Creating Art and Worship Together

Art is a gateway to worship. As we worship during the next several weeks, we will be creating a work of art together. Each Sunday everyone will be encouraged to fold a paper crane in one of the rainbow colors. The cranes will be strung together to create a rainbow banner, which, when complete, will be a visual testimony of our Open and Affirming welcome, and a reminder of God’s covenant with all creation.

I learned how to fold paper canes when I was in high school. In Sunday school or confirmation class, we folded cranes while our teacher told us the story of Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. We learned that because of Sadako’s story, the paper crane became an internationally recognized symbol for peace.

When I was in seminary, I re-learned how to fold paper cranes from a Japanese Buddhist student. She folded tiny paper cranes from 1” square pieces of paper and strung them together in garlands. The crane garlands became part of her shrine to the Buddha which she created in her apartment, and she also hung crane garlands over her door knob and gave them away as gifts. Watching Miyako fold cranes, I began to realize that the crane was more than a symbol of peace—that the act of folding a crane was in itself a prayer for peace. Those garlands of cranes were garlands of prayers for the world.

As rational adults, we know that objects are inanimate. Things have no soul, no mind, no thought processes. (I may be tempted to believe otherwise when the lawn mower works for my husband but never for me, because it hates me. But really, I know better.) The knowledge that objects are inanimate often leads us to the false assumption that material things have no effect on us. We think, therefore we mow. Or type. Or garden. Or paint. We work with wood and chisels or fabric and thread.

But what if our interaction with inanimate objects is not as one-way as we imagine? What if our engagement with material actually works a change in us?

An illustration: Having been given a guitar when I was eight years old, I learned to play it. It left marks on my fingertips. It created a pattern in my brain whereby I see notes on a page and my fingers play a melody. The guitar I got when I was eight years old played a role in creating me.

I’m inviting you to fold cranes with me because the paper and the act of folding will work a change in you. While you are folding paper into a crane, the paper will play a role in creating you.

We will fold cranes of many colors, and put them in a basket. And when we have all the colors of the rainbow, we will string them into garlands. And when we hang the garlands together we will have a rainbow banner for the entryway. And whenever we walk into the sanctuary we will see the banner that we made, that played a role in making us.

That is how art becomes a gateway to worship.

God’s Provision for the Redemption of the Earth

22 April 2012

Leviticus 25:1-7, 18-24

            When I was in high school, I decided to read the whole Bible, beginning to end. Genesis and Exodus were tough going, but then I got to Leviticus. A few chapters into Leviticus I decided to skip to the New Testament. Not because it was difficult, but because it was so somnolent, which was one of my tenth grade vocabulary words, somnolent—adjective, tending to cause sleep.

            Leviticus is the book of details. It is the book that teases out the minutiae of the law; it is the book where we find the laws about what not to eat (shellfish, pork) what not to wear (blended fabrics, linen and wool together). Sometimes, it makes us think, gee, God is kind of picky. But Rabbi Harold Kushner enlightened me, when speaking at my church in Waterloo, Iowa several years ago. He said, “Do you think when I go out to lunch and look at the menu, I say to myself, ‘Oy Wey, I’d like to have a ham sandwich, but that mean old God won’t let me.’ No. I say to myself, ‘Isn’t it wonderful. Six billion people in the world and God cares what I have for lunch!’”

            So Leviticus is, to some, a sign of God’s embrace. It is a book of love. Loving parents care about what their children eat, what they wear, how they wear their hair. For example, Leviticus teaches me that God and I agree on at least one parental rule: our children should not have tattoos. It’s OK for other people but not for our children. I mean specifically my children. I’m totally OK with any of you having tattoos. There’s nothing inherently wrong with decorating yourself, as long as you’re not my daughter.

            So, I think Leviticus is like that. It doesn’t mean that God has anything against people who eat shellfish or pork, who mix the milche und fleishe—the milk and the meat, or people who wear cotton and wool blended together. To the people of Israel, the descendants of Jacob, the people of Moses, Leviticus is a set of great expectations from loving parents to children. It’s a book that says, We expect you to think about things, to be mindful of the details of your life, to think about how your behavior is a reflection on your parents and your God.

