Glimpses of Light
February 22, 2009
2 Kings 2:1-12; Psalm 50; 2 Corinthians 4:3-6; Mark 9:2-9
What does it mean to belong to a community that is faithful?
What does it mean to belong to a community?
What does it mean for a community to be faithful?
What does it mean to belong to a community that is faithful?
The disciples, confronted by these fundamental questions, could not see the answer when it was right there in front of them in “dazzling white such as no one on earth could bleach it.”
I find that profoundly comforting!
Let’s unpack the questions and the disciples’ response as suggested in the extremely strange, disquieting, decentering, unsettling, disturbing story of the Transfiguration of Jesus.
As I suggested last week, stories illuminate stories, and, as Calvin taught, scripture interprets scripture. The lectionary doesn’t always serve that teaching, but this week it surely does in holding together the apotheosis of Elijah with Jesus’ transfiguration.
If nothing else, these are two equally strange stories.
As Elijah prepares to depart this earthly plane, his disciple, Elisha, seeks understanding, as one imagines Jesus’ disciples seek as he hints at the cross that awaits him. The company of prophets keeps telling Elisha that he is about to be left behind, on his own; powerless and bereft they seem to believe. But while the disciples, as exemplified by Peter, want to pitch a tent on the mountaintop and hold on tight to the present moment, Elisha, on the other hand, says to Elijah, “I’m ready to be on my own, all I ask is for a double share of the spirit that I see alive in you.”
In other words, “I am ready to go down off this mountaintop experience that I have had as your disciple and take that spirit I’ve experienced into the world.”
That, it seems to me, is the word of the Lord for the church today. Go down from the mountaintop into the world; take what you experience in the intimacy of this gathering and carry it into the world.
So, if that is, indeed, the word of the Lord for the church, then what does it mean to belong to a community that is faithful, that listens to the word of the Lord, discerns the movement of the Spirit, and seeks to follow Christ into the world?
I’m not going to venture a guess or propose anything like a comprehensive answer to that incredibly complex, rich and fundamentally important question that presses in upon the church today with life or death urgency, but I am going to suggest a way forward.
As many of you know, I spent three days at Stony Point Center in New York last week in a gathering of people called together by Rick and Kitty Ufford-Chase to consider together one question: what must we do to lay the foundation for a Christian community that supports its members to lead faithful lives, deepen their spiritual practices and support justice and non-violence in the world?
My concerns with that question are both deeply personal and vocationally corporate. That is to say, engaging that question matters to me, deeply, and, I believe, it matters to us. As we were sharing what brought the fifty or sixty of us to the conversation at Stony Point, I thought back to the first time I read Martin Luther King’s “Letter from the Birmingham City Jail,” when I was in high school or early in college. That letter is holy scripture for many people, and it is packed with passages that have become justifiably famous around the world. But the first time I read it, one rather less widely attended passage reached out and grabbed me and has never let me go. King wrote, “the judgment of God is on the church as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.”
King wrote that letter almost 50 years ago. The church has not only forfeited the loyalty of millions in the United States during those five decades, but disappoint moved quickly past disgust to dismissal for the bigger part of an entire generation.
We pitched tents on the mountainside when we were called into the valley, and we never even really attempted to scale the heights of the mountain from which to look around and see an authentic image of the beloved community, the promised land of righteousness, justice and love.
And now here we are, a much smaller collection of folks stretched in the tension between fear and faith, perched on the side of the mountain like climbers in a hanging bivouac, huddled together as the winds of change that have been blowing through our tradition for more than a half century continue to rage and we don’t know whether to try to keep on climbing or find a way back down.
Sisters and brothers, I wish I could tell you that I have been to the mountaintop, looked over and seen the other side. I wish I could promise you that I have seen the way and assure you that we’ll get there soon and very soon. But I’ve been in that same tent.
What I can tell you is what I believe Elisha was trying to say to the company of prophets: I trust the vision of the prophet and I intend to follow his way.
As for me, I trust the vision of Jesus the Christ, and I intend to follow his way.
I really do not care a whit about the questions of orthodox Christology. Was Jesus God’s only son? What does that mean, really? How would one know? Would there be a DNA test for paternity?
But I do know this: at his baptism, on the mountaintop, on the cross and at the empty tomb, God was saying, “this is my beloved, listen to him.” Listen to him. Follow his way.
That, to me, is the sum total of what it means to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior.
The listening is not simple, nor the way easy, but the choice does lie clearly before us: choose this day whom you will serve.
As for me and my household, we will follow Jesus.
What does that mean?
I believe that as we live into the answer to that simple question, we also find the answers to the questions with which we began.
What does it mean to belong to a community that is faithful?
What does it mean to belong to a community?
What does it mean for a community to be faithful?
