"Jesus is Our Exodus"    San Williams, UPC

Luke 9:28-43

Is there any way out?  That’s a question we human beings frequently ask.  When illness takes our strength away, we ask if there is any way back to health. When death strikes someone we love, we may wonder if there is a way out of debilitating grief.  We ask it when the economy takes a downturn. Is there a way out of the financial quagmire?  We’ve seen so many scenes of devastation in Haiti that we wonder if that impoverished island will be forever trapped in its poverty.  As armed conflicts continue to rage, we wonder if there is a way out of the seemingly endless cycle of war.  Well, in the story of Jesus’ Transfiguration that we read this morning, Luke tells us that the conversation among Jesus, Moses and Elijah concerns Jesus’ departure, which is the English translation for exodus.  So on the mount of Transfiguration, we come face to face with Luke’s bold assertion that Jesus is our exodus, our way out.

Finger prints of exodus are stamped all over Luke’s story of Jesus on the mountain.   Look at how closely Luke has tied his description of Jesus’ transfiguration to the experience of Moses on Mt. Sinai recorded in the book of Exodus.  There we’re told that Moses takes his assistant, Joshua, with him to the mountain.  Similarly, Jesus takes his closest disciples—Peter, James and John. When Moses came down the mountain, people saw that the skin of his face was shining.  Likewise, Luke tells us that on the mountain Jesus’ face is changed and his clothes beam dazzling white.  Further, the cloud that overshadowed the disciples recalls the cloud that engulfed Moses on Mount Sinai.  Peter’s desire to build three dwellings echoes the wilderness story that the Feast of Tabernacles celebrates.  Of course, the very presence of Moses and Elijah with Jesus further identifies Jesus with Moses and the prophets.  Just as God chose Moses as his servant to lead Israel out of slavery and through the wilderness, God has chosen Jesus to lead us out of the bondage of sin and death into the freedom of God’s New Creation.   In a word, Jesus is the new and final Moses.  He is our exodus, our way out.  “Listen to him,” says the divine voice from the cloud.

But let’s face it, the world doesn’t listen to Jesus, and even his disciples are reluctant to follow him.  What makes his exodus so hard to accept is that Jesus leads us out of suffering by passing through it.  He opens the way to life by accepting death, even death on a cross. He defeats his enemies by forgiving them, and responds to insults, injury and violence with suffering love.  Jesus is our exodus, but in the most paradoxical sense—a Liberator without a sword, a Leader who suffers defeat, a Savior who is rejected, a King who is servant, the Son of God who is crucified and risen.   No wonder the world rejects him, and even his disciples struggle to comprehend his way and follow his lead.

Yet Luke would have us know that there is no way out of the world’s entanglement with sin and death except the way Jesus pioneered.  Notice that Luke’s interest in Jesus’ exodus in Jerusalem was not merely to report the fact of his impending death, but also to speak of what it accomplished for the world.  He saves us from the bondage of sin by identifying with sinners although he himself was without sin.  He frees us from the power of death by dying a human death and then breaking free of death’s grip.   And he shows us the way to peace by responding to violence, insults and injury with forgiveness and love.  Jesus is our exodus.  He delivers us from evil and points the way to a New Creation marked by healing, justice and peace.  

So the challenge given to us is the same one Jesus put to his first disciples. Prior to taking Peter, James and John with him to the mountaintop Jesus said to all his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”  In our reading, the story of the transfiguration is followed immediately by the account of Jesus' leading the disciples down the mountain back into a world in need.     

In her sermon called The Role of Religion in Today’s Society, the Catholic Sister Joan Chittister describes the struggle between what she calls "religion for real" and "religion for show." For her, Peter’s attempt to build three booths represents religion for show—opting for a religion of temples, institutions and shrines.  She then focuses on how Jesus leads the disciples down from the mountain to meet the needs of people in the valley below.  She declares, “Real religion is about healing hurts, speaking for and being with the poor, the helpless, the voiceless and the forgotten who are at the silent bottom of every pinnacle, every hierarchy, and every system in both state and church.”   Real religion, then, is joining with Jesus in a ministry of healing and hope.

And the good news is that we can follow Jesus without fully comprehending his way or being totally effective in our ministry.  Recall the distraught father in today’s reading who comes up to Jesus begging him to heal his only son who suffers from convulsions.  The father explains to Jesus that he came first to the disciples, but they were unable to heal his child.  Why couldn’t the disciples heal the epileptic child?  Luke had earlier told us about the disciples’ success at proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom and healing the afflicted.  It’s possible, I suppose, that the disciples grew arrogant with success and thus lost their relationship to the source of power.  Perhaps they had failed to sustain that power through prayer.  Or maybe Jesus’ announcement of suffering and death robbed them of faith and firm commitment.  In any case, we may well take comfort and even encouragement at the failure of Jesus’ first disciples.   How often have we as a congregation prayed for healing, only to have the person get worse?  I’ve stood at a hospital bedside praying for healing even as the patient’s life slipped away.  Like the first disciples, at times we are amazed at the success of our efforts, and other times humbled by our ineptitude.  Thankfully, the test of faith is not measured by our success, but by our willingness to stay in relationship with Jesus, no matter what.

One more thing.  If Jesus is our exodus, then the painful losses of life only serve to bind us closer to him rather than drive us away.  Perhaps you saw the report in yesterday’s Austin American-Statesman about the central Texas team of doctors that has returned from Haiti. The doctors were amazed at how incredibly strong and gracious Haitians were, even though they had been sitting for days in their villages with horrible injuries and no access to pain medication.  One of the doctors from Austin was amputating the legs of a woman, when she began singing a hymn in Creole that translated to Praise Jesus.  “I had to stop operating because it was unbelievable,” the doctor said.  “I’m a Christian, but I don’t know that I’d have enough faith to be singing about my love for Jesus while you were cutting my leg off.” The doctor concluded, “Their faith and how tough the Haitian people were are just unbelievable examples of belief in Jesus.” 

As followers of Jesus, we don’t seek out suffering, or glorify it.  As you know, many people today believe that the reality of suffering is an argument against God.  Yet to the contrary, followers of Jesus discover that it is in suffering that the presence and love of God are most powerfully evidenced.  Theologian Fred Craddock put it this way: “The painful, tragic events of our lives and world do not lie across the way but on the way to the completion of God’s purpose.”

Friends, Luke’s story of the transfiguration identifies Jesus as God’s only Son. He came into a world of hurt.  He suffered the full extent of the world’s pain.  He leads the world out of our present futility and into the promise of God’s reign on earth.  He is our exodus.  He is the only way out. Listen to him.  Follow him.