II Corinthians 4:1-6
Mark 9:2-9
Some of the best stories in the Bible do not speak to us directly in our present circumstances. Instead, they jar us out of our familiar world, and carry us—however briefly—someplace we’ve never been.
The Bible takes us into a weird world. Remember that the English word “weird” has its origin in the German word werden—meaning “to become.” The Bible tells us of a God who is always doing new things, a God who calls us to become new people. Whenever there is a period of becoming, a period of change, there is a sense of “weirdness.”
We are people in process. The author of I John put it this way: “Beloved, we are God’s children now: what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: When God is revealed, we will be like God, for we will see God as God is.” (I John 3:2)
We are God’s children now—I like that. God alone knows what we will be.
And that, of course, is why we need to hear stories like the one we heard this morning.
We need to hear stories like this because we live in weird times. Our nation and the world are changing in many ways and what will become of us is not yet revealed. Will we make America great again? Will we descend into autocracy, following the trajectory suggested in the new book How Democracies Die? Which will come first—nuclear destruction or global transformation brought on by uncontrolled and uncontrollable climate change? I recently started reading the book The New Jim Crow—there’s a few discussion groups in this congregation that are working their way through this book as well. It makes the disturbing case that, for centuries, whenever there are times of upheaval in our nation, white people find new ways of oppressing and restricting the rights of African Americans. Get that book. Join the discussion.
We live in weird times—times of changing and becoming.
And it doesn’t get much weirder than this: Jesus talking with the long dead Moses and Elijah. Jesus shining with a radiance far brighter than the new snow under the sun in a blue February sky. And the clear voice of God coming out of a cloud like it does in some New Yorker cartoon.
An astonished Peter says to Jesus: “Hey, this is great! Let’s build some houses and stay here.” Mark adds the obvious—that Peter really didn’t have the slightest idea of what he should say. As is often the case, he and James and John are terrified.
Peter and James and John are our role models. Or at least reasonable examples of how those who follow Christ behave. We speak without knowing what it is we are saying.
And often, trying to freeze things in place seemed a good idea.
There are times in life when we want to speak those words: “Stay here.”
Sometimes it’s when things are going well and everything seems comfortable. Why upset the delicate balance? Stay here.
Sometimes it’s when there are problems and controversy and no good solution is in sight. It seems safer not to move, safer not to explore new directions. Things are unbalanced enough. Stay here.
Sometimes it’s when life has been so full that it seems best not to push it any further. Stay here.
Of course, we can’t “stay here.”
Time moves on.
Life moves on.
The direction of time is always forward. This is a mystery that physicists haven’t quite figured out—that we can only go in one direction and we can’t freeze ourselves in one instant of time. And while the physicists might not understand this, in faith we recognize that all time—and all time is in Gods’ hands.
So, too, our personal lives and our life together as a congregation and, really, the life of the world are all in God’s hands. Life doesn’t stand still. It just keeps moving forward. We can stay where we are. And we certainly can’t go back to what we were—even if we wanted to.
God will not be frozen. The action of God’s Spirit among us will not be restricted.
Let’s be honest. There is no immediate connection between this story and our lives. We can’t draw quick lessons from it about how to deal with North Korea or what seems to be the daily degradation of values and principles we long thought inviolable. There is no immediate connection between this story and our lives—and maybe that’s best, because it coaxes us to stay with Jesus on that mountain awhile longer, to wonder a little more than we might otherwise.
The Hebrew Scriptures, the Law and the Prophets, tell of God's involvement with the world. The God who creates all that is also guides God’s people with the Torah—we call it “the Law” but “the Way” might be a better translation. The God who sustains also leads God’s people back with words of judgment and comfort spoken by the prophets. God does not abandon the world but in love stays with us.
This love, spoken of in the Torah and Prophets, is finally shown in the Word becoming flesh. God incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth works for the reconciliation of all creation. At the heart of our faith tradition is God’s love for all creation.
This story of what is called the “transfiguration” of Jesus is often read on the Sunday before Ash Wednesday. As we move toward a time of thinking about our own mortality—and even more about the life-giving death and resurrection of Jesus—the curtain of reality is pulled back so that we can see where we are heading.
