A Thought For The Week Of March 27, 2017

"The one who steals must steal no longer; rather he must labour, doing good with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with the one who has need." (Ephesians 4:28) This may not be the most important verse in the Bible, but it caught my attention. A concern of mine - because I believe it's a problem in many churches - is how welcoming we are as Christians to people who we find easy to judge. I often wonder about that. If a person who was a known criminal suddenly appeared in the midst of a typical congregation, how would people respond to their presence? No doubt some would be welcoming, but I suspect that there would also be a fair amount of anger, some judgement and that many would just choose to ignore the person and keep a safe distance from them. Those latter three options would hardly be reflections of the teaching of Jesus that "whatever you do for the least of these, you do for me." I found it interesting that Ephesians 4:28 gives instructions to "the one who steals." It's good advice - basically just "don't steal anymore! Change your ways!" You can't really argue with that. But somehow I was pushed to a deeper appreciation of the verse. Ephesians was written for a Christian audience. And it includes guidance to "the one who steals." !!! You don't give advice to people who aren't there. Those few words - so easily skipped over - revealed something huge. It's a biblical injunction for the church to have an open door policy to a whole variety of miscreants, for lack of a better word. This verse just seems to take for granted that some of those who have been stealing are going to be included in Christian communities. And it offers not judgement or condemnation or finger-wagging or threats, but just good, sound instruction. Isn't that really what we should be about: to change people's lives by welcoming them rather than by judging them? I'm wondering how many churches could live up to that example today?

The Dirty Work Of The Gospel - March 26 2017 sermon

As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see. The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” Some were saying, “It is he.” Others were saying, “No, but it is someone like him.” He kept saying, “I am the man.” But they kept asking him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight.” They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.” They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, “He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.” Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath.” But others said, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?” And they were divided. So they said again to the blind man, “What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened.” He said, “He is a prophet.” The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight and asked them, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?” His parents answered, “We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.” His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. Therefore his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.” So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and they said to him, “Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner.” He answered, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” They said to him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” He answered them, “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?” Then they reviled him, saying, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.” The man answered, “Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” They answered him, “You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?” And they drove him out. Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered, “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.” He said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped him. Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.

(John 9:1-41)

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     This is a story that I'm able to look at with what you might call "fresh eyes." When I did my doctoral degree a few years ago, the Dean of the program I was in was Dr. Craig Satterlee - who happens to be legally blind. His approach to his blindness opened my eyes. He saw blindness not as an affliction that needed to be healed but rather as an integral part of who he was, and it did not stop him from accomplishing anything he set out to accomplish. He was a husband and father, and an ordained Lutheran priest, and over the years he had been a pastor, an author and a professor. In the years since I graduated from the program, he also graduated in a sense - he was elected to serve (and is currently serving) as the Lutheran Bishop of the North/West Lower Michigan Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Yes - I'm Facebook friends with a real live bishop! His attitude to his blindness - that it was simply a part of who he was and not a limitation or curse or anything else - had a big impact on how I see people with all of their unique characteristics. Our passage today is about a blind man. It's a long passage, and I considered just using a part of it or only selected verses, but all of it seems so very relevant - and to cut anything out seemed to do violence to the divinely inspired word. This is actually the first time I've preached from this passage since I graduated from Dr. Satterlee's program, and as I said, I see the story a little differently now. I find myself focussing not so much on the miraculous "healing" that took place - but on the more mundane way in which Jesus approached his encounter with this man, who had been blind from birth.

