March 30, 2014: John 9:1-41

 Year A, Lent 4                                                       

                                                                   

            When I was living in Princeton, I would occasionally take the train into New York City to see friends.  This was a labor of love because I feared that city.  I felt like I could take a wrong turn and never be found.  Whenever I visited, I would ask my friend to meet me in one particular spot in Penn Station because I didn’t want to go near the subway where people have been lost for hours, if not days.  As I boarded the train, someone I recognized boarded with his guide dog. He was blind. I had met him earlier when he was visiting the seminary.  We ended up talking until we neared New York.

Then the unthinkable happened. The train stopped in Penn Station in New Jersey (I know, it’s very confusing, that’s why I am convinced that city is out to get me.)  The conductor announced that there was something wrong with the train and he had no idea how long it would take to fix it. He advised us to find another way into the city.  For me, finding an alternate way was like asking me to turn water into wine.  It would have required a miracle. I turned to my new friend and asked, “What other way is there?” He must have sensed my fear and anxiety because he told me that he would show me the way.

             There are a lot of amazing miracle stories in the Bible and we all know that Jesus was a miracle worker.  However, the Gospel of John depicts miracles in a different way than the other gospels.  For John, miracles were signs.  They were signs pointing the way to the truth about who Jesus really was.   They were opportunities for people to witness the glory of God.  Our rather lengthy Gospel story depicts a man who is blind from birth.   Unlike the story in the Gospel of Mark where Jesus also healed a blind man, this healing is not the result of a request. The man never approached Jesus.  Jesus healed him after a conversation with his disciples about the cause of his blindness.  He created some mud with his own holy spittle, spread the mud on the man’s eyes and told the man to go wash in the pool of Siloam. 

The man followed his directions and went from being completely blind to having his vision restored 100%.  There is no indication that he had trouble adjusting.  There were no blurry images or vertigo.   While his physical sight was restored almost immediately, he gained spiritual insight gradually through the course of the narrative.    When he was first asked about the person who healed him, he referred to “the man called Jesus.”   The next time he was questioned he referred to Jesus as a prophet, which means that he identified him as a man sent by God. 

However, the major turning point came when he saw Jesus for the first time.   It was then that he finally understood who Jesus truly was.  Now you might think, well of course he believed, Jesus just cured him of a lifetime of blindness.  That would be helpful for most of us on our faith journey.  However, we must remember that he did not receive his sight until he removed the mud from his own eyes.  Even before he was able to see (and before he really understood who Jesus was) he had enough faith and courage to find his way to the pool and wash the mud away.

While this man was able to believe despite living a life in darkness, others in the story had more trouble.  The Pharisees, who represented the religious establishment more than they represented the Jewish people, seemed almost obsessed with proving this man and Jesus wrong.  First, they hid in the rather murky water of religious laws and rules. It was the Sabbath and you are not allowed to heal on the Sabbath so obviously Jesus was not a man of God.  When the man maintained that Jesus was a prophet (and thus a man of God), the Pharisees tried to convince others that he was not actually blind from birth.  When this theory was proven false by the man’s rather frightened parents, the Pharisees tried to manipulate the man with guilt and lofty religious language.  The man responded to this new challenge with the clarity of someone who has experienced the truth of Jesus Christ.  “One thing that I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”  For the man who had been cured of his blindness, it was just that simple.  

Yet the Pharisees tried to complicate the matter by asking again how it happened.   When they realized that this man could not be convinced by religious law, guilt, lofty religious language or even theology, they removed him from their community.  They kicked him out of the synagogue. He was no longer welcome to worship there.  It was then that Jesus sought him out.  It was then when Jesus revealed not only his glory, but also his love and compassion.  

            In my trek through the New York public transportation system, my friend used one hand to hold the leash of his dog and one hand to stay connected with me.  I would read the signs and he would tell me if that was the right train.  When we finally reached the city, we were dropped a couple blocks from Penn Station.  When I asked him how I could get there, he offered to take me the rest of the way.  He led me through the streets of New York, me telling him what signs I saw, and him telling me which direction to turn.  He did not merely lead me to Penn Station, he took me to the exact place where my friend was waiting. She looked a little perplexed as I walked up holding the hand of a blind man.  I introduced them and explained how I came to know him.  We said goodbye and he disappeared into the crowd.  As I hugged my friend with relief she looked at me and said, “You do realize that you followed a blind man.”   That was true, but at least I had read the signs.

