SERMON – TRANSFIGURATION SUNDAY – YEAR B “BOTH SIDES NOW”

Sermon – Transfiguration Sunday – year b

“both sides now”

mark 9:2-9

 february 15, 2015

Let us pray:  May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to you, O God, our strength and our redeemer.   Amen.

I read a story about a passenger on an airplane.   

The plane landed for a 45 minute stopover and the pilot invited passengers to use the time to get out and stretch their legs.    As this passenger rose to disembark, he noticed a guide dog sitting quietly at his blind master’s feet.    Obviously, the man was a regular on this flight, because the pilot came out and spoke to the man by name, saying,  “Keith, do you want to stretch your legs?”  “No, thanks, I’m fine”, he replied.  “But my dog might like to.”   Now, imagine the scene.  The pilot, wearing his uniform and dark glasses, emerges from the plane into a lobby filled with passengers, with the blind man’s guide dog in tow.    As the story goes, people scattered in panic.   Not only were they trying to switch flights, they were trying to switch airlines!

Living in these times can make us feel like those airplane passengers.   We arrived at this point in our lives with one set of expectations, values, and traditions.  

But, while the pilot has brought us this far, we may wonder if we want to get back on the plane.   All our assumptions have been challenged.  We wonder if we can trust that this same airplane can get us to where we need to go.   It’s kind of like faith.    Is the faith that has carried us along this far have a relevance for us today, does it connect with our rapidly changing world?  

Can a 2,000 year old story still get us to where we need to go?  

At first glance, it would seem that the story of the transfiguration of Jesus has little to say to our changing world.   Jesus appears on a mountain before three of his disciples.   Light radiates from him, a brightness that nothing on earth can match.   The great prophet, Elijah and the great Hebrew leader,  Moses, suddenly appear.  A cloud appears and god speaks:  “This is my beloved son.  Listen to him!”   How might this story, we call the transfiguration of Christ, that has the disciples glimpse the divine in their encounter with Jesus on the mountain, speak to us today.

Some of us who are older will remember Joni Mitchell’s song that seemed to catch the essence of the 1960’s visionary expectation and ironic cynicism cycling into disillusion and hope, all at the same time. 

Recall these lyrics:   Rows and flows of angel hair and ice cream castles in the air and feather canyons everywhere.  I’ve looked at clouds that way....but now they only block the sun.  They rain and they snow on everyone....I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now.”   This is a time of year when as we leave the liturgical season of epiphany, in the afterglow of Christmas, we look ahead to the season of lent, with its tradition of spiritual struggle, of contemplation, penitence, confession before Easter’s dawn.  “Both sides now.”  

And as the season of lent moves along the days will lengthen, the temperature will begin to rise, springtime will draw closer and closer, - a time of “both sides now” – dark and light,  snow and melting, penitential and hope filled.   Perhaps this strange, other-worldly, story of Jesus’ transfiguration does have a message for us.     I would suggest that it invites us to see the world differently.    Some  ponder how the church can move into the future, pointing out that people in a post-modern world have little interest in a god who can only provide a future kingdom.  They long, rather, for a God who can be known in the here and now.   That brings us back to transfiguration, to “both sides now,” to the ancient and never-ending story of how earth and heaven intersect.  

“Both sides now” are essential to spiritual growth.  

the Lenten times through which my life and yours have passed and will inevitably pass again are easier to negotiate if we have taken the time to open ourselves to the glory, the transcendence, of the mountain top, to cultivate a sense of the presence of God, to experience the source of our strength, God’s radiant grace in close proximity.   What is transfiguration?   It is where cloud and light collide, until we see the here and now in a different way.  It is where sacred and secular bump against one another, until each permeates the other. 

It is where life in the valley meets life on the peak.

Transfiguration, ultimately, is cross and resurrection; Good Friday and Easter; the glory of God found in mountaintop experiences shining even in the darkest valleys of life;   glimpses of glory to see us through the scenes of suffering.  Perhaps this experience of the transfiguration sustained and nurtured Peter, James, and John during the difficult days ahead until the reality of Christ’s resurrection lifted them to new heights.     Perhaps such transfiguration experiences in your own life might do the same.