            So, that’s our introduction to Leviticus. This particular chapter of Leviticus belongs a section that is teasing out the details of the commandment, “Honor the Sabbath Day and keep it holy.”

Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. For six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day. (Deut 5)

In the book of Genesis, the Sabbath day is identified as a day of rest because, according to the first story of Creation, God made the world in six days, and rested on the seventh. God’s rest makes the seventh day holy, be holy as God is holy. That is the priestly tradition.

          But in Deuteronomy, the Sabbath day is linked to God’s justice. It is attached to the memory of slavery. When you were slaves in Egypt you had no rest. You are no longer slaves, you are free people. Take at least one day a week to remember that you are free. But also, do not do unto others as the Egyptians did unto you. The Sabbath is my gift to you, it must also be your gift to others—to your servants, your slaves, your employees, to the resident aliens and foreigners in the land, and even to your animals. Your day of rest should not be an extra burden for others. Your rest is to extend to all people.

            And here in Leviticus, the command to rest extends even to the Land itself. Because the land is a gift from God. It remains God’s possession for all eternity. Do not enslave God’s land. The earth itself is to be granted a Sabbath rest.

            This should make us think, right?

            Whose land is it anyway?

            Do the mountains of West Virginia belong to Massey Energy? Or to the people of West Virginia? Or to God? If we really believe that the earth is the Lord’s and all that dwell therein, then what does God require of us in regard to mountaintop removal?

            Do our lakes and the land surrounding them belong to the people who built their homes and businesses in the watershed, or do they belong to the state of Minnesota, or do they belong to God? If we believe that the water is a sacred gift from God, than what does God require of us in regard to our lakes?

            Does the earth belong to the entities that hold the title deed? Does any piece of paper, however correctly filed, grant the holder the right to enslave the earth and extract from it whatever wealth he can?

            What is our role in giving voice to the voiceless?

            Let this be our meditation, and may our meditation lead to action, as we consider…. What does the spirit say to the church?

Kingdom v. Empire

Palm Sunday, April 1, 2012

Mark 11:1-11

This is the week we call Holy, the week preceding Easter. The events of Holy Week commemorate the last week of Jesus' life. Today is Palm Sunday, which many consider a "little Easter," or as I used to think of it, "dress rehearsal" (because my sister and I would put on our Easter dresses and break-in our new shoes on Palm Sunday). Palm Sunday is the day that Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey colt, while crowds waved palm branches and shouted "Hosanna!"

If we ignore the events of the rest of the week, we might think that Jesus moved from a "little Easter," to a "big Easter," from dress rehearsal to the big production number, from glory to glory. But it wasn't like that at all. The events of Holy Week were the original "Arab Spring." The Palm Sunday procession itself mocked the triumphal procession of the Roman governor and his guard, through the opposite gate of Jerusalem. It was a dangerous political demonstration.

Crowds were pouring in to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover, which commemorates the foundational event for the nation of Israel. It declares that God heard the cries of the people when they were slaves in Egypt, that God led them out by a mighty hand, and gave them the land of Israel, a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey.

Now remember the context of this particular Passover: Occupied Jerusalem. Jerusalem under the rule of the Caesar, a self-proclaimed Son of a god. A Jerusalem with a puppet king, selected, appointed, and protected by the powers that be in Rome.

Imagine celebrating Bastille Day in occupied Paris. Imagine celebrating the 4^th of July in occupied Washington, DC. This is the context of Jesus entry into Jerusalem.

It was a demonstration of the Kingdom of God v. the Empire of Rome. It was a proclamation that the Lord God is King of Israel, and that the only one worthy of the throne is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. “Hosanna” is the shout of praise from the coronation psalms of King David. The crowds were proclaiming a Jesus king.

