Gospel

Proper 18, Year B, 2009

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Last month, my husband, Matt, helped out with Nassau Presbyterian’s Esther musical, Malice in the Palace.  He was in charge of daily bible study in-between rehearsal times. The bible study’s theme was: People in the Bible who Stood up for Their Beliefs. On the third day of the program, he chose the story of the Syrophonecian woman.

Some days the kids were engaged.  Some days they were not.  But on the third day, as Matt told the story of the Syrophoenician woman, the kids leaned forward and started to hush each other so they could hear every word out of Matt’s mouth.

The kids were captivated, because unlike every other passage of the New Testament, in this story, Jesus is not the hero.  In fact, Jesus behaves in a very human way.  One might even say Jesus behaves like a jerk.

To be fair, Jesus was trying to lay low.  He had just been in Jerusalem, arguing with the Pharisees and maybe he just needed a break.  After all, Tyre is a beach town.  Maybe he wanted to go to Israel’s version of Cape May and catch a few rays, eat a fish taco, take a little break.  However, when you are as interesting as Jesus, traveling incognito becomes difficult.  Even in the days before twitter and TMZ, the word got out that Jesus had arrived.

The Syrophoenician woman has a daughter who she believes is possessed by a unclean spirit.  She loves her daughter and wants to help her.  She has probably been to every doctor and rabbi and healer in Tyre, seeking a cure for her child.  If you’ve ever known a mother of a sick child, you know there is no fiercer or more determined creature on earth.  When this mother hears that Jesus is in town, she immediately goes to him.

Maybe Jesus is sitting on his beach chair with lemonade in his hand.  Maybe he is praying in a darkened room.  Maybe he is getting some well-deserved sleep.  We don’t know.  All we know is that this woman finds him, interrupts whatever it is he is doing, and falls on her knees before him.

The Jesus we have come to know and love always heals people.  He may ask a few questions first, but he never rejects people.  Until now.

Jesus rejects the Syrophoenician woman.  He not only rejects her, but he calls her a dog.

And this is the point where the kids in Matt’s bible study started to really pay attention!

Calling someone a dog is just not okay.  And when you have the human embodiment of the love of God calling someone a dog, it is REALLY not okay.

Jesus resists healing this poor woman because she is not Jewish.  Until this point in his ministry, Jesus has understood himself as being called to tell Jewish people about God’s call for them.   So, he rejects this woman without a second thought.  She is not a chosen person.  She does not belong.  She does not deserve God’s healing.  Especially on Jesus’ day off.

Thankfully for all of us, the Syrophoenician woman is smart as a whip and stubborn as a mule.  Instead of getting her feelings hurt by Jesus’ insult, she parries with him.  She replies, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”  She pushes Jesus on his definition of who deserves the love of God.  She does not claim the same right as a Jewish person, but she senses something about the nature of the Jewish God, she knows that her daughter deserves healing just as much as a Jewish child would.

I wish I could have seen Jesus’ face when she replied!  I’d like to think he was charmed by this woman who dared to talk back to the Son of God.  Maybe he was chastened by his earlier curt reply.  In any case, he tells the woman that because of her reply, her daughter will be healed.  The Syrophoenician woman might have been pushy.  She might have been rude.  She was definitely cheeky, but Jesus saw her faith in him and her love for her daughter and it transformed his life and his ministry.

Because of that pushy lady, Jesus understood that his Father intended to expand the family of God to include all people.

When I was a kid, we did not go to church.  And I did not want to go to church.  Primarily, I did not want to go to church because I thought being a Christian woman meant having to wear really ugly flowered dresses with lace collars.  I’m not sure where I got this belief, but to me, Christian women were passive and sticky sweet and not at all interesting to be around.

Thankfully, when I got older and became involved in church, I realized that Christian women, especially of the Episcopal variety, were anything but sticky sweet.  They were complicated, diverse, strong, sensitive, and if they needed to be, they were fighters.

Perhaps the stereotypical ideal of a Christian woman for my generation was Mother Teresa.  The news always showed her smiling beatifically at some sick child.  But if you read about Mother Teresa, you learn that “sweet” is not a good descriptor for her.  Mother Teresa truly had the spirit of the Syrophoenician woman.  Mother Teresa was terribly concerned for the poor and she would do anything to help them.  She would wait for hours at a doctor’s office to get medicine, she would badger local officials until they would give into her demands.  She would shame world leaders into enacting more just policies.  In her memoir she even admitted to having serious arguments with God, and doubts about God’s very existence.

Mother Teresa was a prickly, stubborn, big hearted woman.  She was the embodiment of love, but not in the saccharine way Hallmark cards and the Lifetime channel think about love.  Mother Teresa and the Syrophoenician woman shared a kind of inner fire driven by the desire to help another.

That same fire and passion is open to any of us, regardless of our gender.  I see that fire in a friend of mine with Epstein-Barr virus who is fighting to get disability insurance.  I see that fire in my friend who moved home to help take care of her disabled brother, despite her own painful battle with lupus.  I see that fire in yet another friend, as she watches her niece battle leukemia.  None of these friends are going to let naysayers stand in their way.  They are going to fight to take care of their families.  They are going to get the care and attention they richly deserve.

There are times when we have to stand up to authority figures.  There are times we have to risk our reputations.  There are times when we have to argue and fight and push and annoy.  Sometimes a personal crisis brings out our inner Syrophoenician woman, but sometime the hurt of the world can, too.

Our world is so broken, and so needy.  All over the news we are hearing about the 46 million Americans without health insurance.  We hear about the 15 million Americans without jobs.  We are hearing about the consequences of these statistics-debt and poverty and hunger and broken families.  And this is just in our country!

I don’t pretend to know what the solution might be.  I am not a public policy expert.  I don’t even really understand the difference between a public option and single payer health care system.  What I do know is that if you are passionate about these issues, if you are one of the thousands of people on Facebook this week that posted something about health care; if you want to help people in need of work, or who are hungry, or who have lost a home; tap into your inner Syrophoenician woman.

Say your prayers, tap into that inner fire and do something.  Write your Congressman with your opinions on public policy.  Donate money to a cause you believe in.  Volunteer at the Crisis Ministry, Housing Initiatives of Princeton, or the Trenton After School program.

The Syrophoenician woman reminds us that God’s love is not just for the chosen people.  God’s love is not just for the deserving.  She helped Jesus figure that out and in turn received his affection and healing.

Well, guess what?  We’re the body of Christ.  We are called to love all those people on the edges and the fringes, too. We are called to take the lessons that the Syrophoenician woman taught Jesus and apply them to our own lives.  We are called to fight for the poor and those who suffer injustice.  And this, frankly, can be scary and intimidating.  But when we go into those battles, we don’t go alone.  Standing right next to us, beaming, is the Syrophoenician woman, urging us forward.

