FRIDAY, FOURTH WEEK OF LENT

They Walked Down the Mountain

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. So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead could mean. Then they asked him, “Why do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?” He said to them, “Elijah is indeed coming first to restore all things. How then is it written about the Son of Man, that he is to go through many sufferings and be treated with contempt? But I tell you that Elijah has come, and they did to him whatever they pleased, as it is written about him.” Mark 9: 9-13

When Jesus talks to his disciples on the way down the mountain of his transfiguration, he urges no discussion of what had occurred on the summit until his death and resurrection. I picture them looking at one another with raised eyebrows and can hardly blame them for changing the subject to the expectation of the new kingdom: Was it to be heralded by Elijah or not?

It’s at this point that Jesus’ begins to think out loud, in a discourse that feels like stream-of-consciousness. Acknowledging that Elijah is to come, then reflecting upon the sufferings of the Son of Man, Jesus remembers John the Baptist and blurts out that Elijah has already come. He too is caught in the paradox of the kingdom being not yet arrived but already here.

Sometimes we find ourselves convinced that the kingdom of God is right around the corner, the end is near. Sometimes we assume that the kingdom that Jesus had in mind is already here and, in some mysterious way, working itself out. Jesus was able to live with the paradox of the “already, but not yet” character of the kingdom. It did not prevent him from doing the works of the One who sent him; it must not prevent us from doing the same.

Sense the tension Jesus and his disciples felt as they retreated down the mountain into the fray of living. Sense the similar tension of living today.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.