"After six days," that's what Matthew says. Six. One, two, three, four, five, six. On the way, but not complete. Not seven. That would have shown completeness. Seven is the number of completeness. Definitely not eight. That goes beyond; moving into the things of eternity; seven plus one; one past normal time, past normal things; on to eternal things. Six. Six days from what? That doesn't really matter. St. Matthew writes six to make sure we know not everything is done.

Actually, it does matter. Six days after the time Peter gives his big confession and Jesus begins to tell His disciples He is going to suffer, die and rise again. This hasn't happened yet. He hasn't suffered, died and risen again, so therefore it is incomplete.

It's important that we get this. His death and resurrection is central to this event, even though it's not even mentioned, until right at the very end of the text. "Don't tell anyone about this until the Son of Man is raised from the dead. Don't tell anyone, until it's complete. Don't tell them what you have seen because they won't understand. If you tell them before my death and resurrection, it will send them in the wrong direction. They will get thrown off. They will seek the wrong kind of glory."

That's a problem. People don't want the kind of glory God has for us. His glory is in the cross. His glory is in having mercy. It is rescuing lost sinners. But that's not the fun kind of glory. That's a gory glory.

It didn't suit Peter either. A little more than six days earlier, six days before this display of God's hidden glory coming out in Jesus, Peter had listened to Jesus talk about the gory glory. Jesus started talking about the cross. Peter wanted to stop Him. That was not going to happen to Jesus. Peter wouldn't let it happen. Peter didn't like this kind of glory. It was gory glory, which didn't seem like glory at all.

If the people were to have found out what Peter, James and John saw up there on that mountain before Jesus died and had risen from the dead, well, it wouldn't have been good. They might not have even crucified Him. They might have said, "Hey, this is God. We can't do this. We would be killing God."

We might say, "Bingo! That's absolutely right." We might even wonder why Jesus wouldn't want that. Why wouldn't He want them to see He is God?

Think about it, though, what happens to Jesus' mission to die in our place, to suffer our punishment, if He were not to be killed, if He were to be spared because the people realized they were killing God? What happens to God's mercy if Jesus doesn't die? We would have only dreams of this inaccessible glory, and no way to ever reach it.

So, Jesus doesn't want the disciples to say anything about this glory yet. What they see now is for later. It's what these apostolic witnesses will point to later after He has gone bodily back to heaven and His manner of being with them is in His Word.

Peter speaks of it straight out in the letter we heard in the epistle lesson today. "For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty." "We ourselves heard the voice for we were with Him on the holy mountain." But he wrote this after Jesus had ascended. If they were to have said it then, though, right after they came down from the mountain, if this is what they told the people, the people will only see a God of power. They would not see a God of mercy. They would never see the God of mercy. They would never see the glory that is for sinners.

The Peter of this letter is a Peter with a more mature faith. Not the Peter on the mountain. The same distaste for the gory glory of the cross Peter had shown six days earlier, shows up again here on the mountain. Peter wanted to keep this glory, the glory that is ordinarily hidden, the glory that is not really for this earth. He wanted to keep it by building a couple tents and keeping everyone here on earth.

Who needs the cross, when you have this? Let's bottle this stuff. We could give it away to everyone who comes to church, and we would have our pews filled in no time.

I hate to say it, but it's true. We could fill our pews if we were to give this stuff away. If this is what we preached, this would be a whole lot more appealing than the cross. We could talk about God in all His power. We could talk about His love for us, but not the basis of it. The basis of it is the big part that would be missing, but we would convince ourselves we could live without it. Then we could spend most of our time talking about what we need to do as a result of His love. Yes, that's the formula for a successful church. But we wouldn't have Gospel. We might have God's love, we might talk about God's love, we might even talk about His grace, but we wouldn't be talking about the cross.

