Sermon for the Transfiguration of our Lord
Feburary 18, 2007
Exodus 34:29-35
Psalm 99
2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2
Luke 9:28-26 [37-43]
Year C
I.N.I. (In the name of Jesus)
Blessed Transfiguration! We begin with a poem, that we will make our prayer:
In the desert, on God's mountain,
Moses saw the bush aflame,
wondered at the fiery foliage,
heard the crackling call his name.
May we notice bushes burning;
may we wonder at the flame.
Later in the wild of Sinai,
from another mountain height,
bringing promise to his people,
Moses shone with God's own light.
May we, not consumed, yet burning,
guide all to the mountain height.
--Susan Palo Cherwien
For weeks now we have been delving into the experience of God's glory.
On Christmas Day, the ten of us who were here heard the effusive poem from the beginning of John that climaxes in chapter 1 verse 14,
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.
On that memorable day in January when the Keyls opened up their house to this parish, we marveled at the abundance of wine at the wedding at Cana which concludes:
Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana in Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.
We have heard Jesus speaking of the fulfillment of Isaiah's jubilee vision at his hometown synagogue, then enabling a successful fishing expedition, and then offering the kingdom of heaven to the poor. This is big stuff, lights flashing, bells ringing, adrenaline-rushing kind of stuff.
The trouble is, for many the very idea of glory is elusive. We wouldn't know it if we saw it, or don't quite know what to do with it. We go from one busy task to another, or turn on the computer or TV or iPod, that we do not even know what it is to make space for God.
Glory is the fullness of God. It's the mystery described in recent weeks by Isaiah, where God is so big, so huge, and so immense, that only the fringes of his robe are noticeable. It's the presence, in Hebrew the shekinah of God that is manifested in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Glory glows in the burning bush that Moses encounters on Horeb when looking after his father-in-law's sheep and in the awesome presence of God takes off his sandals. Glory is in the radiation off Moses' face in today's first reading when he comes down from Mount Sinai holding the tablets that have the Ten Commandments written on them because he was hobnobbing with the Holy One, the one who cannot be named for fear of blaspheming, and the brightness of the almighty refracted off poor Moses who scared the bejeebers out of Israel so that they didn't even want to be close to him until he wore a veil! Oh, the challenges of being a mediator between God and the people!
So God, in infinite wisdom, decided to share that glory with everyone. God, as the song says, came down that we may have love, light, peace, and joy forevermore. God enfleshed the very deity in Jesus, born of Mary, who ate and drank and walked and talked and lived like you and me. So Jesus, ever mindful of ultimate things, talked frankly and plainly with his friends about the direction his life was to take him, not glory, but suffering, not fame, but rejection, not immortality, but death. And Jesus, fully God and fully human, recommended the cruciform way of life for his followers as a daily routine. As we adopt ways of serving others, of identifying with the poor and lonely, of giving up our inflated selves and carving out a way for God to enter in and influence our life's activities, we enflesh Jesus, we are clothed with Christ.
Jesus regularly carved out a way with God. Time and time again he went to a place apart to pray. In today's gospel, eight days after Jesus teaches the way of the cross that I just described, Jesus takes his closest compadres to a God place, a mountain, and as he does so,
glory happens! Full of himself, Jesus has a strategic planning meeting with two others who were known for conversing with God, Moses, the one with the veil we heard about earlier who chatted regularly with the Lord, and the prophet Elijah was forced at one time to listen to God whispering with a still voice. Peter, James and John, invited up to be with Jesus and with God and with the golden oldies Moses and Elijah just about dozed through the whole thing, it says
since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory.
This is big stuff, lights flashing, bells ringing, adrenaline-rushing kind of stuff.
Poor Peter didn't know quite what to do with it. He wanted to bottle it up, bask in the glow, stay in the moment, construct a shrine to it. While Peter was in mid-sentence with his off the wall idea, the very voice that reverberated off the Jordan River at Jesus' baptism restated the claim
This is my Son, my Chosen,
and then, as if to remind bumbling Peter and you and me, adds
listen to him.
God moments abound, if we have ears to hear and space and time in which to seek it. The mystery of God overflows, if we can recognize it. Each week, in our own repeating Isaiah's vision with Holy, holy, holy over bread and wine, we sing each week that
heaven and earth are full of your glory.
We don't have to climb a mountain to find it. It comes out of the lips of lectors who proclaim God's Word. It comes in growing friendships among youth and adults who share jambalaya and laughter. It comes to all who take responsibility to think and to act on significant issues of war and diplomacy, hunger and poverty, and God's will for peace and harmony among all peoples.
Where is your God place, the place where you can be overwhelmed and filled with the glory of God? Mine is when I take time to play with my children. It's when I sit in quiet prayer with a few pilgrims at Prayer Around the Cross. It's when I recognize the beauty of snow in my yard and on a ski slope. It's where people in a community care for one another, especially the sick and the dying. It's each week as we greet one another with Christ's peace before sharing the meal of new life, yet another taste of glory.
Kathleen Norris puzzles through how so people think the word "mystic" is dangerous,
someone whose head is in the clouds and who can't get places on time. Someone we admire, or profess to admire, if we hold a romantic, sentimental view of ... religion. But we wouldn't want our child to marry one, let alone become one.
She reports, a monk I know was once being pressured by a journalist to describe his "religious experiences." It had become clear during the interview that she expected that, as a monk, he would have dramatic stories to tell. He kept saying that he didn't know how to separate out his "religious experiences" from any other. Finally, the monk said, simply,
"I go to church."
("Mystic," from
Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, Riverbed Books, New York © 1998, p. 284).
Glorious, indeed!
I.N.I.
The Rev. Timothy J. Keyl, Pastor
Christ the King Lutheran Church
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