Thanks be to God.

Proper 16, 2009, Year B

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

I am terribly sorry for what I’m about to say.  I do not mean to hurt your feelings, I promise.  But I have to tell you-we are weird.

Normal people would spend a morning like this in bed, or in an air conditioned café with a fresh copy of the Sunday New York Times.  We should be curled up on a couch, puzzling over the crossword puzzle with an iced latte in our hand.  Instead we’re in this overheated sanctuary seated in hard wooden pews.  We’re wearing our least comfortable clothes: stockings, ties, suit jackets and high heels. When I’m done with this sermon, we are all going to say the same words we’ve said the last thousand Sundays, all together in a chant.  After that, we are going to partake of a tiny cracker and some port-before noon!

How weird are we?

Well, we are almost as weird as the disciples.

And we’re not anywhere close to being as weird as Jesus.

In today’s gospel lesson, we have finally reached the end of the Bread of Life discourse in the Gospel of John.

So far, the Bread of Life discourse has been lovely.  The image of Jesus as spiritual nourishment is a cozy, comforting one.  In my last sermon, I talked about Jesus’ coming to us as bread as his way to embrace us. But in today’s passage, Jesus veers off into a very uncomfortable, weird direction.

The word for eating in the New Testament is usually esthio.  Esthio is a nice, polite word.  Esthio is how the Israelites ate the manna in the desert.  Esthio is how the crowd of 5,000 ate the miraculous loaves and fishes.  But when Jesus tells the crowd that those who eat his flesh will abide in him, he does not use the word esthio.  No, Jesus uses the word trogo.  Trogo is an awful word.  Trogo means to chomp, to gnaw, to munch, to crunch.  Trogo is how you eat fried chicken or what a dog does to a bone.  When someone is trogo eating you can hear their teeth click and their tongue squish. Trogo is disgusting.

Trogo is an offensive word, and here trogo is paired with an offensive act-eating human flesh.

I get the sense Jesus is messing with the disciples here.  He’s pushing their buttons and making them uncomfortable.  Jesus is reminding them that he is not ethereal.  Jesus is not abstract.  Jesus, the Son of God, is right in front of them, shockingly, in the flesh.

Can you imagine the disciples’ reaction?  I bet they started looking down at their hands at first, and then maybe they started stealing glances at each other. Eventually maybe they start talking quietly with each other and looking at Jesus out of the corner of their eyes.    I bet they started to wonder what they had gotten themselves into.  Who was this weirdo they were following?  Eventually they just flat out confront Jesus.  Some brave representative says, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?”  Which is a rather polite way of telling Jesus he is a freak show.

Jesus has his audience right where he wants them. They are seriously uneasy. Jesus wants to reorient his disciple’s point of view, but before he can do that he needs to disorient them, he needs to get them off balance.

And boy, are the disciples off balance!  They are probably still shuddering at the image of gnawing, chewing, crunching on human flesh, when suddenly Jesus redirects the conversation.

Jesus asks the disciples, “Does this offend you? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But among you there are some who do not believe.”

Woah!  Twist!

The disciples are still over here, worried about cannibalism while Jesus is over here schooling them in what really matters.  He’s telling them that, in this instance, the flesh is not important.  Jesus is saying that what he has been talking about all along how the spirit gives life.

Jesus is reminding the disciples that they have no idea who he really is.  Jesus is telling them that if they are upset now, they would really freak out when they saw him in the fullness of his divinity.  Jesus calls them out for not believing in his divinity.  Jesus reorients them.

Many of the disciples, though, cannot get past being disoriented.  They cannot get past Jesus’ weirdness.  And so, they leave.  We never hear what happens to these disciples who left.  We don’t know if they changed their minds and came back.  We don’t know if they went back to their families.  We don’t know what they thought when they heard about Jesus’ resurrection.  All we know is that Jesus made them too uncomfortable, so they left.

Jesus turns to the twelve disciples who have been his closest allies and asks them, “Do you also wish to go away?’

Now, these twelve disciples may be as weirded out as their compatriots who left, but they are also convinced of Jesus’ divinity. Peter  says, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”  Peter speaks for the twelve and expresses why they are so drawn to him, why they cannot leave his side.  Jesus is the Holy One, Jesus is different from anyone they had ever met.  They may not fully understand what it means that Jesus is God, but they feel something in their gut.  They have an inkling, so they stay with Jesus, even though he’s weird.

We Christians do a lot of weird things.  We have a lot of weird symbols and rituals and music.  Your priests wear weird clothes. We have these weird weekly gatherings we call church.

The God we worship is weird.  He calls us to be together in ways that are too intimate, too different from the cultural norm.  He calls us to move beyond what is comfortable and into what is risky.  He calls us into real relationship, into honestly looking at our lives and confronting the parts of ourselves that don’t live up to our ideals.  He calls us to work through problems together rather than going on cable tv and screaming at each other from a safe distance.  He calls us to love the unlovable, serve even though we are powerful, have faith even when life seems hopeless.

We join with the twelve disciples in worshiping Jesus for the very same reason they did.  We may not understand Jesus.  We may think he is weird sometimes, but we also know he has the words for eternal life.  We know that what Jesus says and did and does makes sense in a way nothing in this world does.

We gather together and engage in all our weird rituals, because nothing normal quite gets at the feeling we want to convey to God.  We gather together and worship weirdly, because we are weird.  We are broken and whole, ugly and beautiful, sinful and filled with goodness.  We know that worshiping Jesus does something in us that we cannot explain, but that is absolutely real.

We worship Jesus, we follow Jesus, because we don’t want to miss anything.  We want to be there for the healing, for the joy, for the peace that only he can bring us.

We follow Jesus because we know he loves us. And that may be the weirdest, most wonderful part of all.

Amen.

Proper 14, Year B, 2009

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

I don’t know how closely you’ve been paying attention to the lectionary lately, but there has been a lot of whining and a lot of bread.  Two weeks ago, Jesus fed the 5000 with just a few loaves.  Last week, the Israelites started whining about being hungry in the desert and were fed manna from heaven.  This week we’ve got Elijah whining in the desert and Jesus describing himself as the Bread of Heaven.

Well, maybe Elijah is not whining, exactly.  You see, Elijah has been locked in an epic battle with a powerful woman named Jezebel.  Jezebel was the wife of King Ahab and had worked with her husband to encourage the worship of Baal among the Israelites.  And frankly, that is about the nicest thing I can think of to say about Jezebel.  She was not a kind person.  Elijah was not afraid to confront her about her many failings as Queen of the Israelites, but Jezebel was not really open to criticism.  Instead of listening to Elijah, she ordered his death.  Elijah ran away, into the wilderness.

