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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] It. Good morning, saints of St. Paul Lutheran Church. God's peace be with you. It's Pastor Wolf Mueller here. And this is the Sunday drive to church for February the 11th, 2024. Today is the feast of the transfiguration of our Lord. This is so great, this, this event when Jesus took Peter, James and John up on the mountain and was transfigured before them, and he was glowing, radiant th, with the brightness of his divine glory up on the mountain, and they beheld his glory. Well, we'll behold it with our ears this morning. It's the last Sunday in the season of epiphany. In fact, did you know that transfiguration did not used to be a Sunday feast? This is one of the lutheran innovations of the liturgy, that transfiguration used to be celebrated on just some day in August, like August the 11th or something. I don't remember back in the Middle Ages. And the Lutheran said, no, this needs to be a Sunday. So they made the last Sunday of epiphany, transfiguration Sunday. Now this is also the interesting thing to think about, because in the old one year series, there was three weeks before Lent, the Gezima Sundays, because they were septuagesima, sexagema, quinquagesima. So the week of the 70th, the 60th and the 50th day before Easter. And so those three weeks of pre Lent were getting ready for the season of Lent. The three year series has dropped that. So we go basically straight from Epiphany right into Lent. And I'll confess, moving from the one year in Colorado to the three year here, it's a bit jarring to go from Transfiguration, where Jesus is in his glory to all of a sudden we turn around on Wednesday and we're putting ashes on everybody's head for ash Wednesday. It's a bit of a church here, whiplash, but, oh, well, that's what we have, and that's good. It puts these two things in contrast. And maybe that's helpful, because I think one of the most helpful things to think about with the transfiguration is not when Jesus was transfigured, but when he wasn't transfigured. More on that later. I'm looking at the Bulletin, and when you get to church and grab a bulletin, you'll see the COVID is this beautiful Raphael painting of the transfiguration. It might be good for you to look at it and look at it with your kids and say, okay, what is different about this painting than what actually happened? Because this painting is a theological exposition of the Transfiguration. It's not a historical representation. There's no, for example, indication that Jesus was levitating. And also the crowds that are around there, that also wasn't the case. Jesus was by himself. So look at this painting as a theological reflection on the event and see if you can get the kids to notice the differences between what really happened and what's there in the painting. The collect for the day grabs ahold of a bunch of things from the Transfiguration. I think this is the old, original Transfiguration day collect.
[00:03:12] And in a wonderful way, it kind of focuses our mind through Peter's reflection on the event, which he writes about in second Peter.
[00:03:23] The collect focuses our mind on things that are important.
[00:03:27] It has a long rationale. In fact, I'm looking 123-45-6789 lines of the colic. There's 1234 lines of rationale, two lines of petition, three lines of termination.
[00:03:45] There's a long setup for the request. The request is, in fact, I would encourage you guys to get out a pencil and look carefully at this collect, because there's so many things there when you're praying it and getting ready for church. That's, by the way, why we put the collect on the front page of the bulletin, because to pray the collect is probably one of the best ways to prepare yourselves for the service. So to look at it and study it, and it grabs all these ideas, puts them together. So here, we'll pray it together. Let's pray. O God, in the glorious transfiguration of your beloved son, you confirm the mysteries of the faith by the testimony of Moses and Elijah. In the voice that came from the bright cloud, you wonderfully foreshadowed our adoption by grace.