A young man dies in hospital after a long battle with cancer; close members of his family have spent days at his bedside keeping vigil.  

The weather has been dull and cloud covered for days, sunshine is not expected for some time to come. 

But just then, a few short moments after the nurse had left confirming what they already knew, that he had died, a break in the clouds, a few bright rays of sunshine come bursting through the window filling it with a wondrous glow.   His aunt, a member of the church I served at the time, told me she knew, she knew at that moment she had experienced the divine, the presence of God, and in the midst of intense grief she found a joy and a sure hope that would never let her go.     

Another death, an older person, again dies after a long illness.    A friend of that person is owner of an ancient cactus – it had bloomed for many years at Christmas time, but this particular year, it did not.  It was beyond its time of blooming.    But the day after his passing, the friend phones the spouse of the one who had died and exclaims – “my cactus is blooming”.     

Co-incidences.   I suppose.  Maybe.    But, I think that is how God works sometimes, some call it serendipity; it’s all in the timing of the co-incidence.   glimpses of the divine.    Transfiguration moments that buoy us up, that uplift us, strengthen and encourage and even delight us. 

A favourite writer of mine, Frederick Buechner, wrote of transfiguration this way:  “even with us something like that happens once in a while. 

the face of a man walking his child in the park, of a woman picking peas in the garden, of even the unlikeliest person listening to a concert, say, or standing barefoot in the sand watching the waves roll in....every once and so often, something so touching, so incandescent, so alive transfigures the human face that it’s almost beyond bearing.”  

I had a transfiguration moment  at the congregational gathering yesterday.    The person leading the event was speaking.  Behind him was a screen with a representation of Jesus projected onto it.    A very young child, Adeline, began to walk toward the screen, hesitantly at first, then with growing confidence she walked right up to it and reached up her hand toward Jesus smiling down on her.  In light of the day’s theme, of wanting to discern God’s will for us going forward, in trusting that God has good intentions for our future as a congregation; in our wanting to journey with God in our development plans, this to me was a significant moment, a transfiguration moment, a God moment in which one could catch a glimpse of the divine in the actions of a little girl.

What are the times in your life when sacred and secular bump together, when you see the world from “both sides now?”   Those “God-moments,” can we describe them that way to others?  It’s not easy.   No wonder Jesus told the disciples not to tell anyone what they had seen.    

Why might we keep silent?   Why do we?   Perhaps we feel our words can’t express such an experience.   “I have seen things,” Aquinas wrote, “that make all my writings seem like straw.”   Perhaps we fear rejection: “no one will believe me....what would they think if I told them that for an instant, in worship, in a circle of prayer, sitting in traffic or at a concert, talking with a friend, for just a simple fleeting moment, I felt a sense of that peace for which I long, of the cloud of God’s presence enveloping me, saturating the world?”    Can you tell stories of your ‘mountain top experiences.?   The disciples told no one.  But later, they could, after the resurrection, when that extraordinary experience of their lives inspired them to a different understanding of the mountain top. 

 It was as if they read the story backwards, and the resurrection revealed what transfiguration was about:  glimpsing the glory of Christ, the power of God’s love. 

Then the disciples could move beyond fear, and the desire to build shrines. Transfiguration recognizes the spiritual power of ‘both sides now.’ 

It asks us to turn, firmly, even if reluctantly, from epiphany’s light to Lent’s cloudy shadows, for if we want to experience the power of Christ in the radiant, transforming power of the light, we need also to be open to the presence of God’s love in the shadows.   

As we enter Lent’s darkness, let us hold on to that vision of the light.  Let us sustain ourselves with songs and praise and prayer, with worship, discipline and self-giving, knowing God goes with us down from the mountain even into the darkest valleys.   

The transfiguration isn’t just some sort of mystical experience for the disciples that we inherited.   It was for the disciples, but it is also for us and for anybody who is in danger of losing their way.  It’s a landmark when the horizon is spinning around you, even when it seems as if we are in a plane with a pilot who can’t see where she is going. 

Thanks be to God for transfiguration in our own lives, for the abiding strength and endless joy it offers us, emboldening us for living and serving in Christ-like ways.  Amen.

