High up on a mountain comes a voice: “This is my Son, the chosen one.” In that moment it was hard not to believe the call that thundered from the cloud. Their teacher’s face had transformed and his garments shined like lightning. Moses and Elijah stood there at his side. Surely this man was the Son of God.

Yet the voice was not finished. Lost in the cloud, those three dumbfounded disciples heard instruction: “Listen to him!” It was those words on which the Transformation of Peter, James, John, and the rest of us hang. It was one thing to think that he was God’s Son, but it was another entirely to listen to him.

I want to see transformation. I think that most of us do. Not so much for our faces to change or our clothes to flash with blinding light. But the kind of change that comes from truly listening to Jesus. To truly love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. To love our neighbors, enemies, and ourselves. To be those blessed peacemakers.

“Have you still no faith?”

That is what Jesus said to his disciples after they woke him up in the middle of a raging storm and he calmed the sea with a word. It is a question that does not land well with me. I want to argue a bit with Jesus: “Go easy on them, they thought they were going to die.” There are times when it seems like Jesus does not quite understand humanity. The pious counterargument is that he does not understand a humanity that lacks a complete trust in God. Yet piety is tough when your mouth is full of brackish water.

The disciples were afraid for their lives. They were on a boat at sea in a storm. They were fighting for their very existence. And I imagine that at least some of them were not just afraid of losing their own lives but the life on the one that they believed was the hope for their people. The life that was asleep on the boat.

My parents texted me a few weeks back and asked me what I wanted for my birthday. Birthday presents aren’t quite as exciting in your late 30s. My oldest son, whose birthday is just a few days before my own, asks for toys and Lego sets. Alright, in full disclosure, I have very recently asked to receive Lego sets for birthdays. But I wasn’t feeling that this year and I always ask for books. So I told them that I was trying to save up for a new bike and so money to go towards that would be greatly appreciated.

“You don’t want your old bike?” Mom responded.

This isn’t the first time she has asked me if I wanted my old bike. Frankly, I wasn’t sure it was in decent shape. I probably haven’t touched the thing in over 20 years. But it wouldn’t hurt to give it a try. My dad took it for a short ride. The tires were surprisingly good, the gears were a bit of a question mark, but it was decent. I figured I’d give it a shot. Mom and Dad put it on their bike rack and drove it up here from South Carolina when they came to visit us for our May birthdays.

It’s been awhile since bike riding was a regular part of my life. When we lived in Columbia, I would ride it all around my neighborhood; pretending that I was going fast enough to travel through time like Marty McFly. When we moved to Spartanburg, we lived on a curvy and narrow street on which teenagers in pickup trucks would do their best NASCAR impersonations. Riding a bike on that road felt like courting death. So I didn’t ride my bike too much after 3rd grade; not even when, as a teenager, I got the dark granite Murray that my dad set down in our Nashville driveway.

“Save us now!”

That is a cry that starts in the heart of peasants in 1st Century Palestine and it hangs in the air circling and reverberating around the globe some twenty centuries later. We still want to be saved; from Rome, from heartbreak, from hunger, from war, from pandemic, from violence, from hatred, from ourselves. And we still cry out.

Often that for which we cry out is not going to save us. In Jerusalem, they wanted a conquering king to overthrow the Empire that oppressed them. They wanted and we want a blow in the cycle of conquering and vengeance that keeps on turning. We still often want an earthly kingdom that will establish rule for people like us. A kingdom that will rule by power, by sword, by gun. We want a leader on a war horse and the eradication of our enemies.

Patience is difficult. If there is something that we do not like or with which we are not comfortable, we don’t usually want to stick with it. I get that. It makes complete sense. Yet just because we want something to be over doesn’t mean that it’s over. Just because it becomes more than we want to deal with or we lose interest that doesn’t mean we’re done with it or it’s done with us.

The people following Moses became impatient on the way. They were witnesses to their misery in Egypt and to the incredible acts of God that rescued them. But the wilderness was difficult. They had what they needed but they were uncomfortable. They had food, but it wasn’t good enough food. “Why did you bring us out here to die?” they asked. They weren’t going to die, but things got tough and it felt like they were.

According to Numbers, God sent poisonous snakes to set the people straight. Did God do this? The reader can judge for themselves. I have a hard time believing God does something like this. Partly because we seem to do a pretty good job inviting the poisonous snakes to the party ourselves. Our impatience clouds our judgment and then it bites us in the butt.

A funny thing has happened in perpetual reassessment of faith in adulthood: I believe in total depravity. Not necessarily in the theological construct that posits that we all are born into corruption because of original sin. One of the most consistent parts of my faith journey is that hardcore Calvinism has always seemed problematic to me. I just mean that I believe that we as humans are really, really screwed up. I believe we all hold that divine spark from God too; that Imago Dei.

But, good Lord, we are a messed up people.

You can look around for ample evidence. I won’t point it out to you, because I could look within for evidence as well. There is something askew and off the mark about us. There is something about us that is not quite as it should be. Now because we are made in God’s image, there is that capacity within us to be more like what we should be. We just often cannot or will not access it.

In early June, the killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Ahmaud Arbery spurred a group of high schoolers to plan a Black Lives Matter march. They didn't know if anyone would show up. 10,000 people took to the streets that day and lifted their voices in peaceful protest.

Peaceful.

It’s an interesting word in the context of 10,000 people pulsing through downtown Nashville. That show of righteous anger does not really paint the picture of peace. I guess you could split hairs to say that it was non-violent and that is somehow different than peaceful. But the mandate from those young women beforehand was that this would be a peaceful protest. And so it was.

Yet the chant that still rings in my ears six months later is No justice! No peace! Again and again it would ring out; its staccato cadence bouncing off the buildings. No justice! No peace! Each syllable like a punch; a fierce passion jabbed into speech. No justice! No peace!

The second Sunday of Advent is about peace and it’s keeping me up at night. I grew up in a context where the stuff of Christianity was almost all personal. The primary concern was to make sure that your individual relationship with God was in the right alignment. If that personal relationship was right then you could personally experience hope, joy, love. And peace.