Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

This Sunday we are pulling out all the stops.
The readings, the hymns, the organ. The story of Elijah and Elisha is full of references to grand moments in Israel’s salvation history: it reminds of Moses striking water, parting the Red Sea, passing through on dry ground, Israel crossing the Jordan into the promised land. Now Elijah and Elisha cross back to other side of the Jordan. There Elijah himself disappears or is taken up in a grand moment when a fiery chariot gets between him and Elisha.
Psalm 50 also starts out full mouthed, piling up three names for God in the first line: Mighty one, God, Lord. It sings of God’s beauty, glory, and fiery power, of God the creator who calls the heavens and the earth as witnesses to his judgment. In the Epistle Paul speaks of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ who is the image of God. He takes the very bold step to say that this glory shines into our hearts giving us first hand knowledge of this glory.

The Gospel reading itself gives us the reason why all this piling up, pulling out all the stops: We are celebrating the Transfiguration of Our Lord. Jesus is transfigured up on a mountain into a man wearing white clothes, whiter than anyone can make them, as white as only the martyrs wear them in apocalyptic visions.
Jesus is in conversation with Moses and Elijah, who in the time of Jesus were held as two of the most important figures in Israel’s history of salvation. Both of them prophets who are bestowed with special gifts from the Spirit, leading the people, having seen God’s glory from close by in times of particular crisis and discouragement. Their endings were mysterious, both disappeared without burial. And now Jesus is in conversation with them. It truly is the G-3 summit of salvation history taking place right in front of us. They are so close we can almost grab them.

With the celebration of the Transfiguration of Our Lord we are finally closing the festival cycle of Christmas whose light of glory above the shepherds’ fields, whose star leading the wise men to the manger and the Word made flesh, has shone over us even until now, accompanied us until now. The origin of our celebration today goes back to the glory revealed in the manger.

Before we enter the season of Lent, sisters and brothers, and the liturgy changes to a pensive, reflective, more somber mood in preparation for the great mystery of Easter, it makes great sense to remember again, where the true light and life come from, to reflect in whose world we live and who we are in it. It is good to pause and allow questions like, “What is our faith, our mission, how can we describe the path on which we find ourselves?”

I suspect that what holds true for many, many people of faith, holds true for people in this community as well. We often go through times asking ourselves, “What do I believe? After all these years, I think I still haven’t got it.” Or, more basic, “Do I believe at all? For what am I subjecting myself to the customs and discipline of faith if again and again I am not even sure that God is real, that faith makes sense at all?” There are times when the anger at God is overwhelming, there are times when God seems to be nowhere and we can’t seem to reach out to God. It would be good if only we could see God, just once, so that we could be sure, or more sure.

Today, on Transfiguration Sunday, we are given a chance to do just that, see and hear God. Through Peter and James and John’s eyes, we get to behold God. There is plenty to see and plenty to hear. We see summarily all of God’s acts of salvation in Moses, Elijah and Jesus, and we hear, “This is my Son, the Beloved, listen to him!” We had heard this voice already at Jesus’ baptism in the first epiphany in Mark: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” (Mark 1:11) Now in this second epiphany, we hear it again. “This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him.”

Listen to him. Here is a clue.
Mark wants us to remember what we have already heard and seen.
We heard from Jesus: “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe in the good news.” (Mark 1:14-15) We saw in the Gospel these last weeks people like you and me leave the life they knew and follow Jesus. In Jesus’ first exorcism we saw the powers of this world lose their grip on people like you and me, measuring up to those powers with the power of mercy and love. We saw Peter’s mother-in-law reinstated in her life, and the life of the family renewed in service to Jesus. We saw Jesus making himself unclean by touching an unclean man to push the boundaries of the religious and social order in order to give priority to the rule of mercy and healing.

Do you hear? Can you see what you see? Here is our God. God’s glory manifest in the lives of real people. When I listen carefully in this congregation and around me, I can hear, and when I expose my eyes to the light of God, I can see the knowledge of the glory of God among us.

When we are asked to listen to Jesus, there is something else that was said just before the Transfiguration. Hear this: “Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” ... “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” (See Mark 8:31-38)

“Listen to him!” The glory of God has in it the cross, has in it the last consequence of Jesus’ way of life and way to exercise power. The cross is the inevitable turn in which God’s glory comes into full light. Here we know and see who God is.

The event of the Transfiguration, dear congregation, grants us a wondrous moment of pausing, of beholding and hearing the glory of God, the glory of God which will always surpass our understanding but which we may behold even un-understood. In the light of the Word made flesh, when we are ready, we will learn to see that the white robe of Jesus is the robe of the martyrs for the faith.

Even if we cannot solve the questions of faith that we may have in a satisfactory or permanent manner, we know that when we want to see God, just once so we know God is really there, we have to look to the cross and even follow the cross. It is strangely comforting to know that none of the disciples ever called Jesus Son of God in their time with Jesus. In the Gospel of Mark it is the outsider, the non-believer in whom the last epiphany of the coming of the Son of Man descending on a cloud comes to fulfillment: When the Roman centurion stands facing Jesus’ cross and sees that Jesus has died, he exclaims, “Truly this man was God’s Son!” The disciples had all left long ago.

But did this failure of confession make the disciples into failures? No, they did incredible work. They proclaimed and spread the good news of God’s glory in Jesus Christ, so that we would still receive its glorious light in our day. They were persecuted for their faith, many died as martyrs wearing robes whiter than white. Which can only mean: We are ourselves already set on our paths of life and faith and mission, because we have seen and we have heard, beholding God’s glory and the cloud of witnesses.
So, dear congregation, let us pull out the stops and sing to the glory of God.
Amen.