The Sunday Before Transfiguration



ISAIAH 55:10-13: This lovely poem from Isaiah holds before us a welcome vision of peace. It breathes the spirit of the great prophet of the exile, Isaiah of Babylon, and it offers hope to all who read it.



He begins with an event that all of us recognize. The rain and the snow come down from heaven and water the earth. The plants of the earth sprout and give seed to the sower and bread to the eater. In the same way, the word of the Lord goes forth from his mouth and accomplishes the purposes that God intends and prospers the thing that God has sent it to do.



Then the prophet declares:



You shall go out in joy,

and be led forth in peace;

the mountains and the hills before you

shall break forth into singing,

and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress;

instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle;

and it shall be to the LORD for a memorial,

for an everlasting sign which shall not be cut off.



Memorize the verses. Any commentary on them would detract from them instead of add to them.

PSALM 92:1-4, 12-15: This psalm was sung in the temple each Sabbath. We are not certain when this practice began. As conditions in Judah deteriorated, seven psalms that speak of the need to worship were selected to be used on each of the days of the week. This psalm was chosen for use on the Sabbath.



There are reasons for its selection. It reflects the two main themes associated with Sabbath. One theme is that Sabbath, as the climax of creation, celebrated the power of God at work in his world: "At the work of thy hands I sing for joy." The other theme calls for people to recognize the goodness and faithfulness of God: "It is good to give thanks to the Lord and sing praises to the Most High, to declare thy steadfast love in the morning and thy faithfulness by night." In these songs, set to the melody of the lute, the harp, and the lyre, the people of God sing to the God who created them and whose faithfulness upholds them.



The last verses encourage proper behavior on the part of the people. "The righteous flourish like the palm tree, like the Cedar of Lebanon" - therefore, implies the psalm, be righteous. "They are planted in the house of the Lord, they flourish in the courts of our God" - therefore, come before God in the temple. "They bring forth fruit in old age, they are ever full of sap and are green" - God will support you all your days. "God is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him" - therefore, take your stand on him.



The word for God in this psalm is "El Elyon." This suggests that the psalm may have been used in worship in Babylon and transported to Judah, where the people understood that they were praising not the god of the Babylonians, but their own God, Yahweh. The word for God is used seven times in this psalm. That may have been one of the reasons it is used for worship on the Seventh Day, the Sabbath.



FIRST CORINTHIANS 15:51-58: The best way to understand this magnificent passage from the preaching of Paul is simply to read it over and over until it becomes part of our life:



51: Lo! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,
52: in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.
53: For this perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality.
54: When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: "Death is swallowed up in victory."
55: "O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?"
56: The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
57: But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
58: Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

Knowing certain things about the passage will enhance our understanding of it. I will point to the following:



51-53. What happens in the resurrection is a mystery; "mystery" means that God is acting in a manner beyond our known experience. Paul expected the resurrection to occur at any moment: "We shall not all sleep." "Sleep" is a euphemism for "death." But whether we sleep or whether we do not sleep, our resurrection will change our whole manner of being. "Change," in Greek, means to "vary the voice, speak in a different manner according to the audience, to transform." The resurrection of the dead is not to be compared to the evolution of the caterpillar into the butterfly, a seed into a flower, nor to the maturation of the unruly child into the responsible adult. Death brings an abrupt break that necessitates a new beginning. The best meaning may even be "to exchange one thing for another," to exchange our present decaying bodies for the glorious body that awaits us in the resurrection. It is like changing one's clothes. We must put off an old garment and put on a new one: the perishable for the imperishable, the mortal for the immortal. It will happen in the twinkling of an eye, at the sound of a trumpet.



54-57. Humankind, said Paul, is in a deplorable state composed of combinations of sin, death, and law. "The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law." "The sting" is that of bees, or scorpions, or locusts; nothing could hurt more than these. Or maybe something could. The word also speaks of an iron goad used for urging on oxen, horses, and other beasts of burden; to thrust this goad into the side of an animal is unbelievably painful, and the animal reacts in anguish. The combination of these three words - all sinister words in Paul's vocabulary - tells us that nothing imaginable could be worse than the kind of life we are living now.



