Coming Down From The Mountain (Transfiguration Sunday Feb 19 2012)

Yr B, Transfiguration Sunday (Last Sunday of Epiphany), Feb 19 2012, St. Albans

Readings:  2 Kings 2:1-12; Ps 50:1-6; 2 Cor 4:3-6; Mark 9:2-9

I have two friends who competed in the Olympics, one in Seoul in 1988 and the other in Barcelona in 1992.  One was a runner, the other was a rower.  Being an Olympian is what you might call a peak experience.  It is the crowning glory of many years of hard-work, of early mornings and late nights, of training and of competitions.  For an athlete, the Olympics are a mountain top experience.  And coming down from the mountain isn’t easy.

Neither of my friends found it easy to come down from Mount Olympus.  The glory of the mountain is something that we naturally want to hold onto, something we want to find a way back to.  It’s not easy when the peak experience of your life happens when you are in your 20’s, and then you’ve got another 50 years to go.  My two friends handled this in different ways.  My friend the runner is currently recovering from an injury sustained while he was training for a master’s race.  His life still revolves around the track.

The rower took another route.  After the 1992 Olympics, he came really, really close to taking a shot at the 1996 Olympics.  But in the end, he set that aside.  He decided to come down from the mountain, and he re-entered that ordinary world that most of us live in.  He has a family, he’s active in his community.  And with a lot of work, and quite a few challenges at first, he’s built a successful career for himself.  I asked him once what was the key to his success.   One of things he told me is that he was able to take his Olympic experience and the lessons learned there, and use these to sustain and guide him as he struggled through the challenges of his post-Olympic life.

Today’s gospel is about a mountain-top experience.  It’s about a life-changing experience for Peter, James and John.  It marks a turning point in the gospel of Mark and in Jesus journey with his disciples, although of course the disciples don’t really know that yet.

Peter, James and John have been disciples of Jesus for several years by this point.  They’ve been with him as he wandered from village to village in Galilee and in the neighbouring regions.  They’ve heard his teaching, they’ve witnessed his healing ministry and acts of power, they’ve seen him reach out to those at the margins of society, they’ve been astounded at the crowds who follow him wherever he goes.  They get the sense that something big is about to happen.  Peter is even able to put a name on this, identifying Jesus as the Messiah, the one sent by God to save his people.

And it’s at this very point in the journey when things start to get hard.  Jesus, sensing somehow that it’s time to move his ministry to the next stage, tells his disciples for the first time that things aren’t going to play out the way they’re expecting.  Rather, Jesus tells them that he will undergo great suffering and be killed, and after three days rise again.  And if Peter, James and John want to continue to be his followers, they too must be prepared to lose their lives.

I can only imagine that the disciples were devastated by Jesus words, that they were overcome by doubt, by fear.  I expect that many of those who had been following  Jesus simply turned around and went home.  Maybe, they thought, Jesus wasn’t the one after all.

And in the midst of these doubts and fears, Jesus takes Peter and James and John and leads them up the mountain.  And there they witness the most amazing thing that they have ever seen in their lives.  They see Jesus transfigured and dazzling white, talking with Elijah and Moses.  And a cloud overshadows them, the divine presence overwhelms them and they hear a voice saying “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him”.

The temptation must have been so great to stay on the mountain, to remain just a little longer in that place where the veil was had been lifted, just for an instant, and the glory of God had been revealed.  We get a hint of the longing to stay on the mountain in Peter’s suggestion that he should build three dwellings for Jesus, Elijah and Moses to stay in.

But Peter doesn’t get to build the dwellings.  They don’t get to stay.  Instead, Jesus leads them down from the mountain and out into the wilderness.  They don’t even get to head back to familiar territory in Galilee, but instead, Jesus turns towards Jerusalem, towards his final destination, towards the cross.

So why did Jesus lead them up the mountain in the first place?  Was it meant to add to their confusion?  Was it meant to fill them with a longing for something that was just beyond their grasp?

No, I think that Jesus led his closest friends up the mountain because that was just what they needed at that point in their journey.  Any doubts they may have had about Jesus were swept away by the voice that said, “This is my Son, my Beloved.”  And any indecision as to what they were to do next was replaced by a single, clear instruction:  “Listen to him”.  And I think that at that point on their journey, that was exactly what Peter, James and John needed.