Some people are able to read, understand and follow the signs.  Some people can read and understand, but lack the courage to follow.  Others can read them but not make sense of them.   Then there are some people who are so blinded by the map that is in their head, they don’t even look for the signs.  The Pharisees were not bad people.  Most of them were very good people who had dedicated their life to their religion.  But somewhere along the way they stopped being open to new signs because they already had all of the answers.  Even when the signs were right in their face, they found way to get around them. 

Jesus gave the blind man sight, but in many ways (much like my friend) he already had sight.  He had insight and a heart open to invisible and visible signs.  We might not all have that insight naturally.  Some of us might be a little stubborn or maybe we are new on this journey and the signs all look a little alike.  Perhaps like me, you occasionally lack the courage to take risks and try new things.  Yet at some point, I think we will all find that Jesus has given us all the signs we need, even the courage and the miracle cure.  He gave it to us when he died for us, when he was resurrected.  He continues to give them to us in the waters of Baptism and in the Eucharist.  It is up to us to wash the mud out of our own eyes.

 

March 23, 2014: John 4: 5-42

Disclaimer: I like to think (and I could be totally misguided on this) that my sermons read pretty well.  Some preachers feel that you have to hear and/or see the sermon to get anything from it.  While I think that is the best way to experience a sermon, usually the text works pretty well.  I am not sure it does for this sermon.  It feels pretty bumpy when you read it, but it's worth a shot!

 Lent 3, Year A                   

                                                                     

            In the late 90’s, a book came out called “Bad Girls of the Bible.”  It was very popular and spawned two more books called Very Bad Girls of the Bible and Slightly Bad Girls of the Bible.  The series  has sold over a million copies, which is pretty good for a book about the bible.  I read it about 15 years ago and I liked it. However, the more time I spent studying the Bible, specifically women in the Bible, the less I liked it.  Let’s start with the cover.  All you can see are the heavily made up eyes of a woman with what I can only assume is a “come hither” look.  Otherwise, I am not sure why eyes with heavy mascara indicate a bad girl.  Then there is the line-up of “bad girls.”  There are a couple that I would not dispute (Delilah and Jezebel), but the rest I would take issue with…in regards to how bad they really are.

 In the midst of these bad girls is the Samaritan woman at the well.   Over the centuries she has been depicted as a seductress, a prostitute, an adulteress, a serial monogamist and everything in between.   All these assumptions come primarily from her response to Jesus’ request that she call her husband.  She responded: “I have no husband.”  He said, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands and the one you have now is not your husband.” From this exchange, people have inferred that she was divorced five times and obviously it must have been her fault.  Now she is living with someone who is not her husband which is further proof that she is a woman of questionable character.

Divorce at this time is much different than it is today.  First of all, a woman could not ask for divorce.  So if this woman at the well was divorced 5 times, it was because five different men divorced her.  Men also did not need a reason to divorce.  There was no extensive paperwork.  All they needed to do was to put it in writing.  The woman had no recourse.  There was nothing she could do.  Since there were not many occupations available to woman, the only options for a divorced woman was to remarry, move in with a male relative, beg on the street, prostitute herself or starve.  

While a man could divorce his wife for any reason, there was one situation when divorce was recommended.   Because procreation was a so important in the Jewish faith, if a woman could not bear a child in the first ten years of marriage, it was recommended that the man take an additional wife or divorce and then remarry.[1]  Therefore (and please know this is conjecture…but a lot more likely than her being a seductress who liked to hang out at a well) it is very possible that the reason she had been abandoned by so many men was due to barrenness. 