     Really - what could be more mundane than spit? If I was going to paraphrase this image, I'd say that Jesus chose to get down and dirty with the work of God. A lot of Jesus' followers don't want to get down and dirty. Those disciples didn't want to get down and dirty. They just wanted to judge - "who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" There was no sense of helping this man or of even showing him kindness. There was just a jump to an assumption: somebody must have sinned. This blindness has to be a punishment from God for something. Either this man had sinned and was being punished - or, more likely since he had been blind from birth, he himself (his very existence) was a punishment to his parents. I wonder how that thought must have made the blind man feel? The disciples wanted to use the man as an excuse to have a theological or philosophical conversation with Jesus, but they didn't see the man as someone worthy of reaching out to and helping. There are those times when the followers of Jesus - and I do not exempt myself from this problem - look past the obvious needs we see around us. We can talk about the social causes of those needs; we can advocate for programs or policies that might help to alleviate the problems; or we can simply condemn those who have the problems as being responsible for them and so wash our hands of any responsibility - but whatever our rationale may be, when we come face to face with needs we're often not willing to get down and dirty (into the mud) to actually meet a need that confronts us. As I say, I'm as guilty of that as anyone. Maybe the needs are too overwhelming. Maybe we don't think we can make a difference. Maybe we don't think the need is important enough for us to respond to. Maybe (just every now and then) we fall into judgment of the person with the need. "Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" And we do that in our society all the time. We blame the poor for being poor. We think that those who are different are dangerous or sinful. In a previous church that I served I had to go to a meeting shortly after I started my ministry. The room the meeting was being held in was just down the hall from my office. As I left the office, someone else attending the meeting walked past and said "make sure you lock the door because those people are in the building." I hadn't been there long enough to know who he was referring to. It turned out to be the local AA group that met in the basement every week. I wonder how many different groups there are in our society who get marked with the title "those people"? The blind man was one of "those people" - one of those who weren't worthy of being helped and who weren't trusted. One of those simply seen as responsible for his own problems.

     But Jesus refused to buy into that way of thinking. There are no "those people" to Jesus - there are just children of God. And so Jesus got down and dirty - into the mud where no one else was willing to go. In fact he not only got into the mud - he made the mud with his own spit and hands. And he changed this blind man's life. The focus is almost always on the blind man receiving his sight - and I don't deny that might have happened. I don't deny miracles. If God can't do things that I can't do - if God can't do things that amaze me - then God isn't much of a God. I choose not to construct a God in my own image. I choose to believe in a God who is vastly different than I am and who can do the most amazing things that I can't even imagine doing. So I have no reason to dismiss the story. The blind man could see. But I look at the story a little differently now. I'm no longer sure that it was the blind man receiving his sight that's the key to what happened. That's only a tiny part of the story that we focus on because it's exciting and dramatic - and I get that. But is it the most important part of the story? I'm no longer convinced.

     This man had been looked down on for his entire life. He had been shoved aside and pushed down and rejected. His only way to survive was to lower himself by begging and hoping day by day that enough people might toss him a scrap of bread or a coin that he could survive until the next day when he could start begging all over again. The Pharisees were among those who had no time for this man and no interest in this man and who just assumed that in some way he was responsible for his own plight. They had neither respect nor compassion for him. Their treatment of him was a way of keeping people under their thumb by showing them what happened to people they declared to be sinners. But what happened to this man after Jesus touched him? Did you notice that this man - who was not only sightless but also probably voiceless in this society and who had been constantly demeaned by the Pharisees - was suddenly debating the Pharisees; even arguing with the Pharisees. His own parents were passing the buck and cowering in fear of the Pharisees. This man was taking them on!

     The Pharisees said to the man about Jesus, "we do not know where he comes from." And that was all the man needed to hear. He leapt to Jesus' defence: "Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. ... If this man were not from God, he could do nothing." And the Pharisees were furious. And they drove this man away. But the man had not only gained his vision; he had found his voice. He would not be victimized anymore. He would not just lay down and take it anymore. He went to Jesus, and he said "Lord, I believe!" He knew the difference Jesus had made in his life. More than that, he knew the risk that Jesus had taken to do it. He understood that when Jesus made the decision to get down and dirty on his behalf there would be unpleasant consequences awaiting him and all who followed him. And the man wouldn't cower in fear anymore. "Lord, I believe!" Perhaps, then, the story here isn't just about the man being healed - perhaps it's even more about the man being empowered.

     I loved the words of Father Rick Morley that I shared in today's bulletin: “Let's not look on people like they're poor slobs, and wonder at how blessed we are. Let's reach out - into the dirt - if we have to. Let's dirty our hands. And let's bring the Life that Jesus brings.” Yes! Absolutely! Down and dirty. Down in the mud. Making the mud. Standing up. Being counted. Making a difference! Giving a voice to those who have no voice! Lifting up those who are cast down and cast aside! That is the work of Jesus - and that should be our work as well! To see those who are invisible to others. To hear those who are ignored by others. To accept those who are judged by others. To welcome those who are cast aside by others. To love those who are hated by others. That is the dirty work of the gospel - dirty because it means that by doing it we align ourselves with causes and people that to many will be unpopular; causes that will stain us in the eyes of some who are self-righteous and self-absorbed and think that they're better than everyone else.

