“Our Eyes Have Seen the Glory – Now What?”

Matthew 17:1-8

A Communion Meditation

Several minutes from now we will gather at our Lord’s Table to celebrate Communion. Communion gives us a very brief glimpse of what heaven will be like, a glimpse of that time beyond time when God’s Kingdom will have come in its fullness and his people will gather for a great banquet feast. And O what a time that will be!

A brief glimpse, however, is all we get. We get to savor but a very small taste of eternity. It is over quickly. We will have partaken of the loaf and the cup, bowed for the Communion Prayer, and sung the Communion Hymn. Then comes the benediction and out the door we will go. Communion will be over. Worship will be done. A little fellowship, an hour or so of Sunday school, and then we will go out from God’s house into that so-called real world.

We will have been to that weekly mountain top that is corporate worship. During Communion we will have caught a brief monthly glimpse of the coming glory of God. After the mountain top, after that brief glimpse of glory, then what?

In today’s text Peter, James, and John accompany Jesus to a mountain top. There Jesus is revealed in all of his transcendent splendor. The three disciples get an eye full of glory that we can’t even begin to imagine. Moses and Elijah are there. The experience is so wonderful, so glorious, that Peter begins a grand statement about how all of them should take up residence on the mountain top.

But Peter never finishes his speech. The Great God Almighty himself speaks from a bright cloud telling them that Jesus “is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” Jesus is the real deal, the true Messiah with whom God is pleased. And with words that end with an exclamation point in today’s text the disciples are told by God to listen to Jesus.

The disciples are appropriately awed. They fall down in holy fear. Jesus reassures them with his touch. Then, boom, it’s all over. No more transcendent Jesus, no more bright cloud, no more Elijah, no more Moses. Just three overwhelmed disciples alone with the same Jesus whom they had accompanied up the mountain. Their eyes had seen the glory – now what?

Back down the mountain they went, taking up again their journey with Jesus to Jerusalem. Watching him preach, teach, and heal. Knowing, because he’d already told them, that he had set his face toward Jerusalem, to that place where his cross awaited him. Still naively hoping that things would turn out differently once they arrived in Jerusalem. Even after they have been given assurances of resurrection, they aren’t ready for a crucifixion. Wishing that they could have stayed on the mountain top.

Nice wish. Normal even. Mountain top experiences are always more fun that long treks down a hot, dusty road that will bring us to a cross. Mountaintop experiences are cleaner and safer that going out into the world to deal with lost, lonely, hurting people – people who need to know Jesus. Mountain top experiences take us away from the realities of life in Christ: servanthood, sacrifice, and the possibility of suffering and dying in the name of our Savior. Glimpses of heaven, brief though they may be, are always preferable to the messiness that is life out there in that so-called real world.

It really isn’t the real world, not the real world created by God. It is world riddled by sin, a world where even the best people are sinful and imperfect. It is a world awaiting the redemption that will come when God’s Kingdom shall appear in all its glory. Real or not, it’s the only world we have. We must live and minister in it, proclaiming a Gospel that will often fall of deaf or hostile ears, practicing a servanthood that will be taken advantage of by some we seek to serve, and speaking God’s truth to those who are content to listen to the Devil’s lies.

The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. knew all about living and ministering in our so-called real world. Speaking out in the name of Jesus about racial inequality, prejudice, bigotry, and the cruelty that often accompanies such things Dr. King found himself at odds with a nation and culture that liked things just the way they were. He was threatened and jailed. He was the target of false and malicious accusations.

Yet he persevered, and in the midst of some of the worst stuff that the world could throw at him, he could still preach about having been to the mountain top, about having seen the coming glory of the Lord. He could have rested on that mountain top basking in the revealed glory of God, but he didn’t. He walked back out into this sinful world of ours and on an April night in Memphis found himself on the receiving end of an assassin’s bullet.

Disciples of Christ are not called to stay safely put on mountain tops. While called to worship and partake in the Sacraments, our lives are not meant to be one great big life-long prayer and praise service. We cannot sit at the Communion Table forever. We are called to go out into the world proclaiming the Gospel, witnessing to Christ’s saving love, speaking God’s truth, and teaching others all those commandments Jesus taught his disciples. In other words listening to and then obeying what Jesus has said.

And so we go, sometimes reluctantly, often haltingly. We go out into the world to serve Jesus, opening ourselves to criticism, rejection, hostility, and occasional humiliation. Sometimes we have our own crosses to bear in the name of Jesus. We never know when the world will come to hear our preaching as meddling. We don’t always know what awaits us. Maybe jail. Maybe a bullet. Yet we go.

But we do not go alone. Peter, James, and John didn’t come down that mountain by themselves. Jesus came with them. Just as Jesus is with us in our worship by the power of the Holy Spirit and just as he by that same power sits as host at the Communion Table, so too is he with us as we serve him in the world. He’s with us on the mountain tops. He is our companion in those marvelous moments when we see the coming glory of the Lord. After we have seen that glory he is with us still, touching us in comforting ways. Amen.