Sermon for Transfiguration Sunday, Year C, "Transfiguration," Luke 9:28-36

Sermon 3/3/19

Luke 9:28-36

Transfiguration

It isn’t often that The United Methodist Church makes front page news in the national mainstream media. But this week, almost every major news organization was running stories about The United Methodist Church in the aftermath of the Special Session of General Conference. From the New York Times: United Methodists Tighten Ban on Same-Sex Marriage and Gay Clergy - NYTimes, ‘We Are Not Going Anywhere’: Progressive Methodists Vow to Fight Ban on Gay Clergy, and Why a Vote on Gay Clergy and Same-Sex Marriage Could Split the United Methodist Church. From the Washington Post: United Methodist Church tightens ban on gay marriage, LGBTQ clergy. From NPR: United Methodists Face Fractured Future. We’re in the news, but I don’t think the headlines are the kind we want. I don’t think, certainly, that folks thinking about exploring their faith, trying out a relationship with a church, are going to be particularly drawn to The United Methodist Church by those headlines, which reflect a denomination in pain and turmoil. I experienced a taste of this even closer to home this past week. Some of you know we hosted an event at church this past week - the New York State Council of Churches came to lead a conversation on Budget Principles for New York State. As people of faith, what would a “just” state budget look like? We invited members of the press to attend, and it was my responsibility to contact folks from the Watertown Daily Times. In my email correspondence, my contact person immediately shifted the conversation to ask about what had happened at General Conference. He said, in essence, that he couldn’t imagine that the news would be helpful in building up church attendance. And indeed, I had folks in our community contacting me this week to ask - what does this mean for gay and lesbian people I know? Are they welcome at our church? I know, friends, we have a variety of points of view in our congregation, and folks supported different plans coming to General Conference. But I also know that we strive to be a congregation that welcomes all people. In fact, we write that on our bulletin covers every week. All people are welcome here. We are not always perfect at embodying those words, but I think we can agree that that is our intention, our aim, what we strive for. Still, though: What do we do with the painful experiences of this week? How do we respond to the hurt and harm folks are experiencing? How do we respond when we’re in the news, but the news doesn’t sound so good?

Two summers ago now, I preached a series here on women in the bible - do you remember that? One of the Sundays we looked at a story from the book of Judges, the story of the Judge Deborah, and the story of a woman named Jael. When faced with a conquering army, Deborah oversaw the battle, and Jael, finding herself with the main enemy of Israel in her tent, drove a tent peg through his skull while he was sleeping. The Bible is full of fascinating stories, isn’t it? As I was preparing my sermon that week, I was sharing with friends that although I felt like folks would learn from my sermon, learn a Bible story they didn’t know, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say about the story. What should we learn about our own lives from Deborah and Jael? And one of my friends responded with a question: “What’s the good news in the text?” That simple question helped me so much - in that sermon, and since then. We can talk about Bible stories until we’re blue in the face. But if we don’t have any good news to share, we don’t have anything meaningful to share at all. We’re a people of the good news. The word “gospel” means good news. Jesus is the embodiment of good news. That God loves us, offers us grace without condition is good news. That we don’t have to wait until we die to live in God’s kin-dom, but instead can be part of bringing God’s reign to earth right now is good news. We’re people of good news. And so when we read the Bible, we read looking for good news. So that’s what I’m asking today, even as I am grieving the heartbreak in a denomination I love: Where’s the good news?

Today is a - well, a weird Sunday in the liturgical calendar, the calendar that sets the rhythm of our church year. It’s the last Sunday before Lent begins on Ash Wednesday. And today, we celebrate a Sunday called Transfiguration Sunday. Transfiguration Sunday celebrates the transfiguration of Jesus. And the transfiguration itself is hard to describe, but we might understand it as Jesus’ true nature – all his divinity, his godliness – momentarily being seen while he still walked on earth with us, revealed to Peter, James, and John. For a brief moment, Jesus is transfigured, and his holiness is unveiled in a sense, and three of his closest disciples witness it. To be honest, this probably still doesn’t sound very exciting to us, does it? Maybe just more confusing than anything. And indeed, I don’t think reading about it will ever convey to us exactly what happened on that day, or what Peter, James, and John actually saw and felt. But I think we can study this passage and get a better sense of things, and learn to relate to their experiences – and I think that’s what’s key for us to finding good news today.

The text opens with “eight days later.” Eight days after what? The previous chapter tells us it is eight days after Peter answered the question “Who do you say that I am?” with “The Messiah of God” to Jesus, and then Jesus proceeds to tell them that he will suffer, be killed, and raised, and that anyone who wants to follow him should be prepared to take up a cross too. So eight days after this, Jesus takes Peter, James and John up the mountain. There he is transfigured, changed in some way, face shining like the sun, and seen speaking with Moses and Elijah, who represent the law and the prophets, the pillars of Judaism. Together, Jesus, Elijah and Moses talk about what Jesus is trying to accomplish in Jerusalem. What exactly does it mean to be transfigured? The text is vague, but here’s what we can figure out. Transfigured is like but not exactly the same as transformed. To transform means “to make a thorough or dramatic change in the form, appearance, or character of.” In other words, there’s a change, but the change can be positive or negative. But transfigured is transformation with a direction. It means “to transform into something more beautiful or elevated.” (Source: google) Writes Vanessa Chan, “While a transformation simply signifies a drastic change, a transfiguration gives it direction – towards greatness, grandeur, majesty. And in a sense,” she asks, “isn’t this what we’re ultimately all aspiring towards? It occurred to me one day that these successes I’m aiming towards are really just the surface to a deeper desire: holiness. The more we can be like Christ to those around us and in the things we do, the closer we can grow in our relationship with Him. I want to be the best version of me, and God knows what that is better than anyone else.”

