For Love’s Sake

Luke 9:28-36, [37-43a]

For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved one particular prayer in the prayerbook more than any other. It is found in the Compline liturgy, prayers for the close of the day, which was prayed before bedtime every night at my summer camp growing up and at the end of every evening event for my campus ministry. The prayer goes like this:

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake. Amen.

After the Lord’s Prayer, this was the first prayer I memorized. Even as a child, I remember being drawn to the Lord keeping watch with people through the night, no matter what they were up to. I loved the image of Christ tending the sick like a mother of a sick child or a nurse at a bedside. The God who watches, tends, gives, blesses, soothes, pities, shields, loves, is a God who is always near, and that closeness brought me great comfort as a kid and still does today. But the phrase that always stands out most to me, that has shaped and defined so much of my theology throughout my life, is that last pair of petitions. Pity the afflicted, shield the joyous. We ask God to take special care of both the afflicted and the joyous, those who are suffering and those who are celebrating, those who are basking in the light on a mountaintop and those who are weeping in the shadowed valley.

The transfiguration of Jesus is a rich and bizarre story, so striking and important to the people who experienced it that it appears in nearly identical form in three of the four Gospels. The story just after it is so strange and difficult by comparison that the lectionary actually gives us the option to leave it out altogether. After the divine revelation of Jesus’s glory, the appearance of Moses and Elijah, the sudden appearance of the cloud and the voice of God, the goings-on in the valley are a bit of a letdown at best. Starry-eyed and stunned silent by the things they have seen on the mountaintop, Peter, James, and John rejoin their fellow disciples in the valley in time to see a crowd looking for Jesus. So basically, back to business as usual.

A parent bursts forth to beg Jesus to cure his child, a little boy plagued by seizures. The disciples who had been left behind by Jesus when he took his inner circle up the mountain have tried to help this child and have been unsuccessful. We don’t know why they couldn’t do it on their own this time, but Jesus steps in and calls the child to him. The poor thing can’t even make it the short distance to Jesus without falling to the ground in another seizure, further evidence that this child and his family have endured great suffering together. As if it is the easiest thing in the world, Luke tells us that Jesus rebukes the spirit that has been tormenting this child, heals the boy of his illness and injuries, and sends him back to the arms of a relieved and astounded father. The people in the crowd are struck by the greatness of God after witnessing this miracle, and the story moves on.

Usually, the transfiguration story is so dazzling that I don’t even think twice about this child’s healing. Many biblical commentators chalk it up to being just another example of the faithlessness of the disciples and the power of Jesus over the forces of evil. Some lift up this encounter as a lesson about the work of discipleship; the transformational moments on the mountaintop must not keep us from the hard work of ministry in the valley. You could even assume this healing story is just the next thing that happened in the timeline of Jesus’s ministry, a slight delay on the final journey to Jerusalem. But I am struck this week by the vastly different experiences of the disciples, both those who climbed the mountain and those who stayed in the valley.

Peter, James, and John have the privilege of a private audience with Jesus, a spiritual retreat up and away from the crowds and their demands. They witness something incredible, they see the heroes of their faith and they catch a glimpse of the glory from which Jesus came and to which he has warned them he will return. Predictably, Peter makes an earnest but misguided attempt to capture the moment and receives an audible reply from God the Father. These three flawed and sometimes frustrating mortal men see the light of heaven shining around them, and they hear the voice of God with their own ears.

Meanwhile, in the valley, the other nine disciples try to quell the growing restlessness of the crowds who have come from far and wide to see Jesus, who is nowhere to be found. These disciples answer their questions as best they can, they tell stories of the recent miraculous feeding of the thousands and the various healings Jesus has accomplished before their own eyes. A deeply grieved and exhausted man comes to them for help, begging for healing for his beloved child, and they cannot help him. They cannot fix it, no matter how hard they try. Their words of comfort do not relieve the pain, and their prayers do not heal the bruises. Jesus is absent, and his absence is vividly felt by his friends in the face of such affliction.

Pity the afflicted, shield the joyous. In the same moment, some disciples are hearing the very voice of God while for other disciples God seems to have gone silent. Some are seeing the light of heaven, while others are losing hope as darkness falls. Some prayers are answered, others seem to fall on stopped up ears. Some are healed, others are not. Some are joyous, others are afflicted. In Jesus, God comes close to all of them.

Human beings may often, like Peter, feel the temptation to stay on the mountain, far above the shadows and the suffering in the valley below. But Jesus comes down the mountain. God comes down to earth. Even in the moments when the sense of God’s absence threatens to suffocate the flame of hope, Jesus does not stay away. Even when it seems that everyone else is hearing the voice of God and all we’re getting is silence, Jesus keeps watch beside us. When we are sick, it is Christ who tends us. When we are weary, God offers us rest. In our suffering, it is the Spirit of the Lord that soothes and comforts us. When our joy makes us vulnerable in a cynical world, God is our shield. Our faith is founded in a God who shows up for the joyous and for the afflicted, a God who can be found on the mountaintop and in the valley. There is nowhere we can go, no state of being we can find ourselves in, where God is not present, all for love’s sake.