Shine!

Today our series, and the season, concludes with the story known popularly as the “Transfiguration of Jesus.” TRANSFIGURATION is a big, churchy word, and one that may be meaningless not only to those who are new to the congregation or visiting, but to the more seasoned members as well.

So the story goes that Jesus took Peter and James and his brother John on a journey up a high mountain. When they arrived, suddenly Jesus began shining like the sun so that his clothes looked a dazzling white color. And as if that were not enough, Moses and Elijah appeared alongside him.

Peter apparently decided that the best way to cope with the situation was to initiate a casual conversation with Jesus. “Hey there Moses and Elijah! How y’all doin’? Anyway, uh, Jesus, I’m really honored to be here for this momentous occasion. I’m sure you three have a lot to talk about. If you’d like, I could put together three tents for you guys so you could camp out here on the mountainside for a few days and catch up!”

While Peter was making his offer, a cloud came and hovered over the entire gathering. A voice began speaking out of the cloud: “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!”

Now, for those of you who have been here since the beginning of this series, you may recall that these words are very similar to the words that came at the moment of Jesus’ baptism, when the heavens opened up and God’s voice could be heard speaking. So we begin and end with a remarkably similar message from God: “This is my Son, the beloved. I am pleased with him.” Only now, up on the mountain, God adds a final note to the message: “Listen to him!”

Matthew tells us that when the voice spoke from the cloud, Peter and James and John were scared out of their wits. They threw themselves on the ground and buried their faces in the dirt so as not to have to see or hear anymore.

Have you ever felt like that? Have you ever been so scared that you just wanted to close your eyes and stick your fingers in your ears and not see or hear another thing?

Well, it was right about that time, when the disciples were lying prostrate in the dirt with their arms over their heads like kids in a tornado drill, that Jesus tapped them on the shoulder and said, gently, “Hey there. It’s okay. Get up. You don’t need to be afraid.” When they looked up, all the bad stuff had gone away and only Jesus was standing there.

It is an awful feeling to feel terrified and out of control, isn’t it? And make no mistake about it – It was fear that the disciples experienced that day on the mountain: mouth-drying, heart-thumping, knee-buckling fear. And it was this scene of sheer terror that the church now recognizes each year as the Transfiguration of the Lord.

What happened on that mountain? We don’t really know. All we know is that whatever it was, the disciples simply could not cope with it. They could not comprehend the magnificence of the divine presence, nor the implications of what the voice was saying. The entire experience was a mystery way beyond their ability to understand, and it terrified them.

The glory of the transfiguration event shines as brilliantly and as incomprehensibly today as it did for those disciples over 2000 years ago. But even if we don’t have a clue about what really happened or what it meant, we can at least learn how Jesus would have us act and react to events that challenge our comprehension and threaten to paralyze us with fear. Because while Jesus did not explain the meaning behind the Transfiguration mystery, he did give us a strategy for dealing with debilitating attacks of fear that seem to strike us all at one point or another.

So what is the strategy offered by our Lord? Well, it’s pretty simple: “Get up and do not be afraid!”

It seems to me that when Jesus told the three disciples to “Get up and do not be afraid,” he was saying to them and to all would-be followers that part of having faith is having the courage to keep going forward even when we are uncertain, confused, or even frightened out of our wits.

All of us have had those moments. We’ve all had times when it took everything we had to find the strength and courage to face our worst tragedies and fears: our fear of inadequacy, our fear of saying or doing the wrong thing, our fear of failing our families, or our friends, or ourselves. Our fear of judgment. Our fear of change. Our fear of heading in a new direction. Our fear of illness and disease and suffering. Our fear of terrorism and disaster, both natural and human-made. Our fear of failing God, of facing the Lord in our final hour, of the accounting of our lives and the journey into the life that is to come.

I don’t know how any of us do it. How do we even get up each morning and face the day? How is it that we are able to “get up and not be afraid” day in and day out, in the face of terrifying challenges, of life-threatening illnesses and the difficulty of living in this trying time in history.

It is only by God’s grace that any of us are able to get up to do anything.

And that, my brothers and sisters, is the good news in this passage.

Because when we find the courage and the strength to get up in the face of our fears, that’s when Jesus taps us on the shoulder and reassures us. That’s when the Spirit breathes God’s very power and grace into us and we are transformed––transfigured––to use the words from Scripture. That’s when we are transformed from being frightened, helpless people into being strong, able disciples who are able to go forth and minister in the name of Jesus Christ.

The Season of Lent
Lent is popularly known as a season for individual self-examination, penitence, and “giving something up” as a spiritual discipline. It seems, in this popular view, to be primarily inwardly, and perhaps largely negatively focused. It’s commonly seen as being about what’s wrong with me, as an individual, and what I’m willing to do to improve myself. Or at least to make me feel like I should.

