But Did It Help?

Read:  Mark 9:2-9

Reading the gospel lesson for today–and I’m writing this on Sunday morning before going to teach Sunday School–I was struck by the parallel to a question I commonly get from Bible study classes.  “Why can’t God just make it clearer, unmistakable?  Why all this variety and human stuff?”

I can imagine the disciples thinking along the same lines.  Jesus keeps performing miracles, running around healing people, and proclaiming the kingdom, yet he never seems to do anything that would have to do with a coming kingdom.  Why couldn’t he just be clear?

Then Jesus takes Peter, James, and John and does something spectacular.  Now for some reason many in my classes seem to relate “spectacular” and “miraculous” with “clear.”  But Peter, James, and John don’t really get the purpose of the transfiguration either.  They think it’s spectacular, they like it, they’d like to stay where it happened, but they don’t really understand any more about Jesus than they did before.

But did it help?

That is an excellent question.  You see, I believe that Jesus was being quite clear.  It’s just that “clear in general” is not always the same thing as “clear to me.”

Frequently when my wife and I are in conversation, I’ll change tracks to another subject without warning.  Suddenly I say something.  It’s clear to me what I mean.  In fact, there’s probably something in the last sentence that suggested it to me.  But she has no idea what I’m talking about, because she’s on another program.

For conversations with my wife I’ve learned a simple solution, even though I still forget:  Tell her I’m changing the subject!  But Jesus can’t change the subject.  His disciples have one set of things in mind, and they are interpreting what he says and does in the light of their own agenda.  It will take the shock of the crucifixion and finally of the resurrection to get them off of their own agenda and onto God’s.

But did it help?  Well, yes.  But only later.  God’s spectacular act on the mount of transfiguration didn’t immediately communicate to the disciples what they needed to know, but it provided a building block that came together with others to build a new structure born in the fire of adversity at the end of Jesus’ mission.

And isn’t that really our complaint about God’s communication?  He doesn’t give us enough information to keep us from getting in trouble sometimes, or so we think.  But God knows that we’re not really going to learn it until we get into trouble.