We get a glimpse of the glory of God. When we speak of the glory of God we point to an ecstasy that includes joy and happiness, beauty and the thrill of great power and meaning, the overflowing of all that is cherished and desired. Theologians suggest that it is something like the feeling aroused in us by bright, concentrated light—something that can only be described by pointing to that feeling.
Through all the gloom of Lent and the gray late winter/early spring days ahead, there is the light of God shining on our lives.
In that light, we might see ourselves as a community of transfiguration. We can’t offer a neat solution to every problem. But we can offer something needed even more—a vision of grace and compassion in controversy. And that is sorely needed in our nation. Often we regard all of the divisions that exist in our nation as an affliction; often they are. But if we can embrace an awareness of God as the only real absolute, we can show the world something beyond the tentative peace that grows from “understanding our differences,” namely the peace that passes all understanding.
We can also offer a vision of the body broken and “re-membered.” Created in God’s image, we have seen that image broken in every conceivable way. We have seen human welfare considered apart from nature’s welfare. We have seen public morality separated from private morality. And as one person put it, we have seen social justice held aloof from economic justice—so that the current ideal of fairness is one in which people of every race, creed, gender, and sexual orientation eat their breakfasts out of a garbage dumpster while people of every race, creed, gender, and sexual orientation get to look on and laugh.
Against this fragmentation, we offer the vision of Christ’s body broken for us and Christ’s body fully resurrected: a vision of our human condition as wounded but gloriously whole. We can speak of resurrection, of God’s power to bring life out of death, health out of decay.
We can hold out the possibility that something positive can come even from the worst of situations, even from death on a cross. Resurrection suggests that there is a power that can still bring new life to our lives, and to our community, our nation, and our world.
And so, as Paul would suggest, we do not loose heart. We have a ministry here. God calls us to remind ourselves and others that, as weird as it seems, we are becoming a new creation. We are called to announce that good can come out of evil, life out of death, light out of shadows, new growth from decay.
Elie Wiesel told that wonderful story of a prophet who came to a city and delivered his message every day in the marketplace. After some time, his ranting became a fixture of the city’s life and people simply regarded him with amusement—when they regarded him at all. Finally, a child, pitying the old man, approached him and said, “Sir, why do you keep crying aloud like this every day, year after year? The people here will never listen to you.”
“I gave up hope that they would listen to me a long time ago,” said the prophet. “I go on crying lest I begin listening to them.”
Will the world, or this city, be changed by what we say, what we do? Probably not all of it, though perhaps a part. What is especially important is that we remain faithful to what we have seen in the transfigured Christ—the vision of God remaking a broken world.
As you know, Lent begins this Wednesday. Ash Wednesday is a day on which Christians acknowledge our mortality and our limits and our sin. This is important for us to do and I encourage all of you to take the time to worship here at 7:00 this coming Wednesday evening. And if you were thinking “I’m too busy for this,” or “I can’t be bothered,” I invite you to think again and come to this place of a time of prayer and the assurance of God’s forgiving love.
But we should not jump quickly toward the ashes.
There is a playful word of warning line in Talmud, the Jewish commentary on the Hebrew scriptures, that says: “One will have to give an account in the judgment day of every good thing which one might have enjoyed and did not.”
The days before Lent have traditionally been a time of enjoyment, of festivity—a time of enjoying the good things of life. We move toward Mardi Gras—Fat Tuesday. And here we take some Congregational liberty and stretch the festivity out to late Wednesday afternoon.
So before that Ash Wednesday worship service, join us down in Rockwood Hall—eat the fat sausage, the buttery pancakes, the eggs. Everyone is invited, whether you have been a member here for years or this is the first time you’ve walked through our doors. Enjoy the goodness of the food. Take a chance and sit near someone you barely know or have never met. Enjoy the goodness of each other.
As we eat and talk together, see that even in these weird times, we have the love and support of one another. Even as our world is becoming something new, so we too are being made a new creation in Christ. Even as so many voices would say: “Be afraid, look out for yourself, stay here!”—take this time to eat, drink, and be merry, to laugh a little, to see once again that you are not alone, to see the shining face of God in the person across the table from you.
These are weird days. We need each other.
These are weird days. God knows what we will become as we are changed from glory into glory.[i]
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See discussion of What Can Christians Give? by Garret Keizer in February 2000 Christian Century.