Psalm 119.65-72
A little over a year ago, just a week before Thanksgiving and exactly two weeks before I shared the news of my cancer’s return with the congregation— two weeks before anyone knew— a couple of visitors came up to me after worship. They had not, so far as I noticed, raised their hands during the announcements at the first time visitor prompt. The couple looked to be in their early sixties. He was tall and had a thick head of gray hair parted in a stubborn leftward swoop. She was short with an athletic build and blond hair down beyond her shoulders and a birth mark on her pale cheek. They both had sunglasses resting atop their heads, and they wore matching black insulated down coats. In fact, they looked as if they had entered the sanctuary by stepping off a ski lift. They introduced themselves as husband and wife. Shaking my hand, they thanked me for the sermon and the worship service— the usual usual narthex banter.
Or so I thought.
“You get so numbed by churches preaching anything and everything but the gospel that it’s encouraging to discover a church that is actually delivering the goods,” he said to me.
“I hear you,” I said, “Believe me— I hear you; no one’s more cynical about the institutional church than a preacher who’s actually called by Jesus Christ.”
And then, introducing myself, I asked them, “Are you new to the area?”
“No,” the man answered, “We’ve lived here our whole married life, over thirty years.”
“I see,” I said, “Well, in any case, we hope to see you again next Sunday.”
“Oh, I doubt we’ll be back again,” his wife responded matter-of-factly.
I frowned. And then I wiped my eyes. In those weeks before I started treatment, the lymph nodes in my head and my neck were so enlarged that my eyes constantly leaked tears.
Trying to regain my composure, I asked them, “Did something not meet your expectations this morning? Was it the sermon? I can assure you that Pastor Peter preaches most Sundays.”
She smiled and shook her head, “It’s not like that. The music, the sermon, even the welcome at the front door were all powerful. We already belong to a church in McLean— that’s why we’ll likely not be back to worship with you all. We’re leaders there and Bible study teachers. It’s hard for us to get away most Sundays.”
I nodded, “What brought you here this morning then?”
“A message,” he said, his countenance suddenly serious.
“A message?”
“We didn’t come to hear your message,” she explained, “We came to deliver you a message.”
“Who? Us— the church?”
“No,” she said, “You.”
“Me? You don’t even know me!”
“I know,” she replied, her voice striking a grave tone, “Don’t you see, Pastor Jason. We don’t know you. We’d never before heard of you. That’s why we had no choice but to come find you today.”
I furrowed my brows and looked them over a second time, silently wondering if they were grifters or, worse, Jehovah’s Witnesses.
“I don’t understand,” I said, “You have a message for me? From whom?”
Before he answered, he pulled his sunglasses off his head, as though they were an inappropriate accessory with which to discharge his sacred obligation. He stepped closer to me and looked me in the eyes.
“Jason,” he said, “Two Christians in China appeared to us in our dreams last night. They appeared to both of us— both of us! They told us to tell you that they are praying for you.”
“Praying for me? Why? Praying for what?”
“For your cancer. Now that it’s back,” she replied.
And like Moses scurrying into the cleft of the rock, I instinctively took a step away from them; one is not bold in an encounter with God.
“It is good for me that I was afflicted,
that I might learn thy statutes.”
Or as Saint Augustine translates verse seventy-one in his exposition of the psalm, “It is good for me that I suffer; so that, I might turn to your word.”
Every year on the liturgical calendar, the church concludes the Season of Epiphany and pivots to the period of Lent by pointing believers to Christ’s Transfiguration on Mount Tabor. All three Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) report that Jesus ascends a “high mountain” along with him Peter, James, John. All three Gospels concur that atop the mountain, the disciples witness Mary’s boy ablaze with the uncreated light of God. St. Luke writes that “the fashion of his countenance was altered, and his raiment was white and glistering.” St. Matthew testifies that “His face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light.” Meanwhile, St. Mark says, “His raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow, so as no fuller on earth can white them.”
All three Gospels agree that suddenly, in that moment, the disciples see Jesus clearly in all his fullness— a fullness that alters the reality around them, for the dead and gone (Moses and Elijah) appear surprisingly alive and present to Jesus. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are unanimous that the sight of Jesus in his fullness fills the disciples with fright. A dread silence falls over James and John while Peter attempts to quell his terror with chatter, “LORD, it is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.” Mark, Luke, and Matthew all report that God responds to their fear with mercy. A cloud—the cloud, the cloud of the presence, which led Israel through the wilderness— descends upon the mountain and obscures from their eyes the mystery their minds cannot bear. All three Synoptics agree that from within the cloud on Tabor the disciples hear a continuation of what the Father spoke over the Jordan at Jesus’ baptism, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased…listen to him.”
