BIBLE READING: Luke 9:28-43

SERMON

I’ve preached on the Transfiguration a lot! What happened up on the mountain has been endlessly fascinating to me. But today - let’s look at what happened after “Jesus, Peter, John, and James had come down from the mountain.”

In the ninth chapter of Luke (along with Mark 9:2-8 and Matthew 17:1-8), the Gospel reader “views” Jesus’ sublime transfiguration on a mountain. This was witnessed by the inner circle of disciples, was likely a parallel (literally, metaphorically, or both) to Moses’ mountaintop moment with the Holy in Exodus 34:29-35, and included God’s blessing on Jesus’ ministry.

But enough about that life-altering and transcendent event!

Afterwards, Jesus came down the mountain, back into the mess and stress of humanity. While Peter, James, and John were still full of what they had witnessed in the transfiguration, a stranger approached Jesus.

The stranger was more importantly a father, begging the Nazarene to heal his son. His  son is sick, the he is desperate, and Jesus soon healed the boy.

Before approaching the recently transfigured Son of God, the father had apparently sought out Jesus’ disciples to heal his son.

They’d failed. (So said the father: “I begged your disciples to throw it out, but they couldn’t.”)

Which of the disciples had the father gone to see? Had he first approached one of the nine disciples that hadn’t accompanied Jesus to the mountain? Perhaps the fretful father had pleaded with them, one by one. Did the disciples have an excuse like . . . Jesus does the healings, I just watch. Or had they belittled the father . . . Clearly you and your child don’t have enough belief, or touching his forehead and yelling for the demon to depart would’ve worked.

Then again, maybe the father didn’t seek the nine remaining in the valley. What if the father, spying the returning Peter, James, and John, hurried toward them with his fervent hopes? But they were distracted. Perhaps each attempted to help, but failed.

Or like a lot of Luke’s stories about Jesus - maybe he is asking us the readers to place ourselves as a disciple into the story. In Luke’s account of one or more disciple’s failure, maybe we need to insert ourselves into the story? Am I a disciple who’d also disappoint?

And was it that the disciples couldn’t help or wouldn’t help?

Let’s leave the disciples for a moment . What about Jesus’ response to this situation. Here’s what Luke reports what Jesus said, while the son writhed, the father waited, the crowd watched, and the disciples stood embarrassed.

You faithless and crooked generation, how long will I be with you and put up with you?

Did Jesus yell or accuse or even belittle? Should there be a question mark, exclamation point . . . or neither?

Or did he whisper?

Today,let’s presume that Jesus whispered. After all, he’d just had that mountaintop experience. Wasn’t he in a good mood?

And let’s not insert a question mark to end the sentence.

Today, we’ll translate it as a melancholy statement, muttered only loud enough for those who needed to hear it.

Which is me - and you.

We a crooked disciples. We didn’t go up the mountain. And to be blunt we are mostly faithless disciples struggling and failing to help the father.

How? We’ve never healed anyone.

Or have we?

What did all those other disciples—the ones on the mountain or in the village—do when the father approached them? They turned away from the father.

A few weeks ago, I was coming from the church over for morning tea. A person practically grabbed me and started to unburden themselves about an issue.

I wanted to get into the hall for my cuppa and a chocolate biscuit - but I stopped and listened.

I could see people hovering - I know they had important things to tell me about the functioning of the church - but I focused on the person in front of me and listened.

My feet were killing me - but I continued to listen.

Finally they finished up and said thanks Martin - you sure sure helped me! And they went on their way better than when they approached.

Jesus, exhausted or exhilarated, the day’s work over or just starting, turned toward a father with a sick child. Jesus stood by him. Jesus listened to him. Jesus healed the son.

And, in a sense, he also healed the father.

Such a huge difference there is, between turning toward and turning away from a fellow traveller.

. . .

Acknowledgement: Larry Patten