     But just as it is for Jesus, so it should be for those of us who are followers of Jesus - to us, there should be no "those people." There should be only children of God whom we are called to serve and to love!

A Thought For The Week Of March 20, 2017

"Come, my children, listen to me. I will teach you the fear of the Lord." (Psalm 34:11.) That is actually such an important thing to learn. There are so many Christians (and far too many preachers) who should know better and yet who insist on taking this concept (in English) absolutely literally, so that God becomes one to be feared rather than one to be worshipped; God becomes one who is looking for an excuse to punish us rather than one who loves us unconditionally. All because the Bible talks about "the fear of the Lord," and either (a) people latch onto the word "fear" without trying to understand what the word actually means, or (b) people do understand what the word means but choose to ignore that and use it to instil fear into people. And so many people - trusting those who focus on judgement and divine wrath - become afraid of God or reject the very idea of God as monstrous. It seems to me that logic (aside from the Hebrew language) tells us that God can't be both a God of love and at the same time a God who wants those he loves to be afraid of him. Those things are inconsistent with each other. So even without complicated language studies one can see that both can't be true. The Hebrew language also doesn't tell us to fear God. Indeed, in this passage -where we are instructed to teach people what "the fear of the Lord" is -  there's very little to be afraid of in what we learn of God. Instead, what we find here is primarily the promise of God to stand with us always, and the assurance that even if things aren't good, God is still with us. That reminds me of the words of Jesus: "I am with you always ..." That's an awe-inspiring thought, which is, of course, what Psalm 34:11 is actually saying. To fear God is to be awestruck by God, and it's tragic that so many people don't understand that and believe only that God is to be literally feared. But surely we shouldn't be afraid of the one who loves us unconditionally. I came across a translation of this verse that said "I will teach you to REVERE and WORSHIPFULLY fear the Lord." That captures what the response of a Christian to God should be, and it's not the same as being afraid of God. We should never be afraid of the one who loves us unconditionally and who showers us with grace.

A Thought For The Week Of March 6, 2017

"Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter - when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?" (Isaiah 58:6-7) Fasting is an important spiritual practice to some people - and Lent is a time when many choose to engage in ritual fasts as a way of coming closer to God. I tried fasting once. Mostly it was out of curiosity. Many people told me that they had fasted. The Bible talks about fasting. It sounded as if it might be a powerful spiritual experience. So I tried a 24 hour fast - midnight to midnight. Only water. I prayed. I read the Bible. And all I got out of it was extreme hunger! I felt no closer to God at all. Which is perhaps because I hadn't felt called to fast in the first place. I'm sure that fasting is a wonderful experience for those who feel called to it. It just wasn't right for me, and I've never felt the desire (or the call) to fast in that way again. From a Christian perspective, any spiritual practice is really only valuable to the extent that it gives us that feeling of connectedness or closeness to God. Fasting simply for the sake of fasting - making fasting just a ritual and nothing more - seems to miss the point of why people might fast. Fasting for the sake of fasting might give us the sense of having accomplished something, but in the end it's of little practical value. How exactly do we fast to come closer to God? Perhaps that's where Isaiah is going with these verses about fasting. Simply refraining from eating is literally nothing. It's something we choose not to do, but surely we have to replace what we're not doing with something positive. Real fasting has to in some way move us to serve others - because as Jesus would say, service to others is service to God. Isaiah understood that. That's why he spoke of "real fasting" in terms of the beneficial impact that our actions have on those around us. There is still injustice and oppression. There are still many who have difficult finding food and clothing. There are still those who don't even make time for those dearest to them. A real fast should in some way lead us to create a more caring society, to meet the needs of those around us and to be a blessing to our families: all things we sometimes find it hard to make the time to do.

March 5 2017 sermon - Telling The Devil To Go To Hell!

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the  devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, He was hungry. The tempter came to Him and said, "If You are the Son of God, tell these  stones to become bread." Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does  not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.' Then the devil took Him to the holy city and had Him stand on the highest point of the temple. "If You are the Son of God," he said, "throw Yourself down. For it is written: 'He will command His angels concerning you, and they will lift You up in their hands, so that You will not strike Your foot against a stone.'" Jesus answered him, "It is also written: 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'" Again, the devil  took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour. "All this I will give You," he said, "if You  will bow down and worship me." Jesus said to him, "Away from Me, Satan! For it is written: 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only.'" Then the devil left Him, and angels came and attended Him.