And all three Synoptic Gospels agree that what bookends the Transfiguration are Christ’s predictions of his coming passion. “From that time,” Matthew reports just before the Transfiguration, “Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” “If anyone would follow after me,” Jesus announces immediately before ascending the high mountain, “let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” And after they have descended the mountain, Jesus resumes the subject, “The Son of Man will certainly suffer at their hands.” Matthew, Mark, and Luke all concur that the glory of the Transfiguration is bracketed by the suffering of the cross. However, only Luke details what Jesus is doing when the apostles see him transfigured into glory.
He is praying.
Indeed, according to Luke, he ascends the mountain in order to pray.
He is praying. Which begs the question: What is he praying?
Before he ascends the mountain, he is talking about his suffering.
After he descends the mountain, he is talking about his suffering.
Therefore on the mountain, he is praying about his suffering.
As it will be in Gethsemane so it is on Tabor: the Son is giving his fear and dread over to his Father in loving trust. And that, St. Luke reports, is the moment that the apostles see Jesus in all his luminous splendor. When the disciples finally see him fully for who he is, Jesus is on his knees, handing his suffering over to his Father in prayer— that is what transfigures him into glory.
Meditating on the Transfiguration, the nineteenth century Scottish theologian George MacDonald writes:
“The Son, oppressed with the thought of that which now drew very nigh, sought the comfort and sympathy of his Father, praying in the prospect of his decrease. Let us observe then how, in heaving off the weight of this awful shadow by prayer, he did not grow calm and resigned alone, but his faith broke forth so triumphant over the fear, that it shone from him in physical light. Every cloud of sorrow, touched with such a power of illumination, is itself changed into a glory. The radiance goes hand in hand with the dread. The Transfiguration then was the divine defiance of the coming darkness. The outer man shone with the delight of the inner man— for his Father was with him— so that even his garments shared in the glory. Such is what the presence of God will do for every suffering man.”
It is good for me that I suffer.
So that, I might turn to your word.
“They told us to tell you that they are praying for you.”
I backed away and waited for my heart to slow.
“You speak Chinese?” I asked, trying to find my footing.
“No,” she answered, “Not even to order off a menu. And I didn’t get the sense they speak English. I can’t explain it exactly, but when we woke, we looked you up and found you weren’t far from us. Don’t you see, Jason? That’s why we had to come today. It wasn’t just a dream.”
“No one knows but my wife,” I mumbled, as dumbfounded as Peter on Mount Tabor, “No one knows but Ali.”
“But obviously you’ve given it over to Jesus,” she said.
I nodded.
“Well then, of course others know.”
I stared at her, not comprehending the connection.
“For everyone who is in Christ,” her husband proclaimed to me, “No one is in Christ alone.”
To recapitulate the previous sermons:
The very existence of the universe is the event of obedience. God creates with the same moral addresses with which he gives the commandments. God the Father says, “Let there be light.” And God the Son heeds the command, “And there was light.” God speaks in order to bring the world to pass. He utters a command; the command is obeyed, and the obeying act is the existence of the world.
But this pattern of address and response, utterance and obedience, is not limited to the law; it is the shape of prayer as well. And Jesus is both one who prays and one who receives prayers. Jesus prays while simultaneously being the one to whom we pray. Moreover, whatever Jesus did is a revelation of God. As Jesus says to the begrudgers in the Gospel of John, “Truly, I say to you, the Son does nothing but what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise.” Jesus prays; therefore, prayer is proper to the life of God. In fact, we can press the point even further and say that the very existence of the universe is the event of prayer. Because of his communion with the Father, Jesus creates human nature by his praying exactly as he undoes the power of death by his dying. The Son’s prayer to the Father in their Spirit is the existence of the world. That is, when we pray “Our Father,” we are not imitating Jesus. We are praying in the Son. As Robert Jenson writes, “It is only because Jesus’ disciples are invited by him to share his relation to God, to call on God as Father, that we dare pray at all.”
We pray not in imitation of Jesus.
We pray in Jesus.
And in Jesus— in his Body, we are but a few members of a myriad; such that, when we pray, whenever we pray, we are never alone. What’s more, in that prayer is a form of suffering, we never suffer alone. As the Risen Jesus says to the future apostle about the disciples he was persecuting and even murdering, “Saul, Saul, why are you abusing (who?) me?” The community of believers just is the risen body of the LORD. So much so, the scriptures claim Christ’s suffering is not finished upon the cross, not because the cross was incomplete but because the risen Christ is not solitary. And his body is still in the world. As Paul writes in his Epistle to the Colossians, “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.” The body of Jesus is the body of believers.
