February 22, 2015, The First Sunday of Lent, the temptation of Jesus

         Many years ago, when I was a curate in New London, I met an old woman in the hospital. She broke her hip and went to live in a nursing home. I remember her because she was the first person I ever met who was happy to live in a nursing home. She had been alone all her life. She was an orphan who grew up in institutions. She spent her whole life working in the hospital laundry room. Now, in her old age, when she could no longer walk, she very much enjoyed people serving her for a change. She didn’t have to clean or cook or make the bed. She was delighted. Whenever I went to see her, she would play Christmas carols on her harmonica.

         My more usual experience is that people feel that kind of care as a loss. They can no longer do the things they like. They can’t have their own home or their own things any more. People are sad when they can only see what they have lost and not what they have gained.  Sometimes the benefits take time to realize.

         Today we hear about the promise of the rainbow. We think of the rainbow as a beautiful wonder of nature. In the Genesis story, the rainbow is a sign that God will never again destroy the earth. We remember this story with great fondness. We make little wooden arks for our children. We’ve remembered the blessing. I wonder how we would remember the story if we were in that ark for forty days and nights? What if we had lost all that we knew and everyone we loved except for the few survivors in the ark?

          We’ve forgotten the suffering and loss. We’ve forgotten what we go through to get to a new place of blessing. We know we must go through lent, but that’s how we get to Easter. We’ve forgotten that Jesus was tempted in the wilderness before he proclaimed good news. There will be holy week and Good Friday and death before there will be an Easter. We want to embrace the promises of God but we forget that there is a cross in the way.

         We may be discouraged today because of the difficulties of life. We are used to simple cause and effect. We say that successful people earn their success. Therefore, those who suffer must have done something to deserve their suffering. When we reflect, we know that there is more to it. God often calls the most holy people into the most difficult situations. Noah was chosen because he was faithful. God did not make it easy for him. God declares from heaven to Jesus, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Immediately, God’s Spirit sends Jesus into the wilderness for forty days.

         We long for blessing. We want it now. We know from the examples of scripture and from our past that the best things come out of long struggle and loss. Still, we want relief today. Even if I remind us that God is with the faithful in their struggle – we still want to get out of the hard times as fast as possible. It is difficult to see the benefit and easy to see what we are losing.

         We may be grieving the loss of what used to be true. The world we knew is changing – sometimes faster than we can absorb the change. We don’t know what things will look like at the other end. We have to live by faith and not by certainty. When we lived in a time when we knew all the answers and when we knew how everything worked, maybe we didn’t need as much faith. When church meant putting together tried and true programs, we only had to repeat what worked, and maybe we didn’t need faith.

         Now we have to live by faith whether we like it or not. “By faith” means two things. We have to have faith in God: that God will do what God promises and that all that we proclaim about Jesus is good news and true news. We also live “by faith” in how we act. We are not called to simply believe things about Jesus. We are to have his faith, that is, we are called to live like Jesus. We are called to see others as Jesus sees them. We are called to love the world as he loves the world.

         This is the hard thing we are called to do today. We’d like church to be a blessing and strength for us. It will only be that if we live by faith and seek to live as Jesus commands and as Jesus did. This is also the blessing. God does not call us here simply to rest. We have been called to transformation. We have been called to join God in the work of reconciliation. We are called here to invite the world to God as we have been invited. We are called to love as we have been loved.

         I wonder if we could live as faithfully if we were successful by the world’s standard. If we had lots of people and lots of money - would that lead us to trust, or to complacency? Perhaps because we need God we are a little more free. Our loss of institutional identity helps us become a servant to the wider community. We can be something greater than the best church on Route six. We can be the people of God serving the world around us. This is hard now, but the best work always is.

