Hope of the World | Hope Ascended, February 14, 2021

As the United Methodist Church’s communion liturgy states, suggesting Peter was right, “It is a good and joyful thing always and everywhere to give to give thanks,” to give praise to God. That is to give praise to God in Christ.

What we see here in this theophany, is that Christ is the Maker of heaven and earth, the second person of the Trinity, the Son of God, and that same one has promised that his yoke is light, and his burden is easy. His yoke is light, and his burden is easy because, as we see today, he is the end of the law and the prophets. Therefore, we can show up like Pastor Jeff said last week by being present and doing X, Y, and Z without the burden of expectations or performance. The one God tells us to listen to today promises “Behold, I make all things new!”

And that includes you.

He has and he is and he will do it.

The good news is not that we must ascend up to God by our own good deeds or spiritual striving; the good news of the Gospel is that the one who met Moses in a burning bush and spoke through Elijah has come down to us in Jesus Christ and will come again to….

Howard Thurman wrote of the glad surprise, describing it, “as if a man stumbling in the darkness, having lost his way, finds the spot at which he falls is the foot of a stairway that leads from darkness into light.” This is precisely what Peter did. He worshiped. The goal of discipleship is to be transformed, ourselves transfigured, not by our own hands rather through the one who to whom the law and all of the prophets pointed to. If not, what is the point of going up the mountain with Jesus?

We can try to contain the hope of the Good News revealed to us on the mountain but the Good News for us, revealed by the faithfulness of Peter, is that as Jesus’ humanity was transfigured so too will our humanity be called into perfect union with God, and not because of what we do when we come down from the mountain. Rather, because of the one who invites us to ascend, to worship, and to be transformed, and there is no containing that news.