Sometimes, it’s the mountain-top experience that sustains us in the wilderness.  Sometimes it’s that experience of light that guides us through the darkness.  We don’t get to live our lives on the mountain top.  Neither did Jesus.  The things that God calls us to do are more likely to take place in a swamp than on a peak!  The journeys that we’re on don’t always have clear signposts, and the visibility isn’t always great.  We will have doubts and we will have fears and we will have setbacks along the way.  But the promise of today’s gospel is that when God calls us on a journey, he will give us what we need to sustain us and guide us on our path.

Now, that doesn’t mean that we all get to go up the mountain.  Most of us won’t get taken up a mountain to see Jesus transfigured and hear the voice of God.  I expect that goes beyond what most of us need to sustain us and guide us on our journeys.  For most of us, our glimpses of God may be more like the Rumours of Glory that Bruce Cockburn sings about, or the thin places that are referred to in the Celtic tradition.  Or, perhaps it’s enough to hear the words of those who have had those sort of spiritual experiences, people like Peter and James and John, and many, many others throughout the ages.

The prayers of the people that we will be using today have been crafted by Sean from a song which creates a dialogue between Julian of Norwich, an Anglican mystic of the 14^th century known for her mystic experiences of God, and another woman who is struggling with doubt and fear, who is struggling with questions of sorrow and loneliness and cruelty. 

Have a listen:

Julian, you are holy, you are holding my hand and Julian, you are holy, you are holding my hand.

She said, "All will be well, and all will be well, all manner of things will be well."

I said, "Julian, do you not know, do you not know about sorrow and Julian, do you not know, do you not know about pain?"I said," Julian, do you not know, do you not know about hunger and Julian, do you not know, do you not know about shame?"

She said, "All will be well, and all will be well, all manner of things will be well."

I said, "Julian, do you not know, do you not know about loneliness, and Julian, do you not know, do you not know about disease?" I said Julian, do you not know, do you not know about cruelty?" I said Julian, it's too much. It brought me to my knees."

She said, "All will be well, and all will be well, all manner of things will be well."

She said, "No one does not know, does not know about sorrow and no one does not know, does not know about pain." She said "No one does not know, does not know about hunger and no one does not know, does not know about shame."

She said, "All will be well, and all will be well, all manner of things will be well."

She said, "No one does not know, does not know about loneliness and no one does not know, does not know about disease." She said, "No one does not know, does not know about cruelty." She said, "I know, it's too much. It brought me to my knees where I heard:

'All will be well, and all will be well, all manner of things will be well.'"

She said, "Babygirl, do you not know, do you not know about tenderness and Babygirl, do you not know, do you not know about friends?" She said, "Babygirl, do you not know, do you not know about the Spirit?" She said, "Babygirl, do you not know, it's only love that never ends and so,

all will be well, and all will be well, all manner of things will be well."  (Lyrics by Meg Barnhouse)

We read the story of the transfiguration of Jesus in church today because we too have marked a turning point in our church year.  For the last two months we have been in the season of Epiphany, the season in our church year when we reflect on how God has revealed himself in our world through the person of Jesus.  We’ve read about Jesus baptism, about how his identity has been revealed through teaching and healing and finally in today’s story of the Transfiguration.  But now our journey too turns towards the cross.  This Wednesday is Ash Wednesday and it is the beginning of Lent.  And Lent is a time of reflection and preparation that moves us towards the Cross on Good Friday and then on to the joy of Easter.  Lent is a season when we engage in the sort of dialogue that we just heard in that song, a time when the promises of God are put into dialogue with the realities of our world, and when the frailty of our own lives is put into dialogue with the potential that God sees in us.

May God bless you with everything you need to sustain and guide you on your journey.

Amen.

   

Four Words (February 12, 2012)

Homily:  Yr B Proper 6, Feb 12 2012, St. Albans

Readings:  2 Kings 5.1-14; Ps 30; 1 Cor 9.24-27; Mark 1:40-45

Four Words

If someone were to ask you to write down four words that describe Jesus, what four words would you choose?

Well, that is in fact what I’d like you to do.  In your booklet there are a few blank pages and there should be pencils in your pew or nearby.  I’d like to you to take a moment and write down any four words that you choose to describe Jesus.  Now, don’t worry, this isn’t a test and there are no right or wrong answers.  Just write down your four words and think a little bit about why these particular words to describe Jesus are important to you.  And feel free to share them with the person sitting beside you if you want.