The other day I saw how it could work, how we could talk about Grace, but not really be talking about it. I had led the memorial service for the sake of several people who had been residents at the Villa or as it is known now at the The Westwind Village and who had died in the last several months. I was asked pretty much last minute because the usual chaplain couldn't do it. I was told the format. At some point, it becomes an open floor for people to speak about their loved ones. I was concerned about this, but assured again and again I would not be limited on what I could say. That was most important to me. I chose Rev. 14, "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord." From that text I spoke about how dying in the Lord means dying in faith, dying while relying on the fact that they have been claimed as His own children in baptism. It was a strong Christ-centered, cross-centered even sacramental message.

Then the time came for family members to step up and speak about their loved ones. I fully expected to hear people talk about how their loved ones were in heaven because they were good people. I was ready to deal with that. What I got, I had never expected.

A woman got up and talked about god's love and peace known by her loved one. She even talked about grace, but she wasn't a Christian; she was a Buddhist, and a very devout one at that. She also talked about reincarnation, karma and him becoming a spirit guide, called a Bodhisattva. But you have already heard what got me. She used many of the same words we do as Christians, the ones we think are exclusively Christian. I was convinced, the words we use as Christians no longer mean what we think they do.

This was even more disturbing because last week we sang, Amazing Grace as one of the distribution hymns. I chose it because of the line, "blind but now I see." But I looked at the words more closely and saw there was nothing exclusive about it. Just about any person of any religion could sing it. Even a Buddhist. I'm sure John Newton had no intentions of writing something that could be used so universally, but it has become that.

My choice of hymns hurt even worse when this thought was confirmed yesterday. Early in the morning, getting ready to go run I was waiting for Local on the 8's on the weather channel, to see how warmly I should dress. While waiting, a Salvation Army commercial came on. It consisted of the first stanza of Amazing Grace, "Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a--and then it flashed several different people who said what they used to be--a crack head, an alchoholic, a sex addict and then the original word, "wretch" going through the rest of the words of that first stanza with more pictures flashing on the screen at particular times.

It was apparent, "grace" was not the undeserved love penitent sinners know they have from God because of Jesus' death on the cross. Instead, grace was the good fortune or the fates or even God who rescued a person from self-destruction here on earth. That is not what John Newton meant. But it didn't have to mean what he meant when he wrote it. Now, grace could mean just about anything--even the good fortune of discovering the principles of Buddhism, which have actually helped people in their life on earth.

And that's the problem, buying into God's glory seen on the mountain, finding what works for life on earth, is not really the glory God wants us to know. This kind of glory basically leaves us with what we do, what we are to do. God's glory like we see on the mountain doesn't do anything for our souls. To be left with just that, is to leave us with nothing more than a simple three letter word--L-A-W. Law. We hear "Law" especially in church and think of the condemnation of the Law. Yes, it's true the Law always condemns, but that doesn't mean we don't like it. Most of us just ignore its condemning voice. We don't even think of it. Rather, we think of what it tells us we can do. We think of it as suggestions for our life, maybe recommendations. "Try this. Here's something else you can try. It's your choice."

But it's not. Well, yes, it can be. We can choose what we do in our lives. We can choose to talk about God or not talk about Him. We can choose to be a nice person or not. We can choose to be damned. That is, if we try to make it into God's goodwill by our own efforts, we will have chosen to be damned. If we think we want God in the glory that was on the mountain, we have rejected His mercy. That's fine. That's your choice. In fact, when it comes to making a choice, that's the only choice we can make--to reject.

But our God is the Gospel. He doesn't leave us to choose to be saved, because we can't. Instead, He works out our rescue, and then He brings it to us. He shows His glory to us by the cross.

Like Peter said, "The voice was borne to Him by the Majestic Glory, 'This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased." Here's the Gospel. What follows now is grace, pure grace, unmistakable grace which could never be confused with merely good fortune or any other kind of pious sounding talk. You have been covered in Christ. Your baptism did this. God covered you with Christ. You stand before God the Father in Christ. And He says, "This is my beloved Son." You stand dressed in Christ and He says, "This is my beloved Son." You stand dressed in Christ and He says, "This is my beloved Son."

That's glory. This is the glory we want to see; we want to hear. Save the glory they saw for the resurrection and even more for heaven. This is the glory we need now here on earth. That's why this is what He gives.

AMEN