In reality, while self-examination and some individual work are part of the work of Lent, the early church developed Lent to be very much “other-focused”... [READ MORE]

When God comes to us in Christ, when the Lord appears right before our very eyes, yes, our first reaction might be, like the disciples, one of fear and trembling. It can knock us off balance. It may even take us to our knees. But then something incredible happens. God lifts us back up, up from our fears, up from our trembling, up from our lack of faith, and sets us right back on our feet.

These last eight weeks have been a journey. It was a journey that began with the heavens opening up and the voice of God breaking through, identifying in no uncertain terms who Jesus is. And the journey ends with the voice of God speaking through the cloud, once again telling us very clearly who Jesus is.

Jesus is God’s own beloved Son, with whom God is pleased. We should listen to him.

And so, during our eight-week journey, we have listened to some of what he had to say. We listened as he invited his first disciples to come and see for themselves who he was, and we heard the invitation to come along with them and see for ourselves. We listened to him calling his first disciples away from their work and invited them to follow him.

We heard his invitation to follow him into the adventure of being his disciples, to offer grace and healing love in his name, in whatever places and spaces God has called us to be. We listened as he offered each one of us his blessing, even as he challenged our assumptions of what it means to be blessed. We listened as he encouraged us to be like salt, enhancing the flavor of God’s love in this world, and to let God’s saving love shine through us like beacons of light in the world. We listened to him reinterpret the law of the prophets, and to hear a deeper message in the covenant, one that had the potential to transform not just us, but the entire world. We listened as he called us to strive for a different way of being in this world—for righteousness that comes not through revenge, but through grace, forgiving love, and a deep commitment to reconciliation. And today, we listened to him say to us, “It’s okay. Don’t be afraid. Get up, keep going, walk with me a little further and I will show you a more excellent way.”

It is frightening to make a decision to go with Jesus on this unknown journey that we call Christian faith. It is a journey that turns our assumptions about how things ought to be on their heads. It is a journey that challenges the ways of this world, and potentially puts us out of step with those who seek to uphold the status quo. It is a journey that could take us into danger as we disrupt the powers and principalities at work in this world and try to bring justice and blessing to the least of these among us.

Following Jesus is not a decision to be made lightly.

But if you have heard his great invitation to follow him and you want to keep going, then we encourage you to join us for the next stage of the journey: the season of Lent.

As you conclude your sermon, be sure to invite everyone to continue the journey and join you as you begin the season of Lent, and the next series, starting with Ash Wednesday:

Come with us to follow Jesus! Join us on this journey into a different way of living and being in this world. And if you are worried or frightened, don’t be! We will be right here with you, every step of the way. When you stumble, we will pull you up. When you fall, God will lift you and set you back on your feet again. It is a journey that you don’t want to miss. It is the way to life everlasting.

The Season of Lent

Lent is popularly known as a season for individual self-examination, penitence, and “giving something up” as a spiritual discipline. It seems, in this popular view, to be primarily inwardly, and perhaps largely negatively focused. It’s commonly seen as being about what’s wrong with me, as an individual, and what I’m willing to do to improve myself. Or at least to make me feel like I should.

In reality, while self-examination and some individual work are part of the work of Lent, the early church developed Lent to be very much “other-focused.” Lent was created as the “final leg” of intense preparation and support for people who have chosen to learn to live the way of Jesus among us. It was, we might say, a kind of finishing school for those preparing for baptism and lifelong Christian discipleship.

The church in the West had generally begun to drift from such a clear formational focus for this season by the Middle Ages. From that point forward, essentially until Vatican II, Lent in the Western Church, whether Roman Catholic, Protestant, or Anglican, had taken on a more “generically penitential” hue. The still-popular impression of Lent as an extended season of “navel-gazing,” self-deprivation, and generally feeling bad about oneself was not all that far off-track from what Lent had become in practice.

That changed with the liturgical reforms of Vatican II, many of which were then also carried out by Protestants and Anglicans worldwide. The early Christian approach to Lent as a season of intentional formation and baptismal preparation has been moved front and center again. The readings for Lent every year in both the Roman Catholic Readings for the Mass and the Revised Common Lectionary, widely in use by many Protestant bodies in the world, as well as by Anglicans in the US, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa, have been developed to support that work. So has the language of our own version of the baptismal covenant.

Each week during Year A, the readings correspond to a section of our baptismal vows. Worship becomes an occasion to focus on what it means to live out each of these vows, one week at a time. Worship alone does not fulfill the purpose of Lent. It takes focused, accountable work in small groups where we watch over one another in love. So each week, in the planning notes of this series, we’ll provide some guidance for formational groups to work on during the days ahead.