In our Christianity 101 course that we’ll be doing at noon, our topic today is “Who is God?” or if you prefer, what is God like?  As Christians we believe that Jesus, God the Son, is the one who reveals God’s character to us, who shows us what God is like.  As John said in his gospel, “no one has ever seen God.  It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made God known.”  And so the words that we choose to describe Jesus are going to tell us something about what we believe that God is like.

Today’s gospel is only five verses long.  It’s a brief account of Jesus healing a man with leprosy.  But despite its brevity, this passage actually sums up Mark’s message about the whole of the gospel in a nutshell.  And in this short passage, I think we can find the four words that Mark chooses to describe Jesus.

Here is the passage again, it’s what we just heard read, but in a slightly different translation.  Have a look at it and see which words you would pick out as Mark’s four words to describe Jesus.

A man with leprosy came to Jesus and begged him on his knees, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”

Jesus was moved with compassion. He reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cleansed.

Jesus sent him away at once with a strong warning: “See that you don’t tell this to anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.” Instead he went out and began to talk freely, spreading the news. As a result, Jesus could no longer enter a town openly but stayed outside in lonely places. Yet the people still came to him from everywhere.

Here’s what I think are the four words which Mark uses to describe Jesus, four words that summarize in a way his message about Jesus:

Compassion

Touch

Willing

Lonely

Let’s look at each of these in turn.

Compassion:  When the man with leprosy approaches Jesus and pleads with him to be cleansed, Jesus response is compassion.  He doesn’t blame the man for his leprosy.  He doesn’t judge the man for having just broken the law by even approaching Jesus.  He doesn’t bargain with him, saying if you do this, or if you promise to believe that I will heal you.  He doesn’t react to the man as unclean.  No, Jesus is moved with compassion.  It isn’t a rational, calculated response.  It is an emotional response, a passionate reponse.  Jesus is moved with compassion.  What does this tell us about God, and about our relationship with God.  When we come to God in our need, in our brokenness, as we are, God does not judge us, or reprimand us, or demand things of us.  God’s response is rather to be compassionate, to be moved with compassion.

Touch:  Sometimes we underestimate or take for granted how important touch is to us.  But touch is such an integral component of human relationships.  Touch creates bonds.  Touch is intimate.  Touch communicates that we care, that we understand, that we are present to each other.  The man with leprosy would have understood the importance of touch only too well, because he had been deprived of it, and made to feel apart and estranged.  Jesus gets this.  He could have healed the man with a word or with a gesture, but instead, he stretches out his hand and touches him.  Isn’t it remarkable that our God wants to be in a relationship with us that is so intimate that God took on human flesh so that he could stretch out his hand and touch us!

Willing.  The man with leprosy says to Jesus, “if you are willing, you can make me clean.”  And Jesus responds “I am willing”.  There is an intentionality about Jesus response to the man with leprosy.  A choice.  A commitment.  Jesus heals the man not just because that is what the man wants, but because it is what Jesus wants, what Jesus wills, what he chooses.  Our God is a God whose will it is that humanity be healed, restored and made whole, that we be freed from those things that oppress us.  Even before we are aware of our own need, God wants these things for us and has intentionally chosen to act in our world to make these things happen.  Not that that process of healing is complete by any means.  But it has been initiated, initiated by God, initiated by God acting through Jesus and continuing to act through his Spirit, and we have been invited to become participants in that healing process.

Lonely.  There is a strange reversal that takes place in this gospel passage.  At the beginning of the text, it is the man with leprosy who is banned from the towns and villages because of his disease.  He is condemned to live on the outskirts, in the wilderness, in the lonely places.  But by the end of this passage, the man is enabled to return to his community and enter the villages, and it is Jesus who can no longer go into a town openly, but rather must stay outside in lonely places.  Jesus, as a result of what he’s done, in effect, becomes homeless.  This is the first hint in Mark’s gospel that there is a cost to God of God’s love for us.  Later, as the gospel builds to its climax, we’ll get much more than a hint.  The loneliness of Jesus will become painfully clear, in the Garden of Gethsemane, at his trial before the authorities when his closest followers betray and abandon him, and finally in the loneliness of the cross itself.  We all know that love can be a costly thing.  In loving we risk and we make ourselves vulnerable and there is a cost.  God’s love for us, according to Mark, is no different.

