Listen to Jesus

The Transfiguration of Christ
The Last Sunday after the Epiphany
February19, 2012

GOSPEL LESSON: Mark 9:2–9 [The Transfiguration]
2And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, 3and his clothes became radiant, intensely white, as no one on earth could bleach them. 4And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, and they were talking with Jesus. 5And Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.” 6For he did not know what to say, for they were terrified. 7And a cloud overshadowed them, and a voice came out of the cloud, “This is my beloved Son; listen to him.” 8And suddenly, looking around, they no longer saw anyone with them but Jesus only.
9And as they were coming down the mountain, he charged them to tell no one what they had seen, until the Son of Man had risen from the dead.

Jesus and his three closest disciples climbed to the top of a mountain. They camped out, sleeping under the stars. And then, Jesus was transfigured before the disciples, he was changed, he had a metamorphous. His clothes became perfectly white and radiant. I would imagine that it was like a big halo around Jesus. Then Jesus began talking with two Old Testament prophets, Moses and Elijah.

They were talking about the work of salvation that Jesus was going to do. That is, they were talking about the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Moses was the servant of God when God sent salvation and deliverance to the Israelites. Moses led the people out of Egyptian slavery. He led them to the Promised Land. Many years later, Elijah was the servant of God when the Israelites had fallen into the sin and slavery of idol worship. Elijah was faithful to the Lord God and showed the people the true way of salvation. And so it is appropriate that Jesus talk with these two great men of the Old Testament. Moses gave the Law of God to the people to try to control their behavior and faith. Elijah preached judgment and punishment to the people to try to bring them back to the true faith. But neither were completely successful. And so in Jesus Christ we have a new way of doing things. The new way is called Gospel, or Good News. The judgment and punishment of the Law was put on Jesus. Jesus was not a new Moses; he was not a new law-giver. Jesus was not a new Elijah; he was not a fire and brimstone prophet. Jesus kept the law, but he revealed its true meaning. That true meaning of the Law is love—to love God and to love the neighbor, and even to love the enemy.

God told the three disciples, “This is my beloved Son; listen to him.” If you remember your Bible History, the people did not listen to Moses. They worshiped the Golden Calf, they worshiped other idols too. And because they did not listen to Moses, they had to travel in the desert for 40 years. The people did not listen to Elijah and the other prophets. They worshiped idols and forgot about the True God. Because they did not listen to Elijah, they were destroyed by their enemies and taken into slavery to Assyria and Babylon. And so God warned the three disciples, “This is my beloved Son; listen to him.” He wanted Peter to quit babbling about making shelters, God wanted Peter to quit talking and start listening to what is important.

One of the biggest problems the disciples had was listening and understanding. Jesus would speak, but they did not understand him. It was especially hard to understand when Jesus was speaking of his suffering, death and resurrection. At this point they did not understand fully the plan of God. They did not understand that the suffering of Jesus was necessary for our salvation. They did not understand that death was the way to life eternal. They did not understand that Jesus could really rise again on the third day. The way to understand that was to listen to Jesus. They had to listen and trust Jesus. Therefore the Father spoke from heaven, saying, “This is my beloved Son; listen to him.”

The disciples had the problem of not listening. We have the same problem. This problem is on a number of levels. First, it is a matter of not physically hearing the Word of God. This lack of listening is an ignorance of the Gospel; it is a matter of not knowing about Jesus and the love of God and his plan for your life. This is why it is so important that the Gospel be proclaimed and taught. We teach it to our children. We tell it to our family. We invite people to church. It also helps to hear the Word of God if the preacher has a big voice or if the church has a good sound system. Also, if people stay awake because the sermon is interesting. (*blush*)　　

Then the second problem of listening is not understanding. If you do not understand, the Word of God goes in one ear and out the other. It is like as if you hear a clanging noise and don’t know that it is the dinner bell, you will go hungry. And so the Gospel message must be explained. What does it mean for us that Jesus died on the cross? What does it mean that God loves us? What does the Holy Spirit do for us? The way to understand the Gospel is to listen and listen and listen. It is to have the Bible stories repeated over and over until they are part of our lives.

And the third problem with listening is when we do not want to hear. And this is the worst of all. We may think we know it all and so do not need to listen to God anymore. Or, we may not like what we hear, or reject what we hear. We may not want to listen to the Law of God when we want to do something sinful or unethical. We hold our hands over our ears so that the words of Jesus do not bother our consciences. The words of the Sermon on the Mount are an interfering noise when we want to get revenge or when we do not want to turn the other cheek or when we want to steal something. Then we do not want to listen to Jesus.

If we are not listening to Jesus, to whom are we listening? We are listening to the devil, this world, and our sinful hearts. Just look around at this world. Do you hear any good advice about how to live and survive in this sinful world? What can the devil, this society or even our common sense tell us about how to survive?

Listening is more than hearing with our ears. Listening is obeying. Listening is doing what someone tells us to do. When your mother says, “Listen to me,” she means that we should hear her words of command and then obey. “Listen to me. Clean up your room.” When the coach says, “Listen up guys,” he means, “Pay attention, listen carefully. Here is the plan of what we are going to do.” In the same way, when we truly listen to the words of Jesus, we will hear his commands to us, and we will hear the game plan. We will hear about Jesus’ plans to suffer and die for our sins. We will hear the plan to rise on the third day. We will hear the plan of Jesus returning on the Last Day to bring us eternal salvation. And if we are truly listening with our heart, we will hear that the Good News really is good. This is the listening of faith. It is the listening that leads to obedience and following Jesus. And we listen to Jesus because we know he is the authority on the subject of salvation and eternal life. We listen and we trust his word. We listen and we trust his word because he suffered, died and rose again.

When mother says, “Listen to me,” we listen because we know might get into trouble if we do not. Mother is getting angry. When God says, “This is my beloved Son; listen to him,” we listen because we know that God loves us and that he is trying to keep us out of trouble. That is why the Word of God is Good News. That is why it is something worth listening to.

Amen.

Michael Nearhood, Pastor
Okinawa Lutheran Church


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