(Transfiguration Sunday)/
Baptism of Hattie Mae Kost
February 22, 2009
Gethsemane Cathedral
Fargo
2 Kings 2.1-12; Mark 9.2-9
Today is Transfiguration Sunday, the Sunday on which we hear this Gospel reading of Jesus’ being transformed on the mountain top. It is also the last Sunday in Epiphany. On Wednesday—Ash Wednesday—we enter the long, gray season Lent. But for now, on this last Sunday of Epiphany, we get a last glimpse of the Light. This Light on Mount Tabor will sustain us through the Season of Lent until we come upon that glorious Light of Easter morning. Now, here, as we encounter Jesus on the mountain top, we are witnessing something glorious and beautiful.
For a moment, the veil between our world and God’s world is pushed aside. On that mountain top, Jesus seems for a moment to have one foot in each world—one in this world, in which he is a human being just like the rest of us, and one foot in the next world in which he is much more than just another human being.
Most of us have a hard time wrapping our minds around these images of dazzling white light and booming voices from clouds. We don’t experience God like this in our lives. Still, we long for an experience like this. Certainly, we are longing and searching for God in our lives. That is why we are here this Sunday morning. We come here, to church, because we long for God—we long for an experience similar to the experience on the mountaintop in today’s Gospel..
So then, what is this story of the Transfiguration saying to us? Do we too need to be crawling around on mountaintops to find a place in which the veil between this world and God’s world is lifted? Actually, we don’t. We don’t because, every Sunday, every time we gather together to celebrate the Eucharist, we experience something similar to what happened on Mount Tabor. In a sense, when we come together today, here at this altar, we too are coming to a place very much like the mountain top experience we heard about in this morning’s Gospel. In the scriptures we have just heard, we have heard God’s voice. When we celebrate Holy Communion together at the altar, when Jesus comes to us in the bread and the wine, when the bread and the win become his Body and Blood—for a moment, the thin veil between this world and God’s world is parted. We too are able to come close to Jesus, our friend and companion, Jesus our God, and see him—if only under the appearance of a wafer and wine. We too get to hear him, even when the voice sounds like a friend and companion in our very own parish.
Today, as we come together to baptize Hattie Kost, we definitely get to see the veil between this world and God’s world lifted for a moment. We too are reminded that when we ourselves were baptized, that veil was lifted for us and the Light that shown on Jesus on Mount Tabor showed on us as well.
But I think the interesting thing we must remind ourselves is this: it’s all right to search for God, to seek out these experiences of God’s presence in our lives. But our searching and longing for God is different than others because, in our case, as Christians, our God is not evasive. God is not playing hide-and-seek-with us. God is here. All we have to is look. All we have to do is seek. And we will find. We have never lost our God.
God has come to us as dazzling Light, yes. God has spoken to us—at least through the scriptures—with a booming voice from heaven, yes. But God has also come to us as one of us. God has come to us in Jesus. God comes to us in the Jesus we share with each other here in the Bread and the Wine at the altar, in the Jesus we share with each other in our own very presence as the people of God. God has come to us in the Jesus we encounter in our baptisms, in those waters that renew us and revive us and bring us to God.
We search for God. We long for God. But we are also able to find God. God is no further for us than right here, in our midst, when gather together to worship, to hear the scriptures and to break the bread that is Jesus’ body.
And like those disciples in today’s Gospel, we must, when we’re done, go from here. We must leave the mountaintop experience and go back down, to share our experience, to live out what we have learned and felt here.
This is the other reason I think our experience as Christians is different than others. Others seem to be looking for God for themselves. They long for God to fill whatever empty space is within them. It is their own personal experience. Certainly there’s nothing wrong with that. When it comes right down to it, our experience with God is ultimately personal. When all is said and done, we are the only ones who can present ourselves honestly before God. But our experience of God is more than just filling the emptiness within us. Our experience of Jesus is more than just, as the old Depeche Mode song lamented, “our own personal Jesus.” We are compelled—by the words we hear in the scriptures, by the spirit of Christ we take with us from this Holy Communion, by the relationships we form with Jesus in our baptisms—to live that experience out in the world. To share it. Now, I’m not saying we need to preach from the street corners. We’re good Episcopalians, after all. We just don’t do that. Besides, preaching from the street corners doesn’t always do it for others. We need to preach the Gospel by what we do and how we act. We can live out the experience we have with Christ here in how we live our lives—in how we carry ourselves and in what we do and say. I firmly believe that some of the best evangelizing anyone can do is by example.
That doesn’t mean being judgmental and holier-than-thou either. It doesn’t mean having a cheap, saccharinely sweet form of Christianity. Rather, we need to strive to be authentic Christians, not phony and vindictive Christians as I’m sure we ourselves have encountered over the years. Being an authentic Christian means being loving and compassionate people. It means walking in love.