[00:04:36] Mercifully make us co heirs with the king in his glory, and bring us to the fullness of our inheritance in heaven through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
[00:04:51] Okay, looking at the texts and the hymns in the middle, I don't know if this is the case. This might be a little bit briefer than normal. We'll see how it goes. We've got second kings, the ascension of Elijah, where he is taken up into heaven. In the whirlwind, we have two corinthians, three and four, where Paul contrasts the glory of the ministry of the law with the glory of the ministry of Christ. And so in the Old Testament lesson, we have Elijah. And in the epistle lesson, we have Moses, and that's not by accident, because when Jesus is on the mountain, he's there with Moses and Elijah. We get the transfiguration from Mark. Remember that we're in year c in our three year series. So it's Matthew. Sorry, year b. So it's Matthew, Mark, Luke. So we're in Mark year of this series. So we're leaning on the gospel of Mark. So we have the transfiguration from Mark. There's some interesting differences when you compare the accounts of the Transfiguration, Matthew, Mark and Luke. I'll point to maybe a couple of those in a few minutes. And then the hymn of the day, o wondrous type, o vision fair. And the psalm, psalm 50, the first six verses. Let's look at the psalm first. It's a favorite psalm. This psalm comes up. I noticed this psalm because anytime the old Lutherans would talk about prayer, they would quote psalm 50. I mean, it's the thing that they will go to that I will call upon you in the day of trouble, and I will deliver you and you shall glorify me. That's psalm 50, verse 15.
[00:06:28] So that's the Lord's prayer to hear our prayer and to deliver us. We're not going to get to that verse in the opening psalm. We're only going to do the six verses. But the key thing for the first six verses is the Lord coming to judge the mighty one, God. The Lord speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting. So the Lord is calling heaven and earth, and he's calling heaven and earth. You have to get the imagery there is that the Lord is going to judge, and so he needs witnesses. So sometimes you've wanted someone to go with you as a witness, like at a wedding, you call your friends, you say, hey, come and stand by me as witnesses. I want you to see what's about to happen, or even in a court case, hey, we need people to be there. We need a jury. This is what the Lord is calling all creation to come as he comes forth to judge the earth. Verse, verse four. He calls to the heavens above and to the earth that he may judge his people.
[00:07:26] And then here comes the judgment notice. And this is one of these tricky things when we're singing the psalm like you're in church and all of a sudden, confession, absolution, and then you're standing up from kneeling and gently and very quietly raising the kneeler, and then you're opening and you forgot to mark the psalm, and you're getting to it and you're getting there a little bit late and you're trying to figure out where we stop. And it's hard to pay attention to what's going on with the words, right? It's one of the reasons we're doing this. It's one of the reasons to look for it beforehand because you might miss that. The move from verse four to verse five is a move from David, who's praying the psalm to now the Lord is speaking. So verse four, it says, he calls to the heavens above and to the earth, that he may judge his people. And then it switches to the voice of God in verse five. There's quotation marks there. So to help us get it, gather to me, my faithful ones who made a covenant with me by sacrifice, so that the judgment of the Lord is not a judgment, is not a fearful judgment.
[00:08:33] His judgment is, come to me, all you who weary and are heavy laden, I will give you rest. His judgment is, come over here. In fact, the judgment day is really a gathering and ascending. It's an amazing thing when we look at the parables of Jesus on the judgment day, those who are sheep, come to the, come to me. Come to the place I've prepared for you. Welcome.
[00:08:56] That's the way to think of it. It's the judgment day. For the Christian is the judgment of welcome. Come on up in here. For the unbeliever, it's a sending out. Depart from me, you workers of iniquity. Depart from me. It's a get out of here. So that the main thing about the judgment day is the direction are we being gathered in or are we being sent away? And here it says, the Lord comes with heaven and earth to witness. And he says, now come on in here. Gather with me, my faithful ones. And then we praise the Lord with the last verse. The heavens declare his righteousness, for God himself is a judge.
[00:09:34] And this is maybe the point. We hear that judge and we're like, oh, no, judge, that's law. That's bad. But there are two ways for the judge to judge guilty or innocent, and that's the judgment of justification, that we are righteous in Christ. How beautiful is that? This psalm is a good one to pray all week. Psalm 50, and dig in and to study. Okay, Old Testament, lesson two, kings, chapter two. Now I want you to make note of this.
[00:10:06] When you get the bulletin and you sit down, you notice how we have dates that are connected to the writings. So it's nice for the epistles because we're just guessing with our best guess when they were written, because the writing of the epistle is the date. So, for example, two Corinthians written by Paul from Ephesus, July 54 AD, the gospel lesson, because it's a story, has two dates. It has the date when the events happened and then it has the date when it was written. So for the transfiguration, we think it's the 31 march, or. Sorry, it's March, the year 31, maybe 32.
