It was almost Christmas when John Buchanan received a note from the sixth and seventh grade Sunday School class at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago. The note read:

Dear Dr. Buchanan:

We have some questions about Christmas.

1. Did the star stand still?

2. Were the shepherds and wisemen real?

3. How was Jesus born if his parents didn’t have sexual intercourse?

Please meet with us next Sunday and tell us the answers to our questions.

Merry Christmas

The Sixth and Seventh Grade Class.

In reflecting on that experience, Buchanan made three observations. The first was that times had changed. Back when he was growing up the term "sexual intercourse" was not encountered until at least the ninth-grade health class. It was certainly not a term one would have used in a letter to the pastor.

Second, no one in seminary every told him that he would serve as the court of final appeal for questions no one else wanted to answer. Parents could say, "Ask your Sunday School teacher." Teachers could say, "Let’s ask the pastor." But to whom can the minister defer.

But it is his third observation that is most relevant today. When he met with these youngsters the following Sunday, he we reminded that "I don’t know" is a legitimate and respectable answer, one that even inquisitive sixth and seventh graders could appreciate.

BRIDGE

Today, "I don’t know" is the answer I have to offer regarding what happened in the Transfiguration of Jesus. You have heard the story. Jesus took Peter, John and James on a mountain prayer retreat. While Jesus was praying, his face began to glow and his clothes became dazzling white. Moses, the giver of the Law, and Elijah, symbol of the prophets, appeared out of nowhere and disappeared as strangely. Then there was the cloud. It came upon them and out of it God spoke, leaving the disciples speechless.

It is a strange story. It is not something that any of us have experienced. It doesn’t happen at our annual all-church retreat. And that leaves us wondering: "What happened?" What really happened there on that mountaintop?

I don’t know.

And no one else really does either, although scholars have tried.

Some say that it was mystical vision that Jesus had, one which included Peter, James and John. Later, the suggest, he told them about it.

Others have said it was really a resurrection story that the early Christians misplaced as they told the stories of Jesus’ ministry.

Then there are those that say it really has no historical basis. They suggest that someone in the early church created the story to give Jesus stature.

Each of these arguments has merit, but in the end we have to admit that we don’t know what happened on that mountaintop.
We don’t know how Jesus’ face changed. We don’t know how Moses and Elijah appeared. We don’t know how God speaks out of a cloud. We just don’t know, and that is hard to admit.

Yet in the face of that mystery, there is a word we can speak.

When Dr. Buchanan met with those sixth and seventh graders, he told them that there are some things that we do not, and probably never will, know. But he also told them that there are more important questions than "what happened?" Chief among them is "What did this mean?" or "What does it say to us today?"

And that question we can answer. The Transfiguration affirmed that Jesus is God’s Son, affirmed that he was the chosen one, the one sent to reconcile the world to God, the one to whom we are to listen.

That word was an important word to the disciples on the mountaintop. Only days before, Jesus had asked them who people thought he was. They said some thought he was John the Baptist. Others thought he was Elijah. Still others said he was one of the prophets of old. But they knew he was the Messiah, the new king-to-come in Israel.

And yet as soon as they said it, Jesus began to tell them he was going to Jerusalem, where he’d be rejected, suffer and die. He began to tell them that his followers were to take up not the weapons of war but the cross of humiliation and death.

And the confidence with which they had identified Jesus was shaken. The Messiah wasn’t suppose to be rejected. He was to be adored. He wasn’t to suffer but to conquer. Maybe, they thought, Jesus wasn’t the one.

Then came the moment on the mountain, a moment unlike any other—one in which God affirmed that Jesus was the one, was the chosen, the one they were to follow. Whatever happened on that mountain, they now knew that their faith in Jesus was not misplaced. He was God’s Son, the Chosen One.

That word is important for us as well.

After more than three decades as a missionary in India, Lesslie Newbigin returned to the western world, to England. Upon his return, he was not merely surprised, he was shocked. When he had left for India, the Christian faith in the West was strong and vital in his homeland. Now it was weak and unimportant to many there. People said it had become "secularized."

But as he reflected on our culture, and on our own, he came to realize that we were not really secularized. We had not eliminated the religious. We had not killed the gods of the past, freed people from religious tyranny. Instead, we have fostered rampant superstition. Well-educated, liberal, enlightened people of his nation and ours have simply exchanged faith in one God for faith in a host of others. That is why some believe their lives are in the hands of Fate. It is why "Luck" has become the American substitute for "providence." It is why USA Today had to add horoscopes to its paper soon after it was launched. It is why every bookstore and talk show urges us to worshipped the unholy trinity of Money, Sex and Power. These gods, we are told, hold sway.

And so we listen. That is why we gather here. For this brief time each week, we shut out the cacophony of other voices, the other would-be-gods, and listen to Jesus, hear his words of life, hear his call to live. It is not a mountaintop. But its close enough, because here our confidence in Christ is affirmed and we, like his disciples, go renewed in our faith and empowered for his service. Amen.