THE CALL TO MARVEL

THE CALL TO MARVEL

Matthew 17:1-13

Dr. Wm. J. Maxwell

First Presbyterian Church, Newport, RI

March 9, 2008

What a “world-wind tour”! Three years with Jesus, but the recent events seemed to be fast-paced, exhilarating and exhausting for Peter and the others. In the recent past, Jesus had fed miraculously over 5,000 men, women and children. Jesus then asked His disciples for how they perceived Him, as to who they thought He was, and Peter made his great confession of Jesus as “the Christ, the Son of the living God.” It was a high moment for Peter, even though that was followed by Jesus’ startling prediction of His death in Jerusalem.

That wasn’t acceptable to Peter, of course. A crucified Messiah? How could that be? But his objection to Jesus’ prediction earned him a stern rebuke from the Master. In fact, Jesus also told Peter and the others that those who follow Him must give their own lives – their will, their desires, and their future – into His hands, “for whoever wants to save his life will lose it,” He said, “but whoever loses his life for Me will find it.”

So many signs and wonders, a confession of faith, a startling prediction, then a radical call to discipleship … and if this wasn’t enough, Peter, James and John were about to experience an utterly awe-inspiring vision of glory before their very eyes!

THE SETTING.

We are told that after six days, Jesus took Peter, James and John up on to a high mountain. This mountain cannot be identified with certainty, but it was probably Mt. Hermon, fourteen miles north from Caesarea Philippi.

Having such a special relationship with Jesus, the three always counted it a tremendous honor and privilege to be separated from the other Twelve and to venture with Jesus into an experience of tremendous consequence. But they could hardly be prepared for this!

We are told that it was evening and exhaustion had set in to make the disciples very sleepy, but Jesus remained awake to pray. Luke tells us that, “As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning.” [i] Mark tells us that Jesus’ “face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light.”

If that wasn’t enough, Peter and the other two discovered that Jesus wasn’t alone. At the moment he was joined by two others – Moses, the great lawgiver, and Elijah, perhaps the greatest prophet during the period of the kings of Israel. Together they represented the Law and the Prophets, with all the types, symbols, foretelling and predictions pointing to the Christ and His ministry. Appearing in “glorious splendor,” Moses and Elijah talked with Jesus “about his departure (or death), which he was about to bring to fulfillment in Jerusalem.” [ii]

That’s when Peter did a foolish thing in making a request of Jesus. “Lord, it is good for us to be here” (that’s quite an understatement!). “If you wish, I will put up three shelters – one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” Peter desired to build tents or tabernacles, temporary shelters, probably made of branches and shrubbery. He wanted to detain, if possible, the visitors and sustain that moment of incredible glory.

But it was a foolish request for many reasons. First of all, Peter clearly didn’t understand the meaning and intent of this vision. Secondly, Jesus had previously spoken of his impending crucifixion and death. Was Peter thus trying to forestall or even bypass Jesus’ suffering and death which were so necessary for his and for our salvation? Thirdly, Peter was putting Moses and Elijah on the same level as Jesus, who is uniquely (as Peter himself had once put it), “the Son of the living God.” Fourthly, he was in error in his proposition of building a shelter of branches and shrubs for two men who had already been admitted into the glory of heaven.

We could give Peter the benefit of the doubt by saying that, after all, he was very sleepy when all this happened. But Peter so often spoke out before thinking, due to his impetuous nature. Still, the vision didn’t end with a rebuke from the Lord, but it continued with a visitation of the Shekinah Glory cloud – mentioned so often in the Bible as the presence of God. If that wasn’t enough, the confirming voice of God the Father was then heard, instructing the disciples to listen obediently to His Son.

It comes to us as of no surprise that the disciples “fell facedown to the ground, terrified.” Such an experience of such a proportion would leave any of us weak in the knees and falling before a God of such infinite glory.

Even so, John Calvin reminds us that the glory of Christ revealed to Peter, James and John was not yet in its fullness:

His transfiguration did not altogether enable his disciples to see Christ, as he now is in heaven, but gave them a taste of his boundless glory, such as they were able to comprehend. Then his face shone as the sun; but now he is far beyond the sun in brightness. In his raiment an unusual and dazzling whiteness appeared; but now without raiment a divine majesty shines in his whole body. Thus in ancient times God appeared to the holy fathers, not as He was in Himself, but so far as they could endure the rays of His infinite brightness.[iii]

AND YET,

NOT AN UNREASONABLE REQUEST.