Meanwhile, as Jesus is transfigured and joined by Elijah and Moses, Peter, James, and John are witnessing these events unfold. Peter, Luke tells us, doesn’t really know what he’s saying, which cracks me up, that the gospel-writer paints Peter in this act-first think-second sort of way. He just barrels ahead. So, not knowing what he’s about exactly, Peter still offers to build dwellings so that they can all just stay there on the mountain. But God speaks from the overshadowing cloud that frightens the disciples: “This is my Son, the Chosen; listen to him!” The words from God echo those spoken at Jesus’ baptism. And then Jesus is back to “normal,” and alone again with the three disciples, and they head back down the mountain, not telling anyone what they’ve experienced - at least not right away.

From texts like this one, we can easily see why we might talk about having “mountaintop experiences.” We generally use this phrase to describe a particular time when we feel close to God, where we can hear God’s voice more clearly, and where we can see the world from God’s perspective, more clearly. Mountaintop faith experiences are intense, spiritual times where it seems so much easier to see God and to understand what God wants us to do. It’s how I used to feel spending a week at summer camp when I was little – I couldn’t wait to get there, and I couldn’t wait to go back when it was over. It seemed pretty hard to capture that mountaintop experience when in the real world. I found myself thinking like Peter - couldn’t we just stay on the mountain? If God’s voice is so clear on the mountain, shouldn’t we try to be there all the time?

I’m reminded of a passage from C.S. Lewis’s The Silver Chair, Book 4 in The Chronicles of Narnia. In The Silver Chair, we meet Jill, who almost immediately makes a series of mistakes. Beyond mistakes, actually. She does some things that are hurtful. But nonetheless, she finds herself in the magical land of Narnia on a high, high mountain, and face to face with Aslan, the Great Lion, who is the Christ-figure in the series. Aslan overwhelms her. She barely knows how to be or act around him. But she wants to be there, with him, on the mountain. But instead, Aslan sends her down to the land, with a mission, actions she has to take to undo some of the harm she has caused. Aslan gives her careful instructions to follows, and Signs she will encounter to help her carry out her mission. As she is traveling, floating down off the mountain into the world, Aslan speaks these words to her. "I give you a warning," he says, "Here on the mountain I have spoken to you clearly: I will not often do so down in Narnia. Here on the mountain, the air is clear and your mind is clear; as you drop down into Narnia, the air will thicken. Take great care that it does not confuse your mind. And the Signs which you have learned here will not look at all as you expect them to look, when you meet them there. That is why it is so important to know them by heart and pay no attention to appearances. Remember the Signs and believe the Signs. Nothing else matters."

If the air is so clear on the mountain, if we can hear and understand God so easily on the mountain, if it is on the mountain that we see Christ transfigured, elevated in glory, shouldn’t we - couldn’t we please just stay there? After all, when it is just me and God - when it is just me and Jesus, when I’m just in God’s holy presence, when I’m immersed in prayer or scripture or meditation, when I’m just “all in” to my time with God, it all seems so clear. When other people get involved, back down on the ground, it all gets so muddled and messy. Isn’t it best to stay where everything is clear?

To these heartfelt questions, God says: Nope! As cool as it is for Peter and James and John to be on that mountain with Jesus, and as awesome as their vision is of a transfigured Christ, the truth is that our move toward “greatness,” the way we transform into something that is more beautiful and more elevated is not by hanging out on the mountain, but rather immersing ourselves in life in the valleys. Jesus may have appeared in his glory on the mountain, but his ministry was among the people. His holiness came not from separating himself from others, choosing a select few to witness his holiness, but rather it came from his ministry of loving people, healing people, eating with them, listening to them, and submitting himself to being beaten, tried, and crucified rather than giving in to anything that deterred him from God’s mission for him. There is no resurrection glory without taking up the cross. Jesus’s majesty comes not from being above - literally or figuratively - the mess of the world, but from being right in it, right where the pain and hurt and suffering are.

And so it is for us. We cannot withdraw from the world. We can’t abandon God’s hurting people. We can’t stick our heads in sand, or shroud ourselves, or protect ourselves and still experience transfiguration. Jesus calls us to draw strength from the clear voice of God on the mountaintop, and to live and serve in the valleys. When we’ve heard God’s voice clearly on the mountaintop, we can learn to be translators for a world that is confused and longing to hear a voice of love amidst the cacophony of hatred and judgment and violence. We have to be the clearest pictures of Christ for the world that we can be. And so the good news is this: It is in the messiness of the world that Christ’s glory is revealed most fully, and it is exactly in the mess of the world that we find our calling. Maybe the headlines are right: We are a fractured church, a fractured world, a fractured people leading fractured lives. Thankfully, Jesus heals. Thankfully, Jesus calls us onto the mountaintop, shares his power, his life, his being with us, and sets us into the world to be healers too. God’s voice is clear on the mountaintop. And the work God calls us to is clear in the valleys. Let’s share the good news. Amen.  

Sermon for Transfiguration Sunday, "A New Name: Back to Beloved," Mark 9:2-9

Sermon 2/15/15

Mark 9:2-9

A New Name: Back to Beloved

Today we’re drawing our “A New Name” series to a close, and as the title of the sermon suggests, we’re looking again at a name that we started our series with: Beloved. Way back at the beginning of this series, I told you through my surrogate preachers Liz and Tim and Bev and Laura, that I’ve been wanting to do this series for a while. We are a body made up of people and resources from South Onondaga and Navarino and Cardiff and Cedarville. But as much as those places shaped us deeply, we’re this new thing: Apple Valley. For the children of this congregation, for those who have come to this congregation in recent years, for those who are and will become a part of this congregation, the only church they know is Apple Valley, this new creation God has formed. We treasure our history, the legacy of the congregations that birthed this one, but we also treasure this new name, this new creation that God is making.