[00:10:52] That was when the new year happened. So March 30, 132, when this event was Mount Herman. That's a question mark, but that's our best guess. But then it was written by Mark around 60 ad, when he was there with Peter in prison. So the event and the writing of the event were two different things, 28 years apart from one another.
[00:11:12] So there's two dates there on the Old Testament, we're just putting the date of the writing. So we date second kings to the time right before the exile.
[00:11:23] Maybe Jeremiah wrote second kings. That's our best guess on that. So it says written around 560 BC, but the events happened a lot earlier, and that's not written for you. But you can just telling you now that the event of Elijah being taken up into heaven probably happened in the spring of 852 BC. It's connected to the death of Hazariah of Israel, the king of Israel, and it was prophesied by Elijah and it happened. And so that's how we're able to date this. So this puts this five eightynching the numbers around 852 BC, spring 852 puts us right in the middle of the divided kingdom. Remember, the divided kingdom is that era between the death of Solomon, 930, and the destruction of Israel, the northern kingdom, 722. So that's that big era where you had Israel in the north and Judah in the south. And they were mostly fighting against each other. Sometimes they were fighting with each other, against the other enemies. But there was two kings, one in Samaria and the other in Jerusalem. They were back and forth. And the lord, amazingly, kept sending prophets to Israel. And that was the case with Elijah and Elisha. They were wandering all over the place. In fact, Elijah, it seems like, had seminaries set up in all these different places in the north and in the south, and he would go and he would preach everywhere.
[00:13:04] It's good for us to remember that even though Israel had abandoned the worship of God in Jerusalem, the Lord had not abandoned them. And he was sending prophets, probably more prophets to the north than he was sending them to the south.
[00:13:18] And so Elijah and Elijah were doing that prophetic work.
[00:13:23] Now, in our text, it seems like Elijah knows that his time is coming to an end, that he's going to be brought up into heaven by the Lord, which is an amazing thing. And so he's trying to ditch Elisha. So he goes on this circuit, and it seems like in all the places that he goes, he's visiting the places where he had preaching stations set up and the places where he had set up seminaries. So he's going to go to first to he leaves Gilgal and he goes to Bethel. And it's a funny thing that this little phrase comes up a few times, and the sons of the prophets who were in Bethel came out to Elijah and said to him, do you know that today the Lord will take away your master from over you? That sons of the prophets and the language that goes with it in kings, the school of the prophets is what was CfW Walther used to talk about the pastors and the seminaries, so that Elijah and Elisha were called directly by God to be prophets, like the apostles were called directly by Jesus to be apostles. But then the prophets trained up men under them to preach, just like the apostles trained up men under them to pastor. And this is this very important distinction that we need to remember between the immediate call of God and the mediated call of God. God called the prophets and the apostles directly, immediately, without any intermediary. And he confirmed that call by giving them the capacity to do miracles. And along with that call comes the inspiration of the Holy Spirit both to preach and to write, so that those prophets and apostles that were called directly by God could write for God. And that's where the scripture comes from. It's why we call the scriptures the writings of the prophets and the apostles. It's why we say to the apocrypha, well, it's not part of the prophetic and apostolic writings because it wasn't written by the prophets. So there was like prophets with a lowercase P, what's here called the sons of the prophets. That's like the Old Testament pastors. They weren't called directly by God. They went to seminary. They studied under Elijah and Elisha. They read the books of Moses. They were to preach Moses and the prophets like the pastors. Now, I'm not called directly by God, but called by God through you, the people of St. Paul Lutheran Church, through the congregation. So I have a mediated call, an indirect call, which means I don't speak directly from God or write holy scriptures, but stand under the prophets and the apostles to preach what they've preached. So it seems like there was a school, a seminary at Bethel. The sons of the prophets were there. They went from Bethel to Jericho. Elijah's trying to shake Elisha. Stay here.
