Sermons: March 2011

Sermon, March 6, 2011
Grace Episcopal Church
The Rev. Vernon Hill

I changed the hymn to No. 5 because it “reaches in” to the heart of this transfiguration story – the splendor of God’s glory bright.  The hymn listed tells the “story” and ties all the details together but it doesn’t reach inside.  Same hymn tune, but a different art.  No. 5 gets to what this sermon is about, so let’s move on.
Last Monday evening I once again visited the Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson for some more mindless filtering before turning in.  You may recall from my last sermon that on occasion something of note actually takes place in that hour and the mindless part goes to the back burner.  Three weeks ago it was an interview with Dr. Cornel West, professor at Princeton University which made its way into my sermon.   Monday night was a bit more subtle and came from the opening monologue of all things.  Ferguson began by telling a story of the 19th century English sanitarium called Bedlam Hospital where for a penny you could go and peek through the small door windows and watch the patients and be amused by their odd behaviors.  Apparently this was considered good clean fun among late 19th century Londoners visiting the Bedlam.  Ferguson then continued, explaining that watching the slow motion destruction of Charlie Sheen is a bit like peeking through the windows of Bedlam Hospital and that he had decided to not participate, to not joke about this event of self-destruction.
I continue to be amazed in the many ways the Gospel plays out in the very ordinary occasions, in the common messiness of our struggle.   Compassion on late night TV – who could have imagined such a thing?  And yet this is what Jesus is about – this is finding our human character.  This has been the message of the past many Sundays.

Today we come to the close of the season of Epiphany and now things take a turn from the common:  care for the poor and justice and fairness and compassion from our brothers and sisters.  Thing today turn for the weird. The Transfiguration, observed traditionally in this last Sunday before Lent, brings Epiphany to a close with a divine irruption into the earthly. This is a tough passage for modern, progressive Christians to swallow.    Yet in a moment of personal weirdness these past Sundays, beginning with the followers of the star and concluding with the return from the Mountain vision, have been particularly moving for me.  As you might remember, epiphany or theophany as it is called by our orthodox brothers and sisters means to make known, to make Godly presence manifest.  It is often associated with the divine nature of Jesus, but this year, given the greater length of the season, we have had an opportunity to truly grasp beyond stars and miracles to the revelation of what God has called us to be in Jesus.  Epiphany is about star followers and visions on the mountaintops but it is about even more – the disclosure of who we truly are to be as Godly children, as the offspring of God.  We have heard a series of stories of the recovery of our divinity, of our soul, of what it is to truly be human.   The core of our humanity is found in a marriage between soul and action.  It is uniting the intoxication of the Holy Spirit and moral consciousness.  As I have said, Judaism subscribes to the doctrine of imitati dei – that God is a role model for human behavior, that literally we are to be imitators of God and that we find in Christ, “Torah” – the very mind and soul of God – become flesh.  To be holy which is to be truly human is the divine lesson from Jesus; it is about how we treat other people.
The easiest part of the story for those of us who are progressive in our faith understanding comes at the conclusion of Matthew’s account  -  “As they were coming down the mountain.”  You see, after being caught up into the presence of God, like Moses they came down the mountain, came down off the mountain top with what they were to do and entered into the towns and cities and the valleys below, to reach out a hand of mercy, compassion, understanding, healing and justice; to engage in moral and mercy conscious acts.  But what about this weird event itself?  Why is it essential to the rest of the Jesus story?  At the opening and close of this season of Epiphany we encounter these events which feed the ongoing life Jesus which lays before us, these “intoxicating moments” of God’s present Spirit which feeds and leads our moral consciousness.

The theologian, Marcus Borg gets to this when he discusses three approaches to what the storyteller  Matthew describes in this transfiguration on the mountain.  The first approach is with historical questions such as “How did this happen?” and even more basic, “Did it really happen?”  Answers here have the level of interest of a docu-drama on the History Channel and feed our need for rationality but offer very little nourishment beyond.    A second way we can approach the story is with theological questions such as “What connections can we make today to this story?” or “What is this story saying about God or about Jesus?”  I tend to function in this realm most of the time - the realm of interpretation and understanding.  After all, to be a theologian is to seek understanding of what one believes and to grow in that understanding.  Understanding is an important part of our life-situation-coping-mechanisms.