Elijah is exhausted from running.  He has no future that he can imagine.  There is a death sentence waiting for him if he returns home.  In his exhaustion he asks God to kill him and then promptly falls into a deep sleep.

What happens next is one of the loveliest moments in all of Scripture.  Instead of killing Elijah, or telling Elijah to pull himself up by the bootstraps, or berating Elijah for his lack of faith, God sends Elijah an angel.  The angel gently wakes Elijah from his slumber and gives him hot bread to eat and cool water to drink.  Before the angel leaves, he touches Elijah one more time, encourages him to eat and then disappears.

Elijah has spent a lot of his life defending God of Israel against other gods.  Elijah has spent a lot of time helping people to see the power of God, the strength of God.  But in this small moment, Elijah experiences the intimate God, the loving God.  God gently encourages Elijah to press on and gives him the literal bread he needs to build up his strength for the journey.

For Elijah, his whining, or murmuring, or cry for help is met by God with nourishment, not rebuke.

Elijah’s need is met with love.

Most unpleasant behavior can be attributed to either hunger, fear, anger or loneliness.  Elijah was certainly experiencing hunger and fear!  When humans feel these unpleasant feelings and can’t quite sort out how to get our needs met, we lash out at whomever is around us.

I don’t know about you, but when I get cranky, nine times out of ten what I need is food.  My husband knows this by now and when he hears a certain snappish tone in my voice he immediately looks around to figure out what he can feed me before my unpleasantness can fully reveal itself.

The natural response when someone is cranky or whiny or unpleasant is to steer clear of the offending party.  But instead of moving away from us when we are at our worst, God moves toward us.  God nourishes us.

And maybe the lectionary spends four weeks in August dwelling on how Jesus is the Bread of Life, because this concept is so counterintuitive.  This concept is almost as hard to imagine as an angel waking you up and offering you a hot breakfast.

Jesus is easy to understand when he is standing on a mount or a fishing boat and telling us about God or how to live our lives.  When Jesus is speaking to us, we understand that he is the teacher and we are his students. The relationship is safe, the boundaries are clear.

But when Jesus describes himself as Bread-as something we bite and chew, swallow and absorb, those boundaries blur.

Ronald Rollheiser, the Catholic theologian, makes the connection between Jesus being the Bread of Life and being present in the Eucharist.  He writes:

For most of [Jesus’] ministry, he used words. Through words, he tried to bring us God’s consolation, challenge, and strength. His words, like all words, had a certain power. Indeed, his words stirred hearts, healed people, and affected conversions. But at a time, powerful though they were, they too became inadequate. Something more was needed. So on the night before his death, having exhausted what he could do with words, Jesus went beyond them. He gave us the Eucharist, his physical embrace, his kiss, a ritual within which he holds us to his heart.

Words are important.  I believe in words.  I have included many of them in this sermon.  However, words alone cannot convey love.

I spent a lot of time this week watching the footage of the journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee reuniting with their families after being prisoners in North Korea.  I’m sure they spoke words, too, and will continue to speak about their experiences to their loved ones, but their first reactions were to run toward their families and hug them as tightly as humanly possible.

Those hugs, their tears, her husband wrapping his arms around Euna as she clasped her daughter to her chest-those small acts conveyed more love than any speeches the women could have made to their families.

In the same way, Jesus was limited by words to express the fullness of love he felt toward humanity.

And so, Jesus becomes Bread.  He becomes a kiss.  He becomes our nourishment.  He moves beyond words to commune with us in a way both spiritual and physical.

And like the angel gave Elijah bread to give him strength for the journey ahead, Jesus gives us himself for the very same purpose.  Whether we are cheerful or cranky, strong or weak, ready or unprepared, Jesus moves toward us and embraces us.

Jesus is the Bread of life, given to us.  And that is beyond words.

Proper 12, Year B, 2009

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Have you ever tried to plan a party when only half the people you invited actually responded to your invitation?  I never know how many hor d’ouevres to make, how much wine and soda to buy, whether or not to borrow chairs from the neighbors.  I drive myself crazy worrying about whether I’ll have enough of everything to make my guests feel welcomed.

The poor disciples-in today’s Gospel reading, they are in a situation far more stressful than a cocktail party.  They have thousands of hungry people on an isolated hillside and Jesus is asking the disciples to feed the crowd.  The disciples know they do not have enough food.  They are not just a mini-quiche or glass of wine short, they have absolutely no food with them.  They could not even begin feeding the first row of the crowd.  Their fear that they do not have enough is a perfectly rational fear based on the evidence in front of them.

The apostle Andrew notes that the only food anyone has is five loaves of bread and a couple of fish that a child happens to have with him.  Somehow they persuade the child to give up his lunch and we all know what happens next.  When Jesus breaks that bread and tears those fish, somehow that not-enough food transforms into an abundant feast.  Instead of not being enough, the food just keeps coming and coming and coming.

Jesus takes the reality of a scarce situation and transforms it utterly.  Where there was want, there are now baskets of leftovers.  Where there was doubt, there is now wonder.

The crowd has gotten what they wanted.  Those who were sick were healed right before the scene in today’s gospel.  Now, those who were hungry are fed.  The crowd had needs and the crowd’s needs were met.  But these signs were not quite enough for the crowd-or the disciples-to “get” who Jesus was.  Instead of worshiping Jesus as Lord, the crowd’s reaction is to chase after Jesus and try to make him king.

Jesus is not an earthly King.  Jesus is not a magician.  Jesus is not Oprah in front a screaming crowd, giving away prizes.

The abundance Jesus offers is real, but the abundance Jesus offers is not the same thing as wish-fulfillment.

Jesus offers us abundance of life, not just abundance of stuff.  The crowd wanted more of Jesus, but not for the right reasons.  The crowd wanted more magic, more food.  The crowd wanted a world where Jesus was their King and his magic powers would give them everything they wanted.

Our passage today moves on to the story of Jesus walking on water and I don’t think the juxtaposition is accidental.  Jesus walking on the water is not about giving the disciples something they want.  Instead, Jesus shows them, in a new way, what it means that he is the Son of God.  Jesus wants to show them that his divinity is not about meeting their material or bodily needs, but is something beyond that, something even more wonderful than that.

Americans are living at a strange crossroads of abundance and scarcity.  Even though we live in the richest part of the world, we are feeling afraid about the economy.  We are grieving the loss of jobs and have a sinking feeling whenever we check the status of our retirement accounts.