Major Resources:

“The Sermon – An Approach” by The Rev. Dr Lillian Perigoe in Preaching – Word & Witness, Vol. 03:2

(Year B), pp. 67-68.   Editor: Paul Scott Wilson.  Liturgical Publications Inc.   2003.

“The Sermon – An Approach” by Christine Erskine Boileau in Preaching – Word And Witness, Vol. 00:2

(Year B), pp. 71-72.   Editors:  Paul Scott Wilson and John M. Rottman. Liturgical Publications 2000.

Sermon: “Worthwhile Wait”

Let us pray:  May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to you, O God, our strength and our redeemer.   Amen.

There is something about this time of year that does things to us.   Call it the winter ‘blahs’ or the February ‘blues.’   Many years ago when I worked as an insurance adjuster, I came to dread the month of February because clients were particularly irritable and difficult to deal with.     Have you noticed it, perhaps in the workplace; perhaps at home – more frequent flaring of tempers, people being edgy, grumpy.    Perhaps it is a matter of being fed up with winter and spring still a long way off; some of us feel burdened by Christmas bills now due.   February seems to be a month when a lot of us are sick or depressed.     We might experience the feeling of being closed in, of being trapped.   We may even start feeling that there is nothing to hope for, even no one to trust.

All kinds of easy answers abound, of course.   Head for Mexico.  Get your hair done.  Take a pill.   Have a drink.  Lose 15 pounds.   Get a massage.   

Try some ‘new age’ path to spiritual fulfillment.   Any or all of the above.    But it’s not usually all that simple, is it?  And then we come to church, only to hear some author from long ago make it sound so easy.  How does he put it, “even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for God shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not be faint.”   We may well find ourselves thinking, “Well, that sounds really good, but who is he kidding?  Besides, why should I listen to that kind of wishful thinking?  What credibility or authenticity does that passage have for my life?”   Wayne Hilliker, to whom I am indebted for  much of what I have to say today, writes that to answer these questions we need to consider the reading’s original context.   These closing sentences of the 40^th chapter of Isaiah are words that were addressed to a community of people more than 550 years before the birth of Jesus.    The king of Babylon had rolled into the biblical lands in successive waves of conquest.   Torches were set to the crops, axes were laid to the trunks of the precious olive trees, the holy temple was ransacked, the treasury emptied.  significant numbers of Israelites were deported to Babylon, especially the leaders of the people.       And the Israelites, now some 40 years later  are still living in exile in Babylon.  

Not surprisingly, the prevailing mood is agnostic, skeptical.  One of the exiles spits out a lament:

“My way is hidden from God, and my right is disregarded by my God.”   many had forgotten or disregarded the memory of God’s saving acts in history – the promises given to Abraham and Sarah; the deliverance from Egypt; settlement in the promised land; the rise to nationhood.   Many ignored the fact that it was the rebellion and sinfulness of the people, and in particular their leaders, that led to their conquest and deportation.

The attitude of the Israelites reminds me of an old story of an elderly spouse who was quite ill who said to the other spouse, “you know Jamie, you’ve always been with me --- through thick and thin.   Like the time I lost my job – you were right there by my side.      Then I was injured in that car accident and you were right there by my side.  Then there was the time when we were so poor; we had nothing – but you were there with me.  And now here I am, Jamie, sick as a dog, and as always, you are right beside me.  You know something, Jamie, you’re bad luck!!

There is a part of us, isn’t there, that is tempted to look for somebody or something to blame for all the things that go wrong with our lives.    I have a friend whose most favourite saying is, “if I didn’t have bad luck; I’d have no luck at all.”     Sometimes we blame our luck; sometimes fate; often we choose to blame the very people we once looked for to answer all our problems.  

With a similar kind of bitterness, the ancient Jews in Babylon were claiming, “it’s god’s fault we’re still living in Babylon.   God doesn’t care about us!   God has abandoned us.”    It is within this agnostic attitude of the people, this questioning of whether God cares or even really exists, that Isaiah counsels his people “wait for God.”   “...those who wait for God shall renew their strength.”   