(Matthew 4:1-11)

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     I just want to say in opening that I realize that it's not generally considered very polite to tell someone to go to hell, but I thought that since we were talking about the devil after all it might be considered acceptable, since when we tell the devil to go to hell, we're not really telling him to do anything more than to go home! Right? Yes, today we're talking about Satan. Today is the first Sunday of Lent, and the Scripture reading we just heard is the traditional Gospel passage for this day. Satan plays a significant role in this passage in which Jesus faces the temptation (right from the start of His ministry) to abandon the plan God has laid before Him and to accept an easier and more comfortable life. Satan may be a significant character in this passage, but it's fair to say - at least according to public opinion surveys I've seen that have been done on the subject - that the majority of Canadians don't believe in Satan, and it’s probably not unreasonable for me to suspect that many people here today don't believe in Satan. Well, I have a confession: I'm not part of the majority. I do believe in Satan! It always strikes me as strange that so many people – Christian and non-Christian alike – have no trouble believing in good spiritual forces (God or angels or grandpa watching over me, or whatever,) but they reject out of hand even the possibility that evil spiritual forces could exist. I see no logic to that, except that the thought of evil spiritual forces makes us nervous and we’d rather not think about it. But I do believe in evil spiritual powers, defined by the Bible as Satan. Having said that, though – and before you get the wrong impression - let me explain first what I do not mean by Satan.

     I do not believe that Satan is a red-skinned, quasi-human creature  with pointy ears and a long tail who carries a pitchfork. That picture is nothing more than silly medieval mythology. But if Satan is not that, then what is Satan? The tendency is generally to try to explain Satan away and deny Satan's existence. Almost 20 years ago, the United Church Observer had a cover story about just this subject, and my guess is that our thoughts about Satan haven’t really changed much in that time. Mike Milne, who wrote the article, said that "while United Church people readily recognize the spreading evil around them, many of them are squeamish about naming Satan as the source." Marilyn Legge, who is still a professor of Christian Ethics at Emmanuel College in Toronto described Satan in this article as simply "a religious construct that's designed to express human experience of evil." In other words, Satan is a concept we've invented to explain why bad things happen. With just a few exceptions, this article seemed to lead up to a dismissal of even the possibility of any type of evil spiritual force in the world around us, although one notable exception was Victor Shepherd - who taught church history at the Tyndale Seminary in Toronto and who for many years was the minister of Streetsville United Church in Mississauga - who said that if we reject the idea of Satan's existence, "we render almost un-understandable a great deal of the New Testament." Shepherd's words seem relevant to today's passage. Matthew tells us that Jesus faced temptations beyond the normal temptations that comes to any of us at various times. This passage tells us that Satan - however you define him or it - was very much a part of Jesus' experience in the wilderness.

     For Christians, Satan is usually seen as the very epitome (indeed, as the very embodiment) of evil, and I think that's important, because it acknowledges the reality of a spiritual force behind evil. Evil is surely more than just the bad things we do. Evil is what motivates us to act in ways that defy normal conceptions of what is good and right and moral. Evil is that which takes possession of us and pushes us to act in ways that are destructive to both communities and individuals. This particular passage teaches us that evil - most of the time - is not what we think it is. We restrict evil to the obviously horrible and cruel things that happen in the world. The Holocaust was evil; apartheid was evil; slavery was evil; murder and violence of all kinds is evil. And, of course, they are. But what we learn here is that evil is just as often (and perhaps even more often) quite benign - at least seemingly so. Scripture suggests that evil starts with the small and seemingly unimportant things that serve to pull us away from God, and it's these small things that can often serve to make God's presence seem very distant and perhaps even absent.

     We learn a lot from Jesus in this passage about how to do battle with Satan. The evil we battle usually consists of little more than just the every day tests and temptations that we face in trying to be faithful to God: believing that God will provide; believing that God will keep us safe; believing that God is with us; sometimes just believing that there is a God. We're constantly being tempted to give up on our faith in God. We so easily fall into the trap of wanting to put God to the test: "do this or that for me; give me this or give me that" - and when things don't work out the way we had hoped, we question, we wonder, sometimes we get angry with God and give up on God completely. That's not evil by human standards. I know many people who don't believe in God, and the vast majority of them are very nice people - they're not at all evil! But the obvious evil that we see around us flows from that because it's when people give up on God (and giving up on God could mean either not believing in God or professing belief in God but using God to further one’s own agenda) that they can find themselves surrendering the moral compass that a deep and sincere faith in God lays down, and the result is simply moral chaos, with no obvious reason to believe one thing over another except that "it feels right to me." That type of individualism is the greatest darkness and the greatest triumph of evil. It’s the work of Satan in my opinion - to isolate us, to make us individuals who have to get along on our own rather than members of a community that nurtures us and cares for us. In today's reading we see Jesus at His most vulnerable - weak and hungry - and yet we still see Him triumph because he trusted in God to sustain him, resisting temptation by repeatedly quoting God's Word in response to them.

