Transfiguration C 2013; Luke 9:28-36 February 10, 2013 Cross and Crown Lutheran Church Mountaintop prayer

Transcription

1 1 Transfiguration C 2013; Luke 9:28-36 February 10, 2013 Cross and Crown Lutheran Church Mountaintop prayer When I was a little girl, most of you know by now that I was raised a Roman Catholic. And a rite of passage when you're a Roman Catholic kid is that at some point someone - usually a family member gives you your first set of rosary beads. Now, for those of you who aren't too familiar with rosaries, they're more than just religious jewelry. When used properly, they can help the person praying them re-center his or her busy life on Jesus. And that s a good thing. When used improperly they become just another bit of superstitious magic. Exactly the kind of thing that drove Martin Luther up the wall. Anyway, I remember when I was about five or six years old that my Grandma Wulff who I think worked for a religious supply house of some kind gave my little sister and I our first "toy" rosaries. They were about maybe ten inches around made of white cotton string and white plastic beads that were melted onto the string and while I lost them somewhere years ago I still remember there was a little white plastic crucifix

2 2 that hung at the center. Well, Kathie and I thought these things from grandma were the coolest things ever. Not because we were particularly religious kids we weren t but because (A) they were from Grandma so that s got to be good right? and (B) - now remember this was the seventies they glowed in the dark! Every night I couldn't wait to hold my little plastic glow in the dark rosary beads under the lamp by my bedside so I could watch them glow as soon as my mom turned out the lights until they'd finally fade to dark. And I admit, it was fun to stare at the glowing plastic cross with its tiny, tiny little Jesus on it because if you stared at it long enough and then looked away quickly at the darkened wall you could see Jesus on the wall! And to a five year old how cool is that? One of the pastors at church taught me that one. Now, at the time my Grandmother probably did wonder a little, but not much if her gift was being used in the right way, that is, were my sister and I really learning how to pray as we played with the glowy plastic beads and the even glowier Jesus. Well, if what she was wondering once the lights went out was whether Kathie and I were saying the right words

3 3 and consciously asking God to watch over my mommy and daddy and my sister and brother, and my kitty and my stuffed frog Kermit then no, I certainly wasn't praying. But if you were to ask me today whether or not during those nights, staring at the beads as a very young child, I was in prayer then I would say, yes, because all prayer really is is being in the presence of God and I have no doubt whatsoever that even as I started to wonder about this tiny little glowing man that was attached to this tiny little white plastic cross that had this mysterious property of glowing in the dark that I was being held in prayer not just by my parents and my grandparents but even more importantly Kathie and I were being held in prayer by God and it's precisely this morning's gospel lesson that convinces me that this is so. You see there's a really important detail in this gospel lesson we heard this morning that St. Luke felt was important enough to mention. At the very beginning we are told that Jesus took Peter and James and John up on to the mountain to pray. It wasn't for a committee meeting, or to get away from the crowds per se, or to even catch up on sleep before the busy Lenten season,

4 4 but he went there to pray. To spent some time consciously in the presence of God. And as we heard if we listen closely, it was while Jesus was praying that his facial appearance was changed. Transfigured is how Mark and Matthew describe it. And again it was while Jesus was praying that his clothes became dazzling white. And again it was while Jesus was praying that Moses and Elijah showed up and wanted to talk with him about what was about to go down in Jerusalem on Good Friday. All this while Jesus was praying, If you look closely at the text, nowhere does it say that Peter and James and John were doing any of the praying themselves. Nowhere does Luke mention that they used the very popular PRAY acronym that some of you may have heard before that guides folks through prayer: praise, repent, ask, yield. Or even the ACTS acronym for prayer Adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication. There s no mention in the scripture of any of this, or prayer beads or journals or shawls, or anything like that. It wasn't that they squeezed their eyes really tightly and somehow forced themselves to have a mountaintop experience and so therefore we should go and do likewise. No, all Peter James and John seem to have been doing was trying really, really hard in their incredibly busy lives

5 5 not to fall asleep! Yet despite this, or as I like to think because of this God s heart warmed at the sight of his wonderful, tired and oftentimes clueless children and like entering into someone else's dream, God drew them right up into the power of Jesus prayer and Jesus vision. what they experienced wasn t up to them, it was, as it always is up to Jesus. And in those amazing moments God opened their eyes and their ears to eavesdrop on Jesus' conversation with the Father and the prophets. God gentled their minds so they could let go of what any of us might write off as as a simple hallucination so that they could enter into if only for a moment the glory of God s only son. That was God s doing not theirs. That was part of God s gift to them and to us. It was only when Peter decided, not God, but Peter, to take it upon himself to set boundaries on the experience that God stepped in and reminded him to hush up. I can almost hear God voice sighing through the wind in the clouds, "Look Peter, relax,

6 6 whose prayer is this anyway?" And sometimes, at least this is true for me sometimes, when I get a little anxious about my prayer life this is a very good thing to be reminded of. For you see I think many of us feel at times quite a bit a pressure coming from without and within when it comes to prayer. There s a secret little fear that many of us have that for God to really hear us we have to pray in the right way. That it s somehow all on us, if we don t get it right. That special care is needed to find just the right balance of praising and asking and thanking and pleading so that somehow if we include all the requisite parts that our prayer in a faithless world will have a better chance of being heard by God than maybe someone else s. In fact I've read prayer manuals on-line that, with very little tweaking come across sounding a whole lot like how to put together your best resume for that all important interview with God. But you see, it doesn t work like that. Because even here, prayer is yet another gift that God gives us even when we aren t aware of it. And to see that all we have to do is call to mind this morning s gospel. because here we just heard that what Peter and James and John discovered and experienced is that the most powerful

7 7 and transformative prayer of all is Jesus prayer into which they and we have been invited solely by virtue of tagging along with him. All they had to do was be there and God would draw them to experience Jesus glory which means that God is longing just as much to draw us to him to experience Jesus glory. The hard part of course is for us to trust that this is so. And I don t have to tell you finding that kind of trust is hard. It goes against just about everything we re told in this competitive world of ours. So thank God for Peter because Peter seems to be our eternal guinea pig before God. He too had a hard time trusting that Jesus prayer alone - without the dwellings that he wanted to build was enough And yet even Peter with all his trust issues was still welcomed right to the end, and so will we. You know sometimes I wonder if Peter might have been better off, had his grandmother given him a glow-in-the-dark star of David when he was a little boy. So he could have just gotten lost from time to time in the mysterious things of God and not have to worry so much about getting it all right and that includes prayer. Because this morning's gospel lesson is, among other things, an amazing and mysterious story about prayer -- Jesus' prayer, the prayer that Jesus prays to his Father

8 8 one which surrounds us at all times, and in just a few minutes will surround little baby Asher in a remarkably special way. because as you know all of us here have been invited to enter into the mystery of Asher s baptism. With water and word Asher will be joined to Christ and as such Asher will be joined to Christ s sacred prayer for him. A never ending prayer of mercy and love, a prayer of forgiveness and shalom a prayer that will one day result in Asher s seeing as will we all who are baptized the full glory of God at the end of time. But for now, and until that day, we can trust that even when we don t get it right even when we fall so short of the mark that we might as well have fallen off the mountain Jesus is still praying for us because Jesus is with us and showering us with his glory to the end. Amen.