may be, but this is a more realistic ending. This is exactly what happens to people like this Jesus, happens all the time. Evil wins the day, hate has the last word, death snuffs out life. Too bad, but too true. Over the centuries, more than a few people have taken it upon themselves to rewrite the story of Jesus. Perhaps the most famous person to do such a Jesus edit was Thomas Jefferson. In his retirement, the former President took a pair of scissors to his personal Bible, cut and pasted, and produced a Jesus more to his liking. In Jefferson s bible, there was lots of teaching about morality, but no miracles. Jefferson edited out the transfiguration way too mysterious. And of course there was no Easter. Jefferson essentially refashioned Jesus into an Enlightenment gentleman from northern Virginia who taught virtue and met an untimely end. He concluded his Jesus story with the crucifixion. The last words of Jefferson s digested Bible were, There they laid Jesus. And rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulcher, and departed

4 Back to our house church meeting in ancient Antioch. Imagine yourself listening to the story of the crucifixion as they read Matthew s Gospel. For all the world, this seems like a classically tragic conclusion to the story a good man dead too soon, so consummately typical, Jefferson s ending. Time to go home and get in bed. It s getting late. But these Christians neighbors of yours are still passing their new Matthew book around the room, taking turns reading. Believe it or not, there seems to be more to the story. That scene on the mountaintop, puzzling as it was, would have been a great ending. But it was the ending that wasn t. And the cross would have been an all-too believable, way-of-the-world ending. But it was the ending that wasn t. Late now into the Antioch night, you listen, barely credulous at what comes next, the story that Jefferson would edit out of his bible 1,700 years later. Perhaps we should not be too hard on old Tom. Truth is we re all tempted to shrink Jesus to the size of our mortal imagination. It s tempting to edit out or de-mystify that mysterious Easter ending. Even today, people want to remake Jesus into a mere teacher of fine religious ideals. As such, his is a polite, tidy and rather winsome story. Had it ended with part one, it would have been a good-enough story with a happy-enough ending. Or had it ended with part two, ended with the cross, it would have been just another classic tragedy. Either way, it would I promise you be utterly forgotten all these years latter. But there is more. All the Gospels insist that the story pushes past the story of Jesus the teacher, pushes past the scandal of the cross, pushes on to the even more scandalous part three, the mystery that is the Resurrection. The cross brings the story as deep as mortal life goes. Easter is the defiant cry that, believe it or not, the last word, the ultimate truth, is not evil, not hate, not death. Easter is the promise that by God the last word, the ultimate reality, is good, the last word, the ultimate reality, is love, the last word, the ultimate reality, is life. It s nearly midnight in old Antioch now. They ve finally closed their book, these Christian neighbors of yours. They read to the very last page, but it s still not time to go home. Next comes the most stunning surprise of the evening. Even that - 4 -

5 third ending, Easter, is not the end. The story goes actually on. In fact, the story of Jesus goes on before your eyes, right there, that night in that crowded room in Antioch. The story goes on in the midst of them who are gathered in his name. After the book is closed, they turn to each other and they exchange a kiss. They embrace each other and say, The peace of Christ be with you. And after that, they have meal together, just bread and wine. But as you watch, you see that they re not just remembering what once was and is no more. They trust that in the breaking of bread and in the sharing of the cup, He is somehow still present. The story is not finished. It lives on. It lives on in them. It lives on in how they love. It lives on in how they live. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen