The Topic of Conversation!

Text: Matthew 17:1-9
Theme: “The Topic of Conversation”
Transfiguration of the Lord
March 6, 2011
First Presbyterian Church
Denton, Texas
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

In the Name of Jesus

1 After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. 2 There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. 3 Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.
4 Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.”
5 While he was still speaking, a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!”
6 When the disciples heard this, they fell facedown to the ground, terrified. 7 But Jesus came and touched them. “Get up,” he said. “Don’t be afraid.” 8 When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus.
9 As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus instructed them, “Don’t tell anyone what you have seen, until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”


Here’s a topic for conversation – at home, at church, or at the water cooler: if I were to ask you to name one special moment in your life, what would it be? Would you be able to say “Well, yeah! I’ve pulled a few lucky rabbits out of life’s hat”? But really, think about it for a moment and identify, in your mind, that bright, shiny, technicolor experience that is writ large over the canvass of your life so far. When was it? Where was it? What was it? Could it be when your eyes met the eyes, for the first time, of that person of your dreams? Perhaps mothers would mention the birth of a child. Maybe fathers would say the same thing. An athlete might recall winning a huge game or a championship. That special moment may be when you walked across that stage, with that academic mortar board on your head, and received your degree. It could be that you set a personal or a business goal and you set about working toward it and eventually achieved it. No, you didn’t insert a new page in the Guinness Book of World Records, but you set a record for yourself! When that moment arrived, it was grand. Your memories are vivid; it still evokes a smile. You remember that you were overwhelmed, humbled, proud, tired, exuberant, and even a bit afraid. You experienced the whole gamut of emotions. That one moment was truly unique and unforgettable. It was your moment, and they can’t take it away from you; you sent a ripple of hope through your own life and the lives of others.

In 1988, the Summer Olympics were held in Seoul, South Korea. I don’t remember a single gold medal winner. But I’ll never forget the song that emerged from that event. Whitney Houston sang it, and the chorus goes like this:


Give me one moment in time when I’m more than I thought I could be,
When all of my dreams are a heartbeat away and the answers are all up to me.
Give me one moment in time when I’m racing with destiny.
Then in that one moment in time I will feel,
I will feel eternity.

But not everyone is an Olympic athlete or a popular vocalist. What if you can’t think of such a moment? We should definitely allow for that possibility. Someone might say, “You know, I’ve had some good moments and some not-so-good moments, but none of them really stand out. None of them sizzled and most of them fizzled. Maybe you’re the kind that might agree with country crooner Willie Nelson when he sings:

This face is all I have – worn and lived in,
And lines below my eyes are like old friends.
And this old heart’s been beaten up,
And my ragged soul has had things rough.
And this face is all I have – worn and lived in.

Whether you’ve had many moments, only one special moment, or none that you can think of, I still want to invite you into the story that we’ve heard today. Together, I want us to find our place in this story. We may find our moment in it right here today that sets our hearts and souls on a new track.

The Lord Jesus took with Him Peter, James, and John. It always seems to be Peter, James, and John -- out of that apostolic band, that group of Jesus’ twelve disciples -- that get picked. It doesn’t seem fair. Some folks get the special attention and others don’t. That’s one of those irksome little facts about life that you just have to accept. I remember PE class in grade school. We played a game called line soccer. The teacher would pick captains. And the captains – every single time we played – would pick these people in the following order: Neil, Al, Steve, Bryan, and Paul. I was always fifth. Neil, Al, Steve, and Bryan always got picked first. I was the fifth best athlete in grade school; I worked harder than them all, and I didn’t appreciate being fifth pick one bit! I wanted a moment in time when I’d be picked first. It didn’t happen.

Forget line soccer! So here we sit taking in today’s Gospel story from quite a distance in terms of geography and years. Jesus picks Peter, James, and John and they go mountain climbing. There’s nothing too spectacular about that; people climb mountains every day I suspect – to push themselves to their physical limit, for recreation and so forth.

But then, on this particular expedition all those years ago, something happened. And that something that happened is so unique and special that the church, for hundreds upon hundreds of years, has set aside a Sunday to remember it. It’s called Transfiguration Sunday.

