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

Today we strain to understand who is this Jesus who has come on the scene of our earthly existence. It is the proclamation of the church that Jesus is the key to understanding who we are as human beings. Our problem seems to be that we do not understand ourselves. We seek to gain understanding based on an assumption that simply will not hold up under scrutiny.

That assumption is that we human beings are created for glory, our own glory. We have set ourselves in the center of the universe and thereby displaced God from God’s rightful place. We set ourselves up as gods. The heady period of the Enlightenment with its roots in the Renaissance and its bankruptcy in the modern period serves to remind us that we human beings do not perform well when we set ourselves up as gods.

Removing God from the throne and replacing God with reason was a means of putting ourselves on the throne. It is a place where we do not belong. We seem not to be made for such heights as the story of the Tower of Babel well illustrates. The current period of disorientation often called Post-modernism is an interesting consent to the truth that human beings do not belong at the center of the universe, nor are we suited to the heavenly heights where we might pretend to guide the events of history. The post-modern philosophy does not try to put God back in the center. Post-modernism dismisses the center all together.

Some would complain that our current disorientation leaves us in a morass of moral emptiness. It leaves us human beings lost in a world which no longer has a pole star by which we may navigate the dangerous currents, shoals and rocks of existence. We are living in a dark age in which God is not the center, in which humanity is not the center. Now it is the individual who is at the center.

One can see in the rise of all kinds spiritualities, philosophies, and even in the self-help industry that there is an all-out effort to support the lonely individual in our effort to assert ourselves in this world. But these efforts will fail if they do not even recognize the truth of human existence. We are created beings limited in time and space. We are vulnerable at best, and at our worst we are predatory, yes, violent in our desire to establish ourselves over others, over creation, and over God. We want to dominate although we were created for something else.

How will our vulnerability be turned into endurance? How will our predatory behavior be converted to helping our neighbor? How should our will to dominate be transformed to a desire to serve? One step is to come to the truth of our existence. That truth is offered in Jesus.

4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 5 For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus' sake. 6 For it is the God who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 4:4-6),

The Hebrew tradition tells us that we human beings are created by God in his image, in his likeness, and called to represent God in his creation. In one brief sentence in Genesis 1 we find placement in the cosmos.

Then God said, "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth." (Genesis 1:26)

Humankind is not called to dominate or exploit creation. The vocation of humanity is to represent God well in God’s creation. To have dominion is not to rule creation, but it is to embody the very real presence of the creator in the creator’s world. Of course, we are deluded if we believe that our proper role is to rule, dominate, and use the world to our own advantage. In our blindness we believe that we are kings, and as such we believe that our idea of kingship is the model of God’s kingship. It is this lie which Jesus dispels.

In the story of the transfiguration we hear the word of the gospel reaffirming the identity of Jesus and thereby reconfiguring our own identity. First, here is some background. In chapter 8 we are told that Jesus asks his disciples about his identity. There are several possibilities, but Peter hits the nail on the head when he confesses, “You are the Messiah” (Mark 8:29). Peter is saying that Jesus is the anointed one, that is, the king. The problem is that Peter does not understand messiahship the way Jesus understands it.

Jesus tells the disciples that he must suffer, be rejected, die and be raised from the dead. Peter rebukes Jesus for having such an absurd idea of kingship. The king does not suffer. At best the king keeps his people from suffering. At worst the king is the cause of suffering.

Jesus rebukes Peter calling him Satan, the great liar. Jesus assures Peter that as the messiah, the king, Jesus will suffer if he is to carry out his vocation to represent God, the heavenly King in his kingdom on earth.

It is then that Jesus takes Peter, James and John up to the mountain. The mountain is the place of revelation. Moses went to Sinai where he received the Ten Commandments and where he interceded for the children of Israel. Elijah went to the same mountain where he sought refuge from the evil king, Ahab. There God spoke to Elijah and sent him back to confront the king with the word of the Lord. Elijah obediently returned but in great dread of the suffering he would undergo at the hands of Ahab.

Suddenly Jesus is joined by Moses and Elijah. Jesus begins to shine radiantly. Peter immediately sees an opportunity to institutionalize the preeminence of Jesus and set up operations with three shrines to the three holy ones. Then a cloud overshadows the whole scene and a voice reasserts the identity of Jesus. “This is my Son, the Beloved.” These are the words of the divine voice at the baptism of Jesus. The assertion is now emphasized that Jesus is the king. In the Hebrew tradition the king was the son of God.

It is the addition of these words that turn our attention to the true content of the revelation. “This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him.” The voice has now made clear that Jesus will undergo suffering and in this way he will faithfully represent God in this world in a way that you and I would rather not do.

Dear congregation, the glory of Jesus Christ and, therefore, the glory of the Church is that the Son of God comes in our flesh. He shares our vulnerability and our suffering and proclaims that God is with us even in our suffering. This is good news in a day when religion is being used to cause suffering rather than to teach and strengthen us in our suffering. We are called to represent God in the world by our suffering and not by causing suffering.

It is also good news in a day when religion is being used to support the lie that we are not vulnerable, that we will not die, and that we will not suffer if we do the right thing or at least think positively. The gospel is the announcement that God is the Lord of creation and he will reclaim his right to rule through his Son who will rule as the true king enthroned on the cross. We can suffer with Jesus and come to know the glory of God in a way that no one would know through an earthly king.

We enter the season of Lent this Ash Wednesday. Let us gather together with the truth of the transfiguration so that we may accept the ashes of mortality in the knowledge that we are not the center of the universe. That is the place of the transcendent God revealed in the life, suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.