At times, we, like the disciples, are convinced there is not enough.  There are not enough jobs available.  There is not enough money in the bank account.  There is not enough hopeful news to sustain us.

I know for me, from about September to April last year my prayers went something like this, “Please help me find a job in New Jersey.  Please help me find a job in New Jersey.  Puhleeeeze help me find a job in New Jersey.”  My anxiety drove my prayers to sound very much like the cries of the crowd in today’s Gospel reading.  “Help me, feed me, fix me!”

There is nothing wrong in sharing our deepest fears and desires with Jesus.  Jesus invites our lamentations.  He hears our prayers.  He comforts us.  He provides for us.  But there is more to Jesus than his role in responding to our needs.

Jesus, in his earthly ministry, always directed attention towards his Father, the Creator God.  Jesus redirects his followers from focusing on themselves and their own needs, to focusing on God.  When Jesus walked on the water towards his disciples, they could not help but be awed by the power of God to defy the laws of nature.  The act of walking on the water toward the disciples drew them out of themselves and helped them to worship Jesus as God, rather than Jesus as wish-granter.  Jesus showed them that the abundance of God is not just what God gives us, but is inherent in the very nature of God.  God is beyond everything we could want and everything we see.  God’s power stretches beyond our imagination and God’s love is deeper than we can desire.

Jesus walks toward us, too, and invites us to look up and out and to really see him for who he is.  Jesus offers us a life of true abundance–not of material possessions–but of relationship with our Creator.

There is something in that act of looking up, looking out towards God that helps us put our own anxious feelings in perspective.  When we remember the abundance of God’s love for us and for humanity throughout the millennia, we can re-evaluate our circumstances and see God all around us.

As Christians, our lives will not always be easy, but they can always be filled with joy and deep meaning.  Today at the [10:00 or this] service, we will welcome several children into the Christian family through baptism.  We know that throughout their lives, when they bring the broken, inadequate, not-enough pieces of their lives to God in prayer, somehow God will transform them into overflowing baskets of blessing.  God does this for us, too.  And when we realize we have enough-in fact, we have more than enough-we can start giving back to our families, communities and churches.

Thanks be to God.

Pentecost, Year B, 2009

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

This is my final sermon in this pulpit.  How can I do these four years justice?  I could write an epic poem about how much I love this congregation.  I could write and perform a one-woman musical about how wonderful you are.  Or, I could preach from the lectionary text.  Preaching from the lectionary text is not glamorous, but it is how I have preached every Sunday and it just feels right to do that now.

Today we celebrate Pentecost-we remember that day, years ago, when a bunch of terrified disciples gathered in the upper room and suddenly felt the Holy Spirit pour upon them.

But even before that day, Jesus prepared his disciples for the coming of the Holy Spirit.  Today’s Gospel reading is a continuation of the long speech in the Gospel of John that we’ve been reading the last few weeks.  Last week, Chuck gave us the background-Jesus gave this speech because his disciples were very anxious about Jesus’ death.  They did not want him to go.  They definitely did not want him to die.

Jesus is orienting the disciples to what life is going to be like after he is gone.  Jesus tells them his Father will send the Holy Spirit to them. The Greek word that John uses here is paraclete, which can be translated as comforter or helper, but here is translated as advocate.  The Holy Spirit may be our comforter and advocate, but the text here says that the Holy Spirit’s job is to testify on Jesus‘ behalf.

Now, why does Jesus need the Holy Spirit to testify on his behalf?  Jesus needs the Holy Spirit to testify for him because human beings have extremely short memories.  Can you remember who won the second season of American Idol?  Do you remember the name of your congressman when you were 15?  Do you remember the middle name of the first person you had a crush on?  We are bad at remembering things that happen in our own lives, much less something a man named Jesus did two thousand years ago.  The Holy Spirit’s job is to remind us about Jesus and what he told us about the Father.

The Father sends the Holy Spirit to help the disciples in Jesus’ absence.  This way, the disciples do not bear the full responsibility of telling the world about Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.  The Holy Spirit helps the disciples remember the things Jesus said so that the disciples can communicate those words to the world.  In fact, the first act of the Holy Spirit is to give the disciples the gift of languages, so they can communicate the good news of Jesus to people of the many diverse cultures within Jerusalem.

The Holy Spirit is always moving, always extending the good news of Jesus.  The Holy Spirit helped those first disciples tell the people of Jerusalem about Jesus and ever since has helped Christians of every generation pass on the stories of what Jesus has said and done.

When I think of how the Holy Spirit pushed those disciples out of the upper room, into the streets of Jerusalem, and then pushed Christianity out of Jerusalem and spread Jesus’s words and deeds throughout the world, I think of how the Holy Spirit has been pushing Emmanuel.

For years, Emmanuel was a small church in a small town.  Emmanuel was very involved in the community-you can’t hear stories about Lee Marston teaching swimming classes and opening the Greenwood Community Center without realizing how community minded Emmanuel was!  But, the community Emmanuel served had a relatively small radius. When Crozet was established as a designated growth area, you had a choice to make.  You could become insular and focus only on Greenwood, or you could open your arms and welcome newcomers into this parish.  You could take the risk of letting in people who did not know your character, who did not know the Emmanuel Way, who might even risk the very identity of this wonderful church.

You experienced anxiety about the church changing-you may still be experiencing that anxiety-but instead of shutting newcomers out, you opened yourselves up to them and over the last eight years or so have invited more than 200 people to be part of your family.  You spruced up Sunday School classrooms, built a beautiful nursery, cleaned off the playground, beefed up the Christian Education program and invited strangers to coffee hour on Sunday mornings.

This may have seemed like the obvious response to you, but I have to tell you, not every church would have responded the way you have responded.  I truly believe the Holy Spirit was calling this place to open up and to be a spiritual refuge for people in Albemarle, Nelson, and Augusta counties and that you responded to that call.

When you have a chance, ask one of those 200 newcomers what Emmanuel has meant to them.  Your hospitality has opened for them spiritual connection with God, the warmth of community, and a sense of belonging to the universal church.

I cannot begin to tell you how energizing and fun it has been to be a priest in a congregation that is this alive and welcoming and engaged.  I truly believe there is something unique and special about you.  I believe that the Holy Spirit has called you to be a place where hurt people can come for healing, alienated people can be welcomed, and those on spiritual quests can meet God in new ways.

I also see the Holy Spirit calling you to reach out.  I see that call in the ministry of the Bread Fund.  I see that call in your calling to be part of the Disciples Kitchen in Waynesboro.  I see that call in the mission trip going out this summer.  I see that call in the pastoral listening group that started this year.