So we began, on Baptism of the Lord Sunday, by reminding ourselves that God called Jesus Beloved in his baptism, and we are God’s beloved too. Our primary identity, in a world that is constantly trying to tell us who we are and who we should be, is Beloved, God’s children, created in God’s image. When God says these words to Jesus, they are intimate and personal: “You are my Son, the beloved, with you I am well-pleased.” But in our text for today, we hear this same name, beloved, in a different way. Our scene in Mark opens just after the scene we read about in Matthew’s gospel last week. Jesus had been asking the disciples who people were saying he was, and then asked them to answer the question himself. Peter answered the Jesus was the Messiah, but then got off track when he heard Jesus talk about the suffering and death the Messiah was to face. Jesus sets Peter straight, saying followers of Jesus must take up the cross, deny themselves, and put themselves last, not first, in order to serve others.

Now, six days after this, Jesus takes three who have been so close to him, goes up a mountain with them, and is transfigured – changed, unveiled – before them. It’s hard to describe what this might be like. You’ll see some artists’ rendering of the transfiguration during the sermon today. The best we can say is: they were able to see Jesus’ full glory, and it was a sight to behold. Elijah and Moses appear and speak with Jesus – they represent the prophets and the law – the two pieces of God’s revelation thus far – and Jesus with them seems to represent a fulfillment of things. Peter doesn’t know what to do or say, and the three disciples are simply terrified by what they see. So Peter offers to build three dwellings for Jesus, Elijah, and Moses. He says it is good for them to be there. Peter’s ready to make it possible to stay – just remain there on the mountaintop to stay in this very holy, if also very scary, place. But then a cloud overshadows them, and they hear God’s voice saying, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” And then the moment is over, and they are alone with Jesus again, and he orders them, as they come down the mountain, not to tell what they experienced until after the resurrection.

            This whole passage is no doubt strange to us. But two things here are important for us to take away: first, the disciples experienced this as an extremely holy moment, where they felt like they were closer to God, and seeing more of God in Jesus, than perhaps they ever had before. Mountaintops in the scriptures are often places where people meet God, and it is from these encounters that we develop the phrase “mountaintop experience” to describe an overwhelmingly awesome experience. This, even if we don’t understand it, is what the disciples have had at the Transfiguration. And second, they want to try to stay there, remain there in that moment, prolong that time on the mountain, rather than returning to life on the ground.

            We can probably relate to both of those pieces of the transfiguration. We’ve had mountaintop experiences in our lives, I hope. Spiritual peaks or highs, moments where things seem to fall into place and we understand or experience God in a way we normally don’t, times where everything seems so good and right and meaningful. It might be at just those moments when we’re most deeply able to know and believe that we are beloved. And we’ve also experienced, I’m betting, wanting to stay in that place – stay on the mountaintop, prolong an experience where we knew the time was limited, where we knew we couldn’t stay forever.

For me, when I was younger, going to church camp every summer at Camp Aldersgate was my mountaintop place. I’ve told you, I think, how much I loved going there. As soon as Christmas was over, I would begin to wait anxiously for the arrival of the camping brochure, the list of all the camps available at Aldersgate that coming summer. Once the brochure arrived, and camps were selected, waiting until summer and camp week was so hard. I used to start packing ridiculously early - making lists of what to bring, what shirt to wear with what shorts, and tucking things away in the back of my closet, all ready for the week of camp to arrive. And then, in a flash, it would be time to take the trip to Aldersgate. During one short week at camp, it seemed so much could happen. You would meet so many people, experience so many new things, and think about and talk about your faith in a way that rarely happened in other settings, especially as a young person. And then, in another flash, it was all over. The week ended, camp ended, and being in that special place, set apart, was over for another whole year.

At first coming home from a week of camp, it was so hard to get back into things, into the normal routine, and so hard to think about waiting a whole long year to be able to go to camp again. When I was a little older, I got to work on staff at Camp Aldersgate, and I got to prolong that feeling I got from camp for a whole summer. In fact, I enjoyed that special time, that special place, that special connection with other people and with God so much that for some time I confused God's call to ordained ministry for a call to the camping ministry. When I got home from my summer on staff, I had an extremely hard time adjusting back to high-school life. I didn't want my mountaintop time to end. I wanted it to be camping season all the time. I wanted to hold on to the connection I felt with God at camp, to the connectedness to the world around me.

Dan Kimball is a pastor who authored a book called They Like Jesus But Not the Church. In the book, Kimball writes about research results that show people outside of the church have a great opinion of Jesus, his life, and his message. They just have a bad opinion – a very bad opinion – of Christians, finding them to be: hypocritical, homophobic, judgmental, and sheltered. Kimball theorizes about why this is – why do people see Christians so negatively? He concludes that without meaning to, Christians are like pretty scenes trapped in a beautiful snow globe – we live in a bubble, and we like it there, and want to stay there. We tend to mostly interact with, live near, and spend time with people who are like us and share our beliefs. Instead of being the church, the body of Christ, we focus on the church as a place, where we might invite people to come. But we’re unlikely to bring church – to bring Christ – to others. And so it is hard to reach others or be reached from inside the bubble. 

Can you relate to this image at all? I found it helpful and challenging. When we think about the Transfiguration, we can see that Peter’s immediate impulse was to create a bubble – to take this extremely holy experience and trap it, keep it, stay there and dwell in it. And we can hardly blame him. Why would he want such a profound experience to end, even if he couldn’t understand it completely? But at the same time, we have to wonder: what if Jesus had stayed up on the mountain with the disciples? What if Moses couldn’t stop basking in the wonder of the burning bush? What if Mary Magdalene stayed at the tomb with Jesus and never went to share the news? What if the shepherds and the Magi couldn’t tear themselves away from the Christ-child? What if I’d never been able to move on from summer camp? The holy places in our lives, where our place with God is confirmed, where we know we are beloved are so precious. But we’re not called to bottle them up, or put ourselves in a bubble with them – we’re called to take the holy with us as we go, to learn to find the holy in valleys, to embody God’s presence in ourselves as we go back down the mountain. That’s why when we talk about our faith lives, we usually talk not about a static place, but about faith as a journey. We worship a God who is named I AM – a living God, an active God, a God always doing a new thing. Jesus calls us to a path of discipleship using a word of movement – we’re to take up a cross and follow.