But Jesus was modeling a very different kind of kingship. While the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate, was riding in on a war horse, with his armed guard marching with him (O the sound of the trampling warriors!) making a show of force, Jesus was making a show of peace. Here comes your king. Humble and riding on a donkey. Not with force of armaments, not with sword and shield, but with a force of palm-branch waving peasants.

The next day, Jesus led a demonstration at the temple, a symbolic protest of the unholy alliance of market economics, the empire and religion. It is commonly known as the clearing of the temple.  It might have been called Occupy Jerusalem.

On Thursday, Jesus celebrated the Passover with his disciples. After supper, while he and his disciples prayed, Jesus was betrayed by one of his own; he was arrested, tortured, and summarily executed the next day, which is a day ironically called "Good Friday."

Jesus didn't move from the little glory of Palm Sunday to the greater glory of Easter. No, the week we call Holy was, for Jesus and his disciples, hellish. It was "that lonesome valley" of the old spiritual. But in that very experience of suffering, people of faith through the ages have found hope for salvation.

How can this be? I suppose it is because real life doesn’t move from glory to glory. When I was a child, there was a popular evangelist whose trademark truism was “Every day, in every way, it’s going to get better and better.” That may have sounded true in the suburbs. But, that must have rang hollow for people who were marching for the right to vote in Mississippi, or for people who were striking for decent working conditions in the farm fields of Texas and California, or for people who were watching children die in Viet Nam. No, for a lot of people Every day in every way life’s going to get better and better was just a bald-faced lie. These were people of the lonesome valley.

It may seem as if our nation has never been more divided, never more lost, never less hopeful. When I learned of the murder of Trayvon Martin, I couldn't help but think of the lynching of Emmett Till (1955) and wonder, "Have we learned nothing?" Emmett Till's murderers were tried and acquitted. Trayvon Martin’s killer has not been arrested. The powers that were in Mississippi in 1955 and the powers that be in Florida in 2012 both seem to believe that being in the wrong place at the wrong time is reason enough to kill a black man. Where is the justice for the bereaved mothers and fathers? Where is the mercy for Emmett and Trayvon?

Where was the justice in Jerusalem for Jesus?

In our United Church of Christ statement of faith, one of the most meaningful lines for me is “In Jesus Christ, the man of Nazareth, God has come to us, and shared our common lot.” That means there is nothing we experience that God has not experienced. God knows what it’s like to be despised because of his race; Jesus, the Galillean half-breed, was despised. God knows what it’s like to be beaten and tortured; Jesus was beaten and tortured. God knows what it’s like to cry for mercy and find none; Jesus cried out on the cross. And God knows what it’s like to be killed; Jesus was killed.

The suffering of Jesus sanctifies all suffering. Through the Jesus story, God takes human suffering and makes it holy. Through the Jesus story, the endurance of suffering becomes a spiritual virtue, which redeems our past, and gives us hope for the future. Because suffering was not the end of the story.

Maybe we are in that lonesome valley as a nation. But I must believe that this is one lonesome valley with a promise of glory at the end. Because that is the story of Jesus. That is the story of God in this world. It is a story of a little glory, and a lot of suffering, and in the end, a greater glory than we could ever ask or imagine. But that’s a story for next week.

I pray that good will come out of evil, that justice will prevail. I believe that we shall see the goodness of the Lord, and the goodness of God’s creation, in the land of the living. So be it. Amen.

What God Has Made Us

18 March 2012

Ephesians 2:1-10

           When God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, and the spirit of God swept over the waters and God said, Let there be. And there was. And God saw that it was good. Indeed, it was very good.

So, what happened? Why, when we get to the end of the book which has such a promising beginning, why are Christians seeing the world so differently? Why are they writing as if the world were something other than God’s good creation? Why are they writing as if the world was irredeemably corrupted, and the source not of life but of death: as in:

            “You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient.”

            This dualism—the distinction between the way of the world and the way of God--represents a change from Paul’s early letters, and that change leads scholars to believe that this writing is later and probably from one of Paul’s disciples, and not Paul himself.