Many a commentator has brought forward the reasons as to why Peter’s request was a foolish one. I admit that, being in agreement with all the reasons that have been mentioned and more. But I would like to suggest that Peter’s request was at the same time not all that unreasonable. Peter, you see, wanted to sustain the moment of beholding the glory of His Lord. It was at the same time frightening and fabulous; terrifying and terrific; glaring and glorious.

The very nature of this moment seems to me to be a call to marvel – a call to marvel at the glory of the God who created us; a call to marvel at the God who came to us in the person of Jesus Christ to be our Redeemer, Mediator and Savior; to marvel at the God who has revealed Himself in His world and in His Word, and who still speaks to us today.

In other words, I find here a call to pause and to praise this God. I find here a call to admire and adore this God of infinite greatness. But I also know that many of us have a problem with this.

OUR PROBLEM AND OUR SOLUTION.

When many of us do take some time for prayer, quite frankly, we so often want to get right on to the petitions. Oh, we know that God is worthy of our praise and worship, but somehow we just want to rush on from the throne room into the supply room. It isn’t that we intend on being disrespectful, but in the back of our minds, there has always been that lingering question: “Why does God call us to praise Him?”

C.S. Lewis asked this question himself. It wasn’t that he didn’t pray. To the contrary, he was a great man of prayer. He attended his parish church on a regular basis on Sundays and then on weekdays at his college chapel. The Anglican Prayer Book was a constant companion for him. He would pray up and down the platform at train stations, arriving early when he was about to take a journey. He would pray in the early morning in bed and when taking a quick walk before breakfast. He would read his Bible and pray many evenings at 6 pm … he was truly a man of prayer.

But even so, he had questions about prayer, especially in the early stages of his Christian life, such as wondering why God wants us to praise Him. As with us, Lewis didn’t enjoy the company of those who were self-centered and self-focused. “We all despise the man who demands continual assurance of his own virtue, intelligence or delightfulness,” he once wrote.[iv] So why should we find God calling us to do the same with Him? Isn’t this just patronizing flattery?

But Lewis found his way, first by realizing what it means to look at a beautiful and impressive piece of art and say that it “demands” our admiration:

Admiration is the correct, adequate or appropriate response to it … if we do not admire we shall be stupid, insensible, and great losers, we shall have missed something.

Lewis then connected this thought to God in all of His admirable qualities. If we appreciate art in this way, why would we not admire the One of infinite and inestimable qualities?

Then Lewis took yet another step beyond mere appreciation or admiration of God, to this:

I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honor. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise … I had not noticed how the humblest, and at the same time most balanced and capacious, minds, praised most, while the cranks, misfits and malcontents praised least.

I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but compliments the enjoyment … [T]he delight is incomplete until it is expressed.

I hope you can understand what Lewis is saying here. We can offer praise to God because of all that is so wonder-full about God. Thomas Carlyle said that “Wonder is the basis of worship” and it most surely is! [v]

But we can also praise and worship God because there comes about a joyous sense of fulfillment in us as we marvel at His greatness, delight in His presence, and rejoice in His love. Our forbears surely had this in mind when they stated that our chief and primary end or goal in this life is “to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.”[vi]

But it will be even more our chief end and delight in heaven as well. Here, the example of John Donne helps us. When Donne, the dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London was on his death bed in 1631, the gifted poet wrote a hymn which included the lines,

Since I am coming to that Holy room

Where, with thy Quire of Saints for Evermore,

I shall be made Thy Music; As I come

I tune the Instrument here at the door,

And what I must do then, think here before.

In his mind, Donne had the image of an Elizabethan banqueting hall. Musicians would come into the hall to play for as long as the banquet feast lasted. But they did something before they entered. They would tune their instruments at the door, so that they could play flawlessly to the great pleasure of the host.

Donne saw and said that he was an instrument and praise the music for God’s good pleasure; and that, one day, when all the “tuning” in this life is done, in the company of a great number of other such instruments, the music of praise will fill the hallways of heaven, to our King’s delight and also to ours.

Dear friends, may we all thus pause to marvel and pause to praise – even if it be but the “tuning of the instrument” – until we “ourselves as both instrumentalist and instrument, will really start to play.” [vii]