Genesis 9:8-15    1 Peter 3:18-22    Mark 1:12-15
What difference would it make to you if you could see and hear our Lord Jesus Christ praying for you? Will you be encouraged to know that God knows all about your problems, that you are not facing the challenges of life alone? Will your problems immediately begin to melt away since you know that God’s own Son is on your side? Will that vision inspire you to take the bold step of faith you have been afraid to take, knowing that with Christ on your side you are safe? This is how one pioneer missionary to America, Robert Murray McCheyne (1813-1843), answers the question for himself, “If I could hear Christ praying for me in the next room, I would not fear a million enemies.” Yet we do not need to hear with our physical ears Christ praying for us. We can hear it with our ears of faith. For “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1).
As Christians we are accustomed to thinking of Christ as our judge. In today’s second reading from Romans, Paul, still maintaining the courtroom image tells us to see Christ not just as our judge but as our defence attorney. Imagine Christ standing up at God’s judgment throne and marshalling his arguments, point by point, why you should acquitted! Could God say no to Christ? Who else in heaven or earth could take a stand against Christ and have any chance of success? With these powerful images Paul assures the persecuted Christians of Rome that, in life or in death, they are completely safe and secure and have absolutely nothing to fear. “If God is for us,” he asks, “who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31). The answer is clear: noone.
Paul wants to assure the struggling Christians of Rome of the infinite love of God for them. You know, when one is besieged by trials and difficulties on every side, it is easy to doubt if God is really there for us. To reassure them that, yes, God is still with them in their suffering, Paul makes allusion to the story of Abraham’s sacrifice of his son Isaac. He does this to make two points. First is that people of God should not be surprised if they are visited with undeserved suffering because even God’s only Son also went through a suffering and death that he did not deserve. The second point is to underline God’s infinite love. “He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?” (verse 32).
In the persecutions, Christians were arrested, charged to court, tried, found guilty of treason or impiety, and then put to death. Paul is telling them that the charges brought against them are phony and the judgments passed against them null and void, since the only judgment that really counts is God’s own judgment. “Who will bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn?” (verses 33-34a). Then he makes the startling statement that Christ is at God’s right hand interceding for us. “It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us” (verse 34b)
This statement is startling because according to the ancient creed of Christians, the Apostle’s Creed, Christ (i) died, (ii) was raised, (iii) ascended and seated at God’s right hand, (iv) “will come again to judge the living and the dead.” Paul changes the fourth item. Instead of Christ judging us he has Christ interceding for us. Christ is not just a neutral observer recording and judging our actions and failures. He is on our side, supporting us by his grace, to make sure that we do not fall at all.
With this new understanding of Christ who is not a disinterested judge but a committed advocate on our side, Paul concludes by asking a series of questions, which we will do well to answer for ourselves today:
Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? ... 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us (verse 35,37).
One of the most famous mountaintop experiences of our time is that of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. We do not know exactly when and where he had it but he spoke about it in his prophetic Mountaintop Speech made in Memphis, Tennessee on April 3, 1968. As it turned out, that speech was to be his last because the following day, only hours after he made that speech, he was stopped by an assassin’s bullet. The Mountaintop Speech ended with these words:
Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. 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....
Can you imagine what would have become of the followers of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement if King had died without making that speech? Maybe he would have gone down in history as another disillusioned dreamer. Maybe his followers would have suffered a loss of faith in the cause for which King lived and died. Maybe they would have given up on the Civil Rights Movement and the Dream. But that speech made all the difference. It prepared them for the trauma that was soon to come. It assured them that King was not simply a victim of circumstance but that his death was somehow part of God’s plan in the long struggle for liberation.
King compared his situation to that of Moses who was appointed by God to lead the Israelites from slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land. After a lifetime of faithful service as leader of God’s people in their long journey through the desert, Moses himself would die without reaching the Promised Land. That such a selfless and committed leader who has spent himself in the cause of liberation should fail to reach it himself seems incomprehensible to us, but that appears to be a regular pattern in the mystery of God’s design. Now, in order to help Moses and his people bear the shock and the consequent crisis of faith this would generate, God led Moses up Mount Nebo and there on the mountaintop, God granted him a preview of the Promised Land and its glory. With that Moses was reassured that God was still being faithful to His promise and the people were reassured that Moses was indeed the man of God that he claimed to be.
Something similar is happening on the Mount of the Transfiguration in today’s gospel. James and John had followed Jesus because they wanted special seats at his right hand and at his left (Mark 10:37). Peter wanted to know what he would get since he had left everything to follow Jesus (Mark 10:28). These were men who believed that the fact that Jesus was the Messiah was going to translate into visible, tangible dividends in this life both for Jesus and for them his followers. If Jesus had not prepared them beforehand by giving them a glimpse into the heavenly glory that was his and theirs at the end of their journey of faith, they would have been devastated by the shock of Jesus’ shameful death as a public criminal. Just as the Mountaintop Speech prepared Martin Luther King and his followers, and the mountaintop experience on Mount Nebo prepared Moses and the Israelites, so the Transfiguration prepared Jesus and his special assistants who would assume the mantle of leadership after him for the trauma that was soon to come.
Many of us spend our daily lives in the valley of toil and hardship. We feel abandoned by God and begin to doubt our faith and its promises. If we remain close to Jesus during this season of Lent, one mountaintop experience is all that we need and our doubts and fears will turn into blessed assurance. All because our eyes have seen the glory of the Lord, our own future glory.
By Rt. Rev. Prof. Kasomo Daniel
Bishop of the Society of St. Peter and Paul