What does it mean to belong to a community that is faithful?
For those of us who live somehow under the sign of the cross, for those of us who are trying to follow Jesus, what it means to be faithful members of a faithful community is inextricably bound to that following, that discipleship.
So let me close with a couple of concrete invitations to discipleship.
Lent begins this Wednesday, a season of 40 days that is a gift to us. How will you use it?
Over the past 18 months or so at Clarendon, we have transformed our space remarkably, for which we all give thanks (especially to Karen Kimmel and Suzanne Fuller, but also to everyone who has faithfully stewarded money and time to this effort). We have a strong and beautiful foundation. Now it is time to take that deeper, and transform our spirits.
Beginning next Sunday afternoon, we will start a Lenten journey of transforming spirits. I invite each of you to participate. I’ll warn you right now: we’re going to be doing a whole lot of praying together, and that can be dangerous! Prayer changes things! Prayer changes people! Prayer changes churches! Just look what happened on that mountaintop with Jesus. Transfiguration happened!
I know that not everyone can be part of these gatherings, and that’s OK. But each and every one of you can pray for these prayerful gatherings. So please, for the 40 days of Lent, set aside a few minutes each day to hold the transforming spirit group in the light – and especially set aside a few minutes on Sunday afternoons to hold us in the light. We will include the names of participants in weekly e-mail blasts and Sunday bulletins as soon as we know exactly who is participating.
So there are two invitations: participate and pray.
Here is a third: if you have been coming to worship, participating in various activities of the community, putting your toes in the water – all of which is great – take another step this Lent and explore what it might mean for you to become a member of the congregation. Beginning next Wednesday – the one after Ash Wednesday – we will gather a group for three weeks to talk about what it means to be part of a faithful community at Clarendon, and what it means to join the congregation. Participating in these gatherings is not a final decision, but it is an important step. As Jesus said, “come and see.”
Here is a final invitation: Come here this Wednesday evening at 7:00, to worship and commit yourself to a Lenten discipline. Come each Sunday of Lent to worship and renew your spirits. Worship is our mountaintop.
We’ve been dangling on the side of the cliff for far too long. Visiting the mountaintop is lovely and vitally important. We need to catch glimpses of light. But you cannot live on the mountaintop, because we are called back into the valley and the long, faithful journey to Jerusalem.
Lent is a season for this journey. Come and see. Come and follow. Amen.
2 Kings 2:1-12; Psalm 50; 2 Corinthians 4:3-6; Mark 9:2-9
What does it mean to belong to a community that is faithful?
What does it mean to belong to a community?
What does it mean for a community to be faithful?
What does it mean to belong to a community that is faithful?
The disciples, confronted by these fundamental questions, could not see the answer when it was right there in front of them in “dazzling white such as no one on earth could bleach it.”
I find that profoundly comforting!
Let’s unpack the questions and the disciples’ response as suggested in the extremely strange, disquieting, decentering, unsettling, disturbing story of the Transfiguration of Jesus.
As I suggested last week, stories illuminate stories, and, as Calvin taught, scripture interprets scripture. The lectionary doesn’t always serve that teaching, but this week it surely does in holding together the apotheosis of Elijah with Jesus’ transfiguration.
If nothing else, these are two equally strange stories.
As Elijah prepares to depart this earthly plane, his disciple, Elisha, seeks understanding, as one imagines Jesus’ disciples seek as he hints at the cross that awaits him. The company of prophets keeps telling Elisha that he is about to be left behind, on his own; powerless and bereft they seem to believe. But while the disciples, as exemplified by Peter, want to pitch a tent on the mountaintop and hold on tight to the present moment, Elisha, on the other hand, says to Elijah, “I’m ready to be on my own, all I ask is for a double share of the spirit that I see alive in you.”
In other words, “I am ready to go down off this mountaintop experience that I have had as your disciple and take that spirit I’ve experienced into the world.”
That, it seems to me, is the word of the Lord for the church today. Go down from the mountaintop into the world; take what you experience in the intimacy of this gathering and carry it into the world.
So, if that is, indeed, the word of the Lord for the church, then what does it mean to belong to a community that is faithful, that listens to the word of the Lord, discerns the movement of the Spirit, and seeks to follow Christ into the world?
I’m not going to venture a guess or propose anything like a comprehensive answer to that incredibly complex, rich and fundamentally important question that presses in upon the church today with life or death urgency, but I am going to suggest a way forward.
As many of you know, I spent three days at Stony Point Center in New York last week in a gathering of people called together by Rick and Kitty Ufford-Chase to consider together one question: what must we do to lay the foundation for a Christian community that supports its members to lead faithful lives, deepen their spiritual practices and support justice and non-violence in the world?
