On Thursday,
Philadelphia Eagles’ center Jason Kelce paraded up Broad Street, celebrating
the team’s Super Bowl win dressed in a glittering, sequined Mummers’ costume
borrowed from the Avalon String Band. It was a dazzling spectacle.
But it still doesn’t
begin to compare to the display of light and awe that dazzled the disciples who
accompanied Jesus to the mountaintop in the Gospel this morning.
Each year, on this,
the last Sunday before Ash Wednesday,
we hear one of the
Gospel accounts of the transfiguration of Christ, when Jesus is transformed by
God, and, at least in Matthew and Mark’s telling of the event, we hear God speak,
proclaiming,
“This is my Son, the
Beloved…”
In the Gospel of Mark,
the event takes place almost exactly halfway between Jesus’ baptism in the
Jordan and his crucifixion at Golgotha. The disciples have traveled with Jesus
and witnessed miraculous healings and feedings of thousands, but they also know
John the Baptist has been beheaded and they have seen the Pharisees, the
religious leaders, arguing with Jesus.
And then, God speaks, and authenticates Jesus as the Christ, the
Messiah, in all his glory.[i]
This humble
carpenter’s son from Nazareth is God’s own Son. He isn’t merely a wise teacher
or encouraging role model; he isn’t simply a miracle-worker; and he isn’t even
another prophet. He is the Messiah, “the one promised to save”, altogether wholly
human and wholly divine.[ii]
Mark tells us, “All at once [the disciples] looked around and saw
no one with them anymore, except Jesus alone.” (v.8)
The disciples are
given only a glimpse — a mere glimmer — of the glory that will
be and it sustains them through all that awaits them in Jerusalem.
In our lives of faith,
often we are like the disciples who accompanied Jesus, and even more often,
like the religious leaders who questioned his teaching and healing, his
involvement in the lives of the outcast and the ritually unclean. We
second-guess what he meant and what his motives were.
Seeking understanding
of how Scripture fits the world around us, we consider first the knowledge we
have and look to the authorities that are familiar to us, and then we wonder
why it’s so hard to find God in our midst.
This is what Martin
Luther wrote about when he described the “hiddenness of God.” It isn’t that God
wears an invisibility cloak and cannot be seen, but that God actively hides
[from us].[iii]
Don’t misunderstand –
God is not playing a game, like parents who send their children on a snipe
hunt. Luther notes that, “God hides in order not to be found where
humans want to find God. But God also
hides in order to be found where God wills to be found.”[iv]
Our
dilemma is that we want to find God in the boxes we have built, within the limits we have set and in
things we can control.
“Hiding
is the law and gospel in God’s activity with us.”[v] The law in Scripture
teaches us to know ourselves, that we may recognize our inability to do good
apart from God.[vi] “God
outside Christ, outside the word, is an impenetrable power who holds our lives
in his hands and is hiding his will from us.”[vii] God’s hiddenness leads us to places where we
find Christ alone, just as the disciples find Christ alone in the
transfiguration.
And,
like the disciples, each glimpse of Christ sustains us for what lies ahead.
These
glimpses come in all different circumstances. And while I don’t diminish the
ways that we can be awed by the night sky, changing seasons and the display of
God’s paintbrush in sunrises and sunsets, some of the most poignant glimpses we
are given are in other human beings. Celtic
tradition recognizes places where the veil between heaven and earth is minimal,
where the sense of God’s presence overwhelms a person, and sometimes these
“thin places” are experienced in an encounter with another person.
At
the Women of the ELCA retreat that we hosted Saturday, several women told
stories of hymns such as “I Love to Tell the Story” or “Jesus Loves Me” that a
mother or father sang even after dementia or other illnesses had taken away
their everyday speech.
One
woman shared how a group, whose friendship had been forged during a weekend retreat
years ago, now gather to sing together at the bedside of a sick friend. She is
alone, without children and having never married, and they are essentially her
family, caring for her cat and tending to her needs.
These
glimpses of God can be joyful surprises that one mentor of mine calls “God
winks” – Debby and I experienced one of these this week was when we were in the
office talking about how popular socks are in the free pantry and, not even an
hour later, one of you called us offering to bring us boxes of new socks. We
laughed aloud at God’s goodness.
And
they happen here in our worship Christ is revealed in
the breaking of the bread and the pouring of the wine, so that you and I would
know God’s complete love and abundant mercy for each of us.[viii]
On this Transfiguration
Sunday, all the glitter and bling the world can display cannot outshine the
wonder of God’s grace given here for us and the lengths to which our God goes
to reconcile the world to God’s ownself.
Let us pray…[ix]
God of Glory,
Thank you for your
abundant mercy, and your reconciling love for the world.
Shine the light of
glory into our hearts, that we may follow Your Son Jesus Christ into the world.
Sustain us with holy
moments where we witness the fullness of Your Kingdom in the people we
encounter and strengthen us for what lies ahead.
We pray in the name of
Jesus Christ.
Amen.
[i] Sermon Brainwave. Working Preacher.
[ii] Rolf A. Jacobson, Ed. Crazy Talk. Minneapolis: Augsburg Books. 35.
[iii] Steven
D. Paulson. "Luther on the Hidden God." Word and World, Volume XIX, Number 4, Fall 1999. St. Paul: Luther
Seminary. 365.
[iv] ibid, 366.
[v] ibid, 367.
[vi] Martin Luther, “Freedom of a Christian.”
[vii] ibid, 369.
[viii] ibid
[ix] Adapted
from Laughing Bird Liturgical Resources
No comments:
Post a Comment