New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
March 2, 2014 – Transfiguration Sunday
One day in the span of
eternity, Jesus and Moses decide to visit their former stomping grounds for old
time’s sake. While walking in the Sinai
they come to a huge rock; Moses takes a wooden stick, strikes the rock, and
water comes pouring forth. Jesus says,
“Not bad, old man, not bad.” Upon
entering a small village Jesus finds some jugs filled with water; he dips in a
cup and the cup is miraculously full of wine.
Moses said, “Still got the touch, huh?”
Then they come to the Red Sea; Moses lifts his hands in the air, the waters
part, and they cross safely. Jesus says,
“Wow. That one is my all-time
favorite.” After a few days’ journey
they come to the Sea of Galilee; Jesus steps out onto the water and begins to
walk across the surface. All of a
sudden, he sinks like a stone. After he
swims to the shore, he says to Moses, “I can’t understand it. I used to be able to do that, no
problem.” Moses says to Jesus, “You putz! Now you’ve got holes in your feet!”
We love to relive the
good old days, those days of glory when things were familiar and comfortable,
and seemingly more predictable. Though
we would never admit to a desire to live in the past, many times we may find
ourselves unconsciously trying to recreate the good memories and feelings we
enjoyed in past relationships, events, and patterns of behavior. Even if some of Freud’s theories of psychology
were a bit outlandish, he was right about one thing: we tend to project our nearsighted view of
the past onto present circumstances as a way of creating a comfort zone to
shield us from the unknown.
Look at what has been
coming out of Hollywood in recent years.
Many big movies and TV shows are remakes of each other, or of Broadway
productions, adaptations of popular books or earlier versions of a familiar
story. Recent movies such as The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Godzilla, The
Lone Ranger, The Great Gatsby are all examples of our longing for the
familiar past recaptured by new technology and another generation of
magic-makers. In the short term it can
generate a lot of excitement, but in the end, a steady diet of old-made-new
produces a cynical viewing audience who think they’ve seen it all because they
have.
When Peter sees Jesus
in all his glory, together with Moses and Elijah from those good old days, it’s
as if God were back in the house. Before
Israel settled down and made a home and built a temple for the presence of God,
the Ark of the Covenant was placed in a tent that could be packed up and go
wherever God led the people of Israel. The
festival of Sukkot, or the festival of booths, is to remind faithful Jews of
the wandering in the desert and of their dependency on God. Peter reacts to this holy event like any good
Jew would: he wants to build booths for
the presence of God revealed in Jesus.
But this isn’t the good
old days of Israel. And what’s ironic is
that those good old days weren’t so good all the time. The people murmured and complained to Moses about
the food and water. They turned from God
and worshiped a golden calf. They were
bitten by poisonous snakes. When Elijah
was prophet, Israel was a divided kingdom and there was drought and famine in
the land. He had to flee Israel because
there was a price on his head from Israel’s foreign queen, Jezebel.
Though God’s people had
not had a prophetic leader in a long time, even so they weren’t really paying
attention to the new thing God was doing in their midst. Jesus wasn’t God’s version of “Prophet 3.0”—he
wasn’t even behaving like the messiah that had been long-expected. God snaps Peter out of his ‘glory daze’ with
words similar to those heard at Jesus’ baptism: “This is my son, the Beloved;
with him I am well-pleased; listen to him!”
It’s a new day! The Good News,
fresh words of grace and mercy, peace and justice, are forthcoming—take notice!
Even though our culture
has been changing rapidly for the last 50 – 60 years, the Church has not been
keeping up. Most mainline Protestant
churches still work on a version of the 1950’s model: Sunday morning worship, Sunday School
organized like public school, with the expectation that the local church and
its pastor and programs will attract new folks.
Sure, we use some of
the new technology, like having a Facebook page, a blog, and a website—known as
the digital narthex—but then most people who don’t go to church would say,
“What the heck is a narthex?” We may be
using new tools but we’re imposing them on an earlier version of church. We know that whenever we download new
software or a new operating system that in some way we will have to change how
we manage a task. We will have to adapt.
Five hundred years ago
the Church went through several reformations, each going further than the one
before it. If we compared the Puritan
church to the Catholic Church we’d hardly know that one came from the other. And yet even as we in the United Church of
Christ claim these Puritans as our forebears, how we do church now is very
different from how it was done then.
Each generation must continue to ask “How is God speaking to us
today?” It’s not about visioning, so
much as we are being called to choose how we will give expression to the
still-speaking God in our own context.
Last weekend a group of
20 or so of us gathered to begin a process of discovering what we hold valuable
about the Christian education of our children and youth. As I have begun looking at responses, the two
that number the highest are that you deeply value intergenerational experiences
of all kinds and that you wish more people were involved in teaching and
assisting in the faith formation of our children and youth. It was also speculated that it takes about 25
people or more to get Sunday morning worship off the ground. And I’ve been sensing an undercurrent of
anxiety in almost all of our activity, whether it’s a committee meeting or a
potluck lunch or worship planning.
This is the Church all
over. Though this context, the New Ark,
is unique to us, our values and our wishes and our anxieties and worries are
not. Most, if not all, of the mainline
(now sideline) Protestant church struggles with the same issues. And that is because we are operating on a mostly
1950’s model of church in the year 2014.
Traditional church appeals to some but unfortunately many folks have
abandoned traditional church, traditional ways of listening to the
still-speaking God, perhaps because God is speaking in fresh, new ways and not
just in church.
Looking at those
responses, recognizing that how we do church needs to come out of our context,
and who we are, what if we had intergenerational Sunday School? What if we had church in the evening so that
everyone could have their rest? What if
we had a simple community meal every Sunday evening or once a month,
remembering Jesus as we broke bread and shared the cup?
It’s not about
institutional survival but about being a part of a movement to help others find
the sacred in ordinary living. It’s not
just about learning the stories of faith but what the stories point
toward: creating a compassionate,
justice-filled, peace-loving world. It’s
not about being in church but being
Christ-like out in our homes and our
workplaces and our daily connections with others. It’s not about church for us but about God’s
love, justice, and mercy for those who need it most.
 |
The future church won’t
be like the good old days before but like the new glory days ahead. The lectionary passage from Matthew begins
with the words ‘six days later’, recalling the sixth day of creation when
humankind was created in the image of God.
God is not done with us yet. God
is still creating, still speaking.
Six days after Jesus
foretells his death and resurrection he is transfigured into glory. Where Jesus leads, the church is to
follow. We too will make sacrifices on
our way to the cross. We too are called
to carry our own cross and to die upon it.
But we will also be resurrected into glory, into new life and
yet-to-be-imagined possibilities.
What are we looking forward
to as a church? What are our dreams, our
hopes for the new glory days ahead? How
open are we to the unexpected, to the surprising ways of the Holy Spirit? What past behaviors, expectations, and habits
do we still need to let go of? What do we
need to be doing in our own spiritual life to be able to follow Jesus wherever he
leads?
God is always coming
into our lives in new and fresh ways, still creating, still speaking. We are made new whenever we listen, when we
pay attention to Jesus and where he is going next. And when we go with Jesus, we’ll never be
able to say that we’ve seen it all. It
will be as the beloved hymn: “Changed
from glory into glory, till in heaven we take our place, crowned as saints, we
ever shall be lost in wonder, love and praise.”
May it be so. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment