February 6, 2005 Matthew 17:1-9
Reconnected, Refreshed, Resourced
Today is the last Sunday in the season of Epiphany, (a word that means "revealing") that period between Christmas and Lent when the church looks at the many ways in which Jesus is revealed as the Christ to the world. It begins with the magi coming from afar (Jesus revealed to the Gentiles) and proceeds to Jesus' baptism, through various accounts of Jesus teaching and healing, calling disciples, revealing himself in his ministry. And it always ends with what is called the Transfiguration, Jesus being revealed as God's son on a mountaintop in the midst of mysterious light and a voice from heaven.
The biblical story begins when Jesus, who has been forming and nurturing a small spiritual community, consisting of the twelve named male disciples and who-knows-how-many women and others, takes a select few -- Peter, James and John -- on a little weekend retreat. They climb to the top of a mountain, and have a sort of mysterious, mystical, transcendent experience of the Holy. A mountain-top experience. A spiritual experience. One of those things you remember for a lifetime. Who knows what really happened? There were no video cameras present to record the moment, and even if there had been, it's not the kind of thing that would show up on tape anyway. How do you capture things that are really beyond the realm on the senses?
As the Gospel writers describe it, however, Jesus was transfigured before them -- that is, he literally looked different, he almost glowed in the dark, he radiated energy and Spirit. His clothes became dazzling white, even whiter than Clorox could accomplish. And then Jesus is seen consulting with two very important figures out of Israel's past. A truly amazing, dazzling sight!
So inspirational was it that Peter in his ecstasy blurted out, "Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." In other words, this is so fantastic, let's just stay up here and make the moment last forever.
Finally, a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, "This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!" -- the epiphany, revealing again who Jesus is.
Well, they didn't stay on the mountain. They descended back to the valley below, where there was work to be done. If we had continued reading the verses that follow, we would have seen Jesus and the disciples immediately beset by human need, and Jesus was called upon to perform a healing. The mountaintop experience was not for its own sake, but served to reconnect, refresh and resource Jesus and the disciples for their work in the world.
For progressive Christians, as I like to think we are, this is often what the church is and does. It is the spiritual community where we are reconnected, refreshed and resourced, and reminded of who we are. And every Sunday should in some way be a transfiguration experience. Now certainly the church is many things to many people. We each have our unique reasons for being here, for being part of this community. For some it's the music, for others the fellowship. Some come to look for typos in the bulletin, and are rarely disappointed! For some it's the sense of caring and being cared for, for others the challenge of intellectual growth, learning new things about the Bible. For some it's an outlet for their missionary impulses, a way of serving, even saving the world, and for others there is simply the emotional release. And I suppose all of these in some way are related to being reconnected, refreshed and resourced.
But the church is first a spiritual community. Now we are part of many communities in our lives -- families, neighborhoods, schools, places of work, clubs, sports teams, service organizations. Most of these never become spiritual communities, and to be honest, some churches don't either. What makes a community a spiritual community is when the connections go deeper that what's on the surface, beyond the obvious reason that draws people together. You may be in a group that likes to get together to read books or hike or quilt, and that's great --there's value in that -- but at some point the connection may become deeper. It may not be just about reading or quilting or hiking, but about sharing something deeper and more profound. The connection becomes a spiritual one, so that you don't get together primarily to hike, but to experience community, connectedness, with each other and with something larger.
When Jesus on the mount of transfiguration was seen speaking with Moses and Elijah -- that to me is a symbol of his being connected with something larger. His movement is not just about this moment in time, but is intimately related to the whole stream of sacred history, the whole story of what God was doing with the people. On the mountain Jesus became reconnected to that.
That's what should happen in the spiritual community we call the Church -- we are reconnected with each other, with God, with the whole vast sweep of sacred history in which God works. It happens in worship as we sing the great hymns of the faith, as we hear the stories of old, as we share our own stories with each other, offer our prayers and prayer requests and as we share the bread and wine of the communion table. We realize again that we are not alone, that we are part of a great web, held together by an unseen spiritual energy, a web that curves beyond the horizon and beyond time, including people we do not know, somehow all bound together in the bundle of life, and apart from which we cannot really live. In our daily living the bonds get frayed and strained. But in our coming together in community, spiritual community, we get reconnected.
A second thing that happened on the Mount of Transfiguration and that should happen in the church is refreshment. The disciples were given a great new vision, something that made it worth the climb, gave them the power to keep going. Peter enjoyed the refreshment so much he wanted to make it a permanent state of living. And after all, don't we all enjoy that refreshing dip in the ocean, that drink of Gatorade or iced-tea, that song that we hear on the radio that picks us up when we are at low ebb? There are so many great gifts that come to us when we need them most. Getting home after a long hike, I find there's nothing better than a hot shower. And after a hard week, it's great to join with fellow church members in worship. After facing questions that don't seem to have any good answers, struggling with relationships that don't work well, battling on the front lines for justice and peace, getting drained by all that Life-101 seems to demand --- just to sit in an inspiring place among fellow people of faith, hear beautiful music, repeat the familiar prayers, and come forward and receive the spiritual food of bread and wine is incredibly refreshing!
But like Peter and the others, we can't remain on the mountain – or in church – forever (though some Sundays it sure feels like it)! We can't consume nothing but iced-tea, or spend all our time in the shower, or listen to nothing but the most glorious chord of our favorite song. We are not only reconnected and refreshed, we are also -- in the spiritual community -- resourced for our work in the world.
Jesus and the disciples left the mountain, came down renewed for their work in the world. And in the same way, within the spiritual community, which often is graced with mountaintop experiences, we find the resources to do what we are called to do in our daily lives.
I believe that we are called to do is nothing less than the work of Jesus: a the Center for Progressive Christianity puts it, "striving for justice and peace among all people, bringing hope to those Jesus called the least of his sisters and brothers."
Some folks may think that this sort of mission is what we pay clergy and church professionals to do, and to be sure we do have agencies in the UCC who primarily work at being a voice of justice, and who lobby congress, and we have agencies that build homes for the aged and schools and hospitals. I really can't go out and build a health care center on my own. Of course there have been those like Albert Schweitzer, and Millard Fuller who were the inspiration for some pretty significant undertakings like Habitat for Humanity, but none of them did it alone. And yet each of us, wherever we are, whatever we do, can still be about mission and the work of Jesus. Each of us has a chance to care, to make decisions that are just, to speak words that promote loving attitudes, to operate in ways however small that build up God's realm. And the church as a spiritual community can resource each of us on those tasks. As the letter to the Ephesians puts it, in the church we are to "equip the saints for the work of ministry." Saints in the biblical sense does not refer to dead people who lived extraordinary lives, but church-folks, those imperfect, breakable, fallible, very human men and women who make up the body of Christ, each of whom is called to be in ministry in some way in their daily lives.
It's a big undertaking, a heavy expectation, but we don't just throw you in and expect you to swim. We're here to resource you, to equip you. This can happen in a lot of ways: through our time in worship, Adult Education forums, through Bible studies, through other classes and small groups we offer from time to time. We had a Leadership Retreat yesterday. We even have one of the best church libraries I’ve ever seen; it’s free and open whenever the office is. Expecting you to go out into the world and function as the body of Christ is a big thing, a scary undertaking -- but we don't expect you to do it without resources.
So on that mountain called Transfiguration, Jesus and the disciples were reconnected, refreshed, and resourced, and from that experience they came back down to the world and engaged in ministry. And we too, in our various experiences in this spiritual community we call the church are likewise reconnected, refreshed and resourced for our work in the world.
I leave you with a poem by Ann Weems, in her book Reaching for Rainbows, entitled “Where is the Church?”
The church of Jesus Christ
is where a child of God brings a balloon
is where old women come to dance
is where young men see visions and old men dream dreams
The church of Jesus Christ
is where lepers come to be touched
is where the blind see and the deaf hear
is where the lame run and the dying live
The church of Jesus Christ
is where daisies bloom out of barren land
is where children lead and wise men follow
is where mountains are moved and walls come tumbling down
The church of Jesus Christ
is where loaves of bread are stacked in the sanctuary to feed the hungry
is where coats are taken off and put on the backs of the naked
is where shackles are discarded and kings
and shepherds sit down to life together
The church of Jesus Christ
is where barefoot children run giggling in procession
is where the minister is ministered unto
is where the anthem is the laughter of the congregation
and the offering plates are full of people
The church of Jesus Christ
is where people go when they skin their knees or their hearts
is where frogs become princes and Cinderella dances beyond midnight
is where judges don’t judge and each child of God is beautiful and precious
The church of Jesus Christ
is where the sea divides for the exiles
is where the ark floats and the lamb lies down with the lion
is where people can disagree and hold hands at the same time
The church of Jesus Christ
is where night is day
is where trumpets and drums and tambourines declare God’s goodness
is where lost lambs are found
The church of Jesus Christ
is where people write thank-you notes to God
is where work is a holiday
is where seeds are scattered and miracles are grown
The church of Jesus Christ
is where home is
is where heaven is
is where a picnic is communion and people break bread together on their knees
The church of Jesus Christ
is where we live responsively toward God’s coming.
Even on Monday morning the world will hear
An abundance of alleluias!