Our closing hymn is a hymn for Transfiguration Sunday called “Swiftly Pass the Clouds of Glory, written by contemporary Lutheran hymnist Amanda Husberg. Hear the words of the first verse: Swiftly pass the clouds of glory, Heaven's voice, the dazzling light; Moses and Elijah vanish; Christ alone commands the height! Peter, James, and John fall silent, Turning from the summit's rise Downward toward the shadowed valley Where their Lord has fixed His eyes. That last phrase, “where their Lord has fixed His eyes,” lets us know that the transfiguration is sort of a turning point in the gospels. After the transfiguration, Jesus “sets his face toward Jerusalem,” even as he continues to preach and teach. He begins journeying toward his crucifixion. He decidedly faces the ultimate consequences of his radical message of love. There’s no turning back. And so after Peter identifying Jesus as the Messiah, after Jesus talking about taking up the cross and following, when they travel up the mountain and see Jesus transfigured, and hear him called beloved, hear God reminding them to listen, really listen to Jesus, it is sort of a defining moment. They’ve seen Jesus in his glory, revealed, dazzling. But the work Jesus is about, the way his face is set, the people he is called to serve with his very life are back down in the valley. That’s where Jesus is headed. This is the point of no return. And the disciples still don’t get it, fully. But they follow. Because where Jesus, Beloved, goes, they follow.

Remember, the words God once said to Jesus intimately, “You are beloved,” God now says out loud, “This is my beloved.” And so too the intimate experience, the closeness to God that Peter, James, and John experience on the mountain with Jesus is meant to support, not overshadow, the work that they set out to do as they head down the mountain. And so it is with us. We are beloved, and in our holy places and moments when we feel like we’re on the mountaintop, so close to God, the desire to just stay there – us and God – is powerful. But we, dear ones, are not God’s only beloved. Jesus is God’s beloved, and with grace, extends that love to us. And so we extend it to others. We embody the love of God when we find it in others. Our God is of the mountains and the valleys, and all the places in between. And Jesus is setting his face to Jerusalem to pour his life out for others. And if he is God’s beloved, and we are God’s beloved, we are called to do the same. We are God’s beloved – thanks be to God. Trusting that, we set our face, and journey down the mountain, following Jesus. Amen.

Sermon for Transfiguration Sunday, Year A, "On the Mountain"

Sermon 3/6/11

Matthew 17:1-9, Exodus 24:12-18

On the Mountain

This Sunday is the last Sunday in our series about goals for the church. On Wednesday, Lent begins with Ash Wednesday, and our focus will change for a forty day journey. But today, the goal I want us to focus on serves as sort of a transition between where we are and where we’re going. This week, we’re talking about worship. One of our goals is to have meaningful worship that is relevant and powerful for people of all generations. Of course, as human beings, we are all so unique and different, and what is meaningful to me in worship may not be meaningful to you. As a church, we incorporate worshippers from infancy to older adulthood, and that means we try to make worship meaningful for children and teens, for young adults and young parents, for baby boomers and retirees. It is a challenge to find a balance in worship – we try to balance traditional hymns with newer music. We try to use different styles of prayer, different types of liturgy. We serve communion in different styles. We try to incorporate imagery and sounds into our worship and learning. We try to make things relevant for today’s world, while making sure that we pass on a faith that has been nurtured for thousands of years. We try to keep familiar practices while introducing new ones that respond to where we are now.

As it happens, our focus on worship this Sunday falls on a special day in the liturgical year. The last Sunday before the start of Lent is Transfiguration Sunday. Transfiguration Sunday celebrates the transfiguration of Jesus. And the transfiguration itself is hard to describe, but we might understand it as Jesus’ true nature – all his divinity, his godliness – momentarily being seen while he still walked on earth with us, revealed to Peter, James, and John. For a brief moment, Jesus is transfigured, or transformed, and his holiness is unveiled in a sense, and three of his closest disciples witness it. To be honest, this probably still doesn’t sound very exciting to us, does it? Maybe just more confusing than anything. And indeed, I don’t think reading about it will ever convey to us exactly what happened on that day, or what Peter, James, and John actually saw and felt. But I think we can study this passage and get a better sense of things, and learn to relate to their experience – and I think that’s what’s key for us.

The text opens with “six days later.” Six days after what? The previous chapter tells us it is six days after Peter both answered the question “Who do you say that I am?” with “You are the Messiah” to Jesus, and was rebuked by Jesus, who said to Peter, “get behind me, Satan,” when Peter didn’t want to hear about the suffering and death Jesus would soon face. So six days after this, Jesus takes Peter, James and John up the mountain. There he is transfigured, changed in some way, face shining like the sun, and seen speaking with Moses and Elijah, who represent the law and the prophets, the pillars of Judaism. The three disciples are afraid and confused, but yet Peter still offers to build dwellings so that they can all stay there on the mountain. But God speaks from the overshadowing cloud: “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” Jesus, back to normal, and alone again with the three, tells them to get up, not to be afraid. And they return back down the mountain.

Our Exodus text has some similar themes today – we read about Moses going up the mountain where he receives the Ten Commandments and other law from God. We read, “Then Moses went up on the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain. The glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days; on the seventh day he called to Moses out of the cloud. Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel. Moses entered the cloud, and went up on the mountain. Moses was on the mountain for forty days and forty nights.” Again, we don’t know exactly what happens “in the cloud” – but clearly a deeply spiritual holy experience happens on the mountain.

