1 Kings 19.9-18
Psalm 27
2 Peter 1.16-21
Mark 9.2-9
 

On the mountain they see Jesus transfigured, shining with glorious light and conversing with Moses and Elijah.  Peter thoughtlessly blurts out “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” My take on this is that Peter is saying “Wow, it’s a good thing we’re here to see this! This will prove that Jesus is the messiah!” Peter’s bonehead notion is to build a religious tourist attraction that gives equal billing to all three. No doubt he imagines he’s paying Jesus the high compliment of putting him on the same level as Moses, the great giver of the law, and the great prophet Elijah.

Mark doesn’t say what Jesus and the two figures from the Old Testament are talking about, but in Luke’s version we’re told that they were talking about what was soon going to happen to Jesus in Jerusalem.  That is, he’s telling them the same things about his impending death that the disciples have refused to hear.  No wonder that Peter, James and John are terrified.  They’re being forced to see that in Jesus God is doing something frighteningly new and unexpected, something that will turn their pious religious world upside down. Peter can no more accept this than he can accept what Jesus said the week before about the coming humiliation, defeat and death. Everything that made sense to them in terms of the religion of Israel was being overturned. But in this dreamlike vision they wake up from the self-indulgent dream of fitting Jesus into the familiar forms and understandable traditions of Israel.  Moses and Elijah disappear. The time for listening to the law and the prophets is over; they have done their job, preparing the way; the disciples are left with this Jesus they now realize they’ve hardly understood. There’s nothing now but to listen to him. He’s God’s last word:

 This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!

What about us? What can it mean for us, today, to listen to Jesus? It would be a mistake for us to think we’re all that different from the first disciples, that Jesus’ words never bounce off our preconceptions of what it makes sense for God to be doing.

The good news is that the God who comes to us in the crucified, resurrected and now living Jesus has put aside judgment and condemnation for good, that for the sake of Jesus he loves us unconditionally, accepts us as we are. Full stop. There’s not a thing any of us can do to make him love us any more than he already does. He has once and for all gotten out of the business of judging and condemning.  All the schemes and devices anyone has ever come up with to make themselves acceptable to God are rejected, nailed to that cross with Jesus.

Nothing makes less sense; this is foolishness for a world where the most obvious thing is that we need to make ourselves good enough for God.  But to listen to Jesus is to hear the gospel of God’s love against the wisdom of the world.

Last week Karen answered the phone and realized right away she had made a mistake: it was one of those dreaded telephone solicitors. This one, though, seemed different. Instead of the usual pitch for three cent a minute long distance or a 2.9% introductory rate credit card, this caller claimed to be giving something away. She wanted Karen to pick a free book, which would be hers simply for the cost of shipping and handling. “But what do I have to buy?” Karen suspiciously asked. “Nothing,” said the caller. “This is a free gift.” A few more assurances along the same lines and finally Karen warily selected her book. That done, the caller was ready to sign off: “Thank you for joining the History Book Club,” she said.  No surprise here. There were strings attached.
 

If an offer sounds too good to be true that’s because it is: such is the wisdom of the world. It’s good advice: unless the offer is from God. Unless it’s God’s offer of himself not by works but by grace.

The Oxford don John Austin once described how philosophers present their ideas: “There’s the bit where you say it, then there’s the bit where you take it back.” That, too, is the wisdom of the world. On the heels of the amazing claim come the qualifications, the exceptions, the appendices where the astounding assertion is made commonplace as the wonder falls through the loopholes.

So much of the Christian religion falls into the habit of taking back the good news, attaching the strings, writing in the fine print, changing it into something that makes sense to human beings. Like Peter on the mountain, we want to force Jesus into the safe and  familiar forms of our religion. We say and do things that imply that God didn’t really mean it, that God’s grace is not absolutely free, that he’s keeping score after all, playing by good and sensible rules, judging us according to our merits and demerits. We want to let Jesus have his say, but we wind up letting the world have the last word.  The church of Jesus the outcast, the executed criminal, makes itself over into something that makes sense to the world, the guardian of all things good and proper. It becomes a place where Jesus would not be welcome, a place for the right and righteous, a club for those deemed good enough for God.

This risk is always with us: letting some other voice, something that speaks of what is good and important in its own right drown out that quiet voice that is the voice of God.  What we hear from the God who speaks in Jesus is a still, small voice. It’s always vulnerable to being pushed aside by something that speaks more loudly, more urgently, and in words that make sense.

In today’s reading about Elijah in the cave on Mount Horeb the prophet listens for God: he hears the big, attention grabbing things, the kinds of things where, one would expect, God might make himself known. He hears the great wind, a wind that splits the mountains and breaks the rocks, but God wasn’t in the wind.  He hears the earthquake, he hears the fire, but God was not in the earthquake, God was not in the fire. But after the fire comes a sound that’s hardly a sound at all, a mere whisper. The sound of silence. The voice of God, the hardest thing to hear unless you’re listening for it carefully; it’s easily drowned out by urgent and impressive voices that speak with a power and authority we find all too comprehensible.

Peter was no more obtuse than the rest of us, no more ready to let something that makes sense in our terms obscure the unobtrusive voice of God’s grace. We’re all tempted to try to make sure that in the end even God plays by the rules. But God simply refuses to. He makes foolish the wisdom of the world. That’s a good thing: if we play by the rules we lose. We die. Our only hope, our only life, lies with the God whose grace overturns the rules, whose love for us makes no sense by the world’s lights.

I’d like to read part of the final poem from Anne Sexton’s The Awful Rowing Toward God:

    I’m mooring my rowboat
    at the dock of the island called God.
    This dock is made in the shape of a fish
    and there are many boats moored at many different docks.
    “It’s okay,” I say to myself,
    with blisters that broke and healed
    and broke and healed -
    saving themselves over and over....

    I empty myself from my wooden boat
    and onto the flesh of The Island.

    “On with it!” He says and thus
    we squat on the rocks by the sea
    and play - can it be true -
    a game of poker.
    He calls me.
    I win because I hold a royal straight flush.
    He wins because He holds five aces.
    A wild card had been announced but I had not heard it
    being in such a state of awe
    when He took out the cards and dealt.
    As He plunks down his five aces
    and I sit grinning at my royal flush,
    He starts to laugh,
    the laughter rolling like a hoop out of His mouth
    and into mine,
    and such laughter that He doubles right over me
    laughing a Rejoice-Chorus at our two triumphs.
    Then I laugh, the fishy dock laughs
    the sea laughs. The Island laughs.
    The Absurd laughs.

    Dearest dealer,
    I with my royal straight flush,
    love you so for your wild card,
    that untamable, eternal gut-driven ha-ha
    and lucky love.
 

Lent begins this week. Let’s not forget the point: to turn down the volume with which our strident concerns and responsibilities speak to us, to slow down, get quiet and listen for the Word of God spoken for keeps in Jesus. Not to make sacrifices that in our inmost hearts we believe win us God’s approval, but to hear God’s quiet voice, his saving word of unconditional love, his word of healing acceptance; to be strengthened by it to hold to it against all comers, against the wisdom of the world, with all its clamoring voices; to keep hearing it even against our better judgment and despite all our doubts and fears.

Let’s end with this prayer from Leonard Cohen’s Book of Mercy:

     Blessed are you in the smallness of your whispering.

     Blessed are you who speaks to the unworthy.

Amen.
 

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