I think the next year will be really exciting for you.  As you welcome Peter Carey as your new assistant rector, and as you celebrate your 150th Anniversary, the Holy Spirit will call you in new ways.  I don’t know what they are, but I just have this feeling that something new and exciting is in store for you, that you will be asked to push out into the community in new ways.

And you do not need to be anxious about new things.  (Which is something I’ve been reminding myself of a lot lately!) The Holy Spirit will speak to you.  The Holy Spirit will remind you of Jesus’ words.  The Holy Spirit will remind you of who are and what it means to be a Christian.  The Holy Spirit will remind you of what it means to be part of the Emmanuel Family.

I may not be your priest when you get your next call as a congregation, but know that wherever I am, I will always be following what is happening here, praying for you and rooting for you.  I am beyond proud that you chose me as your first associate rector. You have taught me how to be a priest and I promise to take the open, warm and welcoming spirit of Emmanuel with me wherever I go.

May you be as blessed as you have blessed me.

Amen.

Easter 6, Year B, 2009

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Since we are celebrating Youth Sunday at the 11:00 service today, I have been thinking a lot about school.  Specifically, I have been thinking a lot about rules in school.  In school you cannot do anything without getting permission.  There is no eating in class.  No chewing gum in class.  Skirts have to be a certain length.  You have to raise your hand in order to speak.  You cannot be found in a hallway without a hall pass.  For heaven’s sake, you cannot even use the restroom without getting permission!

Frankly, the best thing about being an adult is that you can use the restroom whenever you feel like it.

But, I digress.

Rules can feel arbitrary and annoying, even if you know they are for a greater good.  When we hear any word that sounds like rules-laws, restrictions, regulations-we know that we are about to have our behavior corralled, directed, and controlled.

In today’s Gospel reading from John, when Jesus uses the word commandment to describe how he would like us to behave, we might have that same reaction.  We might start to feel tense, wondering how he is going to restrict our behavior.  After all, we already know about the Ten Commandments, which are pretty restrictive.  We also know about the more than 600 laws in the book of Leviticus.  What new boundary is Jesus going to place on us?

But Jesus’ tone does not feel domineering.  Jesus says he is going to give us this commandment so that we can abide in his love and so our joy may be complete.  Clearly, Jesus has a different understanding of commandment than we do.  For Jesus, the word commandment is a gift, a rule that helps us gain intimacy with God.

And the specific commandment that he reveals in today’s lesson is this:  “to love one another as I have loved you.”

And how does Jesus love us?  He loves all of us, completely, to the point of death, whether we deserve his love or not.  Jesus loves us whether we are mature or irresponsible. Jesus loves us whether we are spiritual or secular.  Jesus loves us whether we are “cool” or “nerds”.  Jesus loves us no matter what our skin color.  Jesus loves us whether we are men or women.  Jesus loves us whether we are gay or straight. Jesus loves us whether we are old or young.

This commandment to love is not just an arbitrary rule.  This commandment is our marching orders.  This commandment is our mission.  This commandment is our deepest calling.

We are called to love everybody.  Period.

And how well are we doing at this job?

I watched a documentary a couple of weeks ago called American Teen that was a look at the lives of five high school students in a high school in Indiana.  One of the students, Meghan, was a typical mean-girl bully.  What was so fascinating about her story is how vulnerable she actually was and how she dealt with anger over a sister’s death and general insecurity about being a teenager by lashing out and making other people miserable.

I wonder what would have happened if she had, at her core, a deep understanding of Jesus’ love for her and the knowledge that her whole mission in life was to love others as she was loved.

Bullying is not just a painful, inevitable part of school.  Occasionally, intense bullying meets a particularly vulnerable child and devastating consequences ensue.  Just last month, eleven year old Jaheem Herrera hung himself after being repeatedly teased and bullied for no reason other than being from the Virgin Islands and being a new student who was an easy target.  Every day at school kids taunted him and called him names.  He sought help from his parents and they sought help from the school, but no one was able to stop the teasing.

I wonder what might have happened, if just a few kids at that school had understood Jesus’ command to we love everyone.  I wonder what would have happened if just a few kids stuck up for Jaheem, surrounded him with support and friendship.  I wonder what would have happened if just a few bystanders had the courage to step up to the bullies.

Loving our neighbors is not just about feeling warm and fuzzy.  Love requires concrete action, such as treating each person you meet with respect.  Love means being patient and kind and helpful.  Love means seeing the good in each person we encounter through the day and treating them like the valuable, created human being they are.

The command to love our neighbors takes great courage. Loving means standing up for those people who cannot stand up for themselves. Loving means risking our own reputations.  Loving means putting ourselves out for another person.  Loving our neighbors means teaching those who are bullied that they are wonderful, strong, beloved children of God who are worth Jesus’ very life.  Loving our neighbors means teaching our bullies that all people are children of God who deserve to be treated with respect.

I have been called by God to love my neighbor.  You, whether you are 8 or 80, have also been called to love your neighbor.  Those of you who are still in school may not be allowed to eat in class or go to the bathroom without getting permission from an adult-but no one can stop you from obeying God’s commandment to love your fellow students.  You have a chance to be heroes by being kind and respectful to everyone in your class and in your school.  You have the chance to be heroes by standing up for kids who are being teased.  If you are a bully, you have a chance to be a hero by apologizing for your behavior and starting over by being kind to your classmates. . . or family. . .or employees.

And when we do live a life of loving our neighbors, we will draw closer and closer to God.  Loving other people helps us to understand how much God loves us.  By loving other people, we will abide in God’s love and experience the deep joy of Christ.  What other rule can do that?

Amen.

Easter 3, Year B, 2009

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

I love watching footage of Publisher’s Clearinghouse winners or housewives who get surprised by Oprah’s cameras.  We can watch an entire story playing out across their faces as they are told they have won a million dollars or are about to meet Tom Cruise.  At first they are embarrassed to be caught in their bathrobe.  Next, they are suspicious that they are being scammed.  Then they just stare blankly, usually with their mouths partially open, thinking.  Finally, the news sinks in and they start jumping up and down and screaming like crazy people.

Any life changing news, whether good or bad, takes a while to filter through the human brain.

We celebrate Easter for a full 50 days, representing the time that lapsed between Jesus’ resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. God gave the disciples a nice, long time to absorb the news of the resurrection before throwing the curveball of the Holy Spirit at them.

Our Gospel lesson today is from the Gospel of Luke.  You’ll remember from our time together at Easter that the Gospel of Mark does not contain any post-resurrection appearances, so the creators of the lectionary are borrowing from the Gospel of John and the Gospel of Luke this year.  In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus makes two post-resurrection appearances.