[00:16:18] And he says, no way. I'm coming with you. They go down to Jericho. It happens again. The sons of the prophets were at Jericho. And they come near to Elisha and say, don't you know that the Lord will take away your master? He says, I know. Stay quiet. And then they leave, elijah. Elijah leaves and says, stay here.
[00:16:34] They cross over the Jordan. He takes his cloak and rolls it up and strikes the water. And he goes to the other side of the Jordan river. This is Bethany, beyond the Jordan. This is the place. Three very important things happened at the same place at the Jordan river. First, under Joshua, the people crossed the Jordan on dry ground into the promised land. 14, 614, five BC. Now 852, Elijah and Elisha and maybe some of the other prophets cross back the other direction on dry ground. It's also the same place, 880 years later, that Jesus is baptized by John the Baptist. So all three of those things happened at Bethany, beyond the Jordan, down in the plain, on the other side of the Jordan river, before it goes into the dead Sea, kind of across the Jordan from Jericho. So they go across the Jordan, and then the chariots of fire come and they separate the two of them. And then the whirlwind takes Elijah up into heaven. So Elijah becomes the second person we know of to be brought straight into heaven. The first is Enoch, who walked with God and was no more. And then now Elijah. Some people say that's what happened to Moses, although I don't think we can say that we're in very tenuous ground, because Jude talks about the angels and the demons wrestling over the body of Moses. It talks about how God took Moses to bury him in a separate place so that the people wouldn't worship at his grave, so Moses would have died. There's also this old tradition in the church that that's what happened to Mary. The assumption of Mary, that she was also taken up into heaven.
[00:18:24] It's a traditional. There's no real evidence to indicate that that's actually what happened. So it seems like a bit of a tenuous people's imaginations got away with them. But it could have happened. We don't know. It's a question of history. But it at least did happen to Enoch and Elijah. Okay, that's the Old Testament. Now, when we go to the epistle, we're looking at chapter three and chapter four of two corinthians.
[00:18:50] It's a reflection on the glory of Moses. And Paul says, we have such a hope. We're very bold, not like Moses, who put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end. Now, this is very interesting. You remember when Moses would go into the tabernacle, he would come out, and the first time it happened, they're like, whoa, Moses, your face is glowing. So Moses had a veil that he would wear over his face to cover up the glory that was radiating from his face after he was in the presence of God. This, by the way, here's a curious thing. This is what Sunday drive home is kind of. Sunday drive to church is good for these little curiosities. Do you know that in the Hebrew it says that rays came from Moses'face? Jerome translates that as a latin word that looks more like horns. And so when you see all the old paintings of Moses, he has horns coming out of his head. And in fact, in know, in american sign language, you can have a sign name. And the sign for Moses is a man with two little horns on his forehead.
[00:19:59] Because of this old misunderstanding, it wasn't horns coming out of his head, it was rays of light that was coming out of his head. And when you just read in the Old Testament, it seems like that veil is there to kind of hide the glory because it was scaring the people. But Paul says here that the veil was to cover up the fact that the glory was fading, so moses would come out of the presence of the Lord and he would be bright with this glory, but that that glory would fade like a glow in the dark. Something when you first turn out the light, it's bright, but then its brightness gets Dimmer and Dimmer. So the brightness of MoSes'Face was getting Dimmer and Dimmer, and that's what had to be covered up.
[00:20:43] The fading, non enduring nature of the glory of the ministry of Moses.
[00:20:50] Paul says they put a veil over his face so that the IsraElites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end.
[00:20:58] And he says, that veil is still over the hearts of Israel this day, because it's only through Christ that the veil is taken away. Yes. Verse 15. To this day, whenever MoSes is read, the veil lies over their hearts. This is Israel. But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now, we might interpret that of this BasiC Understanding that the OlD TEStament is about JEsus. It is law and GosPel. It is about our sin and Christ's forgiving of our sins. But Israel, the SyNagogue reads Moses not about law and gospel, but just the law.
[00:21:35] But our Lutheran Confessions give us a little more pointed understanding of that. That the veil is like the hardness of heart, that can't see that the law condemns.
