Look, and Listen Sermon by Rev. Peter Shidemantle Transfiguration of the Lord February 11, 2018 Mark 9:2-9 There s a story of a little boy, around the turn of the last century, who lived far back in the country. He had reached the age of 12 and never, in all his life, seen a circus. You can imagine his excitement when a poster went up at school that on the next Saturday a traveling circus was coming to a nearby town. He ran home with the glad news, and then came the question, Mom, dad, can I go? The family was poor, but the father could see how important this was to the boy, so he said, If you do your chores ahead of time, I ll see to it that you have the money to go. Come Saturday morning all the chores were done and the boy stood ready in his best clothes beside the breakfast table. His father reached down into his overalls and pulled out a dollar bill the most money the boy had ever seen at one time and gave it to him. After the usual cautions about being careful the boy was sent on his way. The boy was so excited that his feet barely touched the ground all the way to the town. When we got there, he noticed people were lining the streets and he worked his way through the crowd until he could see what was going on. There in the distance approached the spectacle of a circus parade. It was the most amazing, wonderful thing the boy had ever seen. There were exotic animals in cages and bands and acrobats and everything that goes to make a great circus. After everything had passed by where he was standing, a circus clown, with floppy shoes and baggy pants and brightly painted face came by, bringing up the rear. As the clown passed by where he was standing, the boy reached into his pocket and got out that precious dollar bill. Handing the money to the clown, the boy then turned around and went home. 1 of 5
The mistake that the boy made is the same mistake that we can make in our spiritual lives and in our life of faith. We can end up settling for less than the real thing for a portion instead of for the whole. Both of our readings from the Old Testament and from the Gospel this morning are visuals extraordinary visions of God s revelation of divine power and glory. They don t so much teach a lesson or move us to action as they do inspire awe and even fear. I ve preached on the story of the transfiguration of Jesus on the mountaintop numerous times: it comes around every year since it appears, in slightly different forms, in Matthew, Mark and Luke on this Sunday just before the beginning of Lent. If memory serves, I ve tended to move pretty quickly over the vision part, the awe and the fear and get to what many would consider to be the main point, and that is how Christians are called, once they know who Jesus truly is the beloved Son of God, as the voice from the cloud declared to come down off the mountain and serve as Christ s disciple in the valley below. There s good and ample reason for this within the story itself. The vision of Jesus, shining brighter than the sun, standing there with Moses and Elijah, both long dead, together with the voice from the cloud, was all over in an instant. Peter s attempt to extend the moment, babbling something about building dwellings for each of them, was ignored. Then it was just Jesus and the three fearful disciples again heading back down the mountain again moving now toward Jerusalem and the rough days ahead. The kind of Christianity in which I was raised, and to a great degree, trained, was kind of suspicious of mountaintop experiences. It may be the same for you. We were suspicious of them because people who reported having them were so emotional about it which was a little unnerving for us Presbyterians! We were especially suspicious of people who seemed to be on a spiritual high all the time, the ones who tended to judge other Christians by the standard of their own experience and understanding of it. Of course the judging went both ways. It s easy to move from suspicion to judgment. It wasn t that we denied the validity of mountaintop experiences, it s just that the action was back down in the valley where all the suffering and despair and greed and violence was, where Christians were needed to do God s 2 of 5
work and will. People who linger on the mountaintop were avoiding their responsibilities in the valley. It s too bad, really, how so many of us ignore or devalue the prophet s ecstasy, or the dreamer s vision, or the worshiper s conviction that he or she has heard God speak. Most of us are convinced that our faith is about doing good things, about showing love and care for one another in this world, and surely it is. But our faith is also about yearning to see God, to be touched by the Spirit, about being moved by the voice of the Lord whispering in our ear. Our faith is so rich, and our God is so good, that it doesn t make any sense to limit what is possible for us to the dry bones of what we should do or shouldn t do each day. Our faith is about seeing visions of a new heaven and a new earth, every bit as much as it is about seeking justice and resisting evil. I think of Martin Luther King s sermon on the night before he was assassinated in Memphis, where he had gone in support of the striking garbage workers there, when he proclaimed, I have been to the mountaintop, and I have seen the promised land. Without that vision, I believe he would have been the first to say