Of course, we will fail in that. I fail in walking in love all the time—in being compassionate and loving. I get angry at the injustices in the world around me and. petty as it is, I get angry at the guy who cuts me off in traffic. I complain. I grumble. I am not always a walking, talking billboard for the Christians faith. But hopefully, our experience here—our encounter with God in this holy place on this holy day—can make enough of a difference in our lives that we will be able to carry it with us throughout our week and into our very day-to-day lives.
Hopefully, we can go from here glowing with the experience we have here. That glow might not be a visible glow, but hopefully it is one we can feel deep within us. That glow—that aftereffect of our experience of God—is what we can carry with us and cherish within us long after we leave here.
Of course, we also need to face the facts about not only the story we have heard in today’s Gospel, but in what we have celebrated here at the altar. The Transfiguration is a foretelling of the glory that awaits Jesus, but it is a glory that comes with an awful price. It comes only after Jesus has been tortured and murdered. What we celebrate today at the altar, is a remembrance of the violent death of Jesus and his triumph over that death. And not just over his death. It is a triumph over our deaths as well. The Transfiguration shows us that God—not us—gets the last word. We, as Christians, as much as we’d like to, can’t go around being happy-clappy all the time.
Our experience on the mountain-top—like all life-altering experiences—will fade from us eventually. It did for those apostles who accompanied Jesus there. All of them—Jesus, Peter, James and John—would experience much sorrow in the weeks and years ahead of them. Three of the four would die violent deaths. The experience of the mountaintop cannot be preserved. Like all the wonderful moments in our lives, they can only be cherished. And they can be shared. But we have the continued opportunity to come back and to participate in it again and again.
God is here. God is present among us—God’s people. God is longing too. God is longing for us—to know us and to have us experience God. So, today, go from here—go back down the mountain, into the valley below, with your experience of God’s presence in your life glowing brilliantly on your faces. Cherish it and live it out in your life. To paraphrase, George Herbert, the great Anglican priest and poet, be a window pane for that dazzling Light of God. It doesn’t matter how dirty the pane is. It doesn’t matter if the pane is chipped and cracked. God will still shine through. But just do it—just reflect in any way that you can, that Light of God in all aspects of your life. And when you do, you will find that Light of God can truly be shared. It can be spread from one person to another. And it can transform not only Jesus on the mountaintop, but all of us in ways we can only just barely imagine.
Baptism of Hattie Mae Kost
February 22, 2009
Gethsemane Cathedral
Fargo
2 Kings 2.1-12; Mark 9.2-9
Today is Transfiguration Sunday, the Sunday on which we hear this Gospel reading of Jesus’ being transformed on the mountain top. It is also the last Sunday in Epiphany. On Wednesday—Ash Wednesday—we enter the long, gray season Lent. But for now, on this last Sunday of Epiphany, we get a last glimpse of the Light. This Light on Mount Tabor will sustain us through the Season of Lent until we come upon that glorious Light of Easter morning. Now, here, as we encounter Jesus on the mountain top, we are witnessing something glorious and beautiful.
For a moment, the veil between our world and God’s world is pushed aside. On that mountain top, Jesus seems for a moment to have one foot in each world—one in this world, in which he is a human being just like the rest of us, and one foot in the next world in which he is much more than just another human being.
Most of us have a hard time wrapping our minds around these images of dazzling white light and booming voices from clouds. We don’t experience God like this in our lives. Still, we long for an experience like this. Certainly, we are longing and searching for God in our lives. That is why we are here this Sunday morning. We come here, to church, because we long for God—we long for an experience similar to the experience on the mountaintop in today’s Gospel..
So then, what is this story of the Transfiguration saying to us? Do we too need to be crawling around on mountaintops to find a place in which the veil between this world and God’s world is lifted? Actually, we don’t. We don’t because, every Sunday, every time we gather together to celebrate the Eucharist, we experience something similar to what happened on Mount Tabor. In a sense, when we come together today, here at this altar, we too are coming to a place very much like the mountain top experience we heard about in this morning’s Gospel. In the scriptures we have just heard, we have heard God’s voice. When we celebrate Holy Communion together at the altar, when Jesus comes to us in the bread and the wine, when the bread and the win become his Body and Blood—for a moment, the thin veil between this world and God’s world is parted. We too are able to come close to Jesus, our friend and companion, Jesus our God, and see him—if only under the appearance of a wafer and wine. We too get to hear him, even when the voice sounds like a friend and companion in our very own parish.
Today, as we come together to baptize Hattie Kost, we definitely get to see the veil between this world and God’s world lifted for a moment. We too are reminded that when we ourselves were baptized, that veil was lifted for us and the Light that shown on Jesus on Mount Tabor showed on us as well.
