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Sermon
Last Sunday after the
Epiphany, Year A
Penny Nash, St.
Aidans Episcopal Church, Alpharetta, Georgia
During this short season after Epiphany, we as a church, through
our hearing the Gospel readings each week, have been introduced
to Jesus. We have attended his baptism and heard the testimony
of John the Baptizer that the Holy Spirit rests upon Jesus. We
have seen the beginning of his public ministry calling
disciples, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing
every sickness and disease among the people. And now, as this
season draws to a close, we come to the culmination of both the
narrative and the action, a mountaintop experience that shows us
unquestionably who Jesus is.
The story goes like this: the innermost of the inner circle,
Peter, has proclaimed that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the
Living God. But Peter has quickly degenerated from Rock to
Stumbling Block because he did not want to accept Jesus'
teaching about his suffering and death.
Nonetheless (because in Matthew the disciples are ultimately
teachable), six days later Jesus takes Peter, along with James
and John, up a high mountain, where Jesus is transfigured before
them. His face shines like the sun and his clothes become
dazzling white. Moses and Elijah suddenly appear with Jesus,
and then a bright cloud overshadows them all. A voice comes
from the cloud and says again what we remember hearing at Jesus'
baptism, "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well
pleased." And then the voice adds, "Listen to him!"
Peter, John and James fall to the ground. They know they are in
the presence of the Divine. They know that when Moses went up
the mountain to receive the Law, God's presence was made known
by the bright cloud. They know that the Glory of the Lord is
bright and shining and they know that when a voice comes from
the cloud it is Holy One who speaks. And perhaps they
comprehend that just as God called Moses up the mountain to get
the teachings, Jesus has now called them up the mountain to
understand just who their teacher is.
Well. What do we do after we have seen the glory of the Lord?
Try to prolong the mountaintop experience, as Peter suggests,
and keep that high as long as possible? Or go to church on the
seventh day and bask in the reflected glory and think about how
lucky and maybe how special - we are to have had a vision of
the Lord, a vision granted to us as the inner circle of Jesus?
There is a certain tension that runs through Matthew about this
inner circle issue. It appears that the local community for
whom this Gospel was written who called themselves the church,
was in conflict with another group who claimed the same
Scriptures but met on another day and in another location the
synagogue. This passage illustrates and confirms an important
point for the church that they were the inner circle,
the ones to whom the correct vision of Jesus had been entrusted,
a vision validated through the presence of not only three
earthly witnesses but also three heavenly ones. Who can argue
with that?
The thing is, though, that the church was actually closely
related to the synagogue. To use a political analogy on this
Sunday before Super Tuesday, it was not that the church was like
the Democrats and the synagogue was like the Republicans, but
rather that the synagogue was like the Clinton Democrats and the
church like the Obama Dems, both claiming to have the right
vision to guide the on-going life of all the people. It seems
that the church had lost in the primary but had not gone quietly
into the night. Some continuing sniping is preserved in
Matthew's gospel, which is why it is sometimes seen as
anti-Jewish. But just as Huckabee, Romney and McCain are all
Republican, those in the church and those in the synagogue were
all Jewish. So we see in Matthew, as we do in this
year's political debates, the rhetorical technique of arguing
your point by vilifying others.
Here lies a danger for us. We are tempted to think that as
heirs of and continuing participants in the church of Matthew's
Gospel, our role is simply to hold up a static vision of a
dazzling Jesus and say that we are right because we have seen
and correctly identified the divinity of Our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ, and who can argue with that? But there are many
local manifestations of the One Church now. And there is danger
in seeing ourselves in opposition to others who may see Jesus
from another angle, and in our enthusiasm for defending our
vision forgetting that we are still all seeing Christ.
But remember, it's not just a vision that Matthew shows
us. We also hear the voice of God saying, "This is my Son,
Listen to Him!"
Listen to Jesus' teaching. When Peter and James and John heard
those words from the cloud, they fell to the ground, overcome by
fear. They already knew how hard it was going to be to listen
to Jesus. Peter could not bear to hear him speak of his
suffering and death. And isn't it hard for us to hear him say
that the weeds are to be left to grow with the wheat because it
is God's job to sort them out, to hear him say we must forgive
seventy times seven times? To hear Jesus on another mountain
say: Why do you see the speck in your brother's eye and not
notice the log in your own? Love your enemies. Do not judge.
Blessed are the meek, the powerless, the poor in spirit, the
peacemakers, the merciful blessed are those who hunger and
thirst for justice. This is what Jesus teaches. Love and honor
God, yes, and also love as in care for - your neighbor.
The vision is not the end of the story, then. We also have to
listen and obey. We have to understand that the Glory of God is
not just about our vision of a shining Jesus but also, as that
great theologian of the early church, Irenaeus, so beautifully
says, that the Glory of God is a human being fully alive.
So now that we have seen the divinity of Jesus, we his
followers, whom Jesus does consider ultimately teachable, thank
Goodness - we have to remember to look for the humanity of
people, who are also the Glory of God.
You don't have to go to a mountaintop to witness transformation.
You can see it in East Atlanta at the Church of the Holy
Comforter, a mission church of this Diocese, where 70% of the
members of the congregation are mentally handicapped. If you go
there, and I highly recommend that you do, you might come upon
people wearing little gold-colored plastic badges pinned on
their shirts, badges that have the wearer's name engraved in the
middle and the word "Friend" engraved across the top. These
friend badges were the brainchild of a priest who had difficulty
remembering names, and they certainly help with that. But they
do something else too.
Those pins are an agent of transformation. A simple plastic pin
transforms the schizophrenic man into a friend who has a name.
A simple plastic pin transforms the mentally disabled woman
into a friend who has a name. A simple plastic pin transforms
the community from a group of people who are impaired in so many
ways to a community of people who literally define themselves as
friends.
It was there at Holy Comforter I once witnessed the
transfiguration of friend James, a very difficult man with a
severe mental disability. During the closing hymn of a
Wednesday night Eucharist, James abruptly left his place in the
pew and strode forward to stand in front of the altar. He stood
there, smiling broadly, rocking back and forth as he does, and
his face was positively glowing as he alternately hugged himself
and conducted the congregation in the singing of another round
of Jesus Loves Me.
So what do we do when we have seen God's glory? Perhaps what we
ought to do is allow the God who loves us to transform us, too,
so that we are able to find Jesus in the faces of those who may
see him from another angle of vision. To transform us to be
able to imagine a friend badge on our neighbors in the polling
booths this week. And on our neighbors in Iran and Iraq,
Nigeria and Chad, China and Japan, And on our neighbors in
nursing homes and group homes and foster homes and no homes.
And to know that they all have names.
This is a lesson not only for us as individual Christians but
for us as the church, which was of special concern to Matthew.
The church is called to be the agent of reconciliation in the
world. We cannot be reconciling if our focus is solely on our
differences and about drawing distinctions as to who is and who
is not a member of the inner circle. As Lent approaches - Ash
Wednesday is this week - and we think about our Lenten
disciplines, let us pray for our own transformation into a
people who both see and hear Jesus, a people who can look at the
glory of God and not only see divinity, but also humanity.
Amen.
© Penny Nash. All Rights
reserved.
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