     By holding on to that relationship and refusing to be isolated from God, Jesus did battle with Satan in the wilderness and sent him packing, so to speak. He overcame evil, and the strength to do that - the strength to look evil in the face and sneer at it - belongs to us all. As people who belong to Christ we have God with us, and as people empowered by the Holy Spirit we have God within us. That’s all we need to do battle with Satan.

     Martin Luther was quite convinced of the reality of Satan's existence. In his journal, he wrote that on one particular night he was awakened by sounds as he slept in his chamber in the monastery. But, he said with a seeming degree of both irritation and contempt, once he realized that it was only Satan, he rolled over and went back to sleep. It must be marvelous to have such confidence in the power of God; to be able, as Luther apparently was, to look evil in the face and to simply sneer at it. And yet Jesus teaches us that we can have such confidence; that we can have authority over Satan and over all the evil that Satan represents. All we need to do is trust in God. So, as we mark today the beginning of Lent, I encourage you to follow the example of Martin Luther and let the Word of God strengthen you and sustain you. And when you find yourself faced with temptation to turn elsewhere, remember where that temptation comes from, and tell the devil to leave you alone and go to - well, you know where!

A Thought For The Week Of February 27, 2017

"There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love." (1 John 4:18) Here we are. It's Ash Wednesday - the first day of Lent. Traditionally, many Christians give up something for Lent - some pleasure; some treat; some behaviour. It's usually nothing earth-shattering or life-changing, but it is a symbolic way of sacrificing to honour Jesus, who made the greatest of sacrifices upon the cross. But as I look at the state of the world around us as Lent 2017 begins, I think there's something more meaningful that Christians need to give up - and that's fear. So many people today live in fear. We see that displayed when we start to target others who are different from us. Statistics tell us that so-called "hate crimes" are on the increase - against Muslims, against Jews, against the LGBTQ community. But I tend to think that they're not so much "hate crimes" as they're "fear crimes." We target those we're afraid of - and usually we target those who we refuse to take the opportunity to get to know and understand. And as Christians we should be the last people to fall before fear. After all, we believe in a God of love, and this verse of the Bible tells us that the opposite of love is not hate, but is really fear. If love comes from God, then we need to remember that hate comes from fear. Hate is a mask we put on to hide our fear. Fear, you see, would make us look weak. No one wants to look weak, so we cover our fear with hate - and hate seems to make us look strong and tough. But that's not true. Hate is simply hidden fear and nothing more. Hate is a sign of weakness rather than a mark of strength. It's nothing to be proud of. And thankfully, there's a remedy for it. "Perfect love casts out fear" because love breaks down barriers and acts to reconcile us to those around us, so that our differences become unimportant and all that really matters is the love Jesus asks us to show to all. So, if you're thinking of giving something up for Lent - well, you can do better than chocolate, or lottery tickets. Give up fear, and truly live in love. That would be a great way to mark Lent!

February 26, 2017 sermon: Holiness Enthroned And Encountered

Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.” And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone. As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, “Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”

(Matthew 17:1-9)

The Lord is king; let the peoples tremble! He sits enthroned upon the cherubim; let the earth quake! The Lord is great in Zion; he is exalted over all the peoples. Let them praise your great and awesome name. Holy is he! Mighty King, lover of justice, you have established equity; you have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob. Extol the Lord our God; worship at his footstool. Holy is he! Moses and Aaron were among his priests, Samuel also was among those who called on his name. They cried to the Lord, and he answered them. He spoke to them in the pillar of cloud; they kept his decrees, and the statutes that he gave them. O Lord our God, you answered them; you were a forgiving God to them, but an avenger of their wrongdoings. Extol the Lord our God, and worship at his holy mountain; for the Lord our God is holy.

