Waiting with Purpose

Waiting with Purpose

Mark 9:2-13

² After six days Jesus took Peter, James and John with him and led them up a high mountain, where they were all alone. There he was transfigured before them. ³ His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. ⁴ And there appeared before them Elijah and Moses, who were talking with Jesus.

⁵ Peter said to Jesus, ‘Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters – one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.’ ⁶ (He did not know what to say, they were so frightened.)

⁷ Then a cloud appeared and covered them, and a voice came from the cloud: ‘This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!’

⁸ Suddenly, when they looked around, they no longer saw anyone with them except Jesus.

⁹ As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus gave them orders not to tell anyone what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead. ¹⁰ They kept the matter to themselves, discussing what ‘rising from the dead’ meant.

¹¹ And they asked him, ‘Why do the teachers of the law say that Elijah must come first?’

¹² Jesus replied, ‘To be sure, Elijah does come first, and restores all things. Why then is it written that the Son of Man must suffer much and be rejected? ¹³ But I tell you, Elijah has come, and they have done to him everything they wished, just as it is written about him.’

Jesus is God

This bible reading is something of a mystery to 21C people. We don’t immediately get the references and allusions that Mark has imbedded in this story. In fact, these verses are so full of Old Testament references and allusions that we would need several hours to cover them all properly. First century Jews and followers of Jesus would have recognised every reference immediately.

(For all the references try Pastor Chad Bird: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-LMAP1P7D0&feature=youtu.be)

Instead, perhaps we should pursue Mark’s purpose in revealing this event to us, rather than pursuing the details.

The Transfiguration of Jesus is a revelation from God the Father, of something new and of things that are passing away. The transfiguration is a pause between the old and the new, a waiting time, a liminal space where much can be observed, but little can be done.

In our text, God’s New Covenant with his people is being revealed in Jesus. In this revelation, Mark shows us that Jesus the rabbi is also Jesus, who is God. Jesus however, wanted this revelation just for the three disciples for a time and was intent on keeping it secret until he was ready to go public. So, his disciples had to wait in the liminal space, observing, while doing and saying nothing.

Transformed

To discover Mark’s purpose, let’s take note of the disciples’ response as they sat in witness to the transformation of Jesus.

The disciples were frightened and confused. Peter nervously blurtered out what he knew from other rabbis, that the Messiah was expected in the autumn at the time of the Festival of Booths, the Jewish remembrance of the great exodus from Egypt. But Jesus agenda didn’t run in line with the scribes and pharisees. He had his own plans.

Peter offered to build festival booths for Jesus, Elijah and Moses. It’s a crisis for Peter and the others. They are stupefied by what they are seeing and so, like all of us in a crisis, he felt he had to do something, take some kind of action. Maybe cook a casserole or do something else practical to keep busy and avoid the full confrontation of this profound and un-nerving event. Jesus wanted them to do nothing. He wanted them just to be there, to observe, witness, and take it all in, sitting with the confrontation of it all. Later Jesus insisted that they say nothing to anyone. No doing, no speaking, just be with Jesus. After all, ‘they no longer saw anyone with them except Jesus’, Mark tells us.

We have a word for sitting and doing and saying nothing. We call it, waiting.

Another description for waiting is, liminal spaces. Spaces of transition. The space between then ……… and now and between now ………. and when. In the liminal spaces of life there are opportunities to meet with God and worship him in his glory. Opportunities to catch a glimpse of the appearance of God. Opportunities in the most banal of liminal spaces and the most extraordinary.

There are at least two kinds of waiting. Let’s say, a short wait and a long wait.

So, just to get the old joke out of the way: When I was an apprentice, my tradesman sent me to the company store to ask for a long wait. That’s what I was given. 20 minutes later, while still waiting, it dawned on me that I’d had my long wait. That’s a tradesman’s joke not a dad joke at all. ?

Let’s get back to the text. Short waits happen all the time. Some examples are when we spend on average:

• 20 minutes a day waiting for the bus or train, that’s 27 days in a lifetime
• 32 minutes whenever we wait in a doctor’s waiting room
• 13 hours annually waiting on hold for customer service
• 38 hours each year waiting in traffic
• Human beings spend approximately 6 months of their lives waiting in line for things, that’s 3 days a year of queueing up.

All those hours of just waiting, with truly little to do or say. Just, being there. It seems like such a waist to we busy people who need to be productive merely to justify our existence. But a Transfiguration requires us to do nothing and say nothing and not be productive.

Then there’s the long wait. It can be months or years waiting for something to happen – for anything to happen. If you thought the short wait was frustrating wait until you experience the long wait, if you haven’t already. Christians in the western world have been in a state of waiting for many years now, not knowing what to do or say and worse, not knowing how or even why to wait.

In the opinion of many today, we are at the end of one period of history and preparing to enter another. We are waiting and hoping for a long awaited change to structures and systems, for clarity of future vision and for healing peace. This current pandemic has heightened the anxiety of waiting but it’s not the whole picture. We are experiencing rapidly changing world views and communal world views like vision and prophecy are what move us forward. A world view that embraces spirituality and science, heart and head. Views that are attempting to form a unified theory, not just of science but of life, in all its complexity. But it can’t be forced. We alone, can’t make it happen.

As with every apocalyptic era, we are all busy about our work, feeding our families forming relationships trying to make sense of the world, the universe and everything. Seeking happiness and celebration, living in mourning. Waiting for death, waiting for burial, waiting and grieving.

In all of that business, we can more than capably avoid observing what God is doing and saying. Failure to observe and to be still and quiet before Jesus who is God, may well mean we miss the transformation. Not his, because that has already been completed in his death and resurrection, but we can miss our own transformation.

Mark wants us to know that Jesus Transfiguration is our transformation. As Jesus was baptised and then transfigured, so we too who are baptised are also being transformed daily from glory to glory. Our transformation is on-going and the appearance of God for our continuing transformation will happen at any time and place where we wait - on him. In the short waits and in the long waits, in traffic and at the doctors, and in a que.

The Transfiguration event, with Jesus in all his divine glory, point not only backward to promises made and then fulfilled in Jesus, but also forward to the glory of God in all people. To the daily appearance of transformed people on every street and workplace the world over. Where Christ appears in all his glory through one person to another. Where God is making his presence known as he transforms all those who stop! Wait on him in stillness and silence, worshiping the beloved Son of God. Jesus, who is God.

Of course, the time for silence on this matter is over. Outside of those short liminal spaces of worship, God calls forth our faithful shouts from the roof tops to say, ‘Jesus, who is God, is transforming the world. Stop, wait, observe, worship and be transformed.’

For Monday

1. Stop your doing!
2. See only Jesus.
3. Worship him in his glory and be transformed.
4. Daily!