A Sermon by Ben Roe
Warren United Methodist Church
14th & Gilpin, Denver, 2/26/95
Text: Mark 9:2-9; 2 Corinthians 4:1-6
This story in Mark is a difficult story for many of us in the 20th Century who have grown up with the value of objectivity and scientific understanding. Of course, the question "What happened on that mountain?" on one level means, "What would CNN have reported?" (I have no idea!)
But something happened to those disciples and the story we have is the result.
I think I'll even go so far as to say, I think the same thing can happen today, even here on our Capitol Hill!
On the most significant level, it seems to me, what happened to those disciples was a change in their perception of Jesus and of themselves.
They'd been changing a lot in those days since they'd come into contact with this Jesus. There'd been sayings and conversations, but what was unusual wasn't the content so much as the way Jesus had said things, the very impact his being had on them.
And now they experienced an overwhelming sense of Jesus' prophetic presence, a presence that brought to mind Elijah and Moses.
And they experienced what most of us would in an unusual situation: they were confused! And, like many of us, they followed that saying, "Don't just stand there, do something!" That's really the main reason they suggested making 3 tents: they couldn't think of anything else to say! They didn't want to just look confused!
They also had the inclination to somehow keep the moment by putting up something tangible to mark the occasion--you know the pattern: take a souvenir home of the neat things that happened on your special trip! (You should see MY scrapbook and boxes!)
But they also did something else: they allowed this new perception into their experience, they questioned it, worked with it. They were open to being transformed by their witnessing this transfiguration of Jesus. You've had that happen, too--when some truth becomes clear in a moment of insight, when something comes to you "in a flash." And then you spend time integrating it into your life.
The loss of our pastor Paul has some parallels to this story: we experienced confusion and many other feelings; we wanted to keep something to remind us of the special times.
That day in December when Paul announced he'd accepted an appointment to University Park church was a sad day. There were all the usual feelings connected with loss: anger, bargaining, denial, sadness, and eventually acceptance; the disbelief, the confusion, the desire to keep everything the same (well, maybe not everything!), and the recognition that Paul's leadership had been something very special for us here. We recognized something of our own light, too, our own gifts as a congregation. I appreciated the way we responded in that all-church meeting, processing and sharing feelings honestly, including some tears.
But the story on the mountain doesn't end with the inspiration. And the story of our congregation doesn't end with Paul's leaving. As Jesus had done over and over, he surprised the disciples by saying that not only must they not make a national park of the site, the couldn't tell anyone (yet)! Jesus once again turned upside down the standards of the world. Life goes on, and they can't just stop the journey. As followers of this Jesus, we're called, too, to a creative moving-on into a new future.
John Cobb, one of my seminary professors, has written about his understanding of Jesus and the power of creative transformation that is Christ: He said that "where Jesus' words are heard, a permanent principle of restlessness is introduced into history." (John B. Cobb, Jr.,Christ in a Pluralistic Age, Philadelphia: Westminster Press, ©1975, p. 109)
The transfiguration experience upsets the patterns, breaks the mold of our expectation and sets free a new spirit, a new creative power. Cobb went on to say that "Christian existence is a repeated process of giving itself up to what is unknown. This can happen only through the continual unmasking of our tendency to establish ourselves as we are and a repeated renewal of trust in the process of creative transformation." (Christ...p.131)
You see, what happened on the mountain is what can happen to us as well: the recognition of the light of Christ in some unexpected place, a realization that God's creative, transforming power is still at work among, within, and around us. No, we can't establish a standing committee on inspiration. We just have to remain open, expectant, and free to receive Christ anew in the other and in ourselves. And when we receive Christ we receive the grace, hope and love of God.
Another theologian once said that in Jesus' "deeds and words we meet a God who does not condescend, who does not need to lay aside his divinity to meet man in history, who can actually accept sinners as friends, who is separated from men only by man's pride and resistance, who runs to meet the returning delinquent teen- ager, who delights to give good things to men, who above everything else gives love, richly, inexhaustibly, beyond our deserving or our hope, even if it means he must be nailed to a cross!" (Colwell in Christ...p.105) That's grace, forgiveness, hope and the power of transformation.
It is my experience that that spirit of Christ is afoot here in this congregation.
There's a willingness to study, to explore faith, ideas, and meanings--like Bill Denny's series on Mystics, Susan Brayford's studies on Revelation and Ruth. Like the book group which meets again in mid-March to discuss the book Pain, the Gift Nobody Wants (Paul W. Brand and Phillip Yancey; NY: HarperCollins Publishers, ©1993).
And there's the church school with the multi-age grouping open classroom learning experience, truly a creative expression. The youth sharing a rap Christmas song... There's the willingness to experience a variety of readers and worship leaders during our gathering for worship. But most of all, there's the openness to, and expecting to see Christ in the stranger, to call forth the best from each other. That's an expression of the Word on Gilpin.
