Last Sunday after the Epiphany (2008)

New Song Episcopal Church

February 3, 2008     

Preacher:  Rebecca G

Lectionary Readings (Year A-RCL):  Exodus 24: 12-18;  2 Peter 1:16-2; Matthew 17:1-9;  Psalm 99

The stars are just coming out on a cool summer evening.  A small fire burns in the gathering place among the rude huts, somewhere in Syria, perhaps 50 years after Jesus' resurrection.  The community gathers after the day's hard work, the children eagerly jostling for the front spots.  An elder tells the story...their story...our story.  The people are Jewish Christians who keep The Law.  The elder is Matthew.

The listeners know the story of Jesus inside out, but their hearts anticipate a point in its middle, the point that holds together the beginning and the end.  It's where Jesus, increasingly harassed by the Pharisees, turns from proclaiming the Kingdom of God to the Galileans, and takes the road towards Jerusalem and the cross.  It's where Jesus realizes the full implications of his baptismal call.  He sets his face towards Jerusalem, revealing the full depths of who he is.    

That point in the story catches the listeners' hearts, because they, too, have lived through a turn in their road.  Called to live as Jesus commanded, to proclaim the good news to God's holy people Israel, they had come face-to-face with failure of their mission.  The synagogues rejected the Jesus-followers and declared them heretics.  But to turn instead to the Gentiles?  They were Jews, God's chosen, holy people, separate as a light to the nations.  In gratitude they marked the blessing in their flesh, their food, their dress and daily habits.  To take the road to the Gentiles was to change their understanding not only of God, but of who they were.  Only then had they fully understood what it means to follow Jesus.

Matthew's audience waits for Jesus to tell the disciples that he must turn towards Jerusalem, for Jesus to then take Peter, James, and John to the mountaintop. There, the listeners re-glimpse the vision that gave them courage and hope ...to face the hard times as they turned to take their road to the gentiles.

We do know that at the end of that road, the day dawned for Matthew's community.  Not the day they had expected, but the one that God intended for them.  They rose from the dead-ness of their fear and doubt to find new life, and deeper meaning.  We know, because their celebration is inscribed in Matthew's story.  In its concluding words, the risen Christ meets the disciples on another mountaintop:  "When [the disciples] saw Jesus, they worshiped him, but some doubted.  And Jesus came and said to them "...Go therefore and make disciples of all nations....  And remember, I am with you always....'   We know their mission found them, freeing them from their fears, and weaving them into the history of the church.  We know, because Matthew's story spread like wildfire through the early Christian world to become the Gospel of Matthew.  We still tell it as our story.

The experience of Matthew's community is so like our own. We are called.  But we cling to what we have, to what we know, to the dreams of the past, to our expectations of the future, to what we used to be.  The future sprawls before us, and our hearts clutch at its uncertainties.

Each of us was anointed at our baptism into a mission we usually cannot name.  Often with promises made by others on our behalf.  Almost always with little understanding of what the blessing or the promises will demand of us.  In about a week, our playfully-named Waterwings program will begin.   About 15 New Songers, from age 13 to..well..nevermind..will gather to explore together the implications of their own baptismal calls.  That is not an easy thing. Expecting success, we sometimes find failure.  Desiring the zeal of mission, we often find ...just ordinary life.  We ponder our dreams, and long for the passion of joining our gifts to a mission larger than ourselves.  We hold back, though, because we fear dimly seen losses, uncertainties, or even failure.  We stand at the fork in the road, and hesitate.

And New Song?  ... Our community of disciples of Jesus.  In two weeks, at our annual meeting, we will come face-to-face with the difficult choices ...of success.  Called into baptismal ministry from our beginnings.   Called by the diocese to take the leap into mutual ministry with the faith of Abraham, to test fly a new model-still in design phase--for total mutual ministry.  A model that could transcend the size limitations of other models.   And with Abraham's faith we leapt.  Not knowing where we were going.  So far, we still fly, with many spirit-filled joys of community to celebrate.  Growing beyond all  our, and others' expectations.  Graced by so many people with so many gifts.  But uncertainties give rise to confusion and anxiety.  There was hardly an empty seat to be found last Sunday; where will we put those who come?  How will we incorporate newcomers into a community where... everybody used to know everybody?  How will we rise to our mission to make all God's diversity of people truly welcome in the love of Christ?  What a passel of challenges to accompany the acceptance of so simple a call to... "follow me!"

