WADING RIVER CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH

SERMONS IN PRINT

Peter Vibert 11/06/05

Mark 9:1-50 “Glory and Suffering”

“The power and the glory,” the greatest and the least – they are all woven together at the start of this second half of Mark’s Gospel narrative. Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Messiah, and Jesus’ beginning to teach the Twelve that he must suffer and die and rise again are the pivot point of the Gospel story. Now the second part of the drama begins, and Jesus will leave Galilee and start his journey towards Jerusalem.

1) Revelation of Glory

But before he does, all the Gospel writers agree that a remarkable event occurs, right on the heels of Peter’s confession and Jesus’ “First Announcement of the Passion.” Jesus has said that some of his hearers will “see the kingdom come in power.” Nobody has any idea what he means, but six days later he leads Peter, James and John up a mountain alone. In a terrifying and confusing moment, he is suddenly transformed before their eyes; his clothes shine with a brilliance they have never seen before, he is accompanied by the figures of Moses and Elijah, and the shekinah-glory – the cloud of God’s presence – descends on the mountain. A voice from heaven says: “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.”

It is called “the Transfiguration,” and it came later to be understood as a moment when Jesus is revealed in his glory; when to a few people, he is revealed as he truly is. Here the Galilean peasant is revealed as the incarnate Son of God. Moses and Elijah are in attendance; living figures come from the realms of glory to attest that the Law and the Prophets pointed towards this man and this moment. We are told in Luke’s longer account that they “spoke about his departure which he was about to fulfill in Jerusalem.” Their topic is Jesus’ death, his resurrection, his ascension. They speak about the way Jesus’ glory is to be revealed in his suffering and his rising.

2) Glory and Suffering

Here is that great enigma, the mystery at the heart of the gospel: that God’s plan to redeem a fallen world required the suffering of his Son. Nobody had expected this, and even Jesus’ closest disciples could not grasp it. Peter had rebuked Jesus for even suggesting it. Now, on the mountain of Transfiguration, the same Peter who had confessed Jesus as “the Christ” is overwhelmed with confusion and fear, and can only suggest that he build three “sukkah” for Jesus, Moses and Elijah. But the revelation is soon over, and as they descend the mountain, Jesus again speaks about dying and rising. Peter, James and John are simply confused. They question Jesus about Elijah’s return, and are confronted by the unpleasant revelation that he has indeed “returned” in the figure of John the Baptist, who has been imprisoned and killed at the whim of Herod Antipas and his vicious wife. As one commentator (M. Hooker) aptly says, Queen Herodias has done to the “second Elijah” what the infamous Queen Jezebel wanted to do to the “first Elijah.” Suffering at the hands of the “powers-that-be” is what God’s messengers and God’s Son can expect in their mission to a fallen world.

Coming down the mountain - never a good experience - is a reminder of what Moses found when he came down from Sinai. Down in the valley, there is chaos, suffering and unbelief. The remaining nine Apostles have proved incapable of the ministry Jesus had sent them out on just a few months earlier. They cannot deliver a demon-possessed boy; his father is exasperated; Jesus is called for. The man is full of doubts and fears – he approaches Jesus with “If you can help, please do.” This is hardly a strong word of faith in Jesus; “If,” as Jesus notes, is not the word of trust and belief. “Anything is possible” for believers, he says. The father responds with words that millions have echoed ever since: “I believe; help my unbelief!”

The man believes a little, partially, fretfully, doubtfully... Jesus notes that, but he does not turn away. The boy is suffering, and Jesus delivers him. Everyone is astounded, and the Twelve are confused. “Why couldn’t we do that?” Because they had forgotten that God alone can deliver, not the Twelve, and that prayer is essential for those who want to experience the power of God. That, of course, is humbling; this is not the kind of power the Twelve dreamed would be theirs to exercise.

Now Jesus turns and starts his journey toward Jerusalem. He travels “through Galilee,” with only a brief stop at his home base in Capernaum. There is just enough time for some hard questions, and an object lesson for the Twelve, before they set out on the crucial journey. Jesus knows that on the road, the Twelve have been deep in conversation, even though he is trying to teach them once again that he will suffer, be handed over to the authorities and be killed, and rise again after three days. But they could not grasp what he meant, they were unwilling and afraid to ask, and instead they fell to arguing among themselves.

