Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.
(Mark 9:2-9 NRSV)

***

If the Gospel is veiled,
it is veiled only to those who are perishing.
In their case the god of this world
has blinded the minds of the unbelievers,
to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.

What does St. Paul mean,
when he says that the Gospel is veiled?
Who is the god of this world?
The Gospel lesson for this morning
declares the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ in the timeless account of the Transfiguration.

How can one miss the sparkling daze of light, which surrounded Jesus?
How can one miss the witness of Moses and Elijah?
How can one miss the booming words of God, proclaiming:
"This is my beloved Son"?

Take a look at your television sets.
We live in a world that has missed the glorious message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
In a world where an evil madman,
a dictator,
a murderer
can capture the minds of hundreds of millions
and keep them chained to idiot boxes called television sets,
In such a world as this,
the gospel is surely veiled.

And we sit,
we, the people of The Only True God,
we sit, and watch as this world slides into what may, indeed, be called World War Three,
by future historians.
We feel powerless.
We think that there is nothing that we can do.
After a while, it becomes exhausting,
doesn't it?
In anger,
I snap off CNN,
and march off to my room,
only to turn on the radio and hear yet another "Gulf War Update."
Where is the glory of Jesus Christ in a world gone mad?
Is the gospel truly veiled?

I rock, and I rock,
I pet Bishop Tiggert,
my cat,
I contemplate the scriptures
and. I pray for peace.
I pray for deliverance from this present evil world.

Is the gospel truly veiled?
Is God's peace beyond reach?
I want to hear some Good News,
for a change.
I'm tired of hearing about SCUD Missiles and Chemical Weapons.
I'm tired of hearing about Hussein,
I want to hear that God still reigns.

Is the Gospel truly veiled?
Or is the glory of the Lord still here?

Would you pray with me?

Lord God, Almighty, move among us so that we, Thy people, may always feel and sense Thy divine power and presence; for we need to know that we are never alone. And speak to each and every one of us in such a way that we may hear, understand, and remember, give us words by which to mold an shape our living; for we confess to You that we need such words by which to live. For we pray in Thy Holy and Gracious Name. Amen.

I am a scriptural exegete.
I get my jollies,
reading the Word of God,
translating it from the original languages,
toying with the meanings of various words,
contemplating what the author had to say
reconstructing the world of its origin.

I've been known to spend hours,
painstakingly translating a few verses of Paul or John,
not from this--my copy of the New Testament in Greek,
but from second century editions
of the New Testament found in
the Manuscript Collection in Duke's Rare Book room.
I've spent hours, pouring over these eighteen hundred year old papyri[,
examining the script,
contemplating the word-division,
trying to project myself back to the
second and first centuries,
back to the days when the Church was young and the Gospel was fresh and alive
in the living memory of the apostles, or their immediate successors.
I do this sort of thing for fun.
I do this sort of thing because it is what
I have been called by God to do.
I do this sort of thing to escape the insanity of the late twentieth century.

It's almost as if, in those early centuries, the people called Christian
had less trouble hearing the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
I find the temperature-controlled,
padded interior of the rare-book room,
and the smell of the ancient papyri soothing to a mind too-often trapped in the age of bombs, missiles, television, and nuclear war.

Hussein didn't rule the middle east back in the first and second centuries.
Rome ruled the Holy Land and the ancient near east, in those long-gone days.
Oops.....
Rome wasn't exactly the most gentle of all world powers, either, was it?

The first and second centuries were filled with war,
killing,
death,
hatred,
and evil.

The first and second centuries didn't have to worry about Chemical or Nuclear weapons,
but they did have to worry about battering rams,
archers,
gladiators,
lions.

Those ancient millennia did have to worry about SCUD Missiles
jet fighters and Aircraft Carriers,
but they did have to worry about the Assyrian Phalanx,
the Roman Legions,
and the Trojan Horse.

