It’s Transfiguration Sunday! Through stories about Elijah and Elisha and Jesus’ transfiguration, we’re looking at the grief and loss that inevitably go with change.
Thank you to Pastor Gretchen Mertes from Our Redeemer’s Lutheran Church in Seattle for permission to share her Transfiguration Song (embedded at the end of this sermon). Also thanks to Debie Thomas for her commentary at Journey with Jesus. The texts for this Transfiguration sermon are 2 Kings 2:1-12 & Mark 9:2-9.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen
Last weekend, I got to participate in the ELCA Youth Ministry Network’s Extravaganza, a 3-day conference with about 800 youth directors.
It’s the only continuing education conference I know of in our denomination that’s focused on youth ministry people, i.e. people like Christin, but several hundred pastors go as well, and frankly, I think conferences planned by youth ministry people are a lot more fun and inspiring than most conferences planned by pastors. This year, it was obviously all online, which was easier, but still not the same as being physically in a room with people.
One of the workshops I went to was on grief, and the presenter talked about how people are carrying a lot more grief than usual right now.
Part of that, of course, is due to the pandemic. Hundreds of thousands of people just here in our country have died from COVID. Usually, when we think of grief, we think of death, grieving and mourning friends or family who have died.
But what the presenter talked about was that grief is about more than just death. Grief is really about loss.
Losing a person causes grief, but so does losing a job, or an opportunity. Losing independence, losing your health, even losing a routine or letting go of an expectation causes grief. Any kind of transition causes grief.
I’ve heard that before, but something about it really hit me this week as we’re getting ready to enter the season of Lent, which in the way the church measures time, is when the pandemic started last year. I’ve said a few times that it kind of feels like we’re still in Lent from last year, and here we are again.
I wonder this week, what are you grieving right now? So much has been disrupted in the last 11 months, almost a year now. What are you missing? What are you grieving?
In my sermon last week, before our annual meeting, I talked about the apostle Paul’s insistence that the way we proclaim the Gospel needs to look different when we’re talking to different people—you might remember his line that for the sake of the Gospel, “I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some.” And I suggested that we as a church need new ways to tell the old, old story of Jesus’ love.
Of course, the challenging thing about that—well, one of the challenging things—is that new ways of telling the story sounds an awful lot like change, and churches tend not to particularly like change.
But it’s not just churches. No organization likes change, because no person likes change, because change always involves grief. Any time you try something new, it means you’re not doing something else, and that means loss, and loss means grief. Change is hard because any change involves loss.
With that idea of change and loss and grief in mind, take a look at these Scripture readings again.
In the first reading from 2nd Kings, we have these two prophets, Elijah and Elisha. Elijah is the senior prophet, the experienced one, who’s been doing God’s work for years. Elisha is sort of his intern, his apprentice, more of a prophet-in-training, but they’ve working together and traveling together for a while.
In this story, Elijah is about to retire. He’s completed all his work, and the Lord is going to take him up into heaven. And as you heard in the reading, these other people, sort of the local prophets group, keep coming up to Elisha and asking him if he knows what’s about to happen, wanting to make sure he’s prepared.
But Elisha is not ready to be on his own, so he keeps snapping back at them, saying “Yes, I know, so be quiet.” They seem to want to make sure he’s prepared for the change that’s coming, but he really doesn’t want to talk about it.
It’s interesting, because this is definitely a promotion for Elisha. I don’t know that prophets get paid, so there’s not really a salary increase, but there’s got to be more prestige at least. He’s about to complete his internship and graduate to full prophet.
But he’s not ready to deal with this change yet. He’s not ready to lose his mentor, not ready to take on this new role, to give up what he’s used to. Even when Elijah tells him to stay behind, Elisha insists on accompanying his master, so they go from place to place with Elisha practically hanging on to Elijah.
Eventually, they get to the Jordan River, the threshold, and as God takes Elijah away in a chariot of fire, Elijah literally passes his mantle—his cloak—to Elisha. Change comes to him whether he’s ready or not. And in the last verse, as Elijah disappears from his sight, Elisha grasps his own clothes and tears them into two pieces. He grieves. Change is hard.
If you keep reading the rest of the chapter, by the way, you’ll get to one of the most unexpected stories in the Bible. A group of boys from a village come out and tease Elisha, who still seems to be grieving, and his grief presents as being very sensitive about his baldness, so he curses the boys who are teasing him and two wild bears end up mauling 42 boys.
I think the moral of that part is to be sensitive to people who are grieving. Recognize that change is hard for everyone else too.
Roughly 800 years later, Jesus and three disciples, Peter, James, and John, go up a mountain to pray, sort of a little spiritual retreat, and while they’re up there, Mark writes, Jesus is transfigured before them. That word “transfigured” means transformed, changed. In the story, Jesus’ clothes start glowing. The three disciples get a glimpse of who Jesus really is, and they’re terrified.
On one level, they’re terrified because their friend is glowing and chatting with two people, Moses and Elijah, who have been dead for centuries. Well, we just heard about Elijah getting carried up in the chariot of fire, so maybe dead isn’t quite the right word for his status, but either way, this is not normal! Of course Peter, James, and John are terrified!
But I think they’re also afraid because everything they thought they knew about Jesus now has to change. They’ve given their lives to follow this great rabbi, this healer, this teacher, and that’s pretty unique and special, but it all fits into a mental framework that makes sense. There have been other rabbi’s, other teachers, even other healers.
But no one’s ever done what Jesus is doing right now. This is new. They’re in over their heads, and they have to let go of what they think they know. They have to either stop following, or they need to let go of their plans and their expectations and accept that God is doing something new. Changing their understanding of Jesus means changing their understanding of themselves.
This story is a turning point. It’s a threshold. They have to make a decision about whether or not they are willing to keep following Jesus, whether they’ll stick with him down the mountain. For a moment, Peter tries to avoid the decision. He proposes setting up some tents and camping out there on the mountain, at the threshold. But that’s not an option.
Change is always difficult, because it means giving up something, and entering the unknown. Change means coming down off the mountain.
I don’t have a satisfying bow to tie on the end of this sermon, because we’re in the midst of change right now. We’re still grieving, and we will be for a long time. There’s been a lot of loss this year.
All I have right now to suggest to you is to notice Jesus goes with Peter, James, and John down the mountain. God has plans for Elisha, who himself becomes one of the greatest prophets in Israel’s history. God’s not done with them.
God accompanies them and us through grief and loss, through change and disruption. God is at work changing you, changing us, and although there is grief involved, hear the promise that God is at work for good, making us new.
The Holy Spirit’s work is not thrown off by a pandemic, or bitterly cold weather, or even by our unfaithfulness. God is still faithful, and God is still calling you to follow, to cross over the threshold.
May you know God’s presence in the midst of grief and disruption, in the mountaintop moments, as well as down in the valleys.
Let us pray.
God of love, be with us in the times of disruption and change. Keep us grounded in our identity as your beloved children, and open us to welcome the changes you would make in our lives. Reveal your love to us, that it may change us so that we can’t help but reflect your light to the world. In Jesus’ name, Amen
I want to share with you a song about the Transfiguration that I heard at youth ministry Extravaganza last week, from Pastor Gretchen Mertes, who serves at Our Redeemer’s Lutheran Church in Seattle.
[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOMvcNPu2cs”]