Life changed for Peter, James and John when Jesus called them to follow Him.  Life changed again when they saw His miracles, including the one we call the Transfiguration.  For just a few minutes, Peter, James and John caught a glimpse of heaven.  For just a few minutes, they saw what heaven was like, and the spotlight at that moment was on Jesus.  For just a few minutes, God showed them the best He had to offer this earth.

          Nearly 20 years ago the National Youth Gathering took place here in Denver, and Carol and I attended a reception hosted by the president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.  That year the reigning Miss America pagaent was there.  I will always recall seeing this stunning, lovely young woman standing there in her red formal gown, this gorgeous lady recently voted the most beautiful woman in the world.  And she was one of us - a Lutheran!  And wherever she went in the crowd, she just seemed to glow.  Everywhere she went, Miss America was in the spotlight.  Carol also noticed it and told me why.  She would stand under one of the recessed spotlights in the ceiling.  This was no coincidence, Carol said.  That woman always knew where the spotlight was, and she stood in it.

          Jesus never sought the limelight.  Though many followed Him, He rarely even stood out in the crowd.  Crowds spotted Him, but He never sought center stage.  Except for one special day, the day of Transfiguration.  Accompanied by His inner circle of friends Jesus purposely stood under the spotlight.  And it was not for Him, but for them.  He wanted them to see who He really was.  And to do so, He had two other luminaries join Him, Moses and Elijah.

          Besides Jesus, Moses and Elijah are the most famous figures in the Bible.  But though all three were there, only one of them was highlighted by God the Father, our Lord Jesus.  He was the best of the best -- the one and only Son of God, our Savior.  Moses and Elijah were important, but not so important as Jesus.  In our lives, God wants you and me to highlight only the Best.

          Now Moses was good, but he was not the best.  Moses did some remarkable things during his lifetime.  As an infant he was plucked from the Nile River, floating in a tiny basket.  He grew up among royalty and eventually faced down the most powerful man in the world.  Remember the Ten Plagues and the Passover?  Remember the parting of the Red Sea, and meeting God face-to-face on Mt. Sinai, and receiving the Ten Commandments?  How about his praying down manna in the wilderness, and all the miracles of leading God's people for 40 years in the desert?  Without Moses, the world would be a different place.  Moses was a very important man, ranking right up there with Abraham, the father of our faith.

          I got an Email once from a gentleman who is raising money to post the Ten Commandments in every courtroom in the United States.  He felt that the basic principles of right and wrong embodied in the Ten Commandments should be known by everybody.  The Ten Commandments are pretty well known.  At least most people know of them, even if they don't really know the commandments themselves, let alone keep them.  Some people consider them to be the backbone of the Christian faith, that if you wanted to summarize what being a Christian was all about, you could just look to the Ten Commandments.  Keep those, they say, and you're okay with God.

          But there's a problem here.  You and I can't keep the Ten Commandments!  It's not possible.  Oh, we can keep some, but even if we break one, it's all over!  Keeping most of them is not good enough.  We have to keep all of them.  God wants only the best for us.

          His holiness demands we keep all the Commandments, and we know we can't do that.  That's what Paul was getting at in the New Testament reading for today.  Sin hides the truth from us.  We think we can somehow balance the scales, but we can't.  Only Jesus can, and only faith in Him can help us.  Keeping Him in the spotlight is what faith is all about.  Like Paul wrote, "He gives us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ." (2 Cor. 4:6)

          Instead of Moses, we need Jesus.  Moses and the Ten Commandments only show us our sins.  They show us how far we've fallen short of doing what God tells us to do.  But in Jesus, God shows us our Savior, the one who rescues us from hell and Satan.  It's Jesus who obeyed the Ten Commandments, and then gives us His perfect record of obedience to count as our own.  Jesus took the fall for us, suffering punishment for all the times we've broken the Commandments.

          It's not a bad goal to want to post the Ten Commandments on walls around our country.  We could all use a reminder of God's holy Law.  But more than the Ten Commandments on a wall, we need to see Christ on the cross.  Moses was glorious; Jesus is even more glorious.  Jesus did what Moses, great as he was, could never do - He saved us.

          The same is true for Elijah.  He is the other famous Bible character who appears on the mountain with Jesus.  Elijah was one of those men who delivered God's messages to people, and he did it powerfully.  He went to people like the wicked King Ahab and his murderous wife Jezebel, and he didn't mince words.  Elijah had been a faithful prophet, though the world had been against him.  Eventually Ahab staged a nationwide manhunt to find Elijah and kill him.  Another time, Elijah defeated and killed 700 pagan prophets after God sent down fire to consume the sacrifice as all of Israel watched.  "Elijah! Elijah!" they shouted.  "Elijah" means, "Jehovah is God!"

          But what Elijah is most famous for, happened at the end of his ministry.  We heard about it this morning in the Old Testament Lesson.  Elijah did not die, but was taken directly to heaven on a whirlwind in a chariot of fire.  Sounds rather fantastic.  Imagine - kiss all your problems goodbye and go directly to heaven!  All the office politics, the hard work, the crabby teachers, the whining kids, terrorists, politics - all that gone, instantly!  Straight to heaven, without all the pain and suffering of death.  (And riding a fiery chariot sounds better than a new Harley!)

          Something like that must have appealed to Jesus, too.  He knew that suffering and death were coming His way.  The Bible tells us He was tempted to avoid them.  Tempted by Satan, and just days before His transfiguration, even tempted by his disciple Peter!  Jesus was tempted to lay aside the hard things His Father wanted Him to do and take the easy way.  We know how tempting that is, because we've done it.

          But instead of flying off to heaven in a fiery chariot with Elijah, Jesus went down the mountain.  He had work to do.  He had to give His life for the world that needed Him.  The world needed Jesus to die for them, and then to rise again.  All this so that He could bring peace to the world, peace with people and, more importantly, peace with God.  In Jesus Christ, we do have peace with God!  God does not hold our sins against us!  He doesn't keep track and then expect us to do enough good things to balance the scales.  He did that for us.  Jesus went down the mountain to die, so that you and I can go up to heaven and live in joy with Him forever!

          So there stands Jesus, clothes gleaming white, brighter than Clorox could bleach them, standing there with Moses and Elijah.  And that's what God wants us to - to stand with Jesus.  Moses is great, and so is Elijah, but Jesus is the best.  He shines brighter than the sun.  He is greater than the greatest prophets of Old Testament history.  There stand Jesus, Moses and Elijah, and then two of the three disappear.  Who's left?  Only the best - only Jesus.

          Our Heavenly Father highlights only the best.  He spotlights only Jesus.  And that's what we try to do here at Epiphany.  You will see our Mission Statement around a lot now:  "We help people become fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ."  Ten simple words that show who we are, what we stand for.  They're at the top of our bulletins, and sometimes at the bottom, too.  Learn them - memorize them, repeat them often, and help make them happen.

          Stand by Jesus.  When the pressures of your life are weighing you down, when it's hard to do what God asks of you, stand by Jesus.  He carried the cross for you, and He will help you carry your cross every day.  Stand by Jesus - He is the best of the best.  Amen!

Copyright © 2006 by Pastor Bob Tasler.  All rights reserved.