Bible Text: St Matthew 17:1–9 | Preacher: Rev. Dr. Christian Preus
The Father’s voice sounds from heaven and says about Jesus, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Listen to Him.” So it’s important for us to know what words Jesus speaks. What are the first words Jesus speaks to Peter, James, and John after the Father says, “Listen to Him”? They are “Rise and Do not fear.” They are same words Jesus speaks to His disciples after He suffers for our sins and dies our death and rises again, “Do not fear.” They are the same words the angels speak to the shepherds when Jesus is born in Bethlehem of Judea, “Do not fear.” They are the same words Jesus speaks again and again after He calms the storm, after He gives a miraculous catch of fish, after He shows His divine power to help poor sinners, “Do not fear.” Those are the words Jesus speaks to you, and the Father from heaven commands you, Listen to Him.
Do not fear.
Those words presuppose that you are afraid. Jesus isn’t for those who aren’t afraid. Those who are well have no need of a physician. Those who aren’t afraid of God’s judgment, don’t need Jesus to tell them He’s taken that Judgment away. Those who aren’t afraid of death, don’t need Jesus to die that death for them. Those who have no struggle with the devil’s temptations don’t need Jesus to crush that devil under His crucified feet.
Why do you need Jesus to say those words to you, why do you need to hear them, “Don’ t be afraid?” The transfiguration of Jesus shows you that very well. Transfiguration means a change of form. The word in the Greek is metamorphosis. What happens to a caterpillar when it turns into a butterfly. A change of form. And that’s what it looks like with Jesus, the ugly caterpillar changes form into the beautiful butterfly. Jesus, who looked like any other man, and in fact Isaiah says of Him that He was despised, that His form was marred, that he hath no form or comeliness and when we see Him there is no beauty that we should desire Him. That’s what Jesus looked like, because He was bearing our mortality, our corruption. Christians often talk about how wonderful it would be to have seen Jesus, to have been there when he walked this earth, but unless you were there with Peter, James, and John on that mountain, you would have just seen a regular Jewish man, nothing special about Him; but on that Mount, for a brief time, His face shown like the sun, His clothes were white as light, He showed who He was by nature, the eternal Son of God, the Creator of all things, in our human flesh and blood.
Contrast that with the change we see in our human form. Because we are used to metamorphosis. We just don’t describe it that way. We see our faces transfigure, it’s just with wrinkles and dark spots instead of light. We go from the butterfly to the caterpillar. Our lives are spent trying to slow down our transfiguration, with exercise, diet, medicine, or to cover it up, with makeup and surgery, but in the end the transfiguration is complete and we die and what was so full of life and beauty once upon a time is a lifeless corpse, rotting in the grave.
That’s why you need to hear those words from Jesus, “Do not fear.” Not simply because you are slowly being transfigured into a corpse, but because there’s a reason for it, and it’s in you. It’s your sin, your fault. St. Peter shows us what that sin looks like, by the way. He wants to stay there on the Mount. He wants to bottle up the glory and the happiness, make the tents, make it last. That’s us. Dear God, that’s us. Lord, have mercy. Don’t let the good times die, resent the Lord when He sends the bad times, act like you deserve nothing but happiness and success in this life and chafe under the crosses God sends. All as if you’re not a sinner, as if joy and happiness could possibly last with sinners on a sinful earth. Do you believe that you are a sinner? That what you need deliverance from is not just out there or in the future or in your past, but now, in you, the unbelief, the pride, the selfish lusts, the unrighteous anger, the false judgments.
That’s why Jesus’ words, “Do not fear” are so beautiful. They are complete. They cover everything. Don’t fear death, don’t fear your transfiguration, your aging, your declining health, don’t fear that the good days are past, don’t fear that you’ve wasted too much of your short life already, don’t fear the sins you’ve committed, don’t fear the sin that lives in you and brings you down, don’t fear the devil or any of his accusations, don’t fear the state of the world, the country, the church, do not fear.
Because your Creator, whose face shown like the sun through the human nature that He joined to Himself, He hid all His glory, and He came down from that mountain, and He did what Moses and Elijah and all the prophets said He would do, He bore your sin, His face was transfigured in agony, and His body to a corpse, He suffered His own judgment against you, He died your death, and He rose again, and when you have Him and He has you, you have nothing to fear.
It’s not about trying to bottle up as much joy and happiness in this life, because eventually it all ends. That’s a life of despair. Don’t live that way. Your flesh wants to. Fight it every day. You are a Christian. You are not going from life to death. You are going from the death of Jesus, which you have already been joined to in your Baptism, you died with Him, and you are going from that to eternal life. The real death of a Christian happened on the cross and happens in your Baptism where you were joined to Jesus’ death. It is the death to sin that you embrace every day, because you have been forgiven, and cleansed, and filled with the Spirit, and made a child of God, joined to the Savior, the Son of God, so the sin that enslaved you and the devil that taunted you and the death that terrified you were drowned and died. And the life you live is an eternal life. Luther called the physical death that we still have to undergo, he called it a Tödlein, a tiny death, because the big death has already happened, and that’s Jesus’s death, which is your death, and more, gloriously more, the resurrection has already happened, He is your life. Everything beautiful that Peter saw on that Mount, everything that made Him want to stay and never leave, that belongs to you already, you just can see it yet, but you will see it all, and you will never have to leave.
When St. Peter, years after the event, recalled what he had seen on that Mount, he said he saw Jesus’ power and coming. The word for coming Peter uses is Parousia, it’s the regular word for Jesus’ second coming, when all flesh will see Him and when our knee will bow. And that’s important. That’s what Peter saw. He saw what he and you and I will see when our Lord returns. And when we see Him, St. John, who was also there on that Mount, St. John says, when He appears, when we see Him like John saw Him then, we will be like Him, because we will see Him as He really is.
And the sight of Him then will be greater, far better, than what Peter and James and John saw. They couldn’t stay there, they had to come down from that Mount, that sight was not meant to last, because that glory doesn’t become ours until Jesus suffers and until we suffer with Him. The Father says, “Listen to Him,” and the next words Jesus speaks after He says Do not fear are, “Tell no one the vision until the Son of Man is risen from the dead.” It is only after suffering that you get to enjoy the vision. That doesn’t mean you don’t get to enjoy it now. You do. Please do. Enjoy it every single day. Remember your Baptism, remember that you are dust, remember what makes you afraid, remember your sin and your regrets and your death, go through that suffering, and then bury it all in Jesus’ suffering and His death and His resurrection and His love for you, and rise with Him, listen to Him, believe Him when He says you have nothing to fear, you’re a child of God, eternity and life with your Father and all the saints lies before you, and you walk with Jesus and the angels all the way to your heavenly home. Amen.