that he, and the movement itself, could not have gone on through the valley of struggle. There was a reason why the marches and demonstrations of the movement he led always started in church, with worship, and moved on to the streets from there. It s about being refreshed by God, as much as it is about refreshing others in God s name. Philip Toynbee argues that the basic command of religion is not do this! or do that but simply, Look. We might add, as we are led by our text today, in which the voice from the cloud said to the awestruck disciples, Listen. Listen to my Son, the Beloved. Look and listen. For a long time a common critique of Christians and of churches was that they spend so much time looking and listening for spiritual things that they neglect the important truths and duties of everyday life in Christ, which (the critique continued) they didn t do anyway. That never made much sense to me, because that wasn t the kind of church I knew. Almost to the contrary, not that the church or its members have over time been so serving and sacrificial, so confronting of powers that oppress and distort humanity, helping the poor and visiting those in prison but if not, feeling that we should be, should be doing more. But as we wander about in the valley of Christian duty and obligation, whether it be ministry in the world or service within 3 of 5
the church itself, we have discovered how easy it is to neglect the invitation to go up the mountain with Jesus. Like the wider society of which we are a part, we have ceased to be amazed by much of anything. People, even young people, are largely underwhelmed. There is nothing that much surprises or impresses, unless it s the newest IPhone. It s not hard to see how our faith can stay so earthbound that we lose, or never develop, the capacity for wonder, the vision of the glorious. Many of the faithful, including clergy, say they re burned out and the energy just isn t there anymore for serving the church, even for living the Christian life. The church isn t really feeding them, giving them what they need. But maybe they re out of energy because they fail to recognize the food that is before them, because they fail to take and eat what God seeks to give them. For still others the ugly facts of life are enough to squelch the wonder. But we don t need to turn away from the ugly facts to see the depths of beauty. Dreariness and disease, tragedy and war are real, but no more real than hope, joy, peace. God moments, God touches, are just as real as cancer, just as real as bombs, just as real as ethnic hatred. For most of us there have been moments when a word was spoken and we heard more than a word. All of us have seen more than we let on, felt more than we can describe. A certain combination of words on a page, or the way paint is placed on a canvass, or notes on a score witnessed or received actions of sacrificial love that moved our soul. We have been moved because those words, colors, music and acts speak to us of something beyond. Some moments transcend time and space, and in a way we cannot possibly explain, speak to our hearts. We catch glimmers of glory in moments of intimacy, serenity and joy. We have, from time to time, felt the grace of God. God has scrubbed the windows of our spirits. But, as another preacher has said, You can t have a mountaintop experience if you don t climb the mountain. Elisha followed his teacher Elijah around the country despite Elijah telling him not to when he had his experience. He actively sought a double portion of the spirit that filled Elijah and was patient to receive it. Peter, James and John were obeying Jesus when they witnessed his transfiguration. They had climbed the mountain with him when he went to pray. 4 of 5
We can t force or will ourselves into a state of awe, to garner up a mountaintop experience on our own. But we do know that the way to the holy is through the ordinary. We are capable of exercising our imagination as much as our reason. We can understand that there is nothing no thing, no person unworthy of wonder, that the world is a sacrament. Creation is marked with the signature of its Creator. The ordinary is always more extraordinary than we think. Thomas Merton described a life-changing experience for him: In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs. It was like waking from a dream of separateness to take your place as a member of the human race. If only everybody could realize this. But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun. As we head toward Lent, let s not settle for less than the real thing. For the most part I think we re pretty clear on how God would have us live down here in the valley, following Jesus who is the way. We ll always struggle with it, as we should. We ll debate the proper tactics to use and we ll disagree about social and moral issues. But today s message is not about us, but about God and it seems pretty clear that here God s focus is on Jesus. Our role is to look, and listen. The challenge, which I pray will guide our Lenten season together, is not so much, according to this word, returning to the valley to serve but have we been to the mountain, have we been in the presence of God? Go with Christ in anticipation of the fullness of his glory, to discover the giftedness and wonder of the life he has given you. 5 of 5
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