In today's gospel we hear the story that brought courage and hope to Matthew's community at the fork in their road.  If we listen and look with our hearts, we too can be blessed with the vision on the mountaintop, to sustain us through the hard times when change looms.

There, Jesus is transformed before us.  The light of eternity shines from an immeasurable depth within him.  Shines from the glory of the dawn of the 8^th day, when Christ's love has made all things right.  From the clouds, God blesses Jesus with the words of his baptismal call: "This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased.   Listen to him!"   The disciples are sent sprawling with the force of the vision, overcome with fear and awe.  They are not ready to see things in the light of God, any more than we are.

The vision disorients us, as our viewpoint shifts away from ourselves to the Light that illumines everything.  We realize that our judgment is not the final judgment.  Our worth and purpose do not rest in our eyes, or the eyes of those around us, but in the light of Christ from the far side of history.  This disorienting shift comes with a gift for Peter, James, and John, and for us.  It lifts from us the weight of our own harsh self-judgment.  All the ins and outs, ups and downs of our lives have meanings we cannot see now.  Like Moses and Elijah, we don't know yet the part we play in God's plan, what shows God to the world, what redeems the world.  The real depth and significance of God working through us... won't appear until the last day.

The light also infuses our losses and our sacrifices with meaning.   Peter, James, and John are allowed to see Christ's glory so that when they witness his anguish in Gethsemane and on Golgotha, they will know that it was freely embraced by Jesus.  Embraced because it was the only way Jesus could reveal God's redeeming reach towards us, startling us into understanding who and what God is.    On one level that is good news.  On another, it means that living with God will not spare us trials and agonies as we follow Jesus.  If only the vision of glory spared us suffering!  But glory can only be seen for what it really is... when we see it containing... and surviving... our disasters. 

Jesus does not leave the disciples overwhelmed with the force of these hard truths.  Jesus, the human Jesus, reaches out to them, in their fear and confusion, and gently touches them, saying, "Get up, and do not be afraid."   A touch of insistent comfort, as a parent to a child anxious and shaken by a fall off the bicycle he or she cannot yet ride.  A hug for reassurance, a bandaid for the scraped knee.  Then the insistent "Get up, get back on, you can do it."  The parent knows what an important task this is for the adult the child will become.  So the touch is also an act of creation and redemption.  The Greek word translated ‘get up' is usually translated ‘arise,' the root word used for the Resurrection, and for Jesus risen from the dead.  Jesus is saying to his disciples (and to us):  ..."See in yourselves the image of God.  Arise from your dead-ness, the fear that hems you in, and become who you are called by God to be." 

We rarely receive such gifts as this vision in daily life, the awesome bolt from the blue that tells us we are on the right path and can embrace it with the passion of our whole being.  The story, though, does open our eyes to the truth of God the Son-that faith in Jesus means that we must live in the world with all its risks, our lives open to the depths from which Jesus lives. We may be mentally and spiritually flung backward, baffled, fearful at the prospect of discipleship it puts before us.  But the glory of the world redeemed in Christ..is the one vision... that allows us to see everything we experience in the light of God--so that we need not fear.  We can open ourselves to possibilities.   We begin to understand what God, working through us, can do. ... The great challenge to faith is knowing that Christ is in the bad times as well as the good, our shadows as well as our gifts, the conflicts as well as the reconciliations.  We are called to go through the darkness with Christ,... until we reach the light. [after Rowan Williams:  ]

The early church leader writing as Peter tells us:  "you will do well to pay attention to these things as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts."  We have many things to celebrate in our lives and our New Song community.  But we all discover, sooner or later, that neither life nor community is the picnic we thought we set out on.  There have been losses, struggles, and disappointments.  But through all the resulting doubts and uncertainties, God enters our world to rework everything in the light of God's purposes and love. ... We do not know what our history means. ... We only know that it has meaning ...in Christ.  ...The mission that calls  each of us at our baptism... will find us.  The meaning of uncertainties facing New Song...will become clear.  The  cacophony of baptismal energy reverberating off New Song's walls... will find an outlet in mission to a hurting world.  ...   When will we know all this?... Perhaps now, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps...not till the 8^th day.   Only then will we know for sure how...God has woven us into the world's redemption.   ...  And what must we do, today?  Jesus tells us, as we sprawl in awe and confusion, "Get up, ...arise...and do not be afraid."