February 15, the last Sunday after Epiphany, the Transfiguration

         This is the end of one season and the beginning of another. We are ending the season of Epiphany, when we think about how Jesus is revealed to the world. We speak about this as if it were and open secret. To those of us who know him, we rejoice and proclaim alleluia. To those who do not know him, the meaning and truth about Jesus remains a mystery – and we seem strange and foolish to believe.

         We begin today remembering the story of Elijah and Elisha. There are emotional and touching details to the story. Elijah is leaving (dying? Ascending?) Elisha is caught in the knowledge of what must be and the desire of what he wants. We all recognize the struggle of loss. We don’t want to say goodbye. We don’t want a loved one to die. We don’t want to move away for a new job. IN a wider context, we don’t like the way the world is changing. We are losing things that are very important to us and it seems as if no one cares. We want to hold onto the best of our past and we have to step into an unknown future where we have no idea what will remain.

         Elisha asks Elijah for a double portion of his spirit – that is, he asks to inherit the work of Elijah. He sees Elijah carried up into heaven by chariots and horses and fire. He tears his own clothes in grief and picks up Elijah’s cloak. Elisha’s work begins by letting go of Elijah. It is necessary and it is difficult. We recognize our own passages in this story.

         Today we also remember the transfiguration on the mountaintop. Jesus takes Peter, James and John up a high mountain. Jesus is transfigured. His clothes become white. He is talking with Moses and Elijah. (Because both were taken up by God? Because they represent the first prophet and the next greatest prophet of Israel?) Peter sputters something about setting up tents. A cloud, much like the cloud of mount Sinai, covers them and they hear a voice. “This is my Son, the Beloved, listen to him!” Then they are alone with Jesus on the mountaintop.

         They walk down the mountain. Jesus tells them to say nothing until after he rises from the dead. What we miss from the story is what happens next. Jesus begins to teach the disciples that he must suffer and die and rise again. After this, Jesus faces Jerusalem and his purpose there. Peter doesn’t like it. “God forbid!” he says. Jesus rebukes Peter and tells them that if anyone wants to follow him they must take up their own cross and follow.

         The mountaintop is great. We have all had wonderful experiences in our lives. We discover some great insight. We fall in love. We achieve some wonderful success. Then we come down the mountain. We can’t live in the realm of insight and achievement. We have to live in a world where we apply what we’ve gained. We have to live out the truth of it. We are moving from epiphany to lent.

         Falling in love is easy – even a little fun. Living a life of love is difficult. The people around us are not lovable characters in a Hollywood romantic comedy. We live with real people with faults and wounds and blind spots (as we know the truth about ourselves.) We live in a world of great inequality and injustice. We are surrounded by suffering and loss. We can ignore it and keep our heads in the clouds. Or we can face it and take up the work that is left to us.

         At first, we are burdened by what we have lost and by what our work will cost. As we live into the truth that we know, we find a different feeling. We are on our way to something that has meaning and purpose. We recognize friends along the way. We see the face of Christ in the people we meet  - in their hands and in their words. We are not alone and what we are doing is worth the work.

         I have always felt that a way of understanding the transfiguration is not in the miraculous signs and wonders. It’s not in the cloud or the voice or the prophets talking with Jesus. It is the disciples who are transfigured. They see Jesus for who he is. They see him glorified. They see him in conversation with great prophets who have come before. They hear the approval of God in the cloud. They see him standing with them - dressed as they know him. The disciples are changed.

         We are also witnesses. We have been given this vision so that we know Jesus as he is; glorified, beloved, and standing with us, walking with us down the mountain. We say that we are an incarnational church, that is, we believe in a real, flesh and blood God who is among us. We are an incarnational people. Our faith only makes sense as it is seen and known out in the world wherever we find ourselves.

         We no longer live in a time when people seek out a church and a share of them will always come to us. This is a hard loss for us. It is also an opportunity for us to take on a new responsibility. We can be witnesses wherever we are. We can take our vision down the mountain. We can tell the story about our dying and rising God who changes us. We can be the change our neighbors need to see.