First, Jesus appears to two disciples walking along a road to Emmaus.  They don’t recognize him at first, but he says a few elusive things and then breaks bread with them.  In the act of breaking bread, they suddenly realize who he is.

The second appearance-the one we read today-happens when all the disciples are gathered together, discussing the first appearance.

Jesus materializes suddenly, out of nowhere, and the disciples are-here’s that word again-terrified.

Jesus understands their fear, Jesus understands that it takes our small brains time to absorb new information.

Jesus’ response to their fear tells us so much about God and the kind of love and patience that God has for us.  Rather than getting down to the business at hand right away, Jesus gives them time to absorb the experience of being with the risen Jesus.  He invites the disciples to touch him.  He invites the disciples to view his wounds.  He invites the disciples into this intimate moment of connection to reaffirm their bonds and reassure them of his identity.

Throughout all the resurrection appearances, eating is a theme.  The resurrected Jesus almost always eats something within the stories where he appears to the Disciples.  This story is no different.  After giving the disciples a chance to touch his resurrected body, Jesus then eats a piece of fish in front of them.  Eating the fish not only proves that Jesus is no ghost, but must have evoked many memories for the disciples.  So many important moments in Jesus’ ministry happened around food.  When the disciples saw Jesus eat the fish, they must have remembered the final Passover meal together, and the time Jesus fed 5000 people with just fish and bread, and the meal during which Mary poured oil over Jesus head and feet.  The extraordinary resurrected Jesus chooses to do something extremely ordinary to help root his disciples in the reality of the present in a gentle, calming way.

Jesus does not delve into bible study or instruction until all those introductions are out of the way.  Only when the disciples have come to understand that he is, indeed, resurrected from the dead, does Jesus begin to teach them about the implications of his resurrection.  He helps them to understand that their mission is to go out and teach others about repentance and God’s forgiveness of sin.

The church year also gives us time to gently absorb the news of Jesus’ resurrection.  We have all of Lent to focus on repenting and then 50 days of Easter to focus on the fact that our sins are forgiven.

And even with these 50 days of Easter, I don’t know that the good news really ever fully sinks into our hearts and minds.

I wonder what would happen if each of us took the next few weeks of Easter to really think and pray about how the forgiveness of sins affects each of us.  The phrase “forgiveness of sins” has sort of a stern Catholic-school connotation.  We don’t easily jump up and down in joy over the image of a stern God solemnly wiping our slate clean while giving us a one eye-brow raised nod.

But the forgiveness of sins is not about a schoolteacher God judging us and reluctantly changing our grade from an F to an A.  The forgiveness of God is about the gift of an abundant, loving relationship with our Creator. Through Jesus’ death and resurrection, God forgives us of our sins. Because Jesus mediates between us and the Father, we can be in a close relationship with God. Jesus modeled this kind of intimate relationship that is now available to us through his relationship with his disciples.

Jesus’ relationship with his disciples was marked by breaking bread together, walking together, and teaching.  While Jesus occasionally rebuked or got frustrated with his disciples, his relationship to his disciples could not be characterized as stern or cold.  Jesus loved his disciples and his disciples loved him.  Jesus reaffirms this warm relationship with disciples by continuing to break bread with them after his resurrection.

Experiencing a relationship with God can sometimes feel abstract and frustrating.  God does not literally walk with us or break bread with us.  But, our relationship with God is just that-a relationship.  The relationship is dynamic and intimate, just like Jesus’ relationship to the disciples was dynamic and intimate.  We may not experience God in a palpable manner, as the disciples were able to do, but if we lead lives of prayer we do occasionally get a strong spiritual sense of God’s presence and a very powerful sense of God’s love for us.

Maybe this Eastertide, as we slowly absorb the reality of God’s powerful love for us, we’ll have a moment of insight about just how incredible this intimate relationship with the divine really is and we’ll start  jumping up and down and screaming like one of those Publisher’s Clearinghouse winners!

Even for us staid Episcopalians, that would be an appropriate response to the Good News of God’s love for us!

Amen.

Easter, Year B, 2009

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Today is the most celebrated, exciting day of the Church year.  Easter represents the core of what makes Christianity unique.  The resurrection of Christ offers endless possibilities for our own redemption and our own new lives with God.  The resurrection is all about experiencing unbridled hope and joy where there was no room for either.

So, why then won’t Salome and the two Marys get on board with the program!?

In every other Gospel account of Jesus’ resurrection, the women who find the empty tomb are terrified, but they dutifully trot off to tell the male disciples the news.  In the original ending to Mark’s Gospel however, the women are so freaked out by everything that has happened that they run away and tell no one.

This ending of Mark is completely unsatisfying!  This ending is abrupt and unresolved.  We are left not with an image of a victorious, risen Lord, but with three shaken women, who cannot integrate this good news into their lives.

This ending reminds me of the ending of Jean Cocteau’s 1946 film version of Beauty and the Beast.  At the very end, when the Beast morphs back into the prince he had been before his curse, instead of looking thrilled, Beauty looks disappointed.  Cocteau refuses to deliver us the neatly wrapped up ending we want.  David Chase did the same thing when he ended The Sopranos so abruptly, in the middle of a scene.

While neither the ending of Beauty and the Beast nor The Sopranos was completely satisfying, in retrospect, both are considered pretty brilliant, poetic endings.

Real life does not deliver neat endings, wrapped up with a satisfying bow.  Real life is complicated and messy.  Real life does not have endings the way a piece of literature does.

So, I would argue that this ending of The Gospel of Mark is a brilliant piece of writing that acknowledges the messiness of real life and intentionally leaves us in tension.

By leaving us in tension, Mark drives two points home.  First, Easter Sunday cannot be celebrated independently from Good Friday.  Second, God does not need humans to get their ducks in a row before he acts.  The resurrection happened whether the women at the tomb were ready or not.

Easter Sunday is a wonderful, celebratory day, but it cannot happen without Judas’ treachery, the insecurity of Pilate, and the murderous crowds.  The resurrection cannot happen without Jesus’ painful death, and Jesus’ abandonment by all of his closest male friends.  The Good News does not come without the terrible news of the death of God and the abandonment of hope.  The resurrection is redemptive, yes, but not even the resurrection cannot erase the horror that came before.

And this is like life, too, isn’t it?

People have rich second marriages after the death of a loved spouse or a difficult divorce.  Some go on to have children after miscarriages or still births.  There are those who start a new, exciting job after being suddenly laid off from a previous one.

