God's Encouragement

The message given in the Sunday night worship service in the Gettysburg United Methodist church on June 19, 2022.  The Bible verses used are Matthew 17:1-9 and 2 Peter 1:16-21.

            Do you ever get discouraged?

            I think most of us do.  In fact, it seems like it comes pretty easily to us human beings.  Discouragement, pessimism, disappointment--sometimes it seems like life is full of those things.  Even if we try to be optimistic, even if we try to stay upbeat and encouraging, it seems like life has a way of trying to drag us down.

            And it seems like the world does not help us much when it comes to stuff like this.  You turn on the news, and all it seems to be is bad news.  You go to social media and a lot of the times it’s people writing about how awful things are.  You go to the coffee shop and it seems like all we hear is complaints and criticisms.  And none of this is because people are bad people, not really.  It’s because people are people.  As I said, negativity seems to come naturally to us.  Patch Adams once said that the most radical act anyone can commit is to be happy.  There’s a lot of truth in that.  Staying upbeat, staying positive, in the face of all that the world throws at us, is not an easy thing to do.  And we don’t always have a lot of company in doing it.

            If it makes you feel any better, though, know that even Jesus had a hard time staying positive sometimes.  The Bible is full of times when Jesus got angry, when Jesus got disgusted, when Jesus was frustrated.  All those things we feel, Jesus felt them, too.  Remember the time he overturned the tables of the money changers and started chasing people with a whip?  Remember the time he said to Peter, his most trusted disciple, “Get behind me, Satan”?  Remember the time when he’d just been teaching the disciples about humility, and then he caught them arguing about which one of them was the greatest?  Jesus, even Jesus, got discouraged sometimes.  So we should not be too hard on ourselves if we get discouraged sometimes, too.

            God understands when we get discouraged.  But God does not want us to stay discouraged.  God did not want Jesus to stay discouraged, either.  That’s one of the lessons we can learn from our Bible readings for today.

            We read from the seventeenth chapter of the gospel of Matthew.  This comes right after one of those times of Jesus’ discouragement that I mentioned, the time Jesus told Peter “Get behind me, Satan”.  If you remember, Jesus was trying to tell the disciples about how he was going to suffer, and be killed, and then rise again on the third day.  And Peter starts arguing with him!  He says, “Never, Lord!  This shall never happen to you!”  

Now think about that.  You’re there with Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Savior, God the Son.  And he starts telling you what’s going to happen, and you start challenging him!  You basically try to tell Jesus, the divine Son of God, that he does not know what he’s talking about!  I mean, ten out of ten for courage, I guess, but minus several thousand for clear thinking.

That had to be discouraging for Jesus.  Here he is, trying to prepare the disciples for what’s coming, and the leader of the disciples starts arguing with him.  He had to be wondering if he was really even accomplishing anything on earth.  I mean, if even the people closest to him could not understand, could not trust him, could not really believe, what good was any of this stuff doing?

But God the Father understood.  And God the Father did not want Jesus to stay discouraged.  So, six days later, Jesus takes Peter, James, and John, and he goes up on a high mountain.  And he is transfigured.  Now there’s a churchy word for you.  I suspect none of us has ever used words like “transfigured” or “transfiguration” in any context other than in this story.  All it is, really, is a fancy word that means “a thorough or dramatic change in form into something more beautiful or more elevated”.

That’s what happened to Jesus.  He was changed.  And it was dramatic.  We’re not told how long it took, whether it happened in an instant or if it took some time.  But he was dramatically changed.  And he was definitely something more beautiful.  We’re told that “his face shone like the sun” and “his clothes became as white as the light.”  We assume he still appeared to be in the shape of a human being, although the Bible does not specifically say that.  But it was clear, to all of the disciples, that Jesus was not just a human being.  He was something higher.  He was something better.  And, yes, he was something more beautiful.

And he was not alone.  Moses and Elijah were there, too.  I wonder how Peter, James, and John knew who they were.  I mean, Moses and Elijah lived hundreds of years before this.  In fact, in Moses’ case, it was over a thousand years.  It’s not like anyone had pictures of them.  I guess, when you see something like that, you just know.  And how awesome would it be to know what Moses and Elijah said to Jesus, and what Jesus said in response?  I mean, don’t you wish there was a transcript of that conversation?  It had to be incredible.

