Death, Life, and Where We Are Meant To Go: Luke 9:28-43

Luke 9:28-43

Photo by mostafa meraji on Unsplash

Pastor Stephen called me on Saturday morning to let me know the church I was preaching at on Sunday would be without an organist, instead singing along to pre-recorded music. "I hope you don't mind a change in plans," he said. And I thought "Well, no, because I've had my own little change in plans."

To wit: Stephen had asked me for a sermon title, almost a month before I came to worship. I told him "Love is the Law," which he very kindly put on the bulletin cover for me. The idea was that I was going to explain how in the same way Moses' face is changed when he gives the Israelites the law, so Jesus' transfiguration symbolizes that is the embodiment of both love and law, making love the law through the power of the transitive property, and so on and so forth.

I was going to work through this idea step by step, showing how Jesus is love is law that we should all obey. There was just one problem with this plan: when I started to think about it, I discovered that was all I really had for that idea.

This is why I hate giving sermon titles in advance.

So I fumbled around for a good long time trying to find a new angle from which to approach the story of the Transfiguration, not coming up with anything and feeling more and more desperate as the Saturday night minutes ticked away. I was honestly beginning to despair of having anything decent to say, until I remembered Dick and Betty Graham.

Dick and Betty were parishioners at my first congregation, Faith United Church of Christ in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Dick had been, I kid you not, a singing cowboy back in the 1930s and 40s, with a guitar, a western shirt and a big hat, the whole deal. Sadly, there were no recordings of him singing back in the day. But judging by the strength of his tenor even into his eighties, he must have been a heck of a performer.

Eventually Dick settled down and became an insurance salesman, as any good cowboy does. But he maintained the charisma he'd had all his life as an entertainer and a salesman. He could light up pretty much any room he was in, such was the force of his personality.

When I met him, Dick had just been treated for some form of cancer that I no longer remember. As he healed, he would be in and out of church. When he could not attend, I would visit him and Betty at their house near the church. Betty would always greet me at the door, and we would chat for a minute or two in their floral print-and-brass-decorated living room. Afterwards, she would lead me back to the sun room where Dick had set up a bed.

"How you doing, Dick?" I'd say on my way in.

"Doing great, Pastor!" he'd respond. "I'm going to beat this thing, be back in church next Sunday!" And often, he was.

But then the worst happened. His cancer came back, and the treatments had little effect, and he grew weaker and weaker with every passing visit. After some months of this, one day I finally said to Betty, "How do you think Dick's doing?"

"Oh, he's suffering, Pastor" she responded. "I think he's going to die, but I can't tell him that — it'll take away his hope."

She showed me back to the sun room, and as was her habit, closed the glass doors and went off to the front of the house so Dick and I could speak privately.

"How're you doing?" I asked Dick.

"Doing great, Pastor! I'm going to beat this thing, be back in church next Sunday!"

I don't know what came over me, I can only pray that it was the Holy Spirit. Because the words came out of me as clear and undeniable as anything I've ever said: "Well, here's the thing, Dick" I said. "I don't think you're going to beat it this time. I think you're going to die."

The old cowboy fixed me with a stare. "I know, Pastor" he said. "But I don't want to tell Betty, I think she'll lose hope."

"I think she knows, Dick. Maybe you should have that conversation with her."

He nodded and thought about it for a moment. "I'll take care of it," he finally said.

I came back to see him a couple of weeks later and noticed that the atmosphere had lightened considerably in the house. "Did you have that conversation?" I asked Dick.

His eyes flashed with irritation. "I said I would take care of it, and I took care of it, Pastor." I asked no more about it.

To this day, I have no idea what they talked about, or how. All I know is that they were able to go forward like changed people, less burdened by fear and anxiety, more able to be present to and loving with one another.

It occurred to me in thinking about Jesus' Transfiguration that Dick and Betty's story is really a dressed-down version of the same basic narrative, or at least gets at the same important points.

I know that must seem like a bizarre claim, so allow me to explain. When we look at the Transfiguration in isolation, it appears to be a story about Christ in his glory, a being utterly and categorically different than us. But when you look at what comes before and after the story, you quickly realize that its context is death, and life. Just before the story we read today, Jesus tells the disciples that he will suffer pain, rejection, and death before being raised on the third day.

And just after the Transfiguration and the story of healing that follows it, he tells them again, bluntly: "Get it through your heads, I am going to die."

It really is that direct. His exact words are: "Let these words sink into your ears: The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into human hands." Get it? Got it? Good. Let's move on. Somehow, Jesus' appearance before Peter and James and John is tied up in acceptance of his death.

To be precise, when "the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white," Jesus is taking on his post-resurrection form, even before he dies. It's not so much that he is different than other humans, than that he has gone before them into death and life. The dazzling white clothes, the changed face, the presence of Moses and Elijah are startling, even unnerving. But in the end they're only secondary to the important parts of the story: this appearance, with the people he appears with, is where Jesus is meant to go, and so are we. And the way to get to where we are meant to be is by accepting that Jesus must die and so must we.

To admit as much is not to deny hope, or steal it away from another. Rather, it's a way to find a new kind of hope, not for the future, but for the here and now. Hoping for a cure to our illnesses is good and natural. But looking too much to the future — "I'm going to beat this, be back in church next Sunday" — can close off possibilities in the present: I love you, I am sad that we will have to part, but let's go through this together for as long as we can.

As a book on chaplaincy I recently read explains, we have to go from looking for hope to living hopefully. Doing so releases tremendous power to be with, to be present to one another. Connection, love, steadfast love, covenant, call it what you will. Whatever its name, it's the power that healed the child afflicted by demons, it was the power that I saw on display with Dick and Betty Graham. It is the very stuff of God. As Paul tells us,

If we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

We are meant to be with Jesus and look as he did that day on the mountaintop. But how to get there? We can't all be so willing to face the end of our lives and eager to give them up.

It's true that most of us can't make these moves until we have no other choice. I didn't change Dick and Betty or their relationship, I just pointed out that they were running out of time.

Lent, however, is a time when we are supposed to consider just such questions, so I will make a suggestion for you to ponder between Ash Wednesday and Easter. If you've ever received a gift, something you've been truly, deeply grateful for, you may know the feeling of how easy it is to share. Paradoxically, it's precisely that for which we are most grateful that we are most willing to part with.

So think about what sort of burdens you can do without, the traditional Lenten practice. But think as well about what you are most grateful for in your lives, and what you would like to leave behind as your legacy. And above all, think about Dick and Betty Graham, how it is you would transfigure your life and your relationships, and how good, how hopeful, it will feel once you arrive at where you are meant to be.