We pray not in imitation of Jesus.
We pray in Jesus.
Just so, to pray in Christ is to be with others. This is the word, the statute, that makes it possible for the psalmist to pray, “It is good for me that I suffer.”
“For everyone who is in Christ,” her husband proclaimed to me, “No one is in Christ alone.”
Then his wife laid her hand on my shoulder, “They’re praying for you. And now we’re praying with them for you. We don’t know the why of suffering, but we do know the how of it.”
In June 1939, with the Emergency Pastors’ Seminary closed by the Gestapo and conscription into military service looming, Dietrich Bonhoeffer set sail for his second visit to the United States. He arrived in New York City just as Mein Kampf debuted in English on bookstore shelves. Despite the best efforts of friends and colleagues at Union Theological Seminary, Bonhoeffer could not overcome his “acute sense of dislocation.” “Everything,” he wrote home to his best friend Eberhard Bethge, “feels freighted with melancholy.” In other words, Bonhoeffer struggled to pray for his friends and family, who remained trapped in Germany, while also being safely removed from the dangers and hardships they suffered. His prayers, he came to believe, demanded that he be with them. “Is it cowardice and weakness to run away from the here and now?” he wrote to Bethge, “I can hardly tear my thoughts away from Germany.” After a mere six weeks of refuge in America, Bonhoeffer resolved to return home and join the struggle that would cost him his life.
From the deck of the Queen Mary, Bonhoeffer wrote to his friend about his “free decision to suffer:”
“Since I have been on the ship, the interior conflict about my future has ceased. I can think about the abbreviated time in America without self-reproach. I just read the scripture for today: “It is good for me that I have suffered; that I might learn thy word” (Psalm 119.71. From my favorite psalm, my favorite verse.”
Four years before his brief sojourn in the states, Bonhoeffer delivered a lecture to his students at the underground seminary entitled, “Service to God and Service to Neighbor.”
In it, he taught:
“The life of the church-community means participating in the cross by bearing the cross— bearing the cross is nothing other than the visible form of love for one another. The death of Christ, into which each Christian is drawn, took place on the cross of Christ, but it also takes place in baptism just as it takes place in suffering with others. Through such daily dying, the disciple participates in the sufferings of Christ. As a member of Christ’s body, each disciple participates in the LORD’s suffering. And this daily dying with Christ justifies a person from sin.”
That is, it transfigures the believer into Christ.
Into the likeness that is the strange glory of God.
After the Father declares above Mount Tabor, “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well-pleased; listen to him,” nothing but silence ensues. Jesus utters not a single word. He offers no explanation beyond what they have seen. They have seen Jesus on his knees, giving over to the Father his fear of his coming suffering. And they have seen that act of prayer somehow render Jesus more fully himself. But Jesus provides no explanation. Not until they have descended the mountain does Jesus speak. And when he finally does speak, he’s back to talking about the cross.
“Listen to him!”
Listen to me: neither the Psalms nor the Gospel suggest that suffering itself is good. Affliction itself is not good. But cruciform suffering is good. Not suffering we chase, not wounds we baptize as holy, but suffering carried to the Father in the Son. Not every wound is life-giving. But Christ’s wounds are life-giving. And every wound can become his wounds if we take them to him. Every wound can be transfigured into grace if, like Jesus, we offer it up to our Father in faith. Giving our suffering over to God— this divine defiance of our present darkness— this is how God transfigures us. The radiance goes hand in hand with our hardship.
Bonhoeffer continues his lecture to his underground students:
“Dying with Christ, participating in the cross, constitutes the entire process of Christian life as suffering for Christ. It is in this dying, this participating in the cross that one is justified by grace, and that means by the power of the suffering of Christ. This transfiguration thus always includes the entire body of Christ. It is only as members in that body that all these things are given to us. Dying always includes our relationship to one another.”
Which is to say, the Father of our LORD Jesus Christ does not give us an explanation for why there is suffering in our lives. God does not give us an explanation; God gives us a community with whom we suffer in Christ. Exactly as he predicted on Palm Sunday, the cross is how Jesus draws all people to himself; and just so, draws suffering believers to one another.
Sharon worships remotely with the congregation from Colorado. At some point, I don’t recall when, she started to write to me after the Sunday sermon. Often she has shared her heartbreak over her son’s struggles with addiction.
Two months ago, after a relative period of silence, she sent me this message:
“Dear Jason,
Maybe you think I haven’t written lately because everything is going so well.
The too-good-to-be-true news lately is that my son is starting Denver Seminary in January. He’s been sober almost a year. I laugh when I think about the wild ways of God’s grace.