Their issue: “who is the greatest?” No wonder at times Jesus calls them a “faithless and unbelieving people” and asks “how long must I put up with you?” Jesus is exasperated at the stubborn, blind, self-centered unbelief of men who are supposed to be his chosen, closest disciples! So he places a child in their midst, and says “look at him... he is of no account to you, just a child... but you must be willing to serve the needs of insignificant people like him.” Neither Jews nor the Greco-Roman culture thought much of children; to make a child an example, to set him up as someone whose needs were to be served, was to overturn the entire structure of the family and household. Children were no better than slaves – indeed in Aramaic, which Jesus spoke, the same word could mean child or slave – and Jesus insists that “great” disciples must accept and embrace children and slaves as equals and as people worthy of attention. If you want to be great in Jesus’ kingdom, get off your self-importance; because when you welcome and embrace the lowest and the neediest and the unimportant, you embrace Jesus himself.

3) Great?

Who then is a good disciple of Jesus, then or now? The person who listens to Jesus, the person who trusts Jesus, the person who prays for God’s power, the person who believes (even with much doubt mixed in), the person who takes the servant role, the person who grasps and embraces that suffering is at the center of Jesus’ calling and at the center of his disciples’, too.

We don’t much like this definition of discipleship. We hate being told that to follow Jesus, we have to “take up our cross.” We rebel against suffering in all its forms – whether it’s being misunderstood, proved inadequate to a task, or being the object of criticism. We dislike pain, weakness, fatigue. We complain at our failing health and strength; or at the ways other people don’t notice us or care for us. We don’t expect to be short of money, or of a job, or of shelter or food (and if we are, then somebody else must be to blame – perhaps our spouses, or the government). If we feel low, it’s because some other person is not being sensitive to our need for attention.

What we want is to be “great” – to feel great, to look great, to be comfortable, to be waited upon, to have our needs catered to by others. We want somebody else to cook the meals, do the laundry, take out the trash, pay the bills – a paid servant, perhaps? We want well-paying and interesting jobs, attentive and affectionate spouses, obedient and over-achieving children. We want schools that teach what we want taught, children who achieve the highest test scores and play on winning teams, all at minimum prices. We want communities whose doors are closed to others as soon as we move in; we want good public services and good government and a say in what’s happening in our communities. We want good highways, and light traffic.

We want it all, and we don’t want to suffer. And the idea that Christians might be called to be the servants of all is the last thing we want to hear. Too may of us want to be the masters of all, not the servants. We have never grasped that at the center of the Christian gospel is the suffering and death of the Son of God: and if he suffered, what makes us think we will escape? If he came to give his life for us, why do we think the world owes us a living? When will we see that our calling is to serve one another, and him, just as he served us? When will we see that glory and greatness reside in serving the needs of others; in service that goes unnoticed, unpaid, un-thanked, unappreciated?

When will we get off our demands and our complaints and our criticisms, our waiting for other people to do things for us, and start following the Lord we claim to trust? When will we see that in God’s estimation, the great disciples are those who go about their business serving the needs of children and old people and sick people and dying people and needy people, and expecting no reward?

Greatness and suffering are inextricably linked in this fallen world. That is how redemption occurs. "No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown." So wrote the great Quaker leader William Penn in 1669. At some level we know it’s true: “No pain, no gain,” we grunt as we sweat it out at the gym! But what we know to be true physically we must apply spiritually: we will grow in our faith, our belief will be strengthened, we will live in ways that are more worthy of Christ, if we will accept and embrace that the hard things in life, the suffering we go through, reaches us via the hands of a loving God who wants us to grow up, to stop complaining, and to learn that the refining power of suffering is something he is using in our lives to bring us to glory.

The three Apostles who saw his transfiguration caught a glimpse, a preview, of the glorious Jesus who suffered, and died, and rose again; who because he suffered willingly, was taken up to glory and exalted at the right hand of his Father. So will we be, if we embrace him and his way to greatness and to glory.

Let us pray...