It’s somewhere between a grimace and a look of pity—the face people make when they learn that I grew up in churches that took pride in labels like ‘fundamentalist’ and ‘Evangelical.’ And it’s completely understandable given that the face of Christianity for many in America is the fire-and-brimstone Evangelical preacher proselytizing on street corners. There are some things I do actually value about my Evangelical childhood. I got to know the Bible really well and learned to pray off-the-cuff. But the Evangelical approach to “sharing the good news” was not one of those gifts.
We emphasized learning elevator pitches and prepackaged arguments to “convince” the people we met on the streets that they were going to hell and needed to sign on some spiritual dotted line to be saved. And more times than I can count, I ended up saying precisely the wrong thing, missing both the fullness of Jesus and the human dignity of the people in front of me.
Tracts and well-rehearsed spiels are honestly excellent examples of how not to evangelize. Approaches like that are what have given ‘evangelization’ a bad name for so many Christians. At worst, they turn the gospel into a weapon for cruelty. But even when they are well-intentioned attempts to “save souls” they amputate important parts of the Gospel to fit it into man made containers. They make it all about us and our agendas—not Jesus and the Gospel.
But as distasteful as we find the dogged proselytizing of some Christians, many of us still want to see the church grow. We still long to share this part of our lives with the people we love. We want to invite people to experience whatever it is that keeps us coming back here on Sunday morning—even when watching football with friends or lounging in bed provide such attractive alternatives. So we try to find other words—other ways to communicate what we find compelling about our faith and what the Church has to offer; other ways to bring back the people we miss and attract the people who have never been here or heard of us.
But almost invariably, we end up stumbling. Whatever spiels we come up with only capture one facet of the Gospel or only understands one part of the situation. And we end up either completely at a loss for words or saying the wrong thing. We’re left wondering, “What can I say that will do all this justice? What can I say to proclaim the good news and invite people in without maiming the Gospel or turning it into a cudgel? What can I say that won’t end with me sticking my foot in my mouth?
Once again, these are not new issues for Christians. Like, Peter (God love him) must have been very familiar with the taste of his own feet. Peter, James, and John witness a magnificent sight in the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor. And after Peter says to Jesus, “Let’s make three dwellings: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah,” Mark comments, almost as an aside, “He did not know what to say, for they were terrified.”
He didn’t know what to say.
And I feel for him! James and John seem to be dumbstruck in the face of that dazzling sight of Jesus transfigured on the mountain. But Peter feels like he has to say something—to respond somehow and name this terrifying and beautiful sight. So I can imagine him thinking “What can I say?” and blurting out the first thing that popped into his head. It just… didn’t really do the situation justice.
Peter is well-intentioned in trying to name the mystery before him. And he gets that Jesus is a great teacher and a prophet—like Moses and Elijah. But he doesn’t understand that Jesus is so much more than that—the Son of God, the Beloved. And today’s gospel and the episodes surrounding it are part of a whole series of instances where Peter puts his foot in his mouth after getting part of the picture but not quite grasping the whole thing. I think this tendency of Peter’s is part of why Jesus tells these three apostles to keep quiet about what they’d seen “until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.”
As Mark’s narrative unfolds the apostles’ comprehension is only partial at best—marked by an inability to grasp (let alone proclaim) the fullness of what is happening and why Jesus matters. And as we journey with them towards the Cross on Golgotha, we will see how often they end up with their feet in their mouths—how they fail to proclaim the good news and invite people along because they only grasp part of what’s going on and don’t know what to say.
In some ways, we might not feel any better off today. Like the apostles, we really only comprehend part of the mystery of Christ. We only understand part of what draws us here and keeps us here. And so our attempts to proclaim the good news often feel inadequate or downright cringe-worthy. Even if they don’t do the blatant harm that fundamentalists’ proselytizing inflicts, our attempts to grow are prone to becoming attempts to market ourselves and invite people to us. We often find ourselves like Peter on the mountain today, wondering, “What can I say?”
But our situation is different from Peter’s today in a very important way. Unlike Peter, we stand with Paul on the other side of Jesus’ resurrection. We may not fully comprehend the mystery of salvation—the mystery that calls this beloved community, the Church, into existence; the mystery that takes tangible form in the Sacraments that nourish us; the mystery that inspires the beautiful music we love. We may not—we do not—fully grasp the Jesus we encounter here. We hold the glory of Christ—the glory witnessed by Peter James and John at the top of the mountain—we hold that glory in the earthen jars of our finite understanding.
But because we stand on the other side of Easter—because we know that Christ is risen, even as we walk with him again to Jerusalem—we can still proclaim the glory we see in all of its fullness. As Paul puts it, we can proclaim “Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves your slaves for Jesus’ sake.” Even if we can’t fully understand or explain it, we see the full picture that Peter could not see. We see Jesus the Messiah, who is Teacher and Prophet and the very Son of God. We see Jesus, who laid aside freedom to free us from death and who we imitate in laying aside the goods of this world for the greater good of becoming free for the sake of all Creation.
What can we say? We can simply proclaim—not ourselves—but Jesus Christ as Lord. We can simply proclaim who we know Jesus to be—how we see God work in us and for us and through us day by day. We can simply proclaim how we walk with Jesus in solidarity with a suffering world sharing in his work of healing wounds and making things new. Refusing to “practice cunning or falsify God’s word,” we can simply tell the story of what happens to us here as Christ’s Body, the Church—of the mystery that we hold together.
We won’t fully comprehend the whole mystery that we hold and that holds us all here. But it is being fulfilled in and through us. So we can state fully and openly what we hold in clay jars—not chopping off parts or cramming it into a box; not bending it to fit our agenda or spinning it to be more “relevant” or glossing over the mess of human community. We can say to the world, “I don’t fully comprehend it, and neither will you. But this is who I know Jesus to be.”
This open statement of the truth is not a cudgel to wield or an argument to win or a product to market. It is a reality to be lived out—a slow-release miracle that transfigures us gradually. And we proclaim this truth—not through debates or marketing—but by practicing it together as the Body of Christ. Whenever gather for worship or fellowship or service in Christ’s name, we rehearse the baffling Mystery of Faith. As we gather, we are changed into Christ’s likeness from glory to glory and strengthened to bear the Cross that comes with our work of transforming a hurting world.
This is a proclamation Peter didn’t have access to that day on Mount Tabor. But it’s a proclamation that we do have this side of Easter. So as we turn towards the season of Lent and walk with Christ to Calvary again, remember that this is what we’re here to rehearse. Remember that we’re here to proclaim, not ourselves but simply this: Jesus is Lord and became a slave to free us, and we are here to do the same, for his sake and the world’s.