But Borg offers a third approach which speaks to the very core of birthing merciful and compassionate and justice driven living, another set of questions which are spirit-driven.   ‘Our faith is about entertaining angels, every bit as much as it is about seeking to comfort the afflicted and to heal the sick. It is about seeking visions of a new heaven and a new earth, every bit as much as it is about seeking justice and resisting evil.’   This third way of approaching the transfiguration is with your imagination as the mystics, the hermits, the desert fathers, artists, creators of icons, poets and hymn writers have done through the ages, using what Tom Troeger, professor at Yale Divinity School,  calls a kind of ‘spiritual exegesis’ or unpacking and putting on the clothes of the divine.   The transfiguration encounter is about “feeding the soul.”  It is what Paul describes in that wonderful doxology in Ephesians – there is a power at work within us and it transforms us far more than we can think or imagine. 

What we do here each Sunday in Eucharist, at this table, is spiritual exegesis, a gathering on the mountain top to be fed food of the Holy Spirit, to encounter the power of God to shape us, to write on our hearts, not just stone tablets, but on our hearts and to send us forth to do the work of being truly human.  This spirit-driven coming to understanding is living in transfiguration, living within the cloud, alive with the power from on high.  The mountaintop is essential because it is where we receive the blessings in order to be empowered to give, where we are fed in order to go about our work in God.

Few of us will ever have to look into the face of true evil though few of us will be without our moments of difficulty and anguish and testing; but few will have to look into the face of true evil as during the Civil Rights era in the middle of the last century.   On April 3, 1968 at the Mason Temple, Church of God in Christ, Martin Luther King, Jr., explained to all who still hear his voice the essential connection between the mountain top and what we are called to be to our neighbor.  Near the end of his sermon he offered this marriage of vision and courage and action – “And . . . I got into Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?  Well, I don't know what will happen now.  We've got some difficult days ahead.  But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop.  And I don't mind.  I just want to do God's will.  And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain.  And I've looked over.  And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land!”

I have been to the mountain;  I have seen!  These are the words of holiness and strength in the Spirit - ‘”It really doesn't matter  because I've been to the mountaintop.  And I don't mind.”   Amen


  The following was part of the sermon but to make the “read” shorter I moved it to this footnote:  Another example - I called attention this week on my Facebook page to the passing of Peter Gomes, a Harvard theologian, author and Baptist preacher, who served at the Harvard Memorial Church.  Gomes is another story of the Gospel within and through the ordinary and common.  In 1991 a crowd of 200 angry Harvard students gathered on the steps of Memorial Church to protest an anti-gay diatribe printed in a right-wing student magazine.  The magazine, citing Leviticus, denounced homosexuality as an "immoral" and "pitiable" path to misery and disease; God’s judgement.  Being somewhat conservative and reserved, despite the many protests that had been staged on the church steps, Gomes had passed most of them by. This time, however, he was compelled to speak - “These wicked writings are hurtful, divisive and most profoundly wrong," he said, his rich baritone voice reverberating. Gay people, he continued, were victims not of religion but of "people who use religion as a way to devalue and deform those whom they can neither ignore nor convert."  He knew what he was talking about, he said, because he was a minister and a scholar, and "because I am a Christian who happens to be gay."  The crowd, shocked and ecstatic, erupted in cheers.  For the next 20 years, Gomes used his sermons at Harvard and around the country to pick apart fundamentalist readings of Biblical verses, which had been used not just to condemn homosexuality as immoral, but to justify slavery, anti-Semitism and the subjugation of women. "The right use of the Bible," he wrote in a New York Times op-ed in 1992, "means that we confront our prejudices rather than merely confirm[ing] them."

From an article by Emma Brown, Washington Post Staff Writer, Tuesday, March 1, 2011

From “Glimpse God's Glory” by Kari Jo Verhulst, Sojourners

A recollection of a colleague shared by R.L. Hunt in a sermon on the Transfiguration.

Tom Troeger is a Presbyterian minister and Episcopal priest.  He serves at St. John’s Cathedral, Denver.  His use of the term “spiritual exegesis” should not be confused with the formal view of Biblical interpretation.

From Martin Luther King, Jr  "I've Been to the Mountaintop"delivered 3 April 1968, Mason Temple (Church of God in Christ Headquarters), Memphis, Tennessee