(Psalm 99:1-9)

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     I have to stand in front of you today and confess that basically I always struggle with what I’m supposed to do with the Transfiguration of Jesus. If you follow the Lectionary, the story comes up every year on the Sunday before Lent starts. Last year, I confess that I took the easy way out and just ignored the story completely. I didn’t want to do that two years in a row, though, so I was left with the question that always comes to me – what to do with the Transfiguration of Jesus? It’s a strange story;  baffling one in some ways. What does it mean for us today? What does it add to our faith? The Lectionary this year includes Psalm 99 as one of the other readings for today. The Psalms are often used as reflections on the theme for that particular Sunday, so I chose to look at Psalm 99 in that vein. Several times in Psalm 99 God is referred to as holy, and that is in fact an important word to use in connection with God. “Holy” is a word that’s used to emphasize the difference between God and humanity. God is pure; we are not. God is eternal; we are not. God is perfect; we are not. God is more than we are. The Creator is always more than the creation. As I read through this Psalm, what I see in my mind is an image of a God who is enthroned in heaven in such a way as to demonstrate divine authority, and yet – as powerful as God is, and as different as God is from creation – the Psalm affirms that God is not limited to heaven. While Psalm 99 stressed God’s transcendance, the author is also very deliberate in assuring us that the gap between God and humanity has been bridged – that God is not only transcendant, but also immanent. God reigns over us, but God is not remote from us. The Creator is not isolated from the creation. Instead, God is present with us and God rejoices when we approach. The Psalm tells us that God is “great in Zion” - which means that God’s authority is not exercised only over us, but also with us and through us. And it’s from within the midst of those who love God – you and I – that God’s grandeur, God’s holiness and God’s love reaches out to the whole of the world. If God is enthroned in heaven and surrounded by powerful cherubim, then God is also encountered on earth and surrounded by humble souls who accept the invitation to come near. This encounter we have with holiness is the centrepiece of our faith, because Christian faith is not just a set of beliefs, it’s an experience – a relationship of love with an Almighty God. And if that’s the commentary offered by the Psalm, then how do we see this combination of transcendance and immanence shown in the strange events of the Transfiguration of Jesus. This is where I want to go back to the gospel reading that Karen and I shared at the start of our service today, because that story illustrates both transcendance and immanence through Jesus.

     It struck me that the story of the Transfiguration begins with the words “after six days.” I had never thought of that before, but for some reason as I read the story earlier this week those are the words I began to focus on. They reminded me of the story of creation in the Book of Genesis – that God created in six days until all was complete. A lot of the Bible is symbolic, and numbers are very important in the Bible. Maybe I was making too much of this – it could, I suppose, have been a coincidence – but I do think there’s a point being made here. In John’s Gospel, the very first words of the Gospel are “in the beginning.” That seems to fulfil the same purpose – it ties Jesus to the story of creation. He was there, in the beginning, John tells us. In Matthew, it’s the Transfiguration that gets tied to creation. What’s the connecting point? Obviously, the story of creation is about the creative work of God. God has brought about something new. God has brought order to chaos. God has created everything from nothing. In a way creation itself is the most basic revelation of God that there is. Is the same point being made about the Transfiguration? Is this strange and baffling event the start of something new? Is it a turning point? Are the disciples suddenly confronted by a new revelation of God? I would say that the answer is “YES!” The Transfiguration – perhaps as much as anything – makes the point that Jesus is not just a rabbi or itinerant preacher or worker of miracles. Jesus himself is the revelation of God – God’s love suddenly active and present in the world; God’s glory suddenly revealed; God’s word suddenly made flesh. Because of Jesus, God could never be seen in the same way again.

     Jesus appeared with Moses and Elijah – enthroned in a sense between two of the greatest figures in Israel’s history: Moses, the giver of the Law, and Elijah, the greatest of the prophets. Both the Law and the prophets were revelations of God: they were God’s will for God’s people and God’s word for God’s people. They Law showed God’s people how to live and the prophets told the people where they were coming up short. And then, all of a sudden, there is this vision: Jesus, between Moses and Elijah. Jesus transcends all other revelations of God and becomes THE revelation of God. Jesus becomes the one who holds the law and the prophets together. There had always been tension between Law and prophets. Many of God’s people fixated on the written word; others were far more concerned with the spoken word. One revelation had been given once and was fixed in stone; the other was a continual process of revelation guided by God’s Spirit. We still have that problem today in our own faith: the debate between those who see God’s word as basically ink on paper and interpret it literally and those who believe that God is always revealing new things and can’t be contained by a written word. But either without the other is incomplete. The Law and the prophets; the written word and the spoken word; a one time revelation and an ongoing revelation – these are not in competition; they are complementary. The sight of Jesus between Moses and Elijah points that out. There’s the quest of science for the theory of everything – for a single theory that explains everything that exists – and there’s also a quest of faith for something that will hold everything together. Christians believe that everything is held together and that God is finally and fully and perfectly revealed in Jesus, who on the day of the Transfiguration stands between Moses and Elijah and holds the Law and the prophets together and ushers in a new understanding of God. This is what those disciples encountered. Jesus – enthroned as the ultimate revelation of God is encountered by his disciples in the light of that vision.

