What’s Inside Counts

Luke 9:28-36

Transfiguration Sunday

Albertville

2-14-08

 

Today, As I’m sure you know, is Valentines Day. The Feast of Saint Valentine was established in the church in the year 496. Though much is sketchy about who he was, the best evidence tells us that he was a priest in Rome in 270AD. In addition to providing aid to many of the martyrs during the persecution under the emperor Claudius the II, He was known for secretly performing marriage ceremonies for Christians who served in the Army of Rome. Claudius was against his troops being married.

Valentine was caught, arrested and imprisoned. And as the story goes, the emperor took a liking to him; that is until Valentine thought he would share the good news of Jesus with him; whereupon he was beaten and stoned and ultimately beheaded. And a Happy Valentines Day to You!

But wait, There’s more! We observe this day, by giving that special someone a box of chocolates or a card that is purposely shaped like a prominent internal organs. Kind of odd when you think about it. It’s also kind of profound when you think about it. By giving a representation of something that is inside us, we are saying “This is What I’ve got going on inside me and I’m revealing to you today.”

On some level, we’ve always understood this. And that puts us in a good place to understand the other feast day that we are observing today which I think is much more important: The Transfiguration of Our Lord. On the day of transfiguration, Our Lord Jesus would reveal what he had going on inside of him!

A week and one day before Jesus was Transfigured, Jesus put the minds of his disciples iinto a state of confusion. They had been imagining that their merry little band would simply stay together forever and that eventually Jesus would develop such a following that he would begin to dominate the political scene. Soon they’d be sitting on thrones with him in the center. Heaven on earth would be created as they and Jesus would move from victory to victory. But one week and a day before transfiguration Jesus turns to them and says : “The son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised” So their disciple-brains were all twisted in knots as they tried to deal with what he said

After a full week and a day of knitted brows and sad feelings and perhaps also a lot of denial, Jesus invited Peter James and John to follow him up a mountain. Obediently they went. While Jesus was praying, the appearance of his face changed! And his clothes were as bright as a flash of lightening! If that weren’t enough, Moses and Elijah two great prophets who had passed from the earth long ago, were there giving their approval to the now shining Jesus.

Then there was the cloud, that glorious cloud, and the voice in the cloud which caused them to tremble as it said “This is my Son” And they soon understood what they were dealing with. This was the realm of heaven spilling out into the realm of earth: It’s what Adam and Eve were bared from seeing after they had sinned; It’s what Jacob caught a glimmer of when he dreamed about his ladder; Its what caused the Shepherds to tremble with fear on Christmas eve; It’s what we will see on the last day. Heaven was breaking out and breaking forth in this place. And everything was pointing in one very specific direction: to Jesus. “This is my Son.” said the voice. “This is my Son.”

When Jesus came, he lived a life like you and I do, he worked, he ate, he slept. He was very much one of us. He was one of us in every way. But here, on this day he showed that he was more than that. Here he showed us that he was different from us in a most significant way. Not only was he a real human being, but he was also God living among us. In Jesus there are two natures. He is fully God and Fully human at one and the same time. This cannot be explained; it is simply to be believed

Seeing this had a profound effect upon the disciples. John, who was one of the three who saw it would later remark in in Gospel: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory.....”

Peter too would also remark about it: “We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty......” (2Peter 1:15ff)

Though we have not seen, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we confess with the whole Christian church on earth that Jesus is “God of God, Light of light, very God of very God, begotten not made, being of one substances with the father ; by whom all things were made.”

So What Peter and John wound up saying, and what we now say is that Jesus is Human and he is God at one and the same time. Now this has some pretty profound ramifications: Before the transfiguration he told his disciples that he was going to have to die. After the transfiguration, he would tell them that again and again. But who would actually be dying? Was it just a man? No it was God! This was our creator...come down to earth to die for the people he created so that they might be saved. If it were only a man who died on that day, it would be of no benefit to us, but if it were God who died, well that would be a whole different different story. It would be meant that his death could be a sufficient sacrifice and propitiation for all sins.

Sufficient for all of your sins too I might add! You who think that your sins are too big for God to forgive. Who do you think you are? Do you think that you are capable of making a sin that is bigger than God? Nope. All sins are forgiven in Christ.

What a perfect thing to talk about on Valentines day. For in his coming to die for us, the Son of God reveals his love for us and all people. Think about it. He didn’t have to save us. When we sinned he could have simply “Oh Well, it was nice little hobby planet I got here, It failed, I guess I’ll try again on a different planet.” And he would have been perfectly justified in doing that because we had rejected him. But he didn’t. He refused to flush us away; refused to forget about us or leave us. He loved us.

Oh, and he didn’t really have to save us by suffering on the cross you know. Let’s not forget that he’s God, there were an infinite number of different ways that he could have brought about our salvation. But he chose to do it by taking our death upon himself.

And it wasn’t by divine fiat that our salvation was procured. Our salvation was not something that God delegated. He didn’t say “Yeah, you angels, you take care of that salvation for the humans okay, I got more pressing matters to attend to. No, No. He would be intimately involved in the winning of our salvation at great cost to himself. Our Salvation has been on the top of the agenda and at the very center of the conversation in among the Holy Trinity. God has dedicated all that is his and all that is most precious, to the cause of saving us. And All this he demonstrates by the singular act of giving us his only Son.

A better Valentine has not been given. For by the giving of his Son, God is saying “See, this is what I’ve got going on inside of me” and so he confesses his love for you and me and for all people. AMEN