Since this woman has been labeled as bad, a lot of people read this story as one of sin and forgiveness.   While Jesus does acknowledge the fact that she has been married five times, he never declares her to be a sinner.  In other stories of forgiveness, Jesus is very clear about the sin and the need to sin no more.  Yet in this story, he never accuses this woman of sinning nor does he say that she is forgiven.  Obviously, we are all sinners in need of forgiveness, but that is not what this story is about.

After Jesus tells her that he knows about her past and even her present living condition, she declares, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet.”   Most people assume that she is just changing the subject from an uncomfortable topic. However, in the Gospel of John, the word “see” has a special meaning.  It often means belief.  Instead of just changing the subject, she might actually be making a powerful statement of belief.  Not only does she see him, she believes in him.   What is it that led her to believe in him? Was it because he knew all her sins and was able to forgive her?  I don’t think that was it.  Instead of just sin, I believe he saw a deep pain, a pain that she had kept hidden for many years…the pain of being broken in some way and then abandoned over and over again.  I believe he saw that pain that had become her identity, but he saw something else as well, something beautiful and divine.[2]

So often in life, we let ourselves be identified by things that we think are wrong with us.  We will always be the child who was abused, the wife who was beaten, the man who is unemployed, the person crushed by the weight of their own depression, the widow, the divorced person, the single person…and on and on. Often other people do not identify us this way, but we do it to ourselves.  If that is the case, then it might as well be everyone in the world who identifies us that way…at least it feels that way.  Imagine that you are that person who identifies yourself by your pain.  Then one day, someone comes to you and says, “I see your pain.  I see every piece of it, but I see something else too.  I am here to give you a new identity, an identity that carries no baggage and no shame.”  That would be transformative.  Would that transformation be enough to compel a woman of questionable character to run and tell an entire town, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah can he?”  I think it would be. 

For this woman at the well, this new identity is more powerful than any shame she might have carried.  She is now a vessel of living water.  The living water is Jesus the Messiah, and she carries it now. One of the quirky little details in this story is that when she goes into town to share the news of Jesus, she leaves her water jar behind.  Today, that would be like leaving your cell phone or wallet on the counter and walking out.  That jar was literally what kept her alive.   But she doesn’t need the jar anymore, because she is now a vessel of living water. 

Before, there was something inside her that was dead.  Now every part of her is nourished by this life giving water.  Before she was barren. Now she is anything but that.  Her self -worth is no longer dependent on anything those five husbands needed from her. Not only is she full of life, but she has life to share and that is what she immediately does.  She goes to tell the world about this person who is the very embodiment of all that is living, all that is good…the one being who conquers death on every level.

Jesus gives each one of us this opportunity, this chance to define ourselves- not by who we are or who we are not, not by the scars that we bear, but by the God who created us, died for us and was resurrected so that we may know what it is to truly live.

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[1] Biblical and Jewish law regarding divorce: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3140621?seq=7 and http://www.biu.ac.il/JH/Parasha/eng/toledot/shi.html

[2] This partially comes from what Karoline Lewis said about the barrenness of the woman and what affect that might have.   http://www.workingpreacher.org/brainwave.aspx?podcast_id=489

March 16, 2014: Genesis 12:1-4a

Year A, Lent 2                       

                                                                              

          I don’t like the question, “What’s your five year plan?”  This is despite the fact that I’m a planner and always have been.  I still remember my first planner when I was in 6^th grade.  I wrote everything down.  I don’t have a paper planner anymore, but I still love to see my calendar all planned out.  Until a couple of years ago, I always had a 5 year plan.  The 5 year plan worked out until college graduation, then life started going off plan, no matter how dedicated I was to my plans.  As I look back on the last 10 years I realize that nothing has really gone according to plan.  So I stopped making 5 year plans.  Now when people ask me my five year plan I usually remind them of the idiom, “When we make plans, God laughs.”

          Our Old Testament reading for today is one of the first times that we encounter Abraham (or as he is called in this text: Abram).  He first appears in chapter 11, but all we learned was that he is the son of Terah, has three brothers and a wife named Sarai who is barren.  He lives in Haran with his family.  We later learn that he is 75 when the Lord first speaks to him. We don’t even know what he did for a living.  Our ignorance about Abram is interesting, but not as fascinating as what Abram doesn’t know about God.  We do not even know if he believed in God, or if he was polytheistic, meaning he believed in multiple gods. 