War and death,
hatred and anger
is nothing new.
The first century world had its Hussein's, too.
Antiochus Epiphanies,
Tiberius Caesar,
Gaius Caligula.
Trajan.

History has shown that nothing changes--
the Preacher of Ecclesiastics was right when he said that there is, indeed,
nothing new under the Sun.

Try as hard as I might, bury myself in the ancient manuscripts as deep as I may,
I still cannot escape the evil one, and the power of human depravity.
Still,
I like to think of myself as a Biblical Scholar.
And, in the pages of scripture I can still lose myself, at least for a while,
I can still escape the immediacy of evil, which reigns in the middle east.
And, as I exegete
as I translated,
as I researched the words in this morning’s Gospel lesson from Mark,
I found relief from the daily grind of the war.

Last Sunday, I called upon you to turn to the psalter as a source for prayer and guidance.

Today, let's turn to the Gospel of Mark, and the writings of the Apostle Paul,
for a hint of that same guidance and peace.
You know, I'm strange.
Sometimes, I find things in the Scriptures
that others don't see.

Sometimes, I think the authors are trying to say something
other than what they're actually saying.

“Is the Gospel truly veiled?”
I know . . . Paul said “if,”
but that's a conditional word in the greek
which, in this case, assumes that the condition is true.
Not: “If the Gospel is veiled,” but, "Since the Gospel is veiled"

It is Husseins of this world can, in no way, veil the Gospel of our Lord
or destroy His Kingdom.

Paul then writes what is, for me, the central character of Christian proclamation:
"What we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord."
If we keep turning to God, the Father, and to His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord,
the darkness shall never overcome us.

I find it strange that the apostle would use the ancient hymn
which John used in his Gospel to convey this same message.
"Let light shine out of the darkness," says Paul.
And St. John observed that "the darkness will not overcome it."
And this light is the Glory of Jesus Christ,
as revealed in the transfiguration told in Mark.

Jesus was transfigured before us, and “his garments became glistening, intensely white,"
So bright was his Glory that it blinded us to evil, and opened our eyes to good.
It was the kind of Glory that leaves spots in front of your eyes for hours.
It's a light that penetrates to our very hearts, and confirms the proclamation
which we are all called to make,
especially in midst of evil,
the proclamation that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Let's hear you say it: "Jesus Christ is Lord."

The brightness of Christ's glory is so striking, so powerful,
that the darkness of this world's evil can never overcome it.
The glory of our Lord is so stunning, it is so bright and warm
as it fills our hearts with God's grace,
that the darkness of war, death, and spilt oil can never veil the gospel from us,
if we have faith.

The gospel is not veiled, from you and from me,
It is not veiled if we seek our Lord for guidance and peace.
But the hatred and anger,
the ambition and greed of evil, is blinded by the glory of Christ,
never to see the truth of the Gospel.

The hardness of the evil heart cannot stand to look upon
the grace of Jesus Christ, manifested in his glory.
This is why evil can never overcome grace.
When God says, "This is my beloved son,"
evil knows that it is true, but cannot look.
Evil must flee from the glory or be destroyed.
We, through God's grace,
are called to gaze upon this same glory,
and proclaim the truth of it's coming,
the truth of the Gospel message of grace and peace, to all the world.

The darkness cannot overcome the light,
the light will shine in the darkness.
The Gospel is not veiled, it is not hidden from you and from me,
it is not quenched by the forces of darkness.
It is shining forth in the glory of our Lord's Gospel message,
and this is the Good News which we must hear, today.

Amidst all the bad news on our TV and radio sets,
the good news is that the Gospel is not veiled for you and me.
The Good News is that God is in Jesus Christ
shining on our path,
brightening the way before us.

The darkness of this world
cannot overcome the glory of our Lord's Gospel
if only we turn to him.
The darkness of this world
cannot overcome you
if you stand in the light of God's glory.
Thanks be to God.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
--Amen