From texts like these we can easily see why we might talk about having mountain-top experiences. We generally use this phrase to describe a particular time when we feel close to God. I know with the conference youth I’ve worked with, they often speak of our events, our gatherings, as mountain-top experiences – these intense, spiritual times where it seems so much easier to see God, understand what God wants them to do. It’s how I used to feel spending a week at summer camp when I was little – I couldn’t wait to get there, and I couldn’t wait to go back when it was over. It seemed pretty hard to capture that mountain-top experience when in the real world. Something about being on the mountain-top helps makes God’s voice seem clear.

One of my favorite series of books is C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, and one book in the series has a mountain-top scene that seems on task: in book four, The Silver Chair, a young girl named Jill finds herself on a high mountain, being given a task by Aslan, the Christ-like figure of the series. Though she likes being on the mountain, near to Aslan, she soon must travel down into the world to set about the tasks he appointed for her. As she is traveling into the world, he speaks these words to her. "I give you a warning," he says, "Here on the mountain I have spoken to you clearly: I will not often do so down in Narnia. Here on the mountain, the air is clear and your mind is clear; as you drop down into Narnia, the air will thicken. Take great care that it does not confuse your mind. And the Signs which you have learned here will not look at all as you expect them to look, when you meet them there. That is why it is so important to know them by heart and pay no attention to appearances. Remember the Signs and believe the Signs. Nothing else matters."

So what does all of this, what does the transfiguration have to do with worship? I think worship is a time when we particularly seek to draw close to God. It’s like going up on a mountain, where we hope we will find God’s voice to be a bit clearer. And hopefully, like Aslan said to Jill in The Silver Chair, we can remember the Signs when we’re not on the mountain. In other words, we take our experience of closeness to God in worship and let it permeate our whole lives.

We worship because God is God and we are not! We worship because God is love and we seek to love in response. We worship because as God chooses us, creates us, we in turn want to say that we’ve chosen God above all else. It is God who we promise to love with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. And because of that, and to show that, we love our neighbors, our fellow human creations. We worship because God is who God is. And we worship because we want to know this God, encounter this God, hear from this God, be moved by this God. In his book chapter about passionate worship, Bishop Robert Schnase writes, “People are searching for worship that is authentic, alive, creative, and comprehensible, where they experience the life-changing presence of God in the presence of others . . . Worship [is when] we gather deliberately seeking to encounter God in Christ. We cultivate our relationship with God and with one another as the people of God. We don’t attend worship to squeeze God into our lives; we seek to meld our lives into God’s.” (Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations, 33-34, emphasis mine.) We come to the mountain to seek God’s voice. We come down from the mountain and seek to share God’s voice in the world and let it shape our lives.

            Over the last few weeks I’ve been giving you challenges – giving us challenges, concrete ways to live out our goals for ministry in the year ahead. I hope by now, you are getting familiar enough with them that you know them – hopefully you aren’t sick of them yet!  - but hopefully you are starting to remember them well! Our first goal is about being welcoming and sharing the good news. Our challenge is to invite and bring at least one person to worship with you in the year ahead and hopefully help that person become part of the life of this congregation. I hope you’ve already started thinking about who you want to invite. Our second challenge relates to our commitment to mission and our belief that we see Jesus when we truly see one another. So our challenge is to engage in or go deeper with a face-to-face mission, a mission that is relationship-centered. And last week we talked about stewardship and our relationship with God – our task, easy or hard – is to give, every time we give, with a spirit of joy and thanksgiving, so that every time we give it is a celebration of God at work in us.

The challenge that I want to give to you this week is for you to commit to, to fully engage in worship in the season of Lent.  Lent is a season that is just forty days long. Forty days. And during this season we begin with an Ash Wednesday service this week. We will have mid-week services all season where we’ll celebrate with a meal and communion and fellowship and conversation about mission. We have Holy Week services that are unique and special – from Palm/Passion Sunday, to Maundy Thursday with communion and stripping the sanctuary, to Good Friday and a tenebrae service or a time for prayer in the sanctuary, and finally, Easter Sunday. I guarantee to you that you will find Easter worship more meaningful if you have been part of the entire Lenten journey – you will appreciate the destination more if you know what it took to get there. If for some reason you can’t get here to worship during Lent, I encourage you to worship where you are, or to be intentional about your devotional life during the season of Lent.

            If you are interested in talking more about worship and styles of worship and what makes worship meaningful, I invite you to join a small group conversation on Friday, March 25^th, at 6pm. If you want to participate in worship – behind the scenes, up front, in designing worship, or leading worship, please let me or a member of the worship committee know. Worship is the work of all God’s people, and I want you to be invested in our time together with God.

            On Wednesday Lent begins, and worship is at the heart of our Lenten journey. Come, let us worship. Amen.  

Sermon for Transfiguration, "Beyond the Veil"

Sermon 2/14/10, Exodus 34:29-35, 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2, Luke 9:28-36

Beyond the Veil

Can you think of times when someone’s face has seemed particularly radiant to you? Many people of course comment that pregnant women have a glow about them – something on their face that tells the precious thing they’re carrying with them. On this Valentine’s Day, maybe we can think of the look shared between two that are just about to be married at a wedding ceremony, while they are saying vows and exchanging rings and waiting for the pastor to announce them married. I think children’s faces can have a radiant glow, when they just throw back their heads and laugh at something that strikes them funny, with their eyes sparking with pure joy.

