Listen to Him

 Jesu Juva

St. Mark 9:2-9                                           

February 11, 2024

Transfiguration B                 

 Dear saints of our Savior~

        God gave you two ears . . . but only one mouth.  And there just might be a reason for that:  Listening is more important than speaking.  In fact, it’s only through listening that you first learned to speak.  Tis better to be mute than to be deaf.  The wisest man who ever lived wrote in Ecclesiastes that “there is a time to keep silence . . . and a time to speak” (3:7). 

         Spoken words governed by wisdom can be a great blessing.  With our words we can encourage one another, instruct one another, and admonish one another.  And what a blessing that can be.  But there are other times—many other times—when the most loving and eloquent thing you can bring to a situation is silence.  Remember what happened after Job lost everything—after all he loved was taken away and his entire body was covered with festering sores?  His three friends showed up to comfort him.  Job was such a mess that his friends could barely recognize him.  But before any of them opened their mouths to say a word, “they sat with [Job] on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great” (2:13).  Sometimes it’s good to be speechless. 

        Especially when God is at work, it’s often wise to do nothing and say nothing.  Let all mortal flesh keep silence.  Silence is golden when God is speaking and acting.  It’s too bad nobody told that to Peter.  On the Mount of Transfiguration, Peter, James and John were given to see what no eyes had ever seen, and to hear what no ears had ever heard.  Jesus was transfigured before them.  His clothing became radiant and intensely white.  The brightness of divinity shone through His humanity.  This Jesus who looked like an ordinary man was now shining brighter and purer than all the angels in the sky:  God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God.  These chosen disciples beheld the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.  And then out of nowhere, who should appear but Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.  With Moses and Elijah nigh The incarnate Lord holds converse high.

        If ever there was a time to be silent—to stare in awesome wonder—to drink in all the sights and sounds—that was it.   Soak it all in.  Absorb every detail.  Make some mental notes.  Memorize and ponder every word.  Become nothing but seeing eyes and hearing ears.

        But right in the middle of this breathtaking scene, what does Peter do?  He starts jabbering:  Rabbi, Wow!  It is good that we are here.  Let’s make three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.  Mark writes that Peter didn’t know what to say because they were terrified.  Luke gently adds in his account that Peter didn’t even know what he was saying.  And that’s pretty obvious.  What mortal mouth has the temerity to interrupt a conversation between Jesus and Moses and Elijah?  And for what?  To unveil his talking points about tents?  Don’t you just want to tell Peter to pipe down and stop talking?

        You may be thinking that your preacher is probably the last person to give advice on talking less.  And I won’t pretend that I could have done any better than Peter did on the mountain that day.  I wouldn’t have minded having my own conversation with Moses about some of the things he wrote in Genesis and Exodus . . . and Leviticus and Numbers and Deuteronomy.  I wouldn’t have minded chatting up Elijah about that day when he took on the prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel, or about what it’s like to ride on a fiery chariot.

        We all feel the need to speak and the urgency to act—to do something.  It gives us a sense of strength and control.  But just to sit and watch and listen and receive?  Those easy-sounding things are actually the hardest things.  And sitting where you are right now, you know just how difficult it can be to sit, to listen, to do nothing but receive.  After all, that’s the primary reason we come to the Divine Service—to receive—to be given to—to listen. 

And since Jesus is here to bless us, then our primary work in this place is to be passive—to listen and receive.  Our sinful natures really rebel against being passive . . . because our sinful natures want to be god in the place of God.  We have plans to implement!  We have agendas to enforce!  By nature we want to bark out the orders and call the shots and be the center of attention.  And for that sin we need to repent.  We need to sit and watch and listen and receive.  For only when we do those things, are we in the perfect position for God to do His thing—His acting and His speaking and His giving.  As He famously expresses it in Psalm 46:  “Be still, and know that I am God.”

        Back up on the mountain, right about the time Peter’s voice stopped prattling, a cloud of glory enveloped them all.  And from that cloud came the Father’s voice:  “This is my beloved Son; listen to him.”  He was talking to Peter, to James and to John, to all of us too.  Listen to Jesus.  It’s what we do when we gather here. 

        But keep in mind that listening to Jesus is a different kind of listening.  We don’t listen to Jesus like we listen to political pundits, or podcasts, or professors. We listen to Jesus with hope—with expectation—with faith that the words we hear from Jesus will change us.  When you prepare to come to the Divine Service—or when you settle in to listen to the sermon—are you convinced and convicted that the Word of God you are about to hear will change you—will expose your guilt and forgive your sin—that God’s Word preached and proclaimed will give you the power to live as a witness for Christ—power to say “no” to wickedness and “yes” to the holiness that is yours through your baptism?  Listening to Jesus isn’t just a matter of sound waves.  Listening to Jesus is a matter of anticipation and expectation and the joyful confidence that the Savior’s Words will have their way with you.  Gladly, eagerly, listen to Jesus.

        And just in case the disciples hadn’t figured out the great value of keeping their ears open and their mouths shut, Jesus had a few more words for them on the way down the mountain.  He told them: Keep quiet.  “He charged them to tell no one what they had seen, until the Son of Man had risen from the dead.”  The time to tell about the transfiguration would come.  The time to preach and proclaim the miracle they had just witnessed would come.  But first would come the cross.  Jesus’ transfiguration alone couldn’t do a thing about our sin.  His shining splendor alone does not destroy the power of death. 

        This is why Jesus told them not to say a word about what they saw and heard until the Son of Man had risen from the dead.  Before glory would come agony—the agony of nails and thorns and cross.  Before we can behold Jesus in all His glory, He would have to hang dead on a cross bearing all of our sins.  Before we can know Jesus in His glory, we need to see Him broken, bleeding, dying and buried—because that’s how He saved you.  That’s how He paid for your sin.  That’s how He opened the kingdom of heaven for you.  That’s how much He loves you.

        There is, of course, a time and place for speaking—for shouting and singing the praises of the Lord.  Here in the Divine Service we exclaim our “amens” and our “alleluias.”  We sing our hymns and we preach our sermons—with all the volume and vigor our voices can raise.  We pour out our prayers and we confess the creeds.  But the most important times we spend in the presence of God are those times when we are all ears. 

        At no time do we use our mouths more faithfully than when we receive from our gracious Savior the bread that is His body and the wine that is His blood.  As we swallow this sacred Supper, sin is forgiven, the death of Jesus is proclaimed, and we are changed.

        In times like these—standing in the presence of God—we come to realize, “tis better to receive than to give.”  Tis better to listen to Jesus than listen to anyone else.  These moments of receiving are beautiful moments, for they reveal what kind of God we have:  One whose glory is revealed in giving, whose grace is all-sufficient, whose power is made perfect in our weakness.  God is never more God than when He gives.  And we are never more His children than when we receive from His gracious hands.  Listen to Him. 

        In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.