But then I cry. Attached is a picture of my daughter and me, taken three weeks ago. You’ll notice that she doesn’t look homeless. She doesn’t look like an addict. On many days, she looks like the bright, passionate, beautiful girl who I would rather spend time with than anyone in this whole world. She is also the young woman who police had to put in restraints in September because she was in psychosis from drug and alcohol abuse. She entered treatment— again— after that incident and has been there ever since. She has no money, no car (she crashed that in August), no job, no friends, no home— and most family have given up.
You would think that I would love her easily (oh how I want to!) because I have seen the gospel take hold of my son in his suffering and transfigure him. You would think I forgive her quickly, because I remember my own story of addiction and recovery and know it was only the grace of God that brought me to repentance.
But this is the truth: every muscle in my body tenses when she calls because I am anticipating her need— again. And I am keeping score and holding a few grudges. And sadly, this is also the truth. I think every muscle in her body tenses when she’s around me— anticipating that she’s going to be a disappointment (again). She tells me she has “trouble” with Jesus. I don’t blame her because once you get caught in the vortex of poverty, it’s hard to believe a homeless man is the answer to literally all the problems in the world.
And here is the hard truth again. I think I didn’t write you because I don’t want this to be my story. It’s embarrassing to be a mom with so much need. For just one Christmas I would like to be one of those f---ing Christmas card families. But no one wants a letter about police, rehab, collections, SNAP snafus, and the issues with Medicaid sober-living houses.
SO MUCH TRUTH!
So, I write as the same woman who started writing you— a woman in need of so much gospel. As I pull out my few holiday decorations, try to figure out family gatherings to accommodate sober-living curfews and family division, and try to stretch my budget to include turkey and the trimmings and a used car for someone who everyone tells me doesn’t deserve another cent from me, I desperately need someone to proclaim the gospel to me— to remind me that we’re in this together and that we’re not alone. Pray for my girl with the beautiful hazel eyes as I certainly pray for you.
— Sharon”
It’s just an email, dated November 18, 2025.
It’s just five hundred words and a photo in my inbox.
But make no mistake: this is what glory looks like.
This is what the strange glory of God looks like.
God does not give us an explanation for suffering.
God gives us a community of fellow sufferers, with whom our wounds are being transfigured, for we are nothing less than the risen body of the Father’s beloved Son.
Hear the good news:
Not only is everything Jesus did a revelation of God, everything Jesus did is also a revelation of true humanity— your true humanity. Which means, the Triune God does more than forgive you; he is transfiguring your suffering into glory. He is making your sorrow to shine. He is yet turning your darkness to radiant light.
And strangely, he does it here.
The table is our Tabor.
Here the Son— who prayed through dread, who walked down the mountain toward the cross, who handed his suffering over to the Father— gives himself to suffering you.
He gives not an explanation.
He gives a promise.
He gives the promise that the loaf and the cup— this strange glory— are nothing less than his broken body and his shed blood. They are, here and now, his wounds; so that, by his wounds you can be more than healed.
Transfigured.
This is divine defiance in the face of darkness.
This is strange glory.
Glory that looks like a body given.
Glory that looks like blood shed.
Glory that draws suffering people together.
For everyone who is in Christ is never in Christ alone.
Thus, you do not come to this table by yourself.
You come with Sharon in Colorado, aching for a daughter she cannot fix. You come with Dietrich on the deck of the Queen Mary, turning back toward danger because prayer demanded presence. You come with those saints in China whose intercession reached a sanctuary in Virginia. You come with the whole communion of the afflicted, the forgiven, the being-made-new.
Because this is what the church is! We do not have an explanation for suffering. We have one another. This is what church is: not a gathering of the unscarred but the risen Body of the Scarred One. And here— here—your affliction is not answered. It is taken up. Here your wounds are not denied. They are gathered into his wounds. Here your suffering is not baptized as holy in itself but it is carried to the Father in the Son, and so it is not wasted. It is transfigured.
“It is good for me that I suffer…”
Not because suffering is good.
Not because cancer is good.
Not because addiction is good.
Not because grief is good.
But because here, in this bread and this wine, God teaches you his word, “This is me…given for you.”
The table is our Tabor.
And here, he teaches you that glory looks like brokenness shared. At this table, he teaches you that love looks like a body given away without regard for merit. In wine that is his blood and bread that his body, he teaches you that life comes by self-offering and that the radiance goes hand in hand with the dread.
So come.
Come with your diagnosis.
Come with your resentments.
Come with your exhaustion.
Come with your unanswered questions and your fear and your suffering.
Bring it to the Father in the Son.
Come to the table.
Take and eat.
And he will make you shine.