Have you ever encountered someone whose face was so radiant that it was hard to look at? Think of how we know that it can damage your vision to look directly into the sunlight. It’s simply too bright, too powerful for us to gaze at for any length of time, on a clear day. Yesterday I was driving west along Route 5 just at sunset, and the sun was so bright that people kept slowing down in traffic, because it was ironically so bright that it was hard to see.

If you keep these images in mind, you might have an easier time grasping today’s special day. Today is Transfiguration Sunday. It’s one of those strange Sundays that’s a special day on the Liturgical Calendar, but that no one really knows about or understands or gets excited about. It’s the last Sunday before the season of Lent begins, the last Sunday in-between season after Epiphany. And it marks the day when Jesus is ‘transfigured’ on the mountain, in the presence of Peter and John and James. Transfigured here means that Jesus’ appearance changes in a way that his glory, his divinity, becomes particularly transparent, easy for the disciples there to witness. Now why does this event get its own special Sunday in our calendar? I hope after we study our texts today we’ll see more clearly.

Our three scripture lessons weave together perfectly today. First, we read in Exodus a passage about how the people react to Moses after he comes down from the mountain, having encountered God. Moses has been spending time on Mount Sinai receiving commandments from God, which will be the law of the people. And mountains, throughout the scriptures, represent holy ground places where people can go to be close to God. We don’t find it so different today, perhaps – people often find mountain-tops to be awe-inspiring, if not holy places, and people often refer to encounters with the holy and spiritual highs as “mountain-top experiences.” So, when Moses comes down from the mountain, his face is shining, glowing, because of his encounter with God. But somehow, the people find Moses difficult to look at – his shining face makes them uncomfortable, fearful. And so Moses starts wearing a veil when he comes down the mountain, so that the people can listen to his message from God without having to be so frightened. The veil is a distancing device – Moses gets close to God, but the people seem too afraid to ever draw too close, even to Moses. The veil separates them from the reflection of God’s holiness in Moses’ face.

In our lesson from 2 Corinthians, Paul picks up on this very passage. Paul says through the Spirit, through Christ, we have hope, that allows us to act with boldness. He sees followers of Jesus in contrast with Moses and the Israelites. “When one turns to the Lord,” he says, “the veil is removed . . . and all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image.” In other words, when the veil is removed, God is allowed to shine through us, be reflected back at us, so that we are actually transformed by our encounter with God. Essentially, Paul sees that the Israelites seemed to remain at a distance from God. But in Christ, that distance is overcome, and not only to we experience closeness with God, but we, made in God’s image, can reflect God to others. He’s hitting on some themes that we might here about at Christmastime. Remember, Jesus is born as God-with-us, Emmanuel. Jesus’ birth is all about God eliminating any distance between us and God. God is with us, in us, when we move beyond the veil of separation.

Finally, in our gospel lesson, we read about the event known as the transfiguration of Jesus. The passage opens with the words, “Now about eight days after these sayings,” and this lead in refers to Jesus teaching about his impending suffering, death, and resurrection, after Peter calls Jesus the Messiah in response to Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am?” So eight days later, Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up a mountain to pray. While there, his face changes and his clothes seem dazzling white, and Moses and Elijah, representing the Law and the Prophets, appear with Jesus, speaking with him about what was soon to happen. We read that Peter and company had been sleepy, but “since they had stayed awake, they saw [Jesus’] glory.” As Moses and Elijah are leaving, Peter, not sure how to interpret the experience, offers to build dwellings on the mountain for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. But instead, they are overshadowed by a cloud, a terrifying experience, and from inside the cloud they hear God’s voice: “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” And then they find that they are alone with Jesus. And at first, they tell no one about what had seen.

When we think about our passage from Exodus, we can see that looking at Moses’ face made the people afraid. Experiencing God, even second hand, seemed to be a frightening experience. I had a hard time understanding this, as I read the passage. Why would the people be frightened by seeing how Moses changed after being with God? Wouldn’t they want to experience this closeness to God for themselves? Why weren’t they clamoring to get up the mountain too? Why wasn’t everyone trying to race to the top to hear God’s voice for themselves.

But as I thought about the story of the Israelites, I remembered what a tumultuous relationship they had with God and with Moses, who tried to keep them in relationship with God. It’s a story of repeated disobedience, turning away from God, doing their own thing, and blaming God when there are negative consequences to what they do. I think, perhaps, the Israelites weren’t racing up the mountain because they didn’t actually want to get much closer to God than they always were. Although I think they appreciated being God’s people and all, sometimes I think they also resented God’s interference in their being able to live their lives any way they pleased. Are we any different? I’ve always disliked Bette Midler’s famous song, “From a Distance,” where the refrain says, “God is watching us from a distance.” My understanding of God isn’t a God who is far off in space looking down at us, but of a close God who wants to dwell with and in us. But I think maybe her song captures how we’d actually rather have God – looking on from a distance, not close enough to see when we’re doing what we know isn’t God’s will for us, when we’re treating one another so carelessly, when we’re going the opposite way from what we know is the right path. Maybe then we do wish God was watching only from a safe distance. Maybe we like a veil that separates us from God. Because if God gets too close to us – maybe we’re afraid being so close to God will make us change, really change, when we’re getting along fair enough just as we are.

Paul says though that getting along fair enough just as we are is a pretty week imitation of the kind of life God actually wants us to have. Paul argues that in Christ we find boldness to set aside the veil, and let God really see us, let us really see ourselves. With unveiled faces, Paul says, we see God’s glory – and instead of it being frightening, we find that it’s as easy as looking in the mirror, because with Christ in us, we actually reflect God to others. When we really see ourselves, Paul says, we can get rid of the things in our lives that we’ve been hiding, and we can be open in the sight of God and neighbor.