            Jesus seemed to see the world as an evidence of God’s goodness and endless blessing. He saw God’s fingerprint in the lilies of the field and the birds of the air. He and his disciples enjoyed the produce of the land and the vineyard. Jesus lived as if the earth was full of the goodness of the Lord, a perspective that is consistent with the Hebrew Scriptures.

            Despite the dualistic heresy evident in today’s epistle lesson, there is a nugget of pure gold in the expression, “we are what God has made us.” We are created for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life. Echoes of Moses, and Joshua, and Jeremiah: Walk God’s way so that it may go well with you in the land you are about to inherit. Choose this day whom you will serve. God set before you the way of life and the way of death. Choose life that you may live!

            We are what God has made us, we are not our own, we belong to God. And those who are different from us, who believe differently, they are also people whom God has made. And the earth including the fire the flood, the earthquake and the hurricane, are as God has made them. When people go to war with each other, or when the earth seems to be at war with people, it is too easy to resort to dualism: to say one people is of God and the other of the devil. The gentle rains are of God but the flood is of the devil. Or one is for reward and the other for punishment. It is all of God, created for good, meant for blessing and not curse.

            When we experience the world as a harsh and hellish place, it is best to remember that it isn’t always going to be this way. Best to remember God’s saving history in the world: that when people cry out in their distress, God hears, and God makes a way out of no way, provides healing, and help, rivers in the desert and bread from heaven.

            We are what God has made us and God has made us with an independent will, and the ability to choose. To choose the good, and reject the evil, to choose life and not death, to choose to be liberators and not captors.

            Wait for the Lord, you who trust in God, for God seeks to save. If salvation seems to be delayed, wait for it! Help is on the way. And when God comes as promised to deliver the oppressed, where will we be? Among those who are seeking to alleviate suffering, or among those who create it? We were made for good. Let us be and become what God has made us.

           

            

At-one -ment is our natural state

11 March 2012

 Last week’s sermon included a critique of the substitutionary sacrifice theory of atonement, and offered a different way of seeing the cross, not as a sacrificial offering for our sin, but as the consequence of a life of obedience to God. I received a follow-up question by e-mail the next day, asking me to say more about atonement.

The word atonement can be defined by picking it apart the way I did in the sermon title: At One Ment. Atonement means repair of something that is broken into pieces, making it whole again. Atonement in practical terms is restorative justice: like the program of the same name, that provides a way for young offenders to repair the damage they did when they broke somebody’s window or vandalized a public building. Atonement is fixing the window, and cleaning up the mess, and promising never to do anything so stupid again. But more than that, atonement is repairing the broken trust, the trust that allows people to live together in community.

Theologically, atonement is repairing the broken trust between God and people, becoming at one with God. Scripture says that we are made in the image of God, male and female. Scripture also says that we are dust, and to dust we shall return. We are dust animated by the spirit of God which is within us. Which means, at-one-ment with God is our natural state. We come from God and to God we return. It’s the middle part that is tricky, the part where we grow up and move out of God’s house, to make our own way in the world. It isn’t easy for us; but any parent can guess that it isn’t easy for God either.

During this season of Lent, our first scripture lessons have been the covenant stories of the Bible: The rainbow covenant after the flood, the covenant with Abraham, and today, the covenant at Sinai, also known as the ten commandments. These covenants trace the history of God reaching out to creation, like a parent reaching out to a lost or estranged child. God said to all creation: I am sorry about the flood. That was wrong, I was too harsh, I learned my lesson. I declare a unilateral disarmament. Here, I will hang up my bow: I put it in the clouds. Whenever you see my bow in the clouds remember: I am for you.

And later, God reached out to Abraham as he wandered from his home: Saying, Abraham, walk with me. I will be your God, and you will be my people, you and your descendants forever. I give you a name, and a land, and descendants, and my presence, always.