My concerns with that question are both deeply personal and vocationally corporate. That is to say, engaging that question matters to me, deeply, and, I believe, it matters to us. As we were sharing what brought the fifty or sixty of us to the conversation at Stony Point, I thought back to the first time I read Martin Luther King’s “Letter from the Birmingham City Jail,” when I was in high school or early in college. That letter is holy scripture for many people, and it is packed with passages that have become justifiably famous around the world. But the first time I read it, one rather less widely attended passage reached out and grabbed me and has never let me go. King wrote, “the judgment of God is on the church as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.”
King wrote that letter almost 50 years ago. The church has not only forfeited the loyalty of millions in the United States during those five decades, but disappoint moved quickly past disgust to dismissal for the bigger part of an entire generation.
We pitched tents on the mountainside when we were called into the valley, and we never even really attempted to scale the heights of the mountain from which to look around and see an authentic image of the beloved community, the promised land of righteousness, justice and love.
And now here we are, a much smaller collection of folks stretched in the tension between fear and faith, perched on the side of the mountain like climbers in a hanging bivouac, huddled together as the winds of change that have been blowing through our tradition for more than a half century continue to rage and we don’t know whether to try to keep on climbing or find a way back down.
Sisters and brothers, I wish I could tell you that I have been to the mountaintop, looked over and seen the other side. I wish I could promise you that I have seen the way and assure you that we’ll get there soon and very soon. But I’ve been in that same tent.
What I can tell you is what I believe Elisha was trying to say to the company of prophets: I trust the vision of the prophet and I intend to follow his way.
As for me, I trust the vision of Jesus the Christ, and I intend to follow his way.
I really do not care a whit about the questions of orthodox Christology. Was Jesus God’s only son? What does that mean, really? How would one know? Would there be a DNA test for paternity?
But I do know this: at his baptism, on the mountaintop, on the cross and at the empty tomb, God was saying, “this is my beloved, listen to him.” Listen to him. Follow his way.
That, to me, is the sum total of what it means to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior.
The listening is not simple, nor the way easy, but the choice does lie clearly before us: choose this day whom you will serve.
As for me and my household, we will follow Jesus.
What does that mean?
I believe that as we live into the answer to that simple question, we also find the answers to the questions with which we began.
What does it mean to belong to a community that is faithful?
What does it mean to belong to a community?
What does it mean for a community to be faithful?
What does it mean to belong to a community that is faithful?
For those of us who live somehow under the sign of the cross, for those of us who are trying to follow Jesus, what it means to be faithful members of a faithful community is inextricably bound to that following, that discipleship.
So let me close with a couple of concrete invitations to discipleship.
Lent begins this Wednesday, a season of 40 days that is a gift to us. How will you use it?
Over the past 18 months or so at Clarendon, we have transformed our space remarkably, for which we all give thanks (especially to Karen Kimmel and Suzanne Fuller, but also to everyone who has faithfully stewarded money and time to this effort). We have a strong and beautiful foundation. Now it is time to take that deeper, and transform our spirits.
Beginning next Sunday afternoon, we will start a Lenten journey of transforming spirits. I invite each of you to participate. I’ll warn you right now: we’re going to be doing a whole lot of praying together, and that can be dangerous! Prayer changes things! Prayer changes people! Prayer changes churches! Just look what happened on that mountaintop with Jesus. Transfiguration happened!
I know that not everyone can be part of these gatherings, and that’s OK. But each and every one of you can pray for these prayerful gatherings. So please, for the 40 days of Lent, set aside a few minutes each day to hold the transforming spirit group in the light – and especially set aside a few minutes on Sunday afternoons to hold us in the light. We will include the names of participants in weekly e-mail blasts and Sunday bulletins as soon as we know exactly who is participating.
So there are two invitations: participate and pray.
Here is a third: if you have been coming to worship, participating in various activities of the community, putting your toes in the water – all of which is great – take another step this Lent and explore what it might mean for you to become a member of the congregation. Beginning next Wednesday – the one after Ash Wednesday – we will gather a group for three weeks to talk about what it means to be part of a faithful community at Clarendon, and what it means to join the congregation. Participating in these gatherings is not a final decision, but it is an important step. As Jesus said, “come and see.”
Here is a final invitation: Come here this Wednesday evening at 7:00, to worship and commit yourself to a Lenten discipline. Come each Sunday of Lent to worship and renew your spirits. Worship is our mountaintop.
We’ve been dangling on the side of the cliff for far too long. Visiting the mountaintop is lovely and vitally important. We need to catch glimpses of light. But you cannot live on the mountaintop, because we are called back into the valley and the long, faithful journey to Jerusalem.
Lent is a season for this journey. Come and see. Come and follow. Amen.
posted by David Ensign at
11:30 AM
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