We see in the gospels that this is what Jesus’ ministry is about – pulling aside the veils that people had in place, separating them from God. Jesus did this first by example, and so we see him continually seeking out God, seeking closeness, and here today Jesus is going again up the mountain to pray. Peter and James and John – Jesus seeks to bring them right into God’s holy presence. They’re scared, just like the Israelites are scared. But even though they have no idea what to do, they stay. Even though they’re sleepy, they keep awake. They don’t want to miss out. Even though it will change them, they don’t want to pass up this experience.

In fact, the only problem becomes that they want to stay up on the mountain. Peter offers to build dwelling places for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. Now that he’s finally drawn so close to the holy, he doesn’t want to leave. We can relate to this, I think. When we finally feel close to God, who hasn't wanted to stay in whatever the place is where God seems so close and available? Who hasn't wanted to extend a school vacation that seems so restful? Who hasn't wanted to slow the passing of time when things are fun and joy filled? We have a hard enough time finding God, or letting God find us, finally removing the veil – we certainly don't want to hurry off the mountain when we finally make the connection.

The things is, in God's wisdom, we're not meant to stay on the mountain, as comforting as it may be for us to be there. As Peter said to Jesus, it is indeed good for us to be close to God. But imagine, imagine if Jesus had shared Peter's sentiments, and decided to stay with Moses and Elijah on the mountain? There would be no Good Friday crucifixion, and no Easter resurrection. Imagine if Moses had not come down to the Israelites after talking with God. There would be no commandments brought down to the people who certainly needed structure. Imagine if you and I stayed on the mountain where we found God - there would be no spreading of the gospel that Christ commanded us to share. No one new would ever hear about God's love. And self-indulging, we would soon grow less appreciative of the way we were experiencing God. We’re called up the mountain, and into the holy, but we’re called back down too, so that we can help draw others closer to God and share our experience.

But when we remove the veil between us and God, whether we’re on the mountain top or in the valleys, God goes with us. Sometimes we have to look harder, listen more carefully, risk more completely, but we can find God in the valley, on the plains, and in the people, as well as on the mountaintop.

Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness, not like Moses, who put a veil over his face, but with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of God reflected as in a mirror, shining out from our souls. Amen.

Sermon for Transfiguration Sunday

(Sermon 2/22/09, Mark 9:2-9)

Afterwards

Today is Transfiguration Sunday. I’m betting most of you are not even sure what Transfiguration Sunday is, and that’s hardly a surprise – it’s not really ‘up there’ with Advent and Lent, and it isn’t really part of any season, just the last Sunday in this ambiguous time that we call the Season after the Epiphany. It’s a last stop before Lent begins this week with Ash Wednesday. That’s where it falls in the calendar. But what is Transfiguration Sunday about exactly? What does it celebrate? Well, the answer to this question you might not find particularly compelling either – at first. But I hope to change that, at least a little, by the end of this sermon!

Transfiguration Sunday celebrates the transfiguration of Jesus. And the transfiguration itself is hard to describe, but we might understand it as Jesus’ true nature – all his divinity, his godliness – momentarily being seen while he still walked on earth with us, revealed to Peter, James, and John. For a brief moment, Jesus is transfigured, or transformed, and his holiness is unveiled in a sense, and three of his closest disciples witness it. To be honest, this probably still doesn’t sound very exciting to us, does it? Maybe just more confusing than anything. And indeed, I don’t think reading about it will ever convey to us exactly what happened on that day, or what Peter, James, and John actually saw and felt. But I think we can study this passage and get a better sense of things, and learn to relate to their experience – and I think that’s what’s key for us.

Just before our passage today, Peter made an important declaration. Jesus asked who people were saying Jesus was – and the disciples told Jesus – a prophet, John the Baptist resurrected, Elijah come again. But then Jesus asked who Peter said Jesus was. Who do we say Jesus is? That will become an important question for us in the season of Lent. Peter answers that Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ, and it is the first time he makes that claim. But then Jesus goes on to start talking about the suffering and death he must undergo, and challenges the disciples that to truly be named disciples, we have to take up a cross and follow the same path. This is no doubt a tense conversation – Jesus is laying it on the line, and letting the disciples know exactly what is required to follow him – which is simply everything. And so our text opens today, not even quite a week after he’s said these things, and apparently, none of the disciples have decided to leave Jesus. Jesus takes three who have been so close to him – and goes up a mountain with them, and is transfigured – changed, unveiled – before them. Elijah and Moses appear and speak with Jesus – they represent the prophets and the law – the two pieces of God’s revelation thus far – and Jesus with them seems to represent a fulfillment of things. Peter, who sometimes has the bad luck of being portrayed as a bumbling fool of a disciple, doesn’t know what to do or say, and the three disciples are simply terrified by what they see. So Peter for some reason offers to build three dwellings for Jesus, Elijah, and Moses. He says it is good for them to be there. Peter’s ready to make it possible to stay – just remain there on the mountaintop, settle in, and stay in this very holy, if also very scary, place. But then a cloud overshadows them, and they hear God’s voice as was heard at Jesus’ baptism saying, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” And then the moment is over, and they are alone with Jesus again, and he orders them, as they come down the mountain, not to tell what they experienced until after the resurrection.

This whole passage is no doubt strange to us. But to me, a few things here are important for us to take away: first, the disciples experienced this as an extremely holy moment, where they felt like they were closer to God, and seeing more of God in Jesus, than perhaps they ever had before. Mountaintops in the scriptures are often places where people meet God, and it is from these encounters that we develop the phrase “mountaintop experiences” when we’re trying to describe an overwhelmingly awesome experience. This, even if we don’t understand it, is what the disciples have had at the Transfiguration. And second, they want to try to stay there, remain there in that moment, prolong that time on the mountain, rather than returning to life on the ground.

We can probably relate to both of those pieces of the Transfiguration. We’ve had mountaintop experiences in our lives, I hope. Spiritual peaks or highs, moments where things seem to fall into place and we understand or experience God in a way we normally don’t, times where everything seems so good and right and meaningful. And we’ve also experienced, I’m betting, wanting to stay in that place – stay on the mountaintop, prolong an experience where we knew the time was limited, where we knew we simply could not stay forever.