But I think the interesting thing we must remind ourselves is this: it’s all right to search for God, to seek out these experiences of God’s presence in our lives. But our searching and longing for God is different than others because, in our case, as Christians, our God is not evasive. God is not playing hide-and-seek-with us. God is here. All we have to is look. All we have to do is seek. And we will find. We have never lost our God.
God has come to us as dazzling Light, yes. God has spoken to us—at least through the scriptures—with a booming voice from heaven, yes. But God has also come to us as one of us. God has come to us in Jesus. God comes to us in the Jesus we share with each other here in the Bread and the Wine at the altar, in the Jesus we share with each other in our own very presence as the people of God. God has come to us in the Jesus we encounter in our baptisms, in those waters that renew us and revive us and bring us to God.
We search for God. We long for God. But we are also able to find God. God is no further for us than right here, in our midst, when gather together to worship, to hear the scriptures and to break the bread that is Jesus’ body.
And like those disciples in today’s Gospel, we must, when we’re done, go from here. We must leave the mountaintop experience and go back down, to share our experience, to live out what we have learned and felt here.
This is the other reason I think our experience as Christians is different than others. Others seem to be looking for God for themselves. They long for God to fill whatever empty space is within them. It is their own personal experience. Certainly there’s nothing wrong with that. When it comes right down to it, our experience with God is ultimately personal. When all is said and done, we are the only ones who can present ourselves honestly before God. But our experience of God is more than just filling the emptiness within us. Our experience of Jesus is more than just, as the old Depeche Mode song lamented, “our own personal Jesus.” We are compelled—by the words we hear in the scriptures, by the spirit of Christ we take with us from this Holy Communion, by the relationships we form with Jesus in our baptisms—to live that experience out in the world. To share it. Now, I’m not saying we need to preach from the street corners. We’re good Episcopalians, after all. We just don’t do that. Besides, preaching from the street corners doesn’t always do it for others. We need to preach the Gospel by what we do and how we act. We can live out the experience we have with Christ here in how we live our lives—in how we carry ourselves and in what we do and say. I firmly believe that some of the best evangelizing anyone can do is by example.
That doesn’t mean being judgmental and holier-than-thou either. It doesn’t mean having a cheap, saccharinely sweet form of Christianity. Rather, we need to strive to be authentic Christians, not phony and vindictive Christians as I’m sure we ourselves have encountered over the years. Being an authentic Christian means being loving and compassionate people. It means walking in love.
Of course, we will fail in that. I fail in walking in love all the time—in being compassionate and loving. I get angry at the injustices in the world around me and. petty as it is, I get angry at the guy who cuts me off in traffic. I complain. I grumble. I am not always a walking, talking billboard for the Christians faith. But hopefully, our experience here—our encounter with God in this holy place on this holy day—can make enough of a difference in our lives that we will be able to carry it with us throughout our week and into our very day-to-day lives.
Hopefully, we can go from here glowing with the experience we have here. That glow might not be a visible glow, but hopefully it is one we can feel deep within us. That glow—that aftereffect of our experience of God—is what we can carry with us and cherish within us long after we leave here.
Of course, we also need to face the facts about not only the story we have heard in today’s Gospel, but in what we have celebrated here at the altar. The Transfiguration is a foretelling of the glory that awaits Jesus, but it is a glory that comes with an awful price. It comes only after Jesus has been tortured and murdered. What we celebrate today at the altar, is a remembrance of the violent death of Jesus and his triumph over that death. And not just over his death. It is a triumph over our deaths as well. The Transfiguration shows us that God—not us—gets the last word. We, as Christians, as much as we’d like to, can’t go around being happy-clappy all the time.
Our experience on the mountain-top—like all life-altering experiences—will fade from us eventually. It did for those apostles who accompanied Jesus there. All of them—Jesus, Peter, James and John—would experience much sorrow in the weeks and years ahead of them. Three of the four would die violent deaths. The experience of the mountaintop cannot be preserved. Like all the wonderful moments in our lives, they can only be cherished. And they can be shared. But we have the continued opportunity to come back and to participate in it again and again.
God is here. God is present among us—God’s people. God is longing too. God is longing for us—to know us and to have us experience God. So, today, go from here—go back down the mountain, into the valley below, with your experience of God’s presence in your life glowing brilliantly on your faces. Cherish it and live it out in your life. To paraphrase, George Herbert, the great Anglican priest and poet, be a window pane for that dazzling Light of God. It doesn’t matter how dirty the pane is. It doesn’t matter if the pane is chipped and cracked. God will still shine through. But just do it—just reflect in any way that you can, that Light of God in all aspects of your life. And when you do, you will find that Light of God can truly be shared. It can be spread from one person to another. And it can transform not only Jesus on the mountaintop, but all of us in ways we can only just barely imagine.
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