Our lives go on after painful events, but we don’t ever forget those tragedies.  We don’t forget the way grief shaped us.  We don’t forget the people who are no longer with us or who might have been.  We don’t forget feelings of rejection and shame.

Instead of ignoring the past, we integrate the past into who we are.  We are not thankful for bad experiences, but we do acknowledge how they shaped us and made us more complicated, sometimes better, people.

Those painful experiences help us treasure the good in life even more-help us to feel in our guts how lucky we are to be loved, to be safe, to be employed, to have friends.

In the same way Mark’s Gospel, by not prettying up the resurrection, helps us to feel the power of the resurrection in our guts.  Jesus was dead.  Dead, dead.  He was not sleeping.  He was not impatiently waiting in the tomb to jump out and surprise everyone.  Jesus had died.  And so, when Salome and the Marys find the empty tomb, of course they are terrified.  Dead people are supposed to stay dead.  As much as I miss my mother, who died nine years ago, if I suddenly visited her grave and found it was empty, I would be completely unsettled and afraid.  The women who come to minister to Jesus’ body will one day see Jesus’ resurrected body and be comforted and amazed and astonished, but for now they are just scared.  So they run.

And this leads me to my second point-Jesus does not need the women to have an enthused reaction.  He does not need Peter to stay loyal to him.  Jesus does not need to have all of his disciples sitting vigil for him.  God does all the work of the resurrection.  The resurrection is for the redemption of humanity, but God does not need humanity to make the resurrection happen.

Jesus’ resurrection happens despite the fear of the people who had been close to him. In the same way, God takes initiative with us.  God pursues us, loves us, forgives us even when we are afraid, freaked out, and incompetent.

There are those who truly believe that in order to be a Christian you have to meet a long list of requirements-including holding very specific theological and political beliefs.  But, I guarantee you that Mary, Mary and Salome had no deep theological understanding of the empty tomb. I also guarantee you that Jesus did not hold their reaction against them!

Jesus’ resurrection is good news for all of us.  Jesus’ resurrection is for us when we are filled with faith and when we are filled with doubt.  Jesus’ resurrection is for us when we are able to live how we want to live and when we disappoint others and ourselves.  Jesus’ resurrection is for when we are feeling blessed and when we are feeling forsaken.

Jesus’ resurrection and the new life it offers us is all about God’s overwhelming, powerful, all encompassing love for us, not about how good or deserving we are.  Jesus tells us that the entire motivation behind God becoming incarnate in Jesus is that love.  God wanted to find a way to be in full relationship with us. Since we are unable to live a perfect life, he chose to do all the work for us, to become like one of us, die like one of us, but then break the power of death over us, so that we might be in relationship with God forever.

And whether this news makes us shout for joy or makes us want to run away in fear, God still loves us and invites us to relationship with him.  And that is Good News.

Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.

Lent 3, Year B, 2009

/ Sarah / 1 Comment

Oh, Jesus.

Just when we think we know our incarnate deity, just when we think we’ve gotten a sense of his personality, just when we’ve gotten comfortable with him, he has a temper tantrum in the temple and starts causing real havoc.

Our mild mannered man-god starts acting more like testosterone fueled thug than a wise sage.

In the Gospels of Mark and Matthew, the cleansing of the Temple comes when Jesus is deeply stressed and close to his death, after he has entered Jerusalem for a final time.  Today’s reading, though, comes from the Gospel of John.  And, you’ll note that this scene takes place in the second chapter of John, right after Jesus turns water into wine at the wedding in Cana.  So, unlike Mark and Matthew, where Jesus is well known and has been ministering for a long time, in John, this radical act of clearing out the Temple is the first public act of Jesus ministry!

Talk about shock value-In the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, disciples, Pharisees, Scribes, everyone knew who Jesus was.  So, when he turned over the tables and chased out the money changers, they had some context with which to understand his actions.  In the Gospel of John’s version of the story, he explodes onto the scene, introducing himself to the community at Jerusalem in a bold and violent way.

In the Gospel of John, rather than slowly ingratiate himself through healing the sick, restoring sight to the blind, or dispensing wisdom, Jesus has no hesitation about immediately distinguishing himself and claiming religious authority by clearing out the temple.  John’s Jesus is carving out his territory and claiming his identity.

After all, Jesus not only clears out the temple, he also identifies himself as the temple.  He tells the horrified onlookers that if the temple is destroyed, it will be raised in three days.  They think he is talking about the building, but he is referring to his own body.

Jesus is differentiating himself from other teachers, other miracle workers and physically claiming the most holy part of Jerusalem for himself.  To insult his father’s house is to insult him, and Jesus will not tolerate that behavior.

Jesus knew who he was, and he was not afraid to make a scene in order to stick to his principles.

I think we, as Christians, are invited to be a little bolder and to carve out our territory, as well.

Let me be clear-I’m not talking about going after political or economic power or overthrowing the government, or even destroying the companies that make tacky Christian kitch by the truckfulls.

I think we are invited to carve out our own territory of hope and faith in the midst of a culture that is filled with fear right now.

A friend recently forwarded me a column that was found in The New Republic.  The column was responding to an article in The New York Times about the humanities needing to justify their worth in the midst of tough economic times.  While the quote I’m about to read is about the humanities, I think it applies to religions, too.

it will take many kinds of sustenance to help people through these troubles. Many people will now have to fall back more on inner resources than on outer ones. They are in need of loans, but they are also in need of meanings. The external world is no longer a source of strength. The temper of one’s existence will therefore be significantly determined by one’s attitude toward circumstance, its cruelties and its caprices. Poor people and hounded people have always known this, but now the middle class is getting its schooling in stoicism. After all, bourgeois life was devised as an insulation against physical and social vulnerabilities, as a system of protections and privileges secured honestly by work; but the insulation is ripping and the protections are vanishing. We are in need of fiscal policy and spiritual policy. And spiritually speaking, literature is a bailout, and so is art, and philosophy, and history, and the rest. These are assets in which we may all hold majority ownership; assets of which we cannot be stripped, except by ourselves.

As Christians, we have precious assets that we can offer to our friends and neighbors who are hurting right now.

As Christians, we are not rich because of our bank accounts, we are not stable because of rising home values, we do not alter our level of faith when the stock market swings to and fro.

We know that at our core we are valuable because we are created beings who are loved passionately by God.  We know that true power comes when we give up trying to control our lives, and release ourselves to God.

Middle class America has been pretty comfortable for some time now, and in its comfort, it may have lost some of its ability to deal with the very real crisis we are now facing.

When we carve out our territory of faith and hope, we are not being empty headed Pollyannas.  I am not suggesting we go around chirping about how everything is going to be okay if we just believe in Jesus.