But something glorious awaits us. "Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?" The power of this passage is seen best when we look at the Old Testament context from which it is drawn. Hosea 14:14 is a vivid call to death to do its very worst on the impenitent people of Israel.



"Shall I ransom them from the power of Sheol?" asked Hosea. "Shall I redeem them from Death?"



The answer the prophet received from God was "No!"



"O Death, where are your plagues?

"O Sheol, where is your destruction? Compassion is hid from my eye," says the Lord.



Paul changed this to a powerful affirmation: "O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting? But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." Paul gives a new tone to the whole passage. For Paul death had lost its power.


58. With verse 58, Paul brings us back to this life. "Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain." Aristotle used this idea in his great book on the ethical life, The Nicomachian Ethics. He insisted on moral actions being the outcome of conscious, steady character. "In the case of moral excellence, a man must know what he is doing, then he must choose to do it and to do it for its own sake, and finally his action must express a stable unmovable character." Paul attests that only through Christ's resurrection does this happen to us. We already have the victory, says Paul. The decisive action has happened, is already integrated into our lives. It is ours, thanks to God. The resurrection of Jesus Christ, and our own promised resurrection, makes us steadfast, immovable, ready to abound in the work of the Lord.

LUKE 6:39-49: Luke's Sermon on the Plain closes with a number of miscellaneous sayings of Jesus. We have no idea why these sayings were recorded or why, perhaps, others were left out. In this section of Jesus' teaching, two quick, short parables are given, then a third that is developed more fully. Jesus then speaks of "the good tree and the good fruit." The Sermon on the Plain concludes with a parable that is similar to the one that concludes the Matthew's Sermon on the Mount.



6:39 "Can a blind man lead a blind man without both of them falling into a pit?" Jesus had great concern about the blind. He healed them of their blindness when he could, and he said that he came to bring "sight to the blind." He did not want them to fall into a pit. No more did he want his followers to follow teachers who were blind to the truth. Such a teacher would fall into the pit of falsehood, and those who followed him would tumble into the same chasm.



6:40 "A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully taught will be like his teacher." No disciple of Jesus should claim that he is better than Jesus, but when the disciple is fully taught he will be like the one who taught him. He will share Jesus' commitments, his ideas, and his purposes. He will walk with his Lord but will not try to walk in front of him.



6:41-42 Jesus also taught about "the speck and the log." Why do you notice the speck that is in your brother's eye, when you have a log sticking out of your own eye? This is an instance of Jesus' hyperbole, humor even. We can easily imagine people having specks of dirt in their eye, but no one can imagine people have logs protruding from their faces. The point Jesus makes is that before we judge others we need to examine ourselves. Anything else is hypocrisy.



6:43-44 This parable starts out well, but then it is confused by the addition of something else, so that it ends up with two or three parables all at once.



It begins by stating that the healthy tree bears healthy fruit, and the sick tree bears sick fruit. Then it notes that a fig does not come from a thorn tree, nor are grapes produced by bramble bushes. It goes on to declare that if a person has a "good treasure in his heart," he will produce good. If he has an "evil treasure," he will produce evil. All these are truisms, wisdom teachings, that Jesus may have spoken at one time or another. Luke, or his source, has joined them together because they share common words: healthy fruit, fig and grapes; good fruit, good treasures.



Luke closes with a parable similar to the one Matthew uses. "When a house is built on a good foundation," says Luke, "it will withstand the storms that ravage it." Palestinian houses were rarely built upon foundations; Palestinian builders sought out solid rock on which to build. Houses in the larger Greek and Roman world were often built upon foundations, which indicate that this rendering of the Sermon was written in an Hellenistic setting. When one's life is built upon hearing and doing the word of Jesus, that life is strongly grounded. And the reverse is true. If you do not hear and do Jesus' word, your house of life is built on a fragile foundation, and it will not withstand the rigors of being a disciple.