Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory

Text: Mark 9:2-9 
Transfiguration Sunday

The day before I left for my pilgrimage to Palestine, I went to the theater and watched the new movie “Selma.” It tells the story of Martin Luther King Jr and his march on Selma, AL during the civil rights movement. It’s a fascinating film about an important time in our history. I was especially fascinated by the portrayal of King. He is portrayed as a man really deeply struggling with his role in the movement and he has this strong sense that he may not live much longer.

The movie ends with King reiterating his conviction that freedom is coming for his people.

Perhaps the most powerful part of the movie for me was a song performed by John Legend and Common, called “Glory.”

One day when the glory comes
It will be ours, it will be ours
Oh one day when the war is won
We will be sure, we will be sure
Oh glory (Glory, glory)
Oh (Glory, glory)

Welcome to the story we call victory
The comin' of the Lord, my eyes have seen the glory

 

It was this song that kept playing over and over in my head as I read our gospel for today and was thinking about this sermon.

Our text is the story of Jesus revealing his glory. Jesus, the poor wandering rabbi of the gospels, reveals himself to three of his disciples in glory. And he stands with a cloud of witnesses, with Moses, the ancient liberator of his people, and Elijah, the great defender of the poor. And a voice from heaven acknowledges him as the Beloved Son.

Amazing, right? Jesus revealed in glory. In the Holy Land, we visited the Church of the Transfiguration, built on where some scholars believe this happened, on Mt Tabor.

But we usually read this story as if it stands alone in the text. And it doesn’t. In every gospel this story is told, it occurs just after Jesus warns his disciples of his coming death.

Jesus has built a movement. A movement proclaiming a better kingdom, a movement of healing, a movement of liberation for the poor of Galilee. He is not stupid. He knows what happens to Galilean troublemakers. It is not much of a stretch to imagine that Jesus expected to die, expected to be arrested, expected to be executed.

Just a few verses before our text this morning, Jesus turns to his disciples and begins to teach them that he will suffer, that he will be rejected by the religious and political leaders of Jerusalem, and that he will be executed. The disciples, of course, are frightened and upset.

And so Jesus turns to them, and to the crowd around them, and says; “If anyone wants to follow me, he must take up his cross.” Now, lets be really clear. Everyone knows what Jesus means here. He is not talking about bearing burdens—a cross is a method of execution, a method used frequently in ancient Palestine by the Romans to keep people in line. Jesus is saying—in essence—be willing to go to the electric chair, or face lethal injection.

So. Jesus is revealed in glory. Only after he tells them not only is HE going to die, but that if they keep following him, they just might die too.

It’s a fitting text for this last Sunday of Epiphany, as we begin Lent, is it not?

First, Jesus calls his disciples to follow him on the way of the cross.

In Palestine, I got to walk the actual way of the cross, on the stones Jesus probably walked on the way to the cross. That was a powerful time for me.

But what kept coming to me was how many people have walked this way of the cross, walked the way of suffering and death.

Jesus was not the first or the last person crucified. What we have in Jesus is God joining a long line of people who have walked the way of suffering and death. God becomes one of us and dies at the hands of cruelty and evil and empire like one of us.

Like King and so many of the men and women and children that marched with him in Selma. Marched for freedom from empire and cruelty. In Selma, a number of people are killed during the march and its aftermath.

Like so many young black men and women today, in Ferguson or NYC.

In our Bible study in Aberdeen, the group asked me to gather dirt from the Holy Land and bring it back. So I did, and I gathered that dirt as we walked up to Jerusalem, on the way of the cross.

This Lent, on Good Friday, we are planning on walking through Aberdeen, walking our own way of the cross, acknowledging the suffering and death that people experience here and now, today.

All over the world, people still walk the way of the cross.

Here, in our county, we still walk the way of the cross.

And, yet, as soon as Jesus speaks of the cross, of coming death, he takes his most trusted disciples, goes out on a mountain, and reveals his glory.

Because, after the way of the cross comes glory.

Because, life comes out of death.

Because, freedom will come.

Because the Christian story does not end at the cross, but in glory.

Jesus, in our text, is reminding his disciples of this. Even as they look toward the way of cross, even as they face death, they hold on to the hope of triumph and glory. The kingdom of God is coming, no matter what empires do, no matter if we live or die.

Some of you might have heard the news recently that the current pope, Pope Francis, is working to make Oscar Romero, the archbishop of El Salvador, a saint.

Oscar Romero’s story and his writings have had a profound impact on me. He became archbishop in El Salvador during a time of civil war, in the late 70s, during a time when poor communities were being targeted by the government and numerous people were dying.

It was a time when the Roman Church was largely silent and even complicit in the mass suffering of the people of El Salvador. I have a friend who was in El Salvador at the time, and her stories are chilling.

So, Romero did a dangerous thing. He openly stood up to the government. He openly took the side of poor communities. And, in 1980, Romero was shot by a government agent while celebrating the Eucharist during Lent.

A few weeks before he died, he said; “This Lent, which we observe amid blood and sorrow, ought to presage a transfiguration of our people, a resurrection of our nation… Those who have Christian faith and hope know that behind this Calvary of El Salvador lies our Easter, our resurrection.”

Romero knew, even as he walked his own way to the cross with his people, the hope of the transfiguration.

We struggle sometimes to hope. We struggle to hold on the hope of transfiguration, of glory.  

I have people tell me all the time; “Nothing will ever change here. Don’t get your hopes up. Things have been bad for a long time.”

Can the kingdom really ever come?

Jesus, in our text today, points us to the long journey toward freedom, toward the kingdom of God, following Moses, following Elijah, waiting for the glory of the Lord revealed in the face of Jesus Christ.

Remember that last sermon given by King, the night before he died? His hope that his people, that African Americans in the US would find freedom.

“Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!

"And so I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!”

Like the disciples, King had been to the mountain and seen the glory of the Lord. And he had a rock solid hope that as he walked the way of the cross, quite literally, his people would see that glory too.

So, my brothers and sisters, as we prepare for a Holy Lent, as we prepare to at least symbolically walk the way of the cross with Jesus, lets not forget the Transfiguration. Lets not forget that our eyes have indeed seen the coming of the Lord and that he is coming in glory to give freedom and liberation to his people. To us.

Welcome to the story we call victory
The comin' of the Lord, my eyes have seen the glory.