OT Reading: 2 Kings 2:1-14
NT Reading: Mark 9:2-10
In the last few weeks we have spent a lot of time in
Chapter 1 of Mark. In the first 30 verses we get the entire Gospel message about Jesus. We also get the message that very few people understood who Jesus is,
only the demons and spirits he cast out, and perhaps the persons he healed. In every
case except a couple of special ones, when someone recognized and called Jesus for who he is, Jesus silenced them. This is Mark’s
divine secret.
Yet we sophisticated readers have to wonder why? At
his baptism, the sky was ripped open and a voice said, “This is my son in whom
I am well pleased.” But it seems like only Jesus heard it. We've read the other Gospels.
What is most unusual (or maybe most natural), at least to me, is that Mark relates to us that Jesus repeatedly tells the disciples who he is and they fail to understand or forget what they have been told.
Today we have jumped all the way from
Chapter 1 over all the intervening verses that show this forgetfulness to the Transfiguration in chapter 9. (Transfiguration in this sense is easy to explain, it means in the eyes of the world this experience on the mountain transforms Jesus from an ordinary man to a divine entity.)
Let’s
look at some examples. At Mark 4:35-41, Jesus and the disciples are out on a
boat and a storm blows up. Jesus calms the storm with his words and the
disciples can only ask ”Who is this guy?”
He heals the daughter of a man, a girl who is almost
certainly already dead. He only lets Peter, James and John to see him heal her.
And all they can do is stand there amazed, then Jesus tells them to tell no one what he has done. (Mark 5:21-43)
He feeds five thousand men and their wives and
children using five loaves of bread and two fish. (Mark 6:30-44)
Later when the disciples are out on the sea, Jesus
walks across to them in a storm but he disciples who didn’t understand about
the bread, are only astounded by this, not realizing who Jesus is (Mark 6:45-52).
He feeds four thousand more the same way he did
before previously and they still do not understand (Mark 8:1-21)
He heals a blind man at Bethsaida (Mark 8:22-26) telling
the blind man to tell no one.
And then on the way to the next town, in reply to the
question of Jesus, some disciples say John the Baptist, Elijah, one of the
prophets, but dear Peter says , “You are the Messiah.” Jesus orders him not to
tell anyone.
And in the next verses, Mark 8:31-38, Jesus tells the
disciples what is going to happen to him, that he will be killed and rise in 3
days, that to follow Jesus requires paying a great price.
And 6 days later, here we are on a high mountain and
suddenly Jesus is transformed into something unknown, dazzling white clothes
and he is talking to Elijah and Moses. (What do they say?)
Do Peter, James and John react in awe knowing they
are in the presence of the Lord? No, they react like “Boy this is cool stuff.
We ought to make tents for everybody, Elijah, Moses, you, us, hang out and talk, leaving Jesus
speechless, and this terrified them. There as a cloud envelops them, a
loud voice says, “This is my son, beloved, listen to him!"
What is said on the way back down the mountain?
Jesus tells them to say nothing about any of this until the Son of Man had
risen from the dead. Peter, James and John can only wonder, “What does this
rising from the dead mean?” The Kingdom of God is far from their minds. The words of 6 days earlier are forgotten. But how
can anyone go through this experience and not realize Jesus speaks the truth
that the Kingdom of God is at hand?
This is an important passage. Mark presents it to us like
an image in two mirrors. Think about it. At the beginning of Mark at his baptism
we hear this voice saying “This is my Son in whom I am well pleased.”” And
finally at the end after Jesus has died, the centurion assigned to watch Jesus
on the cross exclaims, “Truly this man was God’s son.”
Right here in the middle of this opening and closing
days before his crucifixion, the words from the beginning and end meet
together, “This is my son, beloved, listen to him!”
We are approaching the end of the church season we
call Epiphany and about to enter the season of Lent that marks the final forty days
of Jesus on earth. Epiphany means an understanding, or revelation. From verse 1
of chapter 1 to these verses we hear the message of Epiphany over and over: Jesus is the son of God who has come to bring
God’s children home to the Kingdom of God. Yet everyone in Mark’s Gospel who
hears the words fails to understand them, except the demons and evil spirits
and perhaps those who are healed. The disciples who have everything explained
to them fail to understand, or remember.
Today, do we understand? We give lip service to the
scriptures, but as the prophet Micah says, (Mic. 4:5) “For all the peoples walk each in the name of
its (own) god…”
Even those of us who have to scrape to get enough
money to survive with a roof over our heads don’t seem to really get the
message.
Don’t get me wrong, I think those who have little
have the best chance to see what that glory means.
Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of very gracious
and kind people in the world who do their best to bring compassion to it
because they do understand the vocation Jesus calls us to.
Don’t get me wrong, everybody wishes God would just
walk up and thump them on the side of the head saying, “Wake up! This is what I
want you to do!” It would make our lives so much easier to know exactly what to
do, wouldn’t it?
But the irony of it all is the Lord has done just
that. In Micah 6:8, the Lord says, “He has
told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to
do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Jesus will
say it to us in Mark 12:28-34, when he asked in an attempt to trap him which of
the commandments is greatest of all. Jesus cites the Shema (Deut. 6:4-5), “Hear
O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is One; you shall love the Lord your God
with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with
all your strength.” “And the second is, ‘You shall love your neighbor as
yourself. There are none greater than these.” When the person who asked the
question says, “Yes, these are much more important than all the whole burnt
offerings and sacrifices.” Jesus replies, “You are not far from the kingdom of
God.”
How close to
the kingdom of God do we all walk?
AMEN
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