And when the people were enslaved in Egypt God called them out, and taught them how to live, so that it might go well with them. The commandments were given not so people could break them and give God a reason to retaliate. The commandments were given so that people could live, so that it would go well with them. They had been slaves, whose only rule was, do what your master says. God knows freedom isn’t easy, and God said, this is what freedom means: you have to be accountable to each other now. Here’s some guidelines. This is how you walk with me.

From time to time, God sent prophets to remind the people of the covenant on Sinai. You wonder why things aren’t going well, the prophets said, you wonder why your enemies surround you, you wonder why the people rebel? Remember the covenant. Remember the way God taught you to go. How’s that working for you? Oh, you forgot the covenant? Well, turn around! Repent!

What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God. Walk with me.

In the Hebrew Scriptures, sin is not original. Sin isn’t a sickness, sin isn’t an inevitable state of being. Sin is wandering from God, wandering away from the paths of righteousness that God mapped out for us at Sinai, the paths of righteousness and justice, the paths of mercy and compassion. And we make atonement by turning around, which is what repentance means, turning around. Turn back!

In the fullness of time, God sent Jesus, to be the living embodiment of God’s covenant. Jesus was the rainbow, the sign of peace. Jesus was the promise to Abraham, the one through whom all the nations of the world would be blessed. Jesus was the living Word, faithfulness personified. Jesus was the way, the living map of the paths of righteousness. Jesus’ life is the map, Jesus’ resurrection is the sign of victory snatched from the jaws of death.

Jesus is the key to living the life that is truly worth living, in the meantime. From God we come, to God we will return; in the meantime life can be hell, or life can be at one with God. We, the church of Jesus, we, the followers of Christ have a mission: To keep to the paths of righteousness, as best we can, with the help of the Spirit; and to seek out and save the lost from their living hell, to help them find the way of at one ment with God. May the Spirit help us in our mission, and keep us on the right paths, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

The Cross and The Last Turn

4 March 2012

Mark 8:31-38

“Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”

            I have been reading The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James Cone, the distinguished professor of theology at Union Seminary in New York. James Cone, you could say, is the father of Black liberation theology, a great man, and a great voice of the church and to the church. I found the book on a table at Barnes & Noble, and I was intrigued because, frankly, I have a problem with the cross. Honestly. After all these years of study and prayer and life in the church, I find the common theology of the cross incredible, as in unbelievable, and the substitutionary theory of atonement inexcusable.

            Now, let me go back to what I learned about the substitutionary theory of atonement in college, in the simplest language possible. The first point of the theory is that God is great—God is so great, so perfect, so righteous. The second point is that people are sinful—people are so sinful, so foul, so irredeemable. Therefore, the third point, people cannot be at one with God, people cannot be in the presence of God unless some sort of sacrifice is made for their sins, to cancel out their sins in the balance of things. But, the problem is because people are so foul they are incapable of providing a sacrifice equal to the task. So God, according to this theory, being great and also good, created a son, his one and only son, completely perfect, without a flaw, so that this flawless son of God could be killed as a blood sacrifice for people’s sins.

            How messed up is that? A story of divine child abuse, and human sacrifice, to wipe away the sins of the people. The substitutionary sacrifice theory of atonement is more pagan than Christian. It follows from a theory of god who has more in common with the Titans or the Norse god Odin than with the God Jesus knew.

            I agree with John Dominic Crossan, that Jesus was killed because of sin; but that doesn’t mean he was killed for our sin. Jesus was killed because in this imperfect world, when someone comes along and speaks the truth to power, they will be killed. That’s what power does when it is threatened. Christ’s death was not a ritual sacrifice to appease and angry god. It was murder by a mob, with the complicity of the state.

            I think the substitutionary theory of atonement is bad theology which has been used badly to venerate violence. We keep spilling blood over and over again in war, in execution. We even use the term sacrifice to describe those who are killed in the course of war. Why do we keep spilling blood as if that will save us? As if the smell of blood were somehow pleasing to an angry god. Our God, the God we know through the scriptures, takes no delight in sacrifice. “But God has shown you, O people, what is good, and what does God require of you but to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8)

            What we are doing here today is deconstructing the old, common, theology of the cross—the substitutionary atonement theory—and we are going to see if we can build a new one. If we are going to have a theology of the cross it has to make sense, it has to follow from our understanding of the God whom Jesus knew.

