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Dr. George A. Purnell
February 14, 2010
“Let’s Keep Quiet for Now”
Luke 9:28-36
The definition of paranormal is: “Not within the range of normal experience or scientifically explainable phenomena.” We are intrigued by stories of such experiences, especially as they relate to encounters with persons who have died. Books and movies that describe/dramatize paranormal experiences become best sellers and box office hits.
I read sermons preached by nationally renowned preachers from time to time to see how they develop their messages. One preacher whose sermons I like to read is John Killinger, who had an amazing career as a local church preacher, an author of over 50 books, and a distinguished career as a professor, first at Vanderbilt Divinity School and then at Samford University.
In one sermon I read, Dr. Killinger said that when he was in a city as a guest preacher, he stayed in the home of a church family. The woman of the house told him that her brother was a hard headed, agnostic lawyer who was not given to sentimentality or what he called “nonsense” about spiritual matters. She said that he purchased an antebellum home near the site of a famous Civil War battle. One night her brother, who lived alone, awakened to see a stranger standing at the foot of his bed. The stranger was young and dressed in a Confederate soldier’s uniform. When the lawyer brother started to rise, the visitor disappeared. He did some research and discovered that a boy who had once occupied that bedroom had enlisted in the Confederate Army and been killed in a nearby battle.
It was many years before her brother could ever bring himself to speak of this experience. As he was nearing his own death, her brother spoke of this earlier encounter, and then relayed a later encounter, this one with his and his sister’s long deceased father, who appeared to him in a vision. They had a conversation about unfinished business in their relationship as father and son; issues that had never been mentioned, much less resolved.
Research suggests that many people have had at least one mystical in their life…
Our gospel reading today tells of a paranormal event experienced by Peter, James, and John. Jesus had taken them up on the mountain with him when he went to pray. “And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became a dazzling white.” Then they saw Moses and Elijah – giant leaders from Israel’s past, both dead for several centuries – talking with Jesus.
Luke writes that Peter’s reaction to this vision was to speak: “Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, ‘Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwelling places, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah’ – not knowing what he said.”
I can relate to Peter here. Sometimes when I am in an uncomfortable or scary situation, I say something instinctively because silence makes the situation more frightening. I say something, and then immediately wish I had kept quiet.
Peter wished he had kept quiet, I am sure, because Luke tells us:
“While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said, ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’”
So they were terrified. Just like us when we have an experience that is beyond our ability to explain or understand. The disciples of Jesus – these men whom we imagine as having been far more faithful and far more courageous than we are – are terrified.
Luke concludes: “When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent, and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.”
Commentators tell us that the context of this story is essential to its interpretation. Our reading today is Luke chapter 9, verses 28-36. In the passage immediately before today’s reading, Jesus asks the disciples – “Who do the crowds say that I am?” The disciples tell Jesus that some say he is “John the Baptist, and others say he is “Elijah,” and still others say that he is “one of the ancient prophets” who “has arisen.”
Not letting them off with what others think, Jesus asks his disciples: “But who do you say that I am?” Only Peter offered an answer…
Jesus then says he will “undergo great suffering…and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” And he tells them that if they want to become his followers, they will have to “take up their cross daily” and suffer similarly. “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it…”
Jesus is asking the disciples to decide who he is. He is telling them something that seems impossible, that he will die and will be raised from the dead after three days. He is challenging them to believe that enough to follow him, even at the cost of their own suffering and death.
Eight days after saying this, Jesus took Peter and James and John up on the mountain to witness his transfiguration; to give them a glimpse of his true nature.
The disciples did not know what to say about this paranormal experience, so “they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.” They probably were afraid of how people would react to them if they spoke of something so very strange.
And, like them, we don’t know what to say about this story today…
Barbara Brown Taylor, one of the most renowned preachers in our time, once asked rhetorically, ‘who can really talk about the transfiguration?’ She goes on to say that while the Bible includes many divine/human encounters – Moses at the Burning Bush, Job and the voice out of the whirlwind, Isaiah in the temple seeing the Lord sitting high upon a throne, with six winged seraphim flying around – things don’t seem to work that way anymore. Whirlwinds and burning bushes don’t speak, and seraphim don’t fly with burning coals to touch our mouths to take our guilt away.