To “wait for God.”   Just what does it mean to ‘wait’ for God?   Does it mean sitting on posteriors and twiddling thumbs, expecting God to get us out of the mess.  Regretfully, some Christians take that attitude.  Their faith is characterized by inaction.  They wait for God to put things right.   That is hardly fair to what the bible means by waiting for God.  Behind the word translated “wait” lies a particular Hebrew verb that originally had to do with twisting or plaiting strands together, as in making a cord or rope.   Here we get a sense of the strength that comes from binding things together.    There is also a feminine form of the word used to denote a place for collecting water, such as a cistern or reservoir.     

Waiting for God, then, implies and experience of allowing God to bind together our strengths, or to collect our resources.   Or as we might say letting God help us “get our act together.”   

God focuses us, gathers the frayed strands of our being, conserves our resources, reinforces us, enables us.   God assists us to get ready for whatever challenges are thrown at us.  Waiting is active, not passive.   It is not waiting with dismal resignation to our fate, but trusting with confident expectation that God will employ the various strands of our life to the strongest and fullest degree possible.    Admittedly, this is not always a comfortable process.  It may involve pain, tough decisions, personal anguish from radical changes as we ask God to reorder our discordant lives.  ‘Waiting’, then in the biblical sense means the capacity to hold on tightly, strengthened and upheld by the belief that even the cruellest experiences of life are not going to scrap the good purposes of God.   Implicit in every situation is a saving possibility.

We all know that life is not all sweetness and light.   Sometimes in our walk, our journey of life, we grow weary, we become faint of heart, sometimes of body.   Courage is what is called for.   And it takes a lot of courage to be a human being.  

When you hold an infant in your arms, you realize that child does not know that yet.   Maybe it is your daughter or granddaughter.   Looking into her eyes it is easy to see she doesn’t know anything about arthritis or cancer or car crashes, or depression. 

She does not lie awake at night worrying about her relationships, or her financial situation, or her death.    She sleeps and eats and sighs when she is full.  Her world is as wide as her mother’s arms.  And as safe.  That is all she knows.    But as she grows she will learn more.   She will learn that bee’s sting and roses have thorns, and that other children push and throw stones.   She will learn about all sorts of annoying, painful illnesses and that when her parents move to another province or get divorced, there is absolutely nothing she can do about it.   All of that is part of growing up.  It is not the only part, by a long shot, but it is the hard part, and it is part of how we learn what it is to be human.

As we grow older we may start thinking we are in control of our lives.   That is, until something happens.  The job and income evaporate, the doctor finds a spot on the x-ray, the child’s grades go down and down, and it is like being trapped inside a car when the brakes fail.  In a split second, in a twinkling of an eye, everything changes.  

One moment we are comfortably and safely in command of our journey, and the next we are being flung down the road in an expensive piece of machinery that will not stop.   And we find ourselves saying, “I’ve lost control of my life.!”   

I’ve said it myself, but it is not true.   What we lose is the illusion that we were ever in control of our lives in the first  place.    It is a hard, hard lesson to learn.    We keep thinking there is some way to master the human condition so that there are no leaks in it, no scares, no black holes.    But as far as I know, it can’t be done.     Maybe that is why it’s called the human condition, that is, being human is a condition we live with.   A splendid one in most respects – but with certain built-in limitations.    Some things will budge for us and some will not.   We cannot control everything that happens to us.   That is the human condition, and it can be frightening, because what it means is we cannot choose all the circumstances of our lives.  All we can really choose is how we respond to them.

It does take a lot of courage to be a human being.  And courage is a gift given to us in our faith.    Remember in our gospel reading today, the people came to Jesus in the evening, at sundown – in other words, they came to him in the growing, gathering darkness, bearing their own darkness.   

They discovered in him a different understanding of reality.   They appropriated beliefs by which their lives were invested with new meaning and fresh vigour.   They discovered not so much release from their burdens as new strength for the bearing of their burdens.    No so much protection as unfailing support.    

Writing from a prison cell German theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer expressed it this way: 

“I believe God will give us all the strength we need to help in all times of distress.  But God never gives it to us in advance, lest we should rely on ourselves, and not on God....”   and in his book the screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis lifts up another truth:   “God wants (us) to learn to walk and if only the will to walk is really there, God is pleased even with the stumbles.”   Mark, in his gospel, writes,  “Jesus came and took her by the hand and lifted her up.   Then the fever left her and she began to serve them.”    As we willingly accept Christ’s healing and strength, may we, too, rise to serve as his faithful, courageous disciples.   Amen.