            I believe that we are created in God’s image, as the scripture says; I believe that God is merciful and God forgives, as the scripture says, both the Hebrew and the Greek, the Old and the New Testaments. I believe that Jesus’ life is more significant than his death, and his resurrection is a declaration that death, no matter how violent or how shameful, does not win over life.

            So, in preparation for the season of Lent, I was mulling over the problem of the cross and the substitutionary theory of atonement which underlies and has inspired much of our traditional liturgy and our hymns, especially the hymns for Lent. And on one of those days before Lent, I walked into a Barnes and Noble for a coffee and I saw this book, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, and I knew, I knew I needed this. I need this book, I thought to myself, because if James Cone can find something redemptive in the cross from the Black American liberation perspective, then there must be something to it.

            And there is, But it isn’t easy to read about, and it is even more difficult to talk about, and this isn’t going to be easy to hear. In this book, James Cone makes a personal testimony which invites us to walk around in his shoes. He shares some of his own story of growing up in Arkansas in the 50’s and 60’s; he invites us to imagine what it was like to live every day in fear, knowing that you, your brother, your father, your uncle, your best friend could be killed by a white mob and nobody would be able to do anything about it.

            Lynching was no secret. It was a public spectacle. The dates, times and places where a lynching was to take place were sometimes even published in the newspaper. It mattered not greatly who was to be lynched, if the supposed transgressor could not be found, any black man would do. (Talk about your substitutionary sacrifice.)

            Lynching is distinguished from hanging, you understand: Execution by hanging was a sentence carried out under the law after a trial by a jury of peers. Lynching was mob violence. And, blacks weren’t the only victims of lynching in America. We have our own horrible history of a lynching that took place in Brainerd in the summer of 1872, by The Last Turn Saloon. Two Ojibwe brothers were hung together from the tall pine tree that stood across the street from the Last Turn.

            The brothers had been arrested and jailed in the disappearance of a white girl in Crow Wing, but before evidence could be presented in the case, a mob of white citizens took them from the jail, marched them to the tree, and hung them there one at a time, until they were nearly dead. Then someone grew impatient and a shot rang out. When the bodies were removed from the tree the next day, they were riddled with fifty bullets. Inquiries were made, as inquiries are, but no one could be found who was present at the lynching, except, as the newspaper put it, one person who offered up a prayer for “the poor devils” before they were hung.

            The cross has power for victims of violence because crucifixion was the Roman way of lynching. It was the most shameful, most degrading, most torturous death imaginable; a form of killing reserved for the most despised and rejected people. And despised and rejected people get it. They get it that God takes no delight n the blood of the innocent, but that God is with the man who hangs on the tree. Despised and rejected people get it, that the man who hangs on the tree emulates Jesus. And they get the tragic irony that the crowds, who think they are doing “God’s work” by lynching the black man, have more in common with the Romans and the religious and civil authorities who thought they were in the right when they crucified Jesus. But, in fact, those Christians who did nothing to prevent the deaths of innocent men and women were crucifying Christ all over again.

            So, here is where we begin to create a new theology of the cross. We should bear the shame of the cross, not because we crucified Jesus all those years ago in Jerusalem, but because we continue to crucify Jesus, or we stand complicit while others crucify him.

            We should see Jesus on the lynching tree by The Last Turn, and Jesus in the face of Matthew Shepherd, left for dead on a fence post outside of Laramie. And we should see Jesus in prison in Guantanamo, and Jesus wherever and whenever people are despised and rejected by scribes and elders and statesmen. If we can begin to see Jesus crucified wherever and whenever people suffer violence unjustly, than we can, perhaps, redeem the theology of the cross.

            The cross is worthy of reverence when it shows us where we should stand while we live. What are we willing to live for? What are we willing to live and perhaps even die for? What are we willing to live until we die for?