[00:21:49] So that in the SyNAgogue, when the law is read, it's not understood as that law which shows me my sin, but rather, it's the law that teaches me the way of righteousness, in which I walk and please the Lord. And that's, by the way, the very nature of PharisEeism. We sometimes think, oh, look at the Pharisees. They have all these 6500 and 8600 laws. They make the law so hard.
[00:22:17] That's not the Case. The problem is they make the law too easy, that you can do it, that you can accomplish it, that you can actually be righteous according to the law. That's the veil of moses. The veil of moses is taken away when JeSuS says, you've heard it said, you shall not kill. I say, don't be angry. You've heard it say, you shall not commit adultery. I say, don't lust in your heart.
[00:22:40] In other words, the law shows us our great need for a savior. And then Jesus comes to be that savior.
[00:22:50] So Paul goes on to compare the difference of the ministry of Moses to the ministry of Christ.
[00:22:59] So verse 18 of chapter three is the one that we should highlight. And then at the end of the reading, too, we all, with unveiled face, behold, the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.
[00:23:14] This comes from the Lord, who is the spirit. That's a marvelous, marvelous exposition. And then look at what he says at the end here. Can you imagine this? For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants, for Jesus'sake, for God, who said, let light shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. So just like the glowing face of Moses from being in the presence of God in the temple, so our hearts are now glowing with a glory that doesn't fade but continues to increase from glory to glory to glory. This radiance of God's grace and mercy is glowing in our own hearts as we behold the face of Jesus. And this is the ministry of the New Testament.
[00:24:05] So fantastic. Okay.
[00:24:08] By the way, I'm recording this on Saturday morning, and it is raining hard here in round Rock. Okay. If you hear thunder in the background. That's what's going on now to the gospel. It's mark, chapter nine. It's the transfiguration in Mark. And I just want to say a couple of brief things about this.
[00:24:29] Pastor Leblanc is preaching today. God be praised. In fact, Pastor Davis is doing the liturgy. I might be sitting behind you making sure you're paying attention to the sermon the guys don't like.
[00:24:41] Maybe I started. I better tell you, the guys don't like it when I'm not up there doing something. Because the problem is when I sit in the pews with everybody, then I come up with 20 different ideas about what to do. In fact, this Sunday drive to church idea happened when I was sitting in the pews watching the service unfold. And I said, boy, this comes at you fast when you don't should do something to get ready for it. Anyway, Pastor Lebanon, I believe, is preaching on transfiguration today. So I won't say too much about it. I'll let him give it to us, but just a couple of notes. So Jesus goes up on the mountain with Peter, James and John.
[00:25:17] And it's like all of the Old Testament is gathered into one moment.
[00:25:24] When you think of the Old Testament, you think, oh, the glory of God. The pillar of cloud, that's there. Mount Sinai. They're up on the mountain. You think of Moses. He's there. You think of the prophets. Elijah's there. You think of the voice of God.
[00:25:38] That happens.
[00:25:39] And here Jesus is in the middle of it. Luke tells us that they're having this conversation. So the disciples fall asleep, and they wake up. They get a little bit of this conversation that they're talking about his exodus, his departure. So the whole heavenly council, all the prophets, and all the consideration of God is how Jesus is going to die on the cross.
[00:26:03] It's amazing.
[00:26:05] So Peter wakes up and he says to Jesus, rabbi, it's good to be here. Let us make three tents.
[00:26:12] So here, Tabernacle. Let's make three tabernacles.
[00:26:16] He wants to capture it. Capture the moment. One for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah. And then this is only in Mark. He did not know what to say, for they were terrified.
[00:26:26] Remember that the gospels, Matthew and John, were apostles, but Mark and Luke were not. And Luke was a companion of Paul. So Luke's gospel is sometimes called the Gospel of Paul.
