Get ready. You’re about to have a song stuck in your head for the rest of the week, so I hope you like this one! It’s the Beatles tune, 8 Days a Week.

 

Ooo, I need your love babe.

Guess you know it’s true.

Hope you need my love, babe.

Just like I need you.

 

Hold me, love me

Hole me, love me

 

I ain’t got nothin’ but love, babe

8 days a week

 

There you go. Stuck for a few days, no doubt.

 

In the song, 8 days a week is not enough for our Romeo here to show his love for his Juliet. All the time in the world is not enough to contain this love. And that’s just one person for another person! So how about the love of God for all of creation, including us? Might God also have a love that cannot be contained inside any sort of box? Contained inside the laws of physics, for example? Contained inside timelines or linear realities?

 

The story of the transfiguration also breaks the confines of time, just like this Beatle’s song. This story is full of elements to harken back to the past as well as foreshadowing the future of Jesus’ coming death and resurrection.

 

Elijah and Moses are present here, both of whom had also met God on mountain tops after going up to pray. Repeatedly Moses would go up to the mountain top to talk with God, always being sent down with jobs to do to lead the people in their exodus from Egypt to the promised land. Elijah was much later in the story of the Hebrew people who was a prophet who battled the Queen Jezebel and the followers of Baal. He also went up to the mountain to pray and met God in the still small voice. Both Elijah and Moses were sent back down their mountains to continue their work to bring about God’s will.

 

This moment of Jesus’ transfiguration brings forward these past stories of struggles for liberation, redemption, and survival of God’s people. The struggle of God’s people remains the struggle of God’s people. We still need deliverance from the injustices we inflict on each other, human sinfulness, and our failure to love.

 

In the gospel today, we also have the voice of God speaking in a way that may remind you of Jesus’ baptism. Instead of saying, “You are my Son, my Beloved; with you I am well pleased”, God talks directly to the disciples saying, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” So, the story of Jesus’ baptism is also brought forward into this moment. And what happens after Jesus’ baptism? He goes into the wilderness for 40 days. Again, after a sort of ‘mountain top moment’, there comes a big challenge in service of God.

 

So, these elements of the transfiguration story bring all of these stories of the past and bring them forward into this moment.

 

The future is also brought into this same moment by foreshadowing of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Just like the Garden of Gethsemane, the disciples struggle to stay awake despite some pretty serious stuff going down. Also, in the Luke telling of the resurrection, there are two men in the empty tomb with dazzling white clothes.

 

There is in the text a collision of the past and the future, just like any major turning point in our lives. Every major event causes us to look back at the road we have traveled, including our families and those who came before us. And we look down the road that stretches out before us. All of this happens at weddings, funerals, graduations, and births.

 

And this is the turning point in Jesus’ ministry from “simply” being with the people to turning towards Jerusalem and his death. (This, by the way, is why Transfiguration Sunday is always right before Lent which is the 40 days between Ash Wednesday and Palm Sunday and the beginning of Holy Week.)

 

Now, maybe you noticed in the text for today that this is the 8^th day after what had come before, which was the culmination of Jesus’ ministry in Galilee when he fed the 5,000, Peter declared Jesus to be the Messiah, and Jesus told everyone for the first time about his coming death and resurrection. That was a pretty big day, as well.

 

In the Bible, the number 8 often signifies a completion of something or a beginning. It marks a change.

 

In Genesis, God creates the world in six days and rests the seventh, so the first day of life’s bold journey of ongoing creation is the 8^th day. Also, circumcision was declared by the Lord to take place on the 8^th day of a boy child’s life for the Hebrew people. In Leviticus, it is declared by God that Aaron and his sons were to begin their work as priests after seven days of consecration. In the New Testament, Jesus’ resurrection occurs on the 8^th day of the week, the day after the Sabbath. So, you can think of the 8^th day as a day of completion and beginning.

 

It’s also considered by some to be a day out of time, outside of the restrictions of the 7-day week. The resurrection is not on the 1^st day of the week, but on the 8^th day. It’s just like the Beatle’s song. Seven days is not enough for God to show how much he cares. It’s not enough to show the power of the resurrection, which is not contained or containable. It is an event that happened within time, but it is also always and forever outside of time, which means it is forever now.

 

Now, this event, the transfiguration is not the resurrection. We’re not there yet in Jesus’ story. But this is a big turning point. It is a completion of the first half of Jesus’ ministry where he traveled, healed, taught, and fed people. And on this 8^th day, on a mountain top, a big thing happens that is also out of time. They experience the glory of God, which never diminishes.

 

And then, just like Moses and Elijah, Jesus heads down the mountain to a world that is as yet unchanged by what happened to him, Peter, John, and James. That wasn’t the point. The point was that each of them, in likely very different ways, were being prepared for the work to come. They were given a glimpse of God’s power in order to sustain them for the days and weeks ahead that were to lead them back to Jerusalem and towards Jesus’ death. Just like Moses and Elijah, they are sent back to do the work they are called to do.

 

Jesus, I think, is pretty clear about what’s going on. I’m glad to hear he got a huddle with Elijah and Moses, but I don’t worry too much about Jesus. I think he’s pretty solid, right? But the three who were with him, what did they learn from this moment? What did they need in preparation for what was to come?

 

We know from the stories that follow this moment (them fighting about who was going to be greatest and yet still abandoning Jesus, for starters …) that they weren’t changed forever from this encounter. They weren’t somehow shocked into full enlightenment. No, they continued in their adorable human fashion; fallible, confused, and scared. One thing they were given, though, was a lasting directive that serves us all. We are all told with them to listen to Jesus. Listen to what he says and also to the actions that speak louder than words.

 

We are not told to believe, proselytize, prophecy, condemn, fight, or resist what is to come. We are told to listen. In this moment, our moment of transition and change, we are told to listen to Jesus and maybe be changed before heading out to do our work for the Lord.

 

We live in a noisy time, with everyone having a hot take on everything all the time. And I, like almost everyone else, enjoy listening to these hot takes probably more than is good for me. I think in response to this flood, I have been noticing a profound need in myself to take more time than usual for silent prayer and deep listening to God.

 

We adorable humans do not always have impressive access to wisdom and discernment and that is particularly true when we live without prayer or meditation. And we truly live in a world that is flooded by media that is designed to enrage us. So, in this time of transition in the world, which I believe is extensive on many levels, we are being told again in scripture, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”

 

Outrage is exhausting. Fear is exhausting. Anger and judgement are exhausting, even if they feel good for fleeting moments. Grief and anxiety are exhausting. Listening to God and for God is life-giving. So, it makes sense to me that in these moments of major transition, Elijah, Moses, and Jesus with his disciples were all brought into places of quiet with God where they listened before going forward again to do God’s work. They were brought into a time without time, on the 8^th day and the eternal present now, where God is so that they could live and work faithfully. We too can always access God’s presence in prayer through our own presence in this moment of holy moment of right now.

 

I imagine God serenading us with 8 Days a Week, maybe with a few words changed here and there. (God might not call us babe, though he might. I dunno.) It’s a great love song for God to sing to us because God’s love is too big to be contained on just Sunday or even in all 7 days. It’s so big it fills every cranny of every moment to the point of not even fitting in the restriction of our daily life. God’s love is everywhere for us, 8 Days a Week. So, when we find ourselves exhausted like Elijah, annoyed like Moses, or about to do holy work for God’s Kingdom like Jesus, we can and should come to the God’s holy mountain of silence. There is no special time, because it is all the time. God’s love flows for us 8 Days a Week and for that, we give thanks.

 

AMEN