SPEAKER_00: Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: To him who loves us and has washed us clean from our sins with his own blood and made us to be a kingdom of priests to serve God and his Father.
SPEAKER_00: To him be all glory, honor, and dominion forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: As Christians, we often think to ourselves, we can't wait to be with Jesus and see him face to face.
SPEAKER_00: We imagine what heaven will be like.
SPEAKER_00: We replay Jesus' words to the thief on the cross, truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.
SPEAKER_00: Wherever Jesus is, that's paradise.
SPEAKER_00: Wherever Jesus is, that's where we want to be too.
SPEAKER_00: No doubt being with Jesus and in heavenly places colors the thoughts of Peter, James, and John.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the motivation behind Peter's words.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, it is good for us to be here.
SPEAKER_00: He wants to be with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We want to be with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We all know where Jesus is, that must be paradise.
SPEAKER_00: If Jesus is the King of kings, that means wherever the king rides in, his kingdom comes with him.
SPEAKER_00: But that's not how Jesus presents himself most often in Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: That's not how he appears by the sea or near the well.
SPEAKER_00: That's not how he will appear riding into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, the week of his passion.
SPEAKER_00: There are a few times in the New Testament when we get a glimpse of who Jesus really is.
SPEAKER_00: Most often we only get to see Jesus as he presents himself.
SPEAKER_00: Lowly and lying in a manger, a boy lost at the temple, a carpenter's son, a teacher with no place to lay his head, a healer.
SPEAKER_00: But he eats with sinners.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah the prophet told us he wasn't anything special to look at.
SPEAKER_00: And finally, at the end of his days, he would be beaten and bruised and flogged and hung on a tree for all to see.
SPEAKER_00: And this Jesus would die the death of a man for everyone to see.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, the man, hardly resembled a god in the minds of men.
SPEAKER_00: Especially if you were steeped in Greek and Roman culture as a resident citizen in the surrounding area of Galilee.
SPEAKER_00: But looks are not what determines one to be a god.
SPEAKER_00: Even Moses' face shone like burnished bronze after he had entered the tabernacle and talked with God.
SPEAKER_00: But that light didn't come from Moses, did it?
SPEAKER_00: It was only a reflection of God's own glory.
SPEAKER_00: Miracles don't make a man a God either.
SPEAKER_00: Doing miracles with food, even raising people from the dead, didn't demonstrate that Jesus was God.
SPEAKER_00: Even Elijah, the great prophet, did these things with the widow at Nain, and yet he was only a man.
SPEAKER_00: So what made Jesus God?
SPEAKER_00: He is the only begotten Son of the Father, begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made, who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man.
SPEAKER_00: That is what made him God.
SPEAKER_00: But even though he was nothing to regard on the outside, in the transfiguration, Jesus showed his true colors, as it were.
SPEAKER_00: He was transfigured, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light.
SPEAKER_00: Here was a glimpse of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus in his glory, a true mountaintop experience.
SPEAKER_00: Only here on this mountaintop, on this side of heaven, do these three beloved disciples get to see our Lord in his glory.
SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, he isn't much to behold.
SPEAKER_00: But regardless of appearances, it is God who tabernacles with us in the person of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: The whole of the deity dwells bodily in the person of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: The word of God is incarnational.
SPEAKER_00: He becomes flesh.
SPEAKER_00: He comes in the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: The word of God is enfleshed there on the mountain, and the whole corpus of scripture, represented by the presence of Moses and Elijah, the law, and the prophets, stand there with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: But they are as real as he is real, and they are living just as he is living.
SPEAKER_00: The whole corpus of God's word enfleshed right before the disciples' eyes, and they recognize exactly who they are.
SPEAKER_00: But how often do they get to witness the reality that Jesus is truly a hundred percent God and a hundred percent man?
SPEAKER_00: With their eyes?
SPEAKER_00: Not hardly at all.
SPEAKER_00: They must see him with their ears.
SPEAKER_00: Their ears are their eyes of faith.
SPEAKER_00: For this is just as Saint Paul has taught us, faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the enfleshed word of God.
SPEAKER_00: So then when Jesus speaks, it delivers exactly what God declares it will.
SPEAKER_00: Only God's word is performative.
SPEAKER_00: What he teaches them and what he attaches his word to, that's what matters.
SPEAKER_00: If they go looking for Jesus anywhere else, well, that's foolishness.
SPEAKER_00: So it is the same with us.
SPEAKER_00: It's foolish for us to look for a mountaintop experience where Jesus hasn't called us to be there with him.
SPEAKER_00: The other nine didn't get to see Jesus on the mountain, and yet they believed.
SPEAKER_00: One of the other nine even wrote the Gospel of Matthew.
SPEAKER_00: But he didn't get to gaze upon the Lord in his glory.
SPEAKER_00: In this life on earth, we will never see Jesus face to face until we're either with him after death or when he comes again in the parocia, his second coming.
SPEAKER_00: In the meantime, we must see with our ears, our eyes of faith.
SPEAKER_00: We need to stop looking for Jesus where he doesn't tell us to go looking.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't play hide and seek with us or our feelings.
SPEAKER_00: He's not that kind of savior.
SPEAKER_00: He is exactly where he tells us he will be, even though it may seem to be a mundane and nothing much to look at.
SPEAKER_00: No one else could point to a piece of bread and a sip of wine and say, Here you have my body.
SPEAKER_00: Here I give you my life-giving blood.
SPEAKER_00: Only Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Only where the word declares it to be true.
SPEAKER_00: But it's nothing much to see with these eyes.
SPEAKER_00: Just a plain old Jesus hidden under plain old means.
SPEAKER_00: But this is where your Lord promises to come to you and be present with you bodily.
SPEAKER_00: Who cares if it seems like foolishness to the outside world?
SPEAKER_00: They don't have the eyes of faith.
SPEAKER_00: They haven't been given to see with the ears of faith by Jesus Holy Spirit, like you.
SPEAKER_00: But you have.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed are those who believe and have not seen.
SPEAKER_00: It says, This King of glory died for you, for all your sins, on the altar of his life-giving cross.
SPEAKER_00: It says, I know I am most definitely in his presence this very day, and he is with me as I am gathered with the saints of Christ to receive his word and his sacraments, because the kingdom comes where the King of glory rides in, even if it's hidden under such humble means.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord of glory arrives here for you today, to strengthen you, to give you life, to deliver to you the forgiveness of all your sins.
SPEAKER_00: Because where there is the forgiveness of sins, there is life and salvation.
SPEAKER_00: So we join in with Peter here in this place.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, it is good for us to be here.
SPEAKER_00: Go in peace.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord has put away your sin.
SPEAKER_00: You will not die, but have eternal life with him.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Now the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.