     I’m struck by how they respond. I’m struck by it because it mirrors so much of how we ourselves respond to our own encounters with the divine in our lives. Jesus appeared with Moses and Elijah – and Moses and Elijah were long dead. How would you respond? It would be as if Donald Trump suddenly appeared with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Well. Maybe. A bit. The point is that it would be unexpected. For Peter and James and John this encounter was totally unexpected. We don’t know what they expected on that day when Jesus took them up a mountain. Maybe they thought it nothing more than a hike in the fresh air. But I don’t think they were expecting Moses and Elijah to suddenly show up. And what happened? Well, Peter was essentially speechless. Sometimes the Gospels are funny if you think about them. This is one of those times. Peter looks – he sees Jesus with his face shining as bright as the sun and with Moses and Elijah on either side of him. And, basically Peters says, “Oh. Well. Um. How ‘bout I pitch some tents for you three?” Was there much logic in Peter’s words? Was there anything especially thoughtful or insightful about them? No. Peter just didn’t know what to say and so he said whatever words popped into his head – even if they were inane. Often we don’t know how to react to Jesus, either. That’s why – if you get three Christians together – you’ll probably have at least five theories between them about who Jesus was. I have no sympathy for the idea that you have to turn your brain off to go to church. I think we’re called to learn and discern. Our brains are to be turned on. But maybe we have to learn to be satisfied – at least sometimes – with the revelation of God and the presence of Jesus, and we don’t have to have something to say about every encounter with Jesus that we have. Because half the time when we speak about Jesus – and I’m a preacher so I understand this danger – we probably don’t have anything deeper to say than what Peter offered on the mountain! So maybe we should just respond.

     That’s immediately what Peter and his companions did. They fell to the ground, overcome by fear. As always in the Bible, when we see the word “fear” we might wonder whether it means to actually be afraid. In the Bible, the word usually has a sense of “awe” to it. Perhaps they are awestruck and speechless more than afraid. Suddenly face to face with the holiness of God, they simply fall before Jesus, overcome by the experience. And maybe it wasn’t just that in this moment they encountered the holiness of God; maybe it was that in the presence of God’s holiness they were also confronted by their own lack of holiness – they suddenly realized that they weren’t worthy to be there; they weren’t worthy to have had this experience; they weren’t worthy to have had this great revelation. They fell because they suddenly found themselves unable to face this Jesus whom they had been following. A barrier had been torn away and they had seen Jesus for who he really was and they couldn’t face him. But Jesus – as he always does – said to them, “don’t be afraid.” Don’t be overwhelmed by Jesus or by the state of the world or by your present circumstances or by your failings or by your past. Don’t be overwhelmed; don’t think that there’s nothing you can do; don’t fall on the ground where you’ll be useful to no one. Get up, follow Jesus, move on. Do his work.

     I’m still not sure that I know entirely what to make of the Transfiguration.  But I might have figured it out a bit. When we encounter God, we discover holiness and grace, justice and mercy, judgement and salvation, righteous anger and divine forgiveness – all in perfect balance; all revealed to us by Jesus. And Psalm 99 reminds us that even in those times when we feel distant from God or overwhelmed by God or circumstances – God is still with us. Prayers are still heard and revelation is still given. Psalm 99 closes with the words “the Lord our God is holy.” There’s a relationship implied by those words – a relationship of intimacy. This God – so powerful, so transcendant, so holy – is our God. God is holy but God is not ashamed to be our God. “Get up, “Jesus said to his overwhelmed disciples, “and do not be afraid.” And he led them down the mountain, where the rest of the journey – leading to Jerusalem, a cross and an empty tomb - was about to begin; a journey that we are about to join.