But of course, we don’t know what they said.  We just know one statement.  We’re told that “a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.’”  And of course, that echoes the voice that came down from heaven when Jesus was baptized.  But in this case, the voice added three more words.  Those three words, words about Jesus but addressed to Peter, James, and John, were “Listen to him!”

I would think all this had to be encouraging to Jesus.  That feeling of discouragement he had must have left him.  Jesus, of course, is greater than Moses and Elijah--great as they were, they were still just human beings, while Jesus is the divine Son of God.  But still, they must have had some sort of message for Jesus, and one would think that message must have come from God the Father.  That had to encourage Jesus and strengthen him.  And not only that, but for a little while--we don’t know how long--but for a little while Jesus got to be more of what he truly was.  We don’t know if Jesus fully became what he is in heaven, but he became closer to it.  He was able to shed some of the restrictions of his earthly form, at least for a little while.

That had to be encouraging for him, too.  You know, Jesus had been on earth for over thirty years by this point.  And while thirty years is nothing in eternal terms, it’s quite a while in earthly terms.  I wonder if, at this point, Jesus remembered what it felt like to be in his heavenly form.  I mean, he knew who he was--he knew he was the divine Son of God and all that.  But did he remember what it felt like to be in heaven?  Did he remember what it felt like to be fully divine, without the restrictions of also being fully human?  Maybe he did, but maybe he did not.  I have to think that being closer to that form, being closer to being what he truly was, being reminded of what that felt like, also had to be incredibly encouraging to Jesus.

And you know, this was all encouraging to the disciples, too.  Especially Peter.  It had to be hard on Peter when Jesus said to him, “Get behind me, Satan.”  To have Jesus call you Satan--I mean, Peter had to feel pretty small at that point.  I said earlier that it was probably not very smart of Peter to be arguing with Jesus, but at the same time, I think it was well-intentioned.  Jesus was saying that he was going to be killed.  Peter did not want Jesus to be killed, and you can’t blame him for that.  He probably thought he was coming to Jesus’ defense, saying that he would not let Jesus be killed.  And then, to have Jesus chew him out and call him Satan, well, Peter had to be pretty discouraged at that point, too.  

But despite that, when the time came for Jesus to be changed in this way, what did he do?  He took Peter with him.  James and John, too, of course.  But even though Jesus was upset with Peter, he did not give up on Peter.  He brought Peter with him.  He wanted Peter to see.  He wanted Peter to be encouraged, too.

And Peter was.  This whole thing made a deep impression on him.  That’s why we read the passage from Second Peter.  Peter is re-telling this story of Jesus being transformed.  He remembered it well, even though Peter’s letters were written many years after these events took place.  It had to be encouraging to Peter to know that, even though he’d made Jesus upset, Jesus still loved him.  In fact, Jesus loved him enough to keep him in his inner circle.  Jesus loved him enough to let him be one of the privileged few who not only saw Jesus in his glory, but he also saw Moses and Elijah.  That had to make Peter feel incredibly privileged and special.

If people like Peter and even Jesus got discouraged sometimes, it’s okay for you and me to get discouraged, too.  God understands it.  It’s not a sin.  But God does not want us to stay discouraged.  God wants us to bounce back and to feel encouraged again.  God wants that because God knows we’ll be happier that way, but God also knows we’ll be able to serve God better if we’re in a positive, hopeful frame of mind that we will if we’re always negative.   So, if we keep our eyes open, and keep our hearts open, we’ll see God doing something to help us get over our discouragement and get back to feeling positive about God’s world and about our lives.

The chances are we won’t get to see Moses and Elijah.  We probably won’t see Jesus in his glory, either, not while we’re on earth.  But God will do something.  It may come in a big way, but it may come in a small way.  A song that has meaning to us.  A kind word just when we need one.  Something that just, coincidentally, seems to go better than we expected it to.  There are all kinds of ways God will send encouragement to us.  It’s up to us to be looking for those things, so we recognize them when God sends them to us.

We all get discouraged sometimes.  It’s natural and normal.  But we worship the almighty, all-powerful, all-loving, all-caring, all-merciful, holy and perfect God.  The God who promises salvation and eternal life through faith in His Divine Son.  That, in and of itself, should be enough to keep us from staying discouraged.  In fact, that should be enough to make us rejoice!