Most preachers I know don’t particularly like to preach the story of Jesus’ transfiguration. We know that many of our parishioners don’t understand or believe this story, and, the truth is, we can’t explain it to you in compelling ways since we also have a hard time believing it – at least literally.
Speaking for myself, I have been educated and trained from birth to believe that things like this don’t happen. People do not suddenly change appearance and glow with the intensity and brilliance of the sun. People do not appear with the ghosts of people long dead. Voices do not boom from clouds, and characters do not disappear after the voice speaks, as suddenly and mysteriously as they had appeared.
The challenge we face as preachers when this text appears as the gospel reading on the last Sunday of Epiphany is to somehow make this story of Jesus appearing with Moses and Elijah on the mountaintop resonate with the experience of our congregations.
The longer I have been in ministry, however, the more comfortable I am preaching this story, and others like it that draw upon paranormal encounters with God in the Bible. This is so, because, like John Killinger, I have listened and learned from so many people in churches I have served. I can preach the transfiguration with conviction today, because I know what I have been told, what I have read, and what I have experienced.
People have told me about encounters they have had with deceased relatives and friends, or about other events in their lives that they have been afraid to speak of for fear of how others would react to them...
I once read the story of a young seminary student who took the required semester of Clinical Pastoral Education in an urban hospital where many of the patients were uninsured, poor and mentally ill.
One day a new patient was in isolation in a room on her ward, Susan Andrews – who was then a young seminarian and is now a distinguished Presbyterian pastor in Bethesda, Maryland – wrote. Both his legs had been amputated, but gangrene continued to infect his body. You could smell the stench of his decay before even entering the room, she wrote. When she peeked into his room, she saw him lying in a sweat soaked gown. He was moaning lowly and appeared delirious.
She walked the halls for an hour, resisting going into his room, because she was nauseated by his condition and she had no idea what she could say that would ease his suffering. His experience was not her experience, she noted, because she was a white 25 year old naïve woman who had been raised in an affluent home.
Finally she found herself walking into the room, taking the man by the hand and repeating the words of the Lord’s Prayer. That is when the holy broke into the room, she wrote, and grace flowed through her hand. This man stopped moaning…he stopped shaking violently…he looked into her eyes and started repeating the Lord’s Prayer with her. The man became calm and remained so after they finished the Lord’s Prayer. She held his hand for awhile, and they sat in silence. No more moaning or shaking. The room became completely quiet.
A few minutes after she left the room, that man died. He died peacefully, with a joyful expression on his face.
This was a transforming moment for this pastor and for this man. She had been mad at God for allowing this misery and poverty, and she had been questioning her call, and even her faith. “I have rarely doubted the existence of God since” that moment, she wrote. And the man had by all appearances a transforming moment…a holy moment…a moment when his face changed appearance and his body and mind found a peace that our Bible describes as a peace that passes all understanding.
Have you had an encounter with God? Have you had a moment when you saw something or heard something that you have never told anyone about? Peter, James and John did. They saw a vision and heard a voice, and “they kept silent and …told no one...”
I believe that two of the disciples on the Road to Emmaus had an encounter with the Risen Lord that afternoon of the first Easter. I believe that the Risen Christ appeared to the disciples (except Thomas) as they hid behind locked doors that evening of the first Easter, and that he appeared a week later in the same room to show Thomas his wounds and let Thomas touch him. I believe Paul had an encounter with the Risen Lord when he was on the road to Damascus.
That the disciples and Paul had paranormal encounters with Jesus after his death and resurrection no longer seems so unusual to me. I accept these as matters of faith. The precise facts aren’t as important to me today.
And I believe that we still have holy encounters – with Christ and with saints from our lives, now deceased. I believe that some of us have had paranormal moments. The problem is that we keep quiet for now.
Maybe the time has come for us to speak of these things…Amen.
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