2024 02 11 Sermon Entering a Different World
Entering a Different World
Transfiguration of Our Lord
Mark 9:2-10
Rev. Karl-John N. Stone
When my son was a little boy, whenever we’d watch a movie with him and the story came to a moment of tension, he would always ask “what’s gonna happen?” And I’d respond, “I don’t know, we’re going to have to wait and find out.” But that uncertainty, the unknown, made him uncomfortable, nervous. When he got older and was about to enter middle school, he was a bit nervous about the unknowns of going to a new school. Fortunately, I was able to take him to an open house the week before school started. We walked the hallways, found his locker, visited his classrooms, met his teachers, and figured out how to get to the cafeteria. Then he was fine.
But it’s a common feeling for many people, that nervousness, anytime you have to cross the threshold from the familiar to the unfamiliar—when you’re entering a different world, so to speak—where different rules and customs apply. Maybe you’ve felt this if you’ve ever started a new job, or moved to a new neighborhood or a different part of the country, or been in any situation where you’ve felt like a fish out of water. As humans, we like to settle into routines and form habits, and it’s easier to do this when things feel familiar. It simplifies life when know what to expect; when you know what the rules are. But if you are entering a “different world”, this means that at some level you don’t know what to do. You’re asking “what’s gonna happen?” Depending on the situation, this can be exciting or nerve-wracking.
We see this going on in today’s gospel with St. Peter. Jesus took Peter, James, and John up a high mountain. Mountains are “different worlds” in themselves. When you climb them you’ll find different terrain, different plants and animals, different weather, and a different view of the beauty of God’s creation. And on that particular day, as recounted in Mark’s gospel, the mountain became an entirely different world, as God took the “normal unknowns” of being in a new place, and kicked them up a notch! As the disciples stood there on top of the mountain, Jesus was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white. Then, just to make no mistake that God was doing something special, the great biblical prophets—Moses and Elijah—appeared, and they were talking with Jesus.
Peter, James, and John had entered a completely different world on that mountain, getting a glimpse into the fullness of God’s kingdom in all of its glory. The disciples had entered Jesus’ world—the new reality he would create after being raised from the dead—only, they were getting a glimpse of it ahead of time. On the mountaintop, entering a place where the “rules” were different, they had a profound spiritual experience and didn’t really know how to act. And they were nervous; in fact, they were terrified! Even Peter, who always had something to say “did not know what to say.”
So being Peter, he said the first thing that popped into his mind: “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three tents, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” This was Peter’s way of asking “what’s gonna happen?”; of trying to make himself feel more comfortable when faced with the unknown. But just when Peter tries to make some sense of something so completely mysterious—it’s at that point when a cloud overshadows them, preserving the mystery and making it even more mysterious. It’s like God is saying “I’ll let you know a little bit, but you are not allowed to know too much.” I think it’s often that way for us, if you’ve ever had a profound spiritual experience—there is a mystery to it that you can’t quite explain, and even if you try to explain you never really quite capture the experience. There’s often some strange mixture of knowing and unknowing, brightness and cloud, comfort and discomfort, mystery and knowledge, spiritual and earthly. And through them we get a tiny glimpse into God’s glory; then God overshadows us with cloud, so we have to learn to walk by faith and not by sight.
From the cloud God speaks to Peter and the disciples, saying about Jesus: “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” Walking by faith and not by sight means listening more closely to Jesus and then following him back down the mountain. As much as Peter wants to hang on to this spiritual experience and make it continue (which is what he’s attempting by offering to build these three dwellings), Jesus doesn’t let him stay there for very long. They have to go back down into regular, normal, boring, everyday life. And as they are on their way back down there, Jesus orders the disciples “to tell no one about what they had seen, until after he had risen from the dead.” It seems like a strange command. You’d think if they told people, more people would believe. But Jesus knows they need time to reflect on it. This experience didn’t happen so they would feel “holier” than others (which, if they started talking about it right away, people might get that impression). The mountaintop experience happened so that God would shape them and form them; so that when they did speak of it, it wouldn’t be in a way that just called attention to themselves, but instead pointed to the good news of God in a way that made sense for the people they were talking to.
Maybe that’s another reason why Jesus instructs the disciples to “tell no one just yet”—because as they followed Jesus back down the mountain into “normal life”, they would not only need to listen to Jesus, but also listen to the people they meet. If you think back to last week’s gospel, in Mark 1:38 Jesus says “Let us go to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came to do.” Following Jesus into the neighboring towns meant the disciples would have to enter these “different worlds” of their neighbors—and until they got there, the disciples would not yet know how to speak the good news of God in a way that made sense, without first getting to understand these different worlds.
The author Jim Henderson, in his book Evangelism Without Additives, makes a similar point (page 43). He writes that when Jesus entered people’s worlds “just being with them was a sermon.” So, for us, “following Jesus on his mission…means we go [to other people].” We follow them “into their world.” “We spend time in their cultural context, just as we ask them to spend some of their time in a new cultural context” which we call the church. As we go “we don’t [need] to spell out every detail of the plan of salvation;” because “Jesus expresses himself through Christians just being themselves.”
Here at House of Prayer, I think we’ve been following Jesus into some of these “other worlds” beyond the walls of our church. Your “world” may overlap with some of these “other worlds”, but probably not all of them. We’ve taken neighborhood walks, looked for God’s presence while snow-tubing at The Rock, had Sunday School at Kayla’s Playground, and enjoyed breakfast at Benny’s Café. We’ve cooked and served meals for hungry and homeless people in Racine, built handicap ramps through Revitalize Milwaukee, and sent our youth to help widows with yard work and on mission trips to serve people in Cleveland, Kentucky, and Kansas City. Each time we enter “another world”, we can be looking for the presence of the risen Jesus there, as we also listen for what is meaningful and familiar to the people in those “other worlds”. By listen to them and listening to Jesus, we can reflect on how to speak the good news of God in a way that makes sense; in a way that holds in healthy tension the brightness and the cloud, the mystery and the knowledge, the spiritual and the earthly.
We don’t always know what to say or how to say it when it comes to our own spiritual experiences. But God gives us these experiences from time to time, to keep shaping and forming you so that, so if you do speak of it, it will be able to point people towards the good news of God, and not just yourself. And in the meantime, remember this: research (from the Barna Group) shows—not that many non-church-going people are waiting for Christians to be more articulate about their faith. But lots of people are looking for evidence of a faith that is grounded in Christ-like humility, kindness, love, listening, and service. Amen.