          For millennia, rabbis have been hypothesizing about the back story of Abram.   Jews have something called a midrash.  It’s similar to Biblical commentary, but more creative.  In ancient midrash, learned rabbis would create stories about certain biblical characters.   They would essentially fill in the gaps.  There are several midrash stories about Abram, especially before age 75.  One story explains that his father was a creator of idols.  He made and sold idols of gods.  Abram’s job was to sell these idols. However, according to the stories, he was not a very good salesman because he mocked those who bought them.  In one story, he asked the customer how old he was.  When the customer responded, Abram said, “You are so old and yet you spend so much money on a god that is only one day old.”  Since Abram had actually seen these idols made, he knew that there was nothing to worship. 

          Obviously, we have no way of knowing if such stories have any truth.  But I can understand why these stories were developed.   It almost seems like we need Abram to believe in God before he first heard the voice of God.  Otherwise the whole thing is just madness. One minute Abram is minding his own business living with his family and then a voice comes from somewhere (we don’t know where) and tells him to leave all that he knows and go to a place that the Lord has not yet disclosed so that the Lord can bless him and make his name great. 

Can you imagine that conversation with his wife?  “Sarai, sweetheart, I heard a voice that told me to leave town.  No, I am not sure where we are going.  I guess we will just start walking and the voice will lead us from there.  And I have reason to believe we will be the parents of a great nation.  I know we don’t have any children yet and we are both 75, but you know, the voice said so; let’s start packing. Who is the voice? The Lord.  That’s all I know. ”  Of course the rabbis needed to provide a backstory.  With no backstory, Abram sounds crazy.

Despite the craziness and lack of information, Abram follows God’s call.  Abram and Sarai journeyed from place to place.  There was never a five year plan, never a map, never a destination.  They would travel to a place, pitch a tent and set up an altar.  God would speak to Abram, remind him that his descendants would be numerous and then they would start all over again. There were adventures along the way.  Abram became rich with livestock and land.  He fought wars.  He interacted with kings.  God and Abram kept talking, but there were still no children.   Abram would ask God why there were no children and how he could be a father of a nation with no children.  God did not tell him how, he just kept repeating the promise.   

This went on for 24 years until Abram was 99.   At age 99, God told him once again about all his descendants and then asked Abram to make a promise, to create a covenant with God.  God would change his name to Abraham and ask him to be circumcised along with all of his family.  This is what Abraham gets for 24 years of faithful loyalty: a new name and a very painful physical sacrifice.  With this news, Abraham finally just fell on his face and laughed.  This time it was man laughing at God’s plans.   As a result, God gave Abraham more specific information.  He gave him the name of the son that Sarah would have.  The name would be Isaac….which means he laughs.   This seemed to be enough for Abraham because he did just as the Lord asked, once again.  A year later his wife had her first child at the age of 100.  They named him Isaac. 

I don’t think that God laughs at our plans, at least not in a mean way.  That idiom is just a reminder that our plans are as brittle as the paper we write them or as changeable as the devices we record them on.  I don’t know if the rabbis were right and Abraham’s resume had idol salesman on it.  But considering where and when he lived, he was certainly part of culture that was steeped in idol worship.  As I result I wonder if there was a longing in his heart for something bigger.  Because of that longing, when he heard that big voice of God, he believed it.  Perhaps Abraham appreciated a God that did not give a plan, did not have a backstory.  Abraham was accustomed to seeing people worship figures that men had created.  Seeing how powerless those gods were, Abraham knew there was a need for a God that could not be known, could not be handled or molded by human hands, and could certainly not be controlled by our own plans. 

While we do not have stone idols that we worship, we know what it is to think that we hold the world in our hands. And sometimes we know what it is to feel crushed by those hands, those hands that hold tight to our expectations and the world’s expectations.  It would be so liberating if we could break free of those plans….wouldn’t it? 