[00:26:40] Mark was a companion of Paul till it didn't work out. And then he actually was with Peter. And we know that Mark was with Peter when Peter was imprisoned in Rome. We see that in one of the letters of Paul, so that we call the gospel of Mark Peter's gospel, and all the most shameful things that Peter does are mentioned in Mark. Now think about that for a moment, that it's Peter who's not ashamed to be a sinner. And in the gospel that he's helping Mark to compose, he says, look, I didn't know what I was afraid and I didn't know what to say. I said, I put my foot right in my mouth because I was so foolish on the mountain.
[00:27:22] So that that little note, he did not know what to say, for they were terrified, is just in the gospel of Mark. And it's one of these indications that Peter was helping Mark to put this together, because Peter's own shame is just out in the open. I think about this all the time with our stained glass windows. We have a bunch of Peter windows. Peter's represented on the Christ window in the middle with the keys. He's represented with the keys and a window that's high on the transept above the altar. But then back on the pulpit side, down low toward the back of the church, the Peter window has a rooster.
[00:27:56] Now, Peter's represented by the keys because Jesus said, I give to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven in Matthew 16. Then he expands that to all the apostles and all the church in Matthew 18. So Peter's often represented with the keys and that authority to bind and loose which belongs to the church. The pope goes crazy with it. We know it's the peculiar authority of the church.
[00:28:18] He's also represented by the rooster. Because remember, Jesus says, before the cock crows twice, you'll deny me three times. And I wonder which would Peter picked if you said, hey, Peter, do you want the keys or do you want the rooster? I don't think Peter would hesitate. Put the rooster there. I must decrease. Christ must increase. I'm a sinner. Christ is the savior of sinners. But like Paul says, I'm the foremost. I'm the chief of. So, Peter. No, no, I am the chief of sinners, and Christ has had mercy on me. I'm the one that was denied by Jesus and restored by him. I think that's what's going on here. And they see the glory of Jesus. The cloud overshadows them. They hear the voice. This is the second and will be only the second of three times that we hear the voice of God the father in the New Testament.
[00:29:08] This is my beloved son. Listen to him quoting deuteronomy 18. We had a few weeks ago. And they look around and they didn't see anyone but Jesus, only Jesus, only Sola Christus.
[00:29:19] And they come down from the mountain and Jesus says, don't tell anybody until I'm raised. Now, that don't tell anyone is the, I think, amazing thing for me, because Jesus, when he reveals this glory, which is the glory of his divine nature, and in a really profound way, it's the glory of a perfected humanity, the collect which we prayed right at the beginning, it says that this is the glory that we will share in, in the resurrection. In the resurrection, we will be radiant with this glory of Christ. And he's transforming us into this glory even in our life below that'll be revealed on the last day. Okay, so this glory of the divine nature, this glory of the perfected humanity, Jesus hides all throughout his ministry. And in a way, even in the transfiguration, he hides it. He goes up on a mountain, he only takes three of the apostles. He tells them not to say anything about it. And I like to imagine how it would have been if instead of being transfigured way up on the mountain, Jesus would have been transfigured when he stood before Pilate. Can you imagine that?
[00:30:35] Or if Jesus would have been transfigured right before, when the soldier had the nail to his hand and was about to swing the hammer, and then he was transfigured, and the soldier would drop the hammer and the nails and fall down and worship him, or Pilate would fall down and worship him and give him the throne or whatever. But Jesus didn't reveal his glory then. He hid his glory then for the very purpose of suffering for us.
[00:31:03] So the miracle, the transfiguration, is not that Jesus has this glory, but that he normally, and for us hides that glory for our benefit.
[00:31:13] The glory of God is a consuming fire, but so that he could be merciful to us. The Lord hides that glory so that we are not consumed, but rather we are saved.
[00:31:26] That's so good. Anyway, let's see how we're doing on time.
[00:31:30] I said we were going to be short, and we are long today. Sorry about that. So, Sunday drive. Oh, Ash Wednesday. This Wednesday, church interpreter Training Institute is Friday and Saturday in the see you tomorrow email. I'm going to talk about when you can drop in for that. And hopefully you can just drop by and even if you want to just learn your abcs and see what's going on in sign language, that'll be great as well. So take a look at that, and we'll see you in a few minutes. God's peace be with you. Bye.