I am suggesting that we lead the way in a sense of hope that is rooted in prayer and our knowledge that God will provide us the strength and courage we need to face any crisis with dignity and compassion.  I am suggesting that we can show the world that we can face this economic disaster by banding together and helping one another rather than by frantically scrambling to position ourselves. I am suggesting our faith can give us the courage to be honest about what is really happening in our lives rather than pridefully hiding behind a veil of false appearances just to keep our places in society.

A few weeks ago Lisa Ling did a special report about the foreclosure crisis in California.  She interviewed several people who were handling the crisis in different ways. The first group were representatives of the hundreds of people who were living in tents in a makeshift tent city.  Many of them were there because they were too embarrassed to tell their grown children that they had lost their homes.  They were so caught up in their pride, so rooted in their identity as being people with homes, that they would not seek help from others.  I understand that some families are so fractured that living together is not an option.  However, it broke my heart that these people would rather live in such a desperate way rather than reach out to the people who love them.

Alternatively, another couple in danger of losing their house invited a family to live with them and help pay the rent.  They were honest with themselves and with their friends and family about their financial situation.  Instead of isolating themselves, they reached out.  The couple found a website that matches people who need homes with people who own homes and invited a mom and her daughter to move in with them.  While this arrangement will certainly have its own bumps in the road, I think the flexibility, creativity, and openness of their response really reflected a mature spirituality.

We are stronger when we reach out and ask for help when we need it.  We have deeper relationships when we are honest.  We grow as people when we engage with friends and strangers rather than isolating ourselves.

We have a choice in this economic crisis.  We can act out of fear, or we can carve out our territory of hope and faith and be a witness to the world.

Amen.

Transfiguration, Year B, 2009

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

I occasionally wish that I lived in an earlier era.  Now, granted, I would want that era to have women’s rights and flushing toilets, so perhaps what I really want is a mythical earlier era.  In that imaginary era, I would never have seen a special effect.  So that, when I read the Bible, I would be awed by the stories it contains.

We 21st century people are jaded. We have seen waters part in The Ten Commandments.  We can see creation begin by turning on the Discovery Channel.  Noah’s flood has been replicated in any number of movies and cartoons.  And dead people appearing is nothing new. In the last calendar year alone, the television series House, Grey’s Anatomy, and Lost all had major characters who were dead.  Dead Amber appeared in House’s memory.  Dead Denny was hallucinated by Izzie.  Dead Christian-well, we still don’t know how he got on the island.  And that’s not even considering the dead characters on the show Medium!

We are not impressed by well-laundered clothes and Old Testament ghosts.  We have seen it all before.

Thankfully, Peter, James, and John are not jaded.  Their senses are still sharp and their minds are fresh and open.  For them, the transfiguration is the most incredible event they have ever witnessed. For Peter, James, and John the transfiguration is a moment of transcendence, a moment of understanding God in a new way.

It turns out for them, for Jesus, and for us, experiencing those moments of transcendence is a gift from God to help understand God better and to receive nourishment for the hard work of ministry.

Jesus and the disciples have been working hard.  In the eighth chapter of Mark, immediately before this reading, Jesus has:  miraculously fed 5,000 people bread and fish, walked miles and miles on foot, healed a blind man, informed his disciples that he was going to die tragically, and argued with Peter.  Talk about a heavy couple of days!

Jesus and the disciples must have been worn out-physically, spiritually, and emotionally.

Jesus leads three of his disciples, Peter, James and John, up a mountain so they can spent some time away from the demands of their work.  While they are there two amazing things happen.  First, Jesus becomes illuminated.  His robes become so white they know the source must be supernatural.  Second, two great Old Testament Heroes appear next to Jesus: Moses and Elijah.

Why Moses and Elijah?  Why not Abraham or David?

The disciples are shown Moses and Elijah because of their unique, spiritual relationships to God. You might remember when Moses comes down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments his face shone with a supernatural light.  Peter, James and John would remember that story, look at Jesus’ shining clothes and realize that Jesus had the same ability to hear directly from God.

Legend has it that Elijah never died, but instead was assumed into heaven.  Jesus has just told his disciples that he will die and be resurrected.  They see Elijah as a kind of foreshadowing, to help them prepare for the reality of Jesus’ resurrection.

I believe for these three disciples, Jesus’ transfiguration was their transformation.  While Jesus got time to rest and commune with his Father, the disciples had an incredible supernatural experience they would never forget.  On their walk, after the feeding of the 5,000, Jesus asks the disciples who they think he is.  They guess many things, but finally Peter gets it right.  Peter tells Jesus he thinks he is the Christ.

The transfiguration is a way for these disciples to really internalize and understand at a more intuitive level what it means that Jesus is the Christ.  When your friend is the Christ, weird, supernatural things happen.  When your friend is the Christ, he can glow at will.  When your friend is the Christ, biblical heroes who have been dead hundreds of years will suddenly appear.  When your friend is the Christ, the voice of God will pour out of the sky, filled with love.

These memories of the transfiguration will be something Peter, James and John will be able to hold onto during their darkest moments of doubt.  Even as Peter lies about his association with Jesus on Good Friday, perhaps a small part of his mind was reminding him that everything was going to be okay.  His friend, Jesus, was bigger than death and more powerful than the laws of nature.

The transfiguration was the spiritual experience Peter, James, and John were given so they could keep on going, keep on “running the race”, as Paul phrases it in 1st Corinthians.  After they leave the mountain, Jesus and the disciples get right back to work, right back to ministry, but now they can do it with a little more energy, a little more bounce in their step.  They now know, in a concrete way, that God is with them.

Now, I think it is fair to conjecture that none of us will ever experience the transfiguration.  However, I do know many of you who have had some kind of spiritual experience.  I think we are all capable of that kind of experience.

Some of you have had spiritual experiences when you have taken time away from your own family and work and retreated for a few days in prayer and meditation.  Others of you have experienced the holy when you have traveled to holy places like Iona, or Shrinemont.  Others of you encounter God through singing sacred music. Still others of you have experienced the divine when you had your first child or understood God’s love for you through the love of another.   There are many ways and places where God can break in and speak to us.

Those moments may be few and far between, but they are great gifts to us.  They give us courage to go back to our ministries and give all we have to them.  Those moments feed us spiritual nourishment that sustains us through difficult times.  Those transcendent moments remind us that God is real and that he is with us.  When we experience a spiritual moment we are invited to savor the time we are given with God and use the energy the experience gives us to return to our daily lives and ministries and give back to those around us.

We may be jaded.  We may have seen it all, but like the disciples, we still need God.  We still need reminders that he loves us.  We still need the transfiguration.

Amen.