For me, when I was younger, going to church camp every summer at Camp Aldersgate was my mountaintop place. I used to say that there were just a two seasons that mapped out the year for me. The Christmas season, and camping season. As soon as Christmas was over, I would begin to wait anxiously for the arrival of the camping brochure, the list of all the camps available at Aldersgate that coming summer. Once the brochure arrived, and camps were selected, waiting ‘til summer and camp week was the difficult task at hand. I even used to start packing ridiculously early - making lists of what to bring, what shirt to wear with what shorts, and tucking things away in the back of my closet, all ready for the week of camp to arrive.

And then, in a flash, it would be time - time to take the trip to Aldersgate, a trip that seemed a million hours long at the time, instead of a short hour away. During one short week at camp, it seemed so much could happen. You would meet so many people, experience so many new things, and think about and talk about your faith in a way that rarely happened in other settings, especially as a young person. And then, in another flash, it was all over. The week ended, camp ended, and being in that special place, set apart, was over for another whole year.

At first coming home from a week of camp, it was so hard to get back into things, into the normal routine, and so hard to think about waiting a whole long year to be able to go to camp again. When I was a little older, I got to work on staff at Camp Aldersgate, and I got to prolong that feeling I got from camp for a whole summer. In fact, I enjoyed that special time, that special place, that special connection with other people and with God so much that for some time I confused God's call to ordained ministry for a call to the camping ministry. When I got home from my summer on staff, I had an extremely hard time adjusting back to high-school life, to the point that I seriously looked into how I could graduate early so I could move on and be doing what I thought God was calling me to. I didn't want my mountaintop time to end. I wanted it to be camping season all the time. I wanted to hold on to the connection I felt with God, to the wholeness I could feel at camp, to the connectedness to the world around me.

I felt some of these same things at the Youth Retreat I led this weekend – young people who feel so close to God during the three days we spend together, who find themselves seeing God in new ways, and find that they’re afraid they won’t ever feel so close to God when they return home, and continue on with their lives. For young people who find high school to be an increasingly hostile environment for young Christians trying to express their faith, a retreat time can be a precious and rare space. Added on to this usual feeling of being on the mountaintop is an extra layer this year – this retreat was probably the last one of its kind. As some of you have heard me talk about before, my home conference, NCNY, is merging with three other annual conferences, so that soon the conferences will include all of New York State except the downstate area. This means youth events are about to become much larger, less intimate, and include hundreds of more young people. There are some real opportunities for new ministry with youth – but the youth I’ve worked with also know they’re letting something precious and special go – the event they love will never be quite the same again, and they wanted to stay in that place just as long as they could.

Our keynote speaker at the event shared with us a video clip from Dan Kimball, a pastor who authored a book called They Like Jesus But Not the Church. In the book, Kimball writes about research results that show people outside of the church have a great opinion of Jesus, his life, and his message. They just have a bad opinion – a very bad opinion – of Christians, finding them to be: hypocritical, homophobic, judgmental, and sheltered. Kimball theorizes about why this is – why do people see Christians so negatively? He concludes that without even meaning to, Christians are like pretty scenes trapped in a beautiful snow globe – we live in a bubble, and we like it there, and want to stay there. We tend to mostly interact with, live near, and spend time with people who are like us and share our beliefs. Instead of being the church, the body of Christ, we focus on the church as a place, where we might invite people to come, but we’re unlikely to bring church – to bring Christ – to them. And so it is hard to reach others or be reached from inside the bubble.

Can you relate to this image at all? I found it helpful and challenging. When we think about the Transfiguration, we can see that Peter’s immediate impulse was to create a bubble – to take this extremely holy experience and trap it, keep it, stay there and dwell in it. And we can hardly blame him. Why would he want such a profound experience to end, even if he couldn’t understand it completely? But at the same time, we have to wonder: what if Jesus had stayed up on the mountain with the disciples? What if Moses couldn’t stop basking in the wonder of the burning bush? What if Mary Magdalene stayed at the tomb with Jesus and never went to share the news? What if the shepherds and the Magi couldn’t tear themselves away from the Christ-child? What if I’d never been able to move on from summer camp? What if my youth couldn’t ever handle the merging conferences, and couldn’t handle going back to school? The holy places in our lives are so precious. But we’re not called to bottle them up, or put ourselves in a bubble with them – we’re called to take the holy with us as we go. That’s why when we talk about our faith lives, we usually talk not about a static place, but about faith as a journey. Faith doesn’t stand still, but moves and grows, or our faith is dead. And we worship a God who is named I AM – a living God, an active God, a God always doing a new thing. And that’s why when Jesus calls us to a path of discipleship, he calls us using a word of movement – we’re to take up a cross and follow – being a disciple is an active job, that never leaves us where we are.

Perhaps, in the midst of this time of transition for us – for me and for us – we can particularly relate to this text, to this idea of wanting to stay in one place, but being called, or being compelled to move to another. Certainly I’m not saying the time of me being here as your pastor is necessarily a mountaintop experience for you! But I can agree that it is so much easier sometimes to stay in the same place than it is to move – literally and figuratively. What we know is this: God isn’t leaving us where we are. The question we have to answer is what we will do about it, and where we will go, and whether or not we will follow. Today we receive the gift of seeing Christ transfigured, dazzling white, with God's clear voice speaking to us from the mountain, a holy place. But even this week, we come down from the mountain, into the valley, and begin to walk with Christ to Jerusalem, to the cross, to his death. What happens, then, after the Transfiguration? That is the journey of faith that we take, the unfolding of our lives, as we take up a cross, and follow.

Amen.