            Let us consider what the Spirit is saying to the church, through the image of the cross and the lynching tree.

About the lynching: The story is told on brainerdhistory.com., a reprint of an article from the St. Paul Pioneer Press. The original publication explains that the author, H.L. Bridgman, was commissioned by President Grant to inspect the first section of the Northern Pacific Railroad in 1872.

Mr. Bridgman supposed that “The Last Turn Saloon” was named for the lynching tree. Local sources suggest that the establishment’s name predates the lynching, that the saloon was the last on a long block full of drinking establishments (not much has changed) and it was therefore, the last turn before you left town.

Holy Moments

Mark 9:2-9; 2 Kings 2:1-12

Every year at about this time we read of Peter, James and John on the mountain with Jesus. This gospel story is called “the transfiguration,” which is a 15-letter word for that holy moment, that awesome mountaintop experience. They went up the mountain to pray and while they were praying they had a vision of Moses and Elijah, the two greatest prophets, standing with Jesus, while the face of Jesus glowed with the image of the glory of God.
And this text is paired with the story of Elijah’s sweet chariot of fire (the passage that inspired that beautiful gospel hymn), which swept down from the heavens to carry him home to God, while Elijah’s disciple, Elisha, stood watching. These holy moments, recorded in scripture, are brief, as are all holy moments. The moments themselves were probably briefer than the time it takes to read about them. Before Elisha can blink, and before Peter can speak of building monuments, the moment is passed. Elisha picks up Elijah’s mantle and returns the way he came, across the Jordan. Jesus led the disciples down the mountain, and life went on, for all appearances much as before the holy moment.
The holiest moments in life catch us by surprise. The moment the infant, who has been screaming all night, settles into heavy sleep on your chest, and you know you should put her in her crib and go back to bed (and finally get some sleep), but you just don't want to lose that holy moment.
       Or the moment after you've cried all the tears your eyes can produce, after learning of the death of your beloved, when a snippet of truth comes to your inner ear: "I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living."  And you know that you will not die with your beloved.
       Or the moment of exquisite joy when all your family is gathered around the table and you realize that this is as good as it gets, and it's so much better than you ever imagined. So much better than you could ever ask or imagine.
        What is your holy moment? I invite you to call it to mind.
Was it a night of wonder, under the stars at a campsite in the Boundary Waters?
Was it love at first sight, when you saw your beloved across the crowded college cafeteria?
Perhaps you never thought of it this way before, but I invite you to christen the moment, declare it holy. I believe we are all given holy moments in life that we may know the ecstasy of intimacy with God. Holy moments are a gift, a grace of God.
I suppose that after your holy moment, life continued, much as before. You returned from the wilderness, back to work, back to class, back to laundry and lawn mowing. For all appearances, life goes on. Or does it? In my experience, the holy moments make a difference. They become our touchstone, our treasure buried in a field, our well of living water. We return from these holy moments with strength renewed, well-supplied for the journey of faith that is our life.
How can worship in a sanctuary such as this compare to life’s genuine holy moments? Even the most awesome Christmas Eve service cannot hold a celebratory candle to your personal transfiguration, your mountaintop experience. But worship is what we do to prepare ourselves for those holy moments.
Worship is a reenactment of a history of momentous holiness. Ideally, worship fosters our intimacy with God.
        Ideally. Truthfully, not always. Sometimes worship may feel like one of those weekly chores, like laundry, like shoveling snow, like mowing the lawn. Yes, worship can feel like drudgery. But practice moves us closer to perfection.
        As we enter the season of Lent our order of worship will change, as it does seasonally. The new style of worship may be uncomfortable for you or it may be exactly what you have always wanted worship to be, but whether the one or the other, I encourage you to participate with your heart and mind and soul. Remember that what you may find uncomfortable might just be what one of your brothers or sisters here most needs, to feel closer to God. And remember, that God is full of surprising grace, you might even have a holy moment in church!
        May your life be blessed with these holy moments.