I would love to stand up here and tell you all how I have learned to let go of my plans.  You see, I have a 5 year plan that I want. I’m just realistic enough to know that it’s probably not going to happen.  Sometimes I am ok with that.  Sometimes I get really angry that God has not seen the wisdom and pragmatism in my plans and frankly, gotten with the program.  Then I am reminded of that man and woman who waited 25 years for a promise.  During that time of waiting, they had adventures.  They grew closer to God and one another.  Every place they stopped, one of the first things they did was set up an altar and worship the one true God.  During that time, God would actually consult Abraham on actions that he was taking.  By the end, they had a relationship, a relationship so natural that Abraham could fall on his face laughing as God looked on.  So instead of waiting for our five year plans to really happen, what if we made the waiting the destination?  What if we used that time to create a relationship with God (and one another) that would sustain us? Then, we would know what it is to be blessed. The promise just might be in the waiting itself.

March 9, 2014: Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7

 Year A, Lent 1                                                                             

 

            I have a bumper sticker that says: “God’s original plan was to hang out in a garden with a bunch of vegetarians.”  The main reason I love that bumper sticker is because I am a vegetarian and I get sick of people telling me that Jesus ate meat, so I should too.  No one ever tried to convince me that crucifixion is a good idea because Jesus did it, but that’s beside the point.  There are a lot of misconceptions about the Genesis reading for today.  Usually when a story in the Bible is famous you can be sure that there will be copious amounts of misconceptions and misinterpretations.  The story of Adam and Eve’s defiance of God is one the most well known in the Bible and therefore one of the most misunderstood as well.     

Often you will hear this story referred to as “The Fall.”   Just until recently, I would have been pretty comfortable referring to it that way.  But as I studied the story more and read more commentaries, I started to wonder, what are they falling from.  One would assume that if you are to fall, you have to fall from something.  Some people claim that they were falling from grace, perfection or innocence.  The common theology of “The Fall” is that humans were created as perfect and sinless, but that was destroyed by the disobedience of Adam and Eve. The Fall was considered to be the source of original sin, which attached to humans at birth, or even conception. 
            I find it hard to believe that God’s original plan was to have this perfect world with perfect people and that perfectly planned world would be so fragile that one act of disobedience would ruin it all.  If his original plan was that precarious, why put a forbidden fruit in the garden in the first place?  It seems like an unlikely original plan.  It sounds more like a lesson about our relationship with one another, our relationship with our self and our relationship with God.

            Nowhere in the text does it say that Adam and Eve were perfect.  It says that they were good, just like the rest of creation.   The text also says that man and woman were made in the image of God.  One can understand how we would get perfection and sinlessness from the image of God.  God is perfect.  God is sinless.  But man and women are not made as God.  We are made in the image of God.  We reflect God’s goodness (on our good days) but we are not the source of goodness.  There is a difference.  

            So what is it that we fell from?  Did we fall from goodness?  God was displeased with Adam and Eve.  There is no doubt about that.  He banished them from the garden.  Yet he never took away that goodness.  He never said, “Now you are bad and you must spend the rest of your life proving that you aren’t as bad as I think you are.”  That would be a fall and it would be tragic. That would be proof that God’s original plan had gone awry.  God’s is too wise to settle for such a simple plan. I believe that the plan that God has for us is a plan that slowly unfolds as we grow in faith and in wisdom.  It is a plan that develops and evolves with us. 

            One of the things that changed immediately after they ate from the tree of good and evil is that they realized that they were naked.  When they heard God approaching they hid because they were naked.  They claimed that they did this because they were afraid.  A lot of people have taken this realization and this admission of fear and connected it with shame or sexuality.  I don’t think it is either of those things.  I think that for the first time, they realized that they were vulnerable and their immediate reaction was to cover up, which is what most of us do when we are vulnerable.  We try to put up a wall so people won’t see our vulnerability, or worse yet take advantage of our vulnerability.  

