|
When we
preachers arrive at the most familiar stories of the Bible, we face a few
different temptations: we might think about taking
an old sermon out of the barrel (always a mistake!); we think about asking
one of the Associates or the Intern to preach (gets unfair after a while!)
or we end up delving into the smallest details of the story to find
something fresh to say. Today’s story is one of these most familiar stories;
it comes up every year on the final week before Lent. So what to do? Well
here I am preaching. I have a new finely crafted
sermon; it is me, not Susan, Brent, Bettina or Mike, and no small details,
because this entire story tells us not to get mired in the details, but to
widen our scope to see a bigger picture, to see big, to see Jesus
transformed and transfigured.
Leading up to this event, Mark has been telling
stories about people bogged down by the small stuff. We
have the Pharisees worried over cleanliness regulations. In response to them,
Jesus says stop worrying about washing each cup correctly and worry more
about your behavior, the big stuff like murder, adultery, pride. In the
aftermath of Jesus multiplying the loaves to feed a huge crowd, the
disciples worry out loud that somehow Jesus is criticizing them! Then, at
Caesarea Philippi, Jesus is undoubtedly happy that Peter finally connected
Jesus with Messiah, but then Peter gets caught up in his fear over the
details of Jesus’ death. Jesus has to urge him not to see like a human,
but to see with God’s vision.
By relating these incidents, Mark is showing us that Jesus prepared his
disciples to make connections between Jesus’ life and his teachings to the
whole sacred salvation story of God. If Mark’s Gospel were a murder mystery,
the Transfiguration would be that
“Aha”
moment when all the pieces of the puzzle finally begin to fit together. This
is the moment when we, and the disciples, begin to understand that what is
going on here is much bigger than the man Jesus, bigger than a local
phenomenon, bigger than just a moment in history. What is being transfigured
here, in addition to the physical appearance of Jesus, is our ability to
understand the fullness of the movement of God in the world. Germany Guide
Book – no horizontal lines all vertical – UP.
In Memphis, Tennessee, on the last night of his life, April
3, 1968, Martin
Luther King, Jr. said: “Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got
some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve
been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to
live a long life, longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that
now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the
mountain, and I’ve looked over and I’ve seen the
promised land. I may not get there with you. I want you to know tonight,
that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight.
I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing anyone, mine eyes have seen
the glory of the coming of the Lord.”
As Lent stretches before us, we should know
that we have been invited to go up the mountain, and look over; invited to
focus on the glory of the coming of the Lord, on the big things Jesus has
for us to hear and do; invited to listen to our souls, to stop doing
business as usual; invited to enter the wilderness, to climb the mountain,
to stick our heads in the clouds; invited to see God face to face, and to
live. There is a promised land of healing and wholeness, for us and for our
world, it lies beyond the wilderness, on the other side of the mountain. If
we look, we will see. We will see, in the shadow of the cross, the glory of
the coming of the Lord.
A best-selling book popularized the concept “don’t sweat the
small stuff, and it’s all small stuff.” The gospels beg to differ with the
second part of that equation. There is indeed a great deal of “small stuff”
in life, and we very much need to get a handle on it. But there is also “big
stuff,” like loving neighbors and enemies, like seeking first the kingdom of
God, like
forgiveness. The scripture story allows us to distinguish between the small
and unimportant stuff, and the big stuff, the important things. In these
verses we see the big picture:
Christ is Real Savior!
Jesus is liberating power, when we proclaim and receive this truth, Jesus
sets people free.
According to ancient Russian spirituality, we pass God by every day,
transfigured both in our innermost selves and in all those we encounter on
our journey. God is transfigured not only on a mountain,
but as the suffering victim; God is the one who is hungry, despised,
cast out; the fool, the alien, the immigrant, the beggar. God is the one who
needs our care and our assistance. God is the family torn by addiction,
anger, divorce, and despair. God is in the millions of our brothers and
sisters whose slow journey to Golgotha is starvation.
We
encounter God not through concepts, but in people, through our hearts, in our souls, in our guts! We discover the God, the
real God, where God appears least likely to be found. It is a great
gift to see the divine on a high mountain, as Peter, James, and John did,
but this is no gift at all if we miss God everywhere else. We need to be
looking for Jesus in both the holy and the humdrum.