And so these are the four words found in today’s text that describe Jesus:

Compassion.  Touch.  Willing.  Lonely.

How do they compare to the four words that we wrote down?  I expect that they’re quite different.  Did anyone, for example, write down the word ‘lonely’?  I know that I wouldn’t have.  And as I said at the beginning, the point is not that there are right and wrong words that we could have chosen.  The point I think is that Mark is trying to send us a message even in this brief passage that opens our eyes and expands the way we think about God.  Because even though this text is about Jesus and a man with leprosy, it is also the story of God and us.

We are the man with leprosy.  We are the ones who have needs and whose relationships are impaired and who struggle with the brokenness of this world.  And when we turn to God, even before we turn to God, God is moved with compassion towards us.  He longs to be in relationship with us, a relationship with all the intimacy that we associate with a loving touch.  And he wills this to happen, he has chosen to take action to restore us, to forgive us, to redeem us, to heal us, he has initiated this mission of healing through his incarnation and through the on-going work of those who join in the mission of building his kingdom.  But God’s choice to love us is not without risk, is not without cost, and that costly love, which often is not visible to us, has been made visible in the loneliness of the cross.

The gospel in four words:  compassion, touch, willing, lonely.

Amen.

(This homily was inspired by and based on the following essay by David Lose,

http://www.workingpreacher.org/dear_wp.aspx?article_id=554 )

Raised Up to Serve (Feb 5 2012)

Homily:  Yr B Proper 5, Feb 5 2012, St. Albans

Reading:  Mark 1:29-39

I spent the past few days in Toronto, attending a conference called Vital Church Planting.  It’s a conference held each year for people who are involved with starting new churches, and since that’s kind of where we are, I figured that it was worth a few days to hear the stories of people who were doing similar things, and maybe learn something that might be helpful to us here at St. Albans.

And I did learn some useful things.   And some things that surprised me.  One of the things that was most striking to me was the advice given by one of the speakers.   His big thing was planning.  Rather than being in a hurry to do something new, you have to slow down, plan, listen, and reflect before you actually did anything.  In fact as part of his presentation on church planting, he put up a chart which showed a period of 3 ½ years was needed before you would even have your first church service.

And then I read today’s gospel.  There in ten verses, in the space of 24 hours, Jesus enters the home of Simon and Andrew, heals Simon’s mother-in-law and is served by her.  Then, the whole city of Capernaum gathers around the door and he cures the sick and casts out the demons.  Then, after a short night’s sleep, Jesus is up early, goes to the wilderness and prays, and when his followers find him, he announces that his mission in Capernaum is complete, a mere 24 hours after it started, and it’s time to move on to neighbouring towns.

3 ½ years vs. 24 hours.

There is a sense of immediacy in the Gospel of Mark.  We talked about it last week.  It’s as if even time itself collapses in the presence and power of Jesus.  It’s how Mark portrays God’s time invading our time, God’s space breaking into our space.  The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God has come near.

But in our lives, sometimes things take a little longer than they do in the Gospel of Mark.  When Jesus says to the fishermen follow me, they immediately leave their nets and follow him.  That’s what repentance looks like, that’s what it looks like to change your life, that’s what it looks like to respond to God’s call.  But for many of us that process can take months or years!  And that’s okay.

Last week we talked about the power of God to liberate us from things that oppress us, things like anger and resentment and addiction.  In the Gospel of Mark, when Jesus confronts demons, he casts them out right then and there.  But we know that the battle to overcome addictions and a host of other things that can oppress us can take a long time.  That’s okay too.

And in today’s gospel, we read that Simon’s mother-in-law is in bed with a fever.  When he’s  told about it, Jesus comes and takes her by the hand and raises her up.  The fever leaves her and she begins to serve them.

I want to work this text with you for a few minutes this morning.  “Jesus raised her up and she began to serve them.”  This text needs a bit of work in order for us to get the point.

I know that some of us, when we hear this text, our first reaction is along the lines of “isn’t it terrible that this poor woman was expected to serve the men.”  We, as 21^st century feminists, we object to women being forced into the role of serving in a patriarchal culture.  I want to acknowledge that reaction, that objection that we might have.  But now I want to ask you to set it aside.  On the one hand, this text isn’t reinforcing gender roles.  It was actually a man’s role to serve the Sabbath meal.  And Jesus, when he reaches out and takes the sick woman by the hand, is actually breaking down gender barriers.  But these things aren’t the point of the text either.

The point is that when Peter’s mother-in-law serves, she is doing what God calls her to do, she is doing what Jesus came to do, she is doing what Jesus will ask his disciples to do.  Later on in the tenth chapter of Mark’s gospel, Jesus will make this explicit.  When his disciples are arguing about who is to be the greatest, Jesus tells them “whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant . . . for the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve.”

Simon’s mother-in-law is being held up for us as an example of someone who gets it, someone who is responding to God’s call and is living out a vocation of service.

But that’s not where the text begins.  The text begins with her sick in bed with a fever.  The fever is preventing her from doing what she has been called to do.  Can you relate?  Has anything ever prevented you from doing the things you wanted to be doing, the things you should be doing?  As soon as Jesus hears about this, he comes to her, takes her by the hand and raises her up.  Literally, he resurrects her.  It’s the same word in Greek that will be used by Mark for the resurrection of Jesus, for the raising of Jesus from the dead.

Jesus raises her up and she begins to serve.

Jesus raises us up for a reason.  The liberation that we talked about last week, that we’re talking about again today, is for a purpose.  God liberates us from the things that oppress us so that we can then respond to God’s call to serve.

You may have noticed that Mark has done the time thing again.  In today’s gospel, Simon’s mother-in-law is raised up and immediately she begins to serve.  Now we know that in our lives, that whole process doesn’t always happen in the blink of an eye.  The raising up can take time.  Responding to the call to serve can take time.  Relax the time scale if you must.  But have no doubt.  God is in the business of raising us up so that we can serve.

One of the things we talked about at the Vital Church Planting conference is something that George Bush once called the “vision thing”.  About how when we want to start something new, it’s important for us to have a vision for what we’re doing and where we’re going.

And part of the vision that I have for this new thing we call St. Albans is that this will be a place and a community where God raises us up and liberates us from the things that oppress us so that we can respond to God’s call to serve.

Each of us is on a spiritual journey.  And although there are twists and turns and surprises and setbacks along the way, the basic story line of our spiritual journey is this:  We are raised up so that we can respond to God’s call to serve.  Now that’s not a one and done thing.  We are raised up, we serve, we get knocked back down and we need to be raised up again.  All that will play out as part of our story line.  And a community such as this one is a place where those spiritual journeys, where our individual story lines, overlap and intersect and are played out together.

Each one of us is somewhere on that journey today.  In fact, at the risk of oversimplifying things a bit, I believe that each one of us here this morning is in one of two places:  Some of us need to be raised up and some of us are ready to serve.  I want you to think about where you are this morning:  do you feel like you need to be raised up, or are you ready to serve?

Some of us here this morning need to be raised up.  We could be stressed out, or ill, or afflicted, or sad, and we come here this morning longing for Jesus, for someone, to reach out, take our hand and raise us up.

Some of us here this morning are trying to figure out how to respond to God’s call to serve.  What am I going to do with my life?  How do I respond to the love God has shown me?  What’s my vocation?  How can I serve?

Can you see where this is going?  How amazing is it to be in a community where some of us need to be raised up and some of us need to respond to the call to serve?  Do you see the potential for a connection here?  Because the work of raising people up is not just Jesus’ work, it’s not just God’s work, it is our work too.  Those of us who by the grace of God have been raised up are called to raise up others.

I know this is a bit of risk, and I’m asking for a bit of courage on your part, but I’d like to know where you are this morning.  

Now, if you’re one of the people here this morning that feels that they’re in a place where they are ready to serve, I’d like you to raise your hand. 

If you’re one of the people here this morning who feel like they need to be raised up, for one reason or another, I’d like you to put up your hand.  

Do you see the opportunity to serve we’ve got, right here this morning.  Do see what God is calling us to as a community?  Those of us who are ready to serve can start with those who need to be raised up.  We might not have all the answers, but surely we can offer a kind word, a hug or a prayer.

When the disciples told Jesus that Simon’s mother-in-law had a fever, Jesus went to her, took her by the hand, and raised her up, and she began to serve.

Amen.