            Perhaps the fall was not a fall from grace, perfection or sinlessness, but a fall from security and independence.  Before they disobeyed God they were completely secure in who they were and whose image they were made in.  But something changed when they disobeyed God.  Suddenly, they cared about what other people saw in them.  They saw something inside themselves and in one another besides the image of God and that frightened them.  They were dependent on God just as they had always been, but now they feared that dependence, just as many of us do.

            God punished them by kicking them out of the garden where they had plenty of food that was easy to harvest.   But he also made sure that they were provided for.  They were not kicked into a barren wasteland.  They were put in a place where they were caring for the earth as they were before, but this time it was hard work…work that they resented.   Adam would have to toil for their food now.   Eve would still be a mother, but that motherhood would come with pain.  The relationship between man and woman would be skewed.  They were no longer equals as they were in the garden.  It is clearly a punishment, but it’s also a life that most of us can empathize with and it’s usually pretty manageable. 

Then God did a funny thing, a thing that is easy to overlook in such a juicy story.  God made them clothes.  He could have left them with their fig leaves, but he wanted them to have something more. He wanted to protect them, not only from the perceptions  of others, but presumably from the elements like cold and rain that might not have been part of the Garden of Eden.  Our God who we see only as a punisher in this story takes the time to make them clothing.  When we see pictures of this story, we see an angry God staring down from the heavens with a cowering Adam and Eve below.  It’s always a little scary. It would be nice to see a picture of Adam and Eve on the outside of the garden with God beside them sewing them some clothes.  That would be a different kind of picture, but just as accurate, if not more.

Adam and Eve get a bad rap because of this story, especially Eve.  Yet all we really have is two people who wanted to know more.  They wanted to be like God.  While the serpent promised they would be more like God if they ate the fruit, all they really got was the recognition that they were naked and vulnerable, that they were not at all like God.  This story is never referenced by God later in the scriptures.  God never looks at humanity and says, “Well if only they had not eaten the fruit.”  God never made a comment like, “Well I should have known this would happen; they were bad from the start.”  God never stopped considering humans good.  The real fall was that we stopped trying to be good because we thought we were a lost cause.  And if that is the case, then it was quite a fall indeed.  As long as God doesn’t give up on us, we definitely can’t give up on ourselves.  God’s plans might have changed, but God’s love for us never does.

March 5, 2014: Ash Wednesday

            Up until a couple years ago, we had three services on Ash Wednesday.   It’s not uncommon for churches to have multiple services on Ash Wednesday.  For the longest time, I just took it for granted that we had multiple services on this holy day.  But then I started wondering, why is it this holy day and not others?  Since it is a week day we are trying to accommodate people who are going to work and I admire people who take time to come to this service.  Yet we only have one service on Holy Thursday, one service on Good Friday.  Those are both weekdays.   There are other holy days on weekdays (Ascension Day, Feast of the Annunciation, Epiphany, The Feast of St. John….).  We don’t have any services on those days.  The Roman Catholic Church has ten holy days of obligation and Ash Wednesday isn’t even one of them.   Did you know that some churches have begun a practice called “Ashes to go” where they bring ashes to public places and offer them to anyone who might be passing by.   People partake in it, even when they have not been in church in years. What is it about Ash Wednesday that appeals to people?

            The cynic would tell you that people just come for the ashes so they can show other people that they went to church.  But come on…being a Christian isn’t exactly the most popular thing to do anymore.  It’s not what you do to impress people.  Most people think you just have dirt on your forehead and stare at you while trying to figure out if it is worth telling you that you have dirt on your forehead.  So what is it…what is it that makes this the one day out of the year (besides Christmas and Easter—when most people are not at work anyways) when people feel they need to be in church?  I think there is something deeper going on, something deep and profound that draws people to church in the middle of the day/at the end of a long day.

            The use of ashes goes back thousands of years.  We read about it a lot in the Old Testament.  When someone had committed a sin and was seeking repentance, the person would roll in ashes or sit in ashes.  In some instances an entire town or community would roll in ash, wear sackcloth (which was apparently very uncomfortable and humiliating), and fast in order to seek God’s forgiveness or favor.  Sometimes wallowing in ash was an act of mourning.  In the Gospels, Jesus refers to the use of ashes and sack cloth as a means of repentance.  While now it probably seems a little silly, maybe even unnecessarily demonstrative, for most people it was a very sincere act of humility. 

