a Homily for the Last Sunday after Epiphany, B

Text:Mark 9:2-9

I walked into my poetry class completely unprepared for what was about to happen. This was years ago, back when I dreamed of becoming a writer, a playwright or poet, actually. Or at the very least the teacher of writers. It was our second class and we were to bring in a new poem we had written in the last two days, already heavily edited and prepared for harsh criticism. Apparently, I was ready for neither. The poem I brought was a bit cliche and trite, but worse, I had violated the first rule of creative writing and was called on it.

What I did was this: I used music language to describe a scene rather than write the scene musical. In other words, I told, rather than showed. And no, I will not show it to you.

As a creative writer, the evangelist we know as Mark is terrible. He violates that first rule repeatedly. And he does so this morning. He doesn’t record Jesus’s words, he simply reports that:

As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen

Of course, this would seem like no big deal if it were any other gospel passage. But he did it in this one: The Transfiguration. A passage so visual, so full of engagement, the screen adaptation would need a $200 million budget and Michael Bay directing it. Huge. Explosions. Incredible visual effects. This is as big a “show” passage as it gets and Mark turns it into a “tell”. Even his big miracles with a cast of thousands are intimate, one-cut scenes compared to this one. And notice that we don’t get any Jesus dialogue at all.

The irony, of course, is that this is one of the most important passages in the Greek Scriptures. We get two times in which GOD tells the people who Jesus is: at the baptism and here. GOD speaks from a cloud.

Such an important passage would certainly deserve pages and pages of script, with lots of effects and weighty dialogue. We get 8 verses with two lines of dialogue: Peter’s ridiculous assertion and, you know, GOD, who says listen to this guy.

Wait a second, did you notice that? What did GOD say?

“This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”

Listen! GOD shows then tells. I’m starting to think there’s something intentional in Mark’s writing.

He has this big visual gospel, with blinding light, the presence of two dead men that somehow Peter is able to identify on sight (I’m not sure how since there are no pictures and they preceded him by, like, 1,000 years), and a talking cloud that has descended upon them. And GOD says “listen.” He’s conjured up these big visuals, like the Spirit descending like a dove at Jesus’s baptism, but his message isn’t “watch,” but “listen.”

It is no mistake that this gospel is so visual and then speaks of listening and Jesus orders his people to tell no one. GOD needs us to hear in the midst of other stimulation! But I think it also has to do with something else.

This passage occurs right after the primary pivot point in Mark’s gospel. All the way up through the first half of chapter 8, Jesus is leading his disciples all over the place, then he turns his face to Jerusalem. We get this important passage in two parts in the lectionary and they must be taken together. He begins by asking the disciples who the people say he is: John the Baptizer, Elijah, one of the prophets. Then he asks, “but who do you say that I am?” and Peter jumps up “The Messiah!” Which, of course, is right. But that excitement is short-lived because Jesus proceeds to tell his disciples all about the trip to Jerusalem, with his coming execution! Peter jumps up again “We won’t let it happen!” to which Jesus rebukes him with the famous line: “Get behind me, Satan!” Today’s passage occurs six days after this. This is what they’ve just covered. Jesus has turned all of his attention toward the cross and told his people this and they have refused to hear him. Then he takes a few of them up a mountain and GOD tells the three to listen to Jesus.

The disciples, of course, can’t. They hear parts, but they can’t get it all. They reject this important message because they don’t like the process. They liked the process when they thought Jesus was a conquering hero that would overthrow Rome with his sword, not the weak teacher executed for sedition. Even we have trouble addressing this message of Jesus’s transfiguring the world with love and mercy. We, so often, are those disciples, rejecting Jesus’s very words.

And yet, let’s take a minute to recognize that Jesus took these dimwits up a mountain to see and hear something. The message they heard was more important than any other:

“listen to him!”

This week, the season after Epiphany comes to a close. Tuesday night is the last hurrah. Mardi Gras. Fat Tuesday. The paczkis are in the stores. The following morning ushers in the next season. A season of penitence and introspection. But it is something else. It is a season of listening. Of quiet, or more precisely, of quieting the noise around us so that we can listen. Because it requires silence to hear that still, small voice, whose calls to us come most often in whispers and quiet moments. Moments that remind us of the mission.

As we live it up for a few more days before Wednesday, when we pack the Alleluias away for a few weeks, let us get ready to quiet our lives just a little so that we might do the very thing GOD has asked of us: to listen.
Only then will we be forced to deal with an even more difficult question: what if we hear something?