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Transfiguration
Sunday 2007 |
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Transfiguration
Sunday 2007 |
Peter, James and John
went with Jesus everywhere, and not always to their liking.
In today’s Gospel Jesus takes them up a mountain – not for leisure
– no skiing or snowboarding. They
got enough exercise getting there by foot.
They went up the
mountain, as they often did, to be alone and to pray. But
when they got there this time, they weren’t alone.
This time they were caught in a kind of time warp – which is easy to
imagine in the movies – but this wasn’t the movies.
This was a moment that would change their lives, though Peter, James and
John almost missed it.
Tired from their uphill
walk, they were weighed down with sleep. But
the text makes a point that “since they stayed awake, they saw…”
They saw past barriers of time and place to see Elijah and Moses and the
glory of God in the face of Christ.
Glory is a spot light
word. It is like sun shining through
stained glass. Glory isn’t the
sun, but the sun’s rays. We
don’t look at the sun directly, but the rays tell us about the sun.
Glory is like how we know Rembrandt or Michelangelo or any artist.
We may not see them, but if we see their art we see how they express
their mood; what subjects they are interested in. Frederick
Buechner writes that God’s glory “is what God looks like when for the time
being all you have to look at God with is a pair of eyes.”
Jesus took his disciples
to the mountain for prayer and while Jesus prayed, his face changed.
His clothes shone like the sun. It
was a moment not to miss. But the
disciples could have missed it, weighed down as they were.
It is hard to not be
weighed down. Life is laden with
demands and distractions; so much information to sift, and so many agendas and
differing directions to go, so much competition to negotiate, so many loses to
grieve, challenges to face. Sometimes
we’re so weighed down it’s hard to get up in the morning.
Youth particularly have
so much information to manage: computers; IPODs; DVDs; My Space – all
important for keeping in touch with the world.
And the world assumes they know how to use them all. Movies
and TV move so fast some of us have to watch them twice to get the details. Attention
spans are based on the time between commercials.
Current research says
that while we used to need to hear a message eight times for it to sink in, now
it takes twenty-seven times. We
adapt to the overload by tuning out. But
true as this is, none of this is the real problem.
We have been created with
the capacity for more than the quick fix and the fast pace.
We have been created to behold; to notice; to savor; to be touched; to be
transformed. Life abounds with
challenges that are larger than life – like how to keep breathing when a child
dies; or where to find stability when war explodes; or what to place meaning in
when the world as we know it shatters. The
quick fix doesn’t help. Commercials don’t provide respite. For all the
information IPODs hold, they don’t heal and give meaning.
But
none of these, not cell phones, DVDs, computers, TV, movies, or the myriad of
opportunities and responsibilities is the problem.
The problem is when we forget that something else holds the Order of the
Day.
Lutheran pastor and
author Walter Wangerin, wrote the award winning book The Book of the Dun Cow. The
characters are all animals in a barnyard. The
rooster calls out crows several times through the day that keep the animal
community functioning in a life-giving rhythm.
All is well until something infiltrates into the community that prevents
the rooster from crowing. The
life-giving rhythm is lost. The
community falls into disarray.
When I have attended
Assemblies of our Synod and of the
Without worship being
given the Order of the Day, our projects and agendas and worries and opinions
and anxieties manage us rather than us allowing God to break in and call us to
seeing what we would otherwise miss. And
though we don’t have to climb a mountain to get here, sometimes it seems like
as much to make worship the Order of our Day.
Lorraine Brugh, on the
worship staff of
But when morning came
they all arrived, as usual, and sang and read the psalms and prayers.
There couldn’t have been anyone there who had gotten much sleep, but
the prayer went on. Prayer that
morning happened in spite of their weariness.
As
Worship opens us to
something larger than ourselves. We
can bring our tired selves, our grieving selves, our lonely selves, our burdened
selves, and our happy selves. Whoever
and however we are, the work of the people in liturgy draws us into God’s
story of redemption.
No matter our mood, when
we sing “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of
his glory,” we are lifted through our daily sorrows and joys to see God’s
face shining upon us. Worship does
for us what Jesus did for Peter, James and John in taking them up that mountain
to pray. Worship illumines a
presence that is always there, but that in our weighed-down-ness we fail to
notice. Worship helps us notice.
As Buechner says, all we
have to look at life with now is our pair of eyes.
But worship reaches to all our senses through water and word, bread and
wine, the sights of liturgical arts, the sounds of song, the communal movements
of standing and sitting and lifting our hearts in prayer.
Worship awakens us to the Holy, which is always present, but we need help
to see it.
The regular practice of
worship helps us learn to see. And
by being a community of worship we provide a place for others to learn to see.
It is not just for ourselves that we gather in worship, though we too
need the other to be here. Imagine
if no one else came today, how we would miss each other’s bodily presence. That
we gather as Christ’s broken body helps us scatter as his risen body to be
about God’s work in the world.
We learn to worship from
each other. Children learn the value
of worship by watching adults take it to heart.
Adults are renewed as we watch children insist they be included as full
participants.
Thank you for being a
worshipping community – for making worship the Order of your Day.
Worship won’t always seem like a transfiguring experience.
We won’t always notice the time warp, though it is with the angels and
archangels that we gather. Every
time we feast at the Table of the Lord, we do so with all the company of heaven.
I’ve heard it said that
“good worship makes the unbelievable love of God believable.” May God help
us make worship an Order of the Day in our community and in our lives!
Amen.
+Pastor Peg Schultz-Akerson,
to the glory of God
Faith