Both

Transfiguration Sunday in the church liturgical year is a reminder that if we only get our news from the world we shall live in a constant state of anxiety, dread, and despair.  But if we get the news of God and all His Christ is doing in this world, then we can know hope and optimism.

In the Scriptures, Jesus had come to see His own rejection by Jewish religious authorities. The news of His world was bleak: poverty, human cussedness, sickness, and a Roman government built on force and violence.

That’s when Jesus went up on a mountaintop with Peter, James and John. There God’s glory surrounded Christ and He conversed with the prophet Elijah and the lawgiver Moses. All pointed Jesus toward Jerusalem and His death on the cross.

Christ saw the world for what it is—unfair, sinful, and unseeing.  But He also saw God for who He is—loving, involved, and with a plan.  And somehow in the light of God, life and death seemed doable.

I’ve known men and women who monitor the stock market like it was their heartbeat. They follow politics as if it is our only hope. But they ignore all God has done, is doing, and will do as if it is a mere trifle.

Yet Jesus got the news of both.  He joined human affairs with divine activity and went to Jerusalem, accepted the cross, died for our sins.  But in the greatest headline of all time, He rose from the grave—proving that after man has done his worst God can do His best. And it is forever so that the Gospel is God’s good news for man’s bad news.

Take time to tune in —to what humanity is up to. Ah, but most of all, to that which God is doing.

The Reverend Stephen Crotts is pastor of Village Presbyterian Church in Charlotte Court House, VA. He is also the director of the Carolina Study Center, Inc., a campus ministry, located in Chapel Hill, NC. Pastor Crotts may be reached at carolinastudycenter@msn.com.