            While that is a nice lesson in history and Biblical precedent, I am not sure that it explains why we still use ashes today.  In ancient Israel, ashes also represented that which was burned out and wasted…that which once was, but is no more.   Has anyone here ever felt burned out or emotionally and physically depleted?  You don’t need to raise your hand, but think about it. 

 We define sacraments as an outward sign of an invisible grace.  While faith requires us to believe in things that cannot be seen, Jesus knew that humans needed things that they could touch, feel and even smell.  We need to have things that can be experienced.  When we talk about sacraments, normally that outward sign is something pleasant to the senses.  It might be wine, bread, water, or oil.  These allow us to have some tangible understanding of this inward grace. 

            But what about those things that are more unpleasant: guilt, sin and sorrow.  Do we need something tangible for that?  I think we do.  In fact, I think that one of the reasons why so many people come to church on Ash Wednesday is because it is the one day in the church year when we present a tangible symbol of pain and loss.  We recognize the sin and loss that each one of us holds.  We don’t try to sweep it under the rug as our culture is so fond of doing.  No, we smudge it on our foreheads and in doing so we say, “You may be burned out. You may be hurting.  You may be angry.  You may have sinned and are having trouble asking for forgiveness.  God is here for you and as hard as this may be for you to believe, the church is here for you too.”  We are in this together.  We all get smudged together.  There is no one in this church who is without sin. There is no one who is without pain. 

            It’s one of the only days in the church year where you leave dirtier than you arrive.  That is how we start Lent- by being honest about our sin and pain.  We start Lent together and then during Lent, we do the hard work of repentance, so that we can wipe that ash away.  We won’t ever be completely free of it, but we can certainly try.  We can ask for forgiveness.  We can partake in the body of blood and Christ.  We can experience moments of grace where we are able to see past the soot.  

            One of my favorite hymns is called Ashes.  The third verse says: We offer you our failures, we offer you attempts, the gifts not fully given, the dreams not fully dreamt. Give our stumblings direction, give our visions wider view… This is the day when we can be honest about our failures.  We can offer them to God and God will accept them for what they are, a gift freely given in humility and love.  Sometimes the gifts we give do not come in pretty packages.  Sometimes they are covered in grime.  Thankfully, God is not frightened by a little dirt and grime.

March 2, 2014: Matthew 17:1-9

Year A, Transfiguration Sunday                                             

                                                                                           

Today is Transfiguration Sunday.  Transfiguration is one of those words that you mostly hear in church, and even in church you probably only hear it on Transfiguration Sunday.   A word that might be easier to understand is transform.  We could call this Transformation Sunday, but some might worry that sounds a little too new agey…maybe a little too much like Joel Osteen and not enough like Richard Hooker, a famous Anglican theologian…at least as famous as Anglican theologians get.  But for our purposes, transfigure and transforms are pretty much the same.  It’s about a profound change.  Some people prefer transfigure because it indicates a change that happens as a result of God’s presence in our lives, as opposed to some special exercise program we have started to transform our bodies. 

            This is one of those stories that just doesn’t read well.  It’s so otherworldly, almost unfathomable.  I bet it was hard to believe even if you were there.  This is how I imagine Peter telling the story.  “We hiked up a mountain with Jesus.  We figured he was going to share more of his teachings or perhaps take some time alone to pray.  Suddenly, Jesus started to glow and his face was like the sun and somehow his clothes were so white they were blinding.  And if that was not enough all of a sudden two people appeared out of nowhere…and you would not believe who they were.  It was Moses and Elijah! I know, they are supposed to be dead, but they were there, I swear.   Jesus started talking to both of them and a cloud came over them…but it was a bright cloud, not like any we have ever seen.  Then a voice came from the cloud.  Of course we all just fell on the ground and covered our eyes because by then it had just gotten weird.  When we finally got up it was all gone.” While the people following Jesus had experienced some pretty amazing things at this point, nothing could compare to this. 