(I am indebted to Rev. C. Wayne Hilliker for the main body of ideas and content in this sermon from his sermon entitled, “One Step At a Time” found in “The Chalmers Pulpit, Chalmers United Church, Kingston, Ontario, Feb. 6, 2006.)

Sermon: What have you to do with us, Jesus?

SERMON

FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY – YEAR B

“WHAT HAVE YOU TO DO WITH US, JESUS?”

Mark 1:21-28 / February 1, 2015

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to you, O God, our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.

The gospel writer, Mark, has this style of writing that suggests a state of ‘urgency’.   He often writes that something or the other happened immediately, or right now or right away – in the gospel passage for today he says, “just then”, as Jesus was teaching, just then, or suddenly, there appeared in the synagogue this man with an unclean spirit.

“Unclean spirit.”  That’s first-century talk for a demon.  Many people in those days believed that demons were personal beings,  living entities, that possessed persons or communities and caused those people or groups to think, feel and act in ways that distorted God’s purposes.   A demon was like a virus that got into the operating system of the human being and caused the person to do things which that person would not do if everything were operating in the way God intended.

Now I’m thinking that very few of us believe that the world is inhabited by actual demonic beings who have   personality in a way similar to human beings.   Having said that, I have on a few occasions been asked to ‘bless’ a person or their home because of an alleged  strange, potentially evil, presence there.   While I admit that such experiences have caused me to examine my own conviction in this regard, and have shaken that conviction to a certain extent; I do still remain very skeptical of any  claims of the presence of the demonic, believing that unless proven otherwise another explanation has to be found.    In any event, we don’t have to conjure up imagined or real demons to experience evil;   sadly, there is plenty enough human activity that epitomizes what we might label the demonic.  

In our contemporary contexts, while we don’t speak of demons or unclean spirits, we do speak of powers, forces, systems that are bigger than we are and that prompt us to act in ways that corrupt God’s will and purpose for our lives.   They sneak up on us and take over without our noticing them:   psychosocial phenomena.   Ways of thinking.  Ways of feeling. Ways of acting.  We seldom choose them.   But we are guided by their force fields.   Some of them are personal.  Some are more social and systemic.  

On the personal side we experience the ‘demons’ of alcohol and drug abuse.    If our mental health becomes problematic for us; perhaps severe depression, as an example, we may feel and act like we have an unclean spirit.    These can get inside our system; they can have a life within us that is independent of our will.  And they can distort God’s purposes for our lives.  

One day when I was minister at West Broadway community ministry, a fellow approached me and said that he wished to speak to me privately and to have prayer.    

He said he wanted to be in a sacred place for this. 

So, I invited him to join me in the small chapel located on the facilities.  This fellow was no stranger to me;

He regularly attended the drop-in centre and had, on occasion, volunteered in a variety of ways in the work of the drop-in.  After I closed the door to the chapel and walked toward where he was standing on the other side, he suddenly pulled out two knives and waved them threateningly at me.  He made demands which if I had complied with them would have put persons in the drop-in at risk.     After a whole lot of listening, some conversation, and all the while praying silently within myself for God’s help, he finally broke down, dropped the knives, and fell into my arms weeping.  

Later I learned of the pressures in his life and his attempts to deal with them using illicit drugs.   

His violent act, so unlike him, was precipitated while under the influence of these drugs which to use biblical language – were his ‘unclean spirit’, his ‘demon.’

As well as these personal forces that distort God’s purposes for our lives, there are what may be described as the “social equivalents of possession”,

that is, social forces that bind, limit, possess.  The work of demons:   The “consumption” demon;   the “you can never have enough”  demon;   the “make profit at all costs” demon; the “looking out for number one” demon; the demon of corporate greed and systemic injustice.   Most recently we have been reminded of that unclean spirit within our city – that demon we call racism.

Today’s scripture text does not specify the content of Jesus’ teaching.  But we know what it is because Mark has made it clear in the stories leading up to this one.  

