February 6, 2005

Last Sunday of Epiphany

Matthew 17:1-9

“The Good Stuff’s in the Middle”

     We’ve been talking a lot lately about the United Church of Christ “Still Speaking” campaign … you know, where we quote Gracie Allen: “Never place a period where God has placed a comma.”  This morning, after a couple years of dreaming and planning, we held our first-ever, weekly contemporary service.  This is one of the ways we are trying to listen to what God is saying to us.  We are trying to see beyond our preconceived notion of things, to see what God is showing us today. 

     To be honest, it’s a little scary to step into unknown territory like this.  It’s a leap of faith as they say, and our feet have just left the ground!

     So this is an uncertain, but exciting time too, time for taking a look at things in a new light, for considering where we have been and where we are going.  It’s a time for discovering who Christ is, the One is who calls us to follow.  And it’s a time for discovering who we are, too.

     When Peter, James and John followed Jesus up a mountain, they were wrestling with the same kinds of feelings we are having today.  This was a moment of great change for them, many new things were happening in their lives.  The transfiguration marks a dramatic change of direction in their ministry together.  This reading comes the Sunday before Lent each year because this story is about the day when Jesus and his followers changed the course of their ministry as Christ’s final journey to Jerusalem began.  From this point forward, everything would lead to the cross. 

     This had to be a scary and exciting time for them, but Christ’s transfiguration would assure them they were on the right path. 

     When they got to the mountaintop, Jesus started to radiate light like the sun and his robe became dazzling white.  Then, the prophets Moses and Elijah appeared (and they had been dead for a couple hundred years!).  And God spoke from a cloud, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!”

     I can’t help but think that the transfiguration is something that happened not only to Jesus, but also to Peter, James and John. They were also transformed that day, for where they once saw Jesus as a rather remarkable human being, they now saw him as divine, as God’s beloved Son.  Their perception of things was suddenly changed.

     One of my favorite quotes (and I forgot where this one came from a long time ago) is this: 

“If the doors of perception were cleansed, we would see everything as it is – infinite.”

     Infinite … eternal … radiating the endless life God gives.  That’s the way the disciples saw Jesus that day.  They saw him as he really was.  They saw him as he had always been, except on this day, the doors of perception were cleansed.  

     Jesus was once asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he told them, “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is within you.”  Which is to say, the glimpse of the kingdom of God the disciples saw in Jesus that day on a mountaintop, was the very same glory of God they could have seen in each other and in themselves.  The kingdom of God within. 

     The good stuff’s in the middle.  The light and love of God we see in Jesus is in each of us.  We just have a little trouble perceiving it at times.  OK, maybe a lot of the time.  We look into the mirror and can’t imagine there’s a blessed child of God looking back at us.  We are cut off by some lousy driver at an intersection and we don’t see the kingdom of God revealed in that person … just the opposite!  But if our doors of perception were cleansed, we might see things differently.  We would see the good stuff in the middle, in the heart of it all, a scratch beneath the surface, waiting to be revealed.

     Holy Communion can provide this opportunity.  Here, we are promised that Jesus loves us this much, that what he sees in us is worth dying for.  Here we are promised that all the clutter that has obscured our sight, crowded our hearts and buried our spirits can be forgiven, removed, wiped away clean. 

     A taste of infinity.  The mysterious Body of Christ given for you and me.  A peek behind the doors of perception to see things not as they should be, but as they are. 

     Can you see it?  Do you perceive the kingdom of God come near, come within?  Do you understand that you are the vessel into which God’s love, hopes and dreams are poured?

     A new worship service.  Merger talks with Second Church.  God is still speaking here.  As we take this leap of faith together, what new things will the Lord reveal to us?  In what ways will the kingdom of God transform all our lives?   

“Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness. 

And all these things will be added unto you,

Allelu, alleluia.”