            I wonder if the disciples were even able to believe it.  Let’s consider the reactions of these three disciples.  After Jesus had been transfigured and started talking to two men who were supposed to be dead, Peter said, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.”  Peter wanted to build some tents so the man who was glowing like the sun and the two great prophets who were supposed to be dead could have shelter overnight.  It sounds a little crazy in retrospect, but I am sure it made sense to Peter at the time.  He was trying to be helpful.  Perhaps he wanted to be sure that what he was seeing was real.

            Yet before Peter could even finish his sentence, a voice came from the cloud declaring, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him.” It was this voice, this statement that caused the three disciples to throw themselves on the ground because they were so terrified.   After that Jesus touched them and told them to get up and not be afraid.  They looked up and saw that there was no one there except Jesus.  The next verse has them walking down the mountain with Jesus.  This is all we know of the actions of the disciples. 

I find myself a little perplexed by the fact that it was the voice from the cloud that really scared them.  It wasn’t Jesus transforming before their eyes. It wasn’t the two great prophets who had died appearing before them.  Those were not the things that terrified them.  It was the voice of God…or maybe it was what God said.  “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!”  That doesn’t sound so scary.  Peter had just proclaimed that Jesus was the Son of God.  He had said it himself.  Also, if you will recall Jesus’s baptism, God spoke from the clouds and said that very thing….well almost the same thing.  The only difference is that this time, God adds on, “Listen to him!”  No one fell on the ground at Jesus’ baptism.  God’s words created no such reaction then.  So what was so scary this time? 

It might be helpful to look at what happened before they ascended the mountain.  Right after Peter acknowledged Jesus as the Son of God, Jesus started talking about his death.  He told his disciples that he would have to go to Jerusalem so that he could suffer and die.  This horrified them.  Peter had such a strong response that Jesus had to reprimand him.  Jesus went on to tell his disciples that anyone who wanted to follow him would have to take up the cross and deny himself.  It’s not like Jesus had only been sharing warm and fuzzy things before this, but this was the first time he was so direct about his own death and the way that his disciples too might die.  I am sure it was scary to hear these words from Jesus.  Right after they had heard these difficult words from Jesus, God said to them from the heavens, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!”  Listen to him.  Dear God, he’s serious…that’s what I would have been thinking.  I can’t help but wonder if it was at that moment when it all fell into place for them.  If that was the case, then falling on the ground in fear was appropriate because this man who they loved, who they had come to believe in and worship was about to die a horrific death.

Did they believe what they were seeing?  Probably…but it was nothing compared with what they were hearing, and with what they were about to see, Jesus beaten, killed, sacrificed.  They were terrified and they had every reason to be.  Jesus had called them as disciples long before this moment, but this might have been the moment when they really understood what that call meant.  It was more than just walking around with a man who showed compassion, performed some miracles and told amazing stories.  Being called by Jesus is about really listening to him…not listening for what you want to hear, but what God wants you to hear.  Listen to him.  So yes, they fell on the ground in terror.

But that was not the end of the story, was it?  Because after Moses and Elijah vanished…after the cloud was gone and the voice was quiet, Jesus touched them.  He said, “Get up and do not be afraid.”  In the Gospels, the only time Jesus touches people is when he is healing people.  He knew what they were feeling.  He was probably feeling some of the same things, if not more so.  His voice and his touch was a reminder that they would not go through this alone.  They walked up the mountain together and they would go down the mountain together.  But first, they had to get up.  They had to face their fear and keep moving forward. 

On Transfiguration Sunday, we tend to focus on the way Jesus was transfigured because that is a lot flashier; but the disciples were transfigured as well.  They had experienced the glory of God, but more importantly, they had experienced the bareness of God, the austerity of God.  Because when the light show was over and Moses and Elijah had left, they looked up, and there was Jesus.  As Christians, there will be very few light shows and sometimes we will yearn for the glory, the grandeur of God.  And that’s there, but what we find most often in our day to day life is the Jesus who touches us after we have fallen on our face and says, “Get up and do not be afraid.”  That is the Jesus who we can believe in.