Jesus is teaching that the realm of God is at hand;  God is at work in the world to quiet the demons and to lead every relationship and every situation to mediate God's love, justice, and blessing.  At one level, this story establishes the authority and power of Jesus as the agent of the reign of God.   Jesus comes eyeball to eyeball with the unclean spirit.  The demon doesn’t like it.  “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?”  

Then Jesus rebukes the demon.   With a word.   Nothing more than a word.    Words do have power.  They can shape – and reshape – our world.    Yesterday at the meeting of Winnipeg Presbytery,  our conference president, Barb Jardine, talked about ‘voice’; how as a church we need to be a ‘voice’ speaking out against racism; a ‘voice’ for right relations between people of different races; a ‘voice’ that is strong and loud declaring that all people are God’s beloved children; that all people deserve respect; a ’voice’ that exposes racism; a ‘voice’ that promotes justice and wholeness for first nations people and all people oppressed by racist attitudes and actions.   Barb offered this quote:  “Voice is the muscle of the soul.”   

“And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying out with a loud voice, came out of him.”    Sometimes healing is that way.  Between the recognition of the need for healing, and the healing itself, convulsion, pain that is a part of healing.    What is your unclean spirit?    What is your demon?    Where, in your life, do you need healing?   It’s interesting, isn’t it, that this man with ‘an unclean spirit’ is discovered in the synagogue, within the faith community.    Where in this faith community; this church is the one with the unclean spirit.  Well, let me say I believe all of us, at one time or another, have unclean spirits, demons we want rid of; parts of our lives which distort God’s will and purpose for us; that thwart our efforts to be faithful followers of Christ:  the guilt and shame some live with; the despair of loneliness; the unrelenting competition and drivenness of people climbing the business and social ladders; hopelessness in the face of illness and death; the heartbreaking pain of a friend’s unfaithfulness;  the rage churning within an addict’s battle for control.  Is it any wonder that, in the midst of God’s people in a synagogue, a man bedeviled with an unclean spirit cried out, “what have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?”  Why does any one of us come to worship?   Is it not, at one level, because we are crying out that same question, “what have you to do with us, Jesus?”     You may not choose to call them demons, but how can you know and watch the community around you on any single day and not recognize the evidence that there is still at work in this world sinister forces that oppose God’s will and purpose for our lives?   

Yesterday at the same presbytery meeting we heard from a modern day prophet.    Ovide Mercredi spoke eloquently about racism in our city.  

In true prophetic style he spoke the hard truth of the reality of racism that continues to injure first nations people – individually and collectively. 

He was clear about it; racism exists, is prevalent, and his people, first nations people, experience it every day.    But also in true prophetic fashion, he spoke of hope; he spoke of the hope he has in the people of this city to rise to the occasion and effect the transformation needed. And he called on the churches to be leaders in this regard. As followers of the greatest prophet of them all – Jesus – we are to exorcise the unclean spirit of racism, removing it from our city, starting with our own corner of it; even from within ourselves.   Like the man in the synagogue, there will be much convulsing, and crying with loud voices – but that is the process toward healing and wholeness.

This passage in Mark is a paradigm for the ministry of the church.   Jesus confronts the demon and casts it out.  

A couple of chapters later in Mark, Jesus gives the same power to the church which reads, “and he appointed twelve...to be with him, and to be sent out to proclaim the message, and to have authority to cast out demons.”  Ministry may be described as the casting out of unclean spirits.   “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?”   Yes, yes he has!

He comes to destroy all that would prevent us from the will and purpose of God for our lives; all that would hold us back from abundant living.  

And, in turn, we are called to do the same in the church, in the city, in the world.     Let us give God thanks and praise for such healing, freeing, transforming love.     Amen.

Major Sources:

“Teaching as Exorcism” by Ronald J. Allen in Pulpit Digest, July-September 2000, pp. 121-127.

Editor:  David Albert Farmer.   Logos  Productions Inc.  Inver Grove Heights, MN. 

“Proclaiming the Text” by Ann Hoch in Pulpit Resource, Vol. 28, No. 1, Year B, pp. 20-21.

Editor:  William H. Willimon.   Wood Lake Books, Kelowna, BC.  2000.