Matthew reports that Jesus was “transfigured” before Peter, James, and John. “His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.”

Fire on the mountain! Run boys, run!
The devil’s in the house of the rising sun!
Chicken in the bread pan pickin’ out dough.
“Granny, does your dog bite?”
“No child, no!”

It wasn’t fire; it wasn’t the devil; it wasn’t in the house of the rising sun. But it was on the mountain, and it was Jesus like He had never been seen before. It was one moment in time! And there stood Moses and Elijah – Moses, chosen by God to take on the Pharaoah of Egypt and deliver the law, and Elijah, the chief among the prophets. There stood Jesus, Moses, and Elijah in dazzling glory. And they were talking with one another. What, pray tell, were they talking about? What was the topic of conversation.

You have four gospel books, right? Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Three out of the four – Matthew, Mark, and Luke – record the story of the transfiguration. We’ve heard from Matthew. Mark’s version is similar. But Luke includes a detail, and that detail gives us the topic of conversation. Luke says: “And behold, two men talked with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem.”

The text speaks of His “departure.” In life, you have arrivals and departures – at train stations, at airports, at church meetings, and business conferences, at the beginning of life and when eyelids are closed in death. The English word is “departure.” But the Bible’s term, for which “departure” is the translation, is – drum roll please! – “Exodus”. That’s a compound word for you literary purists; we have two words. There is “ex” which means “out,” and there is “odus” which means “the way”. Exodus means “the way out.”

Moses, that key figure in the great salvation event of the Old Testament, was used of God to help show God’s people the way out of 400 years of bondage in Egypt. Elijah, the “prince of the prophets”, along with the prophetic band, proclaimed the way out to the children of God so bent on not keeping covenant with God. But this time, the topic of conversation is the departure of Jesus. It’s His exodus, his way out.

The detours and side streets were there. He could have adopted plan B. He could have snapped His fingers; vanished from the scene; left Peter, James, and John gawking, and that would have been that. He would have been remembered as a fine, upstanding man among men. World history in subsequent generations would have dubbed Him a great moral leader. They may have awarded Him a Nobel peace prize post-humously.

But Jesus didn’t take plan B. He didn’t plot escape coordinates on His divine GPS. He didn’t go to the left or right or up or down or around. He didn’t romance the thought of detour. He saw the gathering storm clouds. Synagogue and state would collude. God’s honor would be saved and the Pax Romana, the “peace of Rome”, would have to prevail. And that meant that Jesus had to go. He had to die! Sugar-coat it all you want! Beat around the bush all your want, but that’s what had to happen. That’s how His enemies saw it.

But Jesus saw it as His exodus. He knew He was going to die on that cross, but it would be on His terms. It wasn’t His enemies’ plan before it was His! He would suffer the beatings, the mockings, the scourging, the floggings, the wormwood and the gall. He would bleed out His life on that cross not to save God’s honor, not to keep the peace of Rome, but because you are worth it. He would bridge the gap and traverse the hellish chasm; He would bring a confused, anxious, and fallen humanity back to its maker. He would show just how real – and how costly! – genuine forgiveness really is.

As the conversation on the mountain progressed, Peter, James, and John wanted the show to go on. Peter insisted on setting up three shelters. It looked, for all the world, like his one moment in time. Glory on the mountain! Supernatural light! Divine and spiritual power at so very real and at his disposal! He was privy to that. Later on, Peter would write: “We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of the Lord. But we were eyewitnesses of His majesty.”

But a voice interrupted Peter’s event planning there on that mountain. The voice from heaven said: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.”

At the sound of those words, Peter, James, and John – the hand-picked of the Lord – were terrified. They fell on their faces in awe.

When it was all said and done, there was only a touch – the touch of Jesus. Back to normal Jesus said: “Get up and don’t be afraid.”

In just a few minutes, that’s what we shall have: just a touch, a touch of bread and wine, the touch of Jesus.

It is good, Lord, to be here! This may be the most important moment of your week and perhaps even your life. It’s just a touch and a topic of conversation to relish forever.

Amen.