Why do churches fall into disputes about
small details? Church congregations, at least these days, are more likely to
fight over whose job it is to clean up the kitchen than over some
theological truth! I have decided that part of my role as one of your
pastors is to try to help the whole congregation look at a bigger picture
than get focused on every stress and strain in the life of this precious
community that is NPC. I need to help remind all of us about the important
questions: What is God doing in the world? Where does God need our voices,
our hands, our feet to serve not just ourselves, but the people of our
communities and world? What is the mission to which God has called us?
God asks us to move past setting up our little booths on the mountain so we
can listen to Jesus and follow Jesus into a threatening world.
Bible Jewish scholar Abraham Heschel often said the Bible is “not a book to
be read, but a drama in which to participate.” To make most sense of the
Bible, to come to the best interpretation of what it says, requires more
than dispassionate, aloof analysis, detached thinking, and a scorning the
mythical detail with cool intelligence, Instead we realty do need to clamber
up the mountain, to jump into the whirlwind, to allow ourselves to meet God.
The point of our scripture for today is not all about deciding if the story
is factual, but to decide if it is true. As Michael White, a professional
storyteller, has said, “All my stories are true -
and some of them even happened!”
In his book on interpretation of scripture, “Ichabod Toward Home: The
Journey of God’s Glory”, Walter Brueggemann, lately of Columbia Seminary,
suggests that many of our modes of interpreting the Bible
are in fact ways of protecting ourselves from the demands of scripture or,
in terms of the Transfiguration, avoiding worship. He says we try to tame
scripture by making it historical, did it happen? By
asking if it is rational and logical, or traditional, does it fit the dogma
of the church? Rather than allow such approaches to dull our sense of the
God of the Bible Brueggemann suggests that we need fertile imagination so
that scripture, and the God of scripture, might take hold of us, and speak
to us in all of its sovereign freedom. Bible stories, like the story of
Jesus’ transfiguration, he says are “utterances that assault our closely
held worlds. They are surprise raids, surprise assaults on imagination…” This
Lent, can we be more ready to allow God to speak to us in and through our
imagination?
According to a news report, a certain private school in Washington recently
was faced with a unique problem. A number of 12-year-old girls were
beginning to use lipstick and would put it on in the bathroom. That was
fine, but after they put on their lipstick, they
would press their lips to the mirror, leaving dozens of little lip prints.
Every night, the maintenance man would remove them and the next day, the
girls would put them back. Finally, the principal
decided that something had to be done. She called all the girls to the
bathroom and met them there with the maintenance man. She explained that all
these lip prints were causing a major problem for the custodian who had to
clean the mirrors every night. To demonstrate how difficult it had been to
clean the mirrors, she asked the maintenance man to show the girls how much
effort was required. He took out a long-handled squeegee, dipped it in the
toilet bowl, and cleaned the mirror with it. Since then, there have been no
lip prints on the mirror.
The story of the transfiguration, this vision of Christ on the mountaintop,
is one of those biblical texts that can change us and remake us as we enjoy
it, as we wonder at it, as we relish it with delight. In these few fleeting,
holy moments, in the midst of so much that was humdrum, we are witnesses to
the worship of Jesus by the inner circle of his disciples. In this
encounter, God would draw all of us closer and close to the very heart of
our faith. Our faith is a revealed religion.
It is not something we thought up or devised, it
comes to us from a promise-making God, and it can only be received, welcomed
and celebrated as a gift, God’s gift to us and for us and in us. The
transfiguration of Christ on the mountain is
pure worship,
the heart of our faith and our response to faith. We cannot fully explain
it, but we can experience it and the glory of it all.
Jesus’ transfiguration on the mountain occurs for Him and for the disciples
amidst a rather humdrum narrative of events that have, and will take place
down in the valley. But that one surprising day, up on the mountain, the
spectacular broke into the normal, the extraordinary cracked open the
ordinary. And for a shining moment, the disciples see, fully, the disciples
believe, fully.
Lord, it is good for us to be here!
My friends, today our God invites us and has made it possible for us, for
you and me, and all of us to live and believe with imagination and passion
as we move into the season of Lent. As we do so,
we will be met by Jesus; we will be inspired and
changed and renewed. Even as we watch Jesus descend to the cross and to
despair, we will also be watching for that day to
dawn when we will see our Risen Lord victorious over death and defeat and
despair, freed from sin and prejudice able to bring each and all of us, and
all like us, and all unlike us into the one glorious resurrection Kingdom
- where we can join our voices and our words and
our deeds as part of the eternal worship of the God of all goodness, the God
of all grace. So join me in making this your prayer,
Lord Jesus as you were glorified on the mountain top -
be glorified in our lives, in how we live, in all we do and in all we
refrain from doing. Amen. |