I see us continuing to be a community that nurtures, nourishes, encourages, and celebrates creative transformation in each other, in the stranger, and in the community around us.
You are aware of how you've grown and changed in your time of association here. Some of you could tell stories of transformation from your own experience, or perhaps from that of someone you know. We know of situations where God has called us beyond where we have been to a new possibility of existence.
The story of Aldonza the prostitute in the musical Man of La Mancha, the story of Don Quixote, is one such story. Aldonza has a history of abandonment and abuse, nonexistent self-esteem and no sense of hope at all. She's addressed by Don Quixote not out of that reality, but out of a vision of who she could be, a person with dignity, respect, and hope. Finally, after Don Quixote has died, she's addressed by her friends as Aldonza, and she replies, "My Name is Dulcinea." Her transformation is visible; she's broken through the perception wall and claimed a transfigured identity.
One of the themes of Brand's book Pain, the Gift Nobody Wants is the experience of people who have Hansen's Disease, or leprosy. The biggest problem of those with this disease, besides the historical stigma attached to it, is that they have lost almost all of their ability to feel physical pain. They can and do regularly injure their bodies without being aware of it, and thus lose pieces of their bodies to infection and accident. Medicine has come a long way in understanding and treating this disease.
Paul Brand reflects on the similarity of stigma related to Leprosy and now to AIDS. He tells this story of what a difference a smile and a welcome made in the life of one person disfigured by Hansen's disease:
His name was John. He was so advanced in his disease, that surgery could do little. He was a troublemaker; he treated others cruelly and defied all authority. He had experienced racism as a result of his dark skin. He would try to smile, but because of paralysis, his attempts would be frightening and sinister and misunderstood by those he tried to befriend. Dr. Brand's mother eventually was able to spend time with him and he became a Christian. "Neither conversion nor baptism had much immediate effect on John's personality. He made friends with a few patients, but years of rejection had poisoned him against all nonpatients. 'You're paid to do this work,' he would say to me... 'It's not because you're Christians, or because you care about me. It's because you're paid. Nobody likes an ugly face, and nobody wants a leper.'
"One day John made the same accusation at our church on the leprosarium grounds. 'You're paid to take communion with me. It's your job. What would happen if I went to town? Do you think those people would let me in their church?' I had no answer for him.
"Not long afterward I went to the leaders of the Tamil church in Vellore (India) and talked to them about John. 'Everyone can tell he has leprosy.' I said. 'He has a deformed face, ... his hands are very [deformed]. ... He poses no danger to others. Would you let him visit?' The elders agreed he could visit.
"'Can he take communion?' I asked, knowing that the church used a common cup. The elders looked at each other hesitantly, and discussed the matter at length, but in the end they decided he could also take communion.
"A few days later I accompanied John to the church... It was a tense moment for both of us. I could hardly imagine the trauma and paranoia a leprosy patient must feel attempting for the first time to enter that kind of public setting. We stood together at the back of the church. John's paralyzed face showed no reaction, but his trembling gave away his inner turmoil. I prayed silently that no church member would show him rejection.
"As the congregation stood to sing the first hymn, an Indian man seated toward the back half turned and saw us. We must have made an odd couple: a white foreigner standing next to a leprosy patient with patches of his skin in garish disarray. I held my breath.
"And then it happened. The man put down his hymnal, smiled broadly, and patted the bench next to him, inviting John to join him. John could not have been more startled. Haltingly, he made shuffling half-steps to the row and took his seat. I breathed a prayer of thanks.
"That one incident proved to the turning point of John's life. Medical treatments, compassionate care, rehabilitation--each step had helped, but it was a stranger's inviting a deformed Christian brother to break bread with him that truly changed John. He emerged from that service shining with joy.
"Years later, after I had moved to America, I visited [that town again] and made a side trip to a factory set up to employ the disabled. The manager wanted to show me a new machine that produced tiny screws for typewriter parts. ... He shouted at me that he wanted to introduce me to his prize employee ... [who] had just won ... [a] prize for producing the most parts with the fewest errors.
"When we arrived at the prize employee's work station, he turned to greet us and I found myself looking at the unmistakable crooked face of John ... He wiped the grease off his stumpy hand, shook mine, and grinned with the ugliest, loveliest, most radiant smile I had ever seen. Then he held out for my inspection a handful of the small precision screws that had won him the prize.
"A simple gesture of acceptance may not seem like much. For John ... however, it proved decisive. Because of the love shown in a tiny church in Vellore, John's old wounds healed. Perhaps for the first time, he felt free of the oppressive burden of shame and rejection. He felt like a human being again. The marks of his disease ... had not changed. But as a verse in the New Testament puts it, 'Perfect love drives out fear.' It drives out stigma as well." (329-31)
Because someone was willing to see the person behind the deformities and welcome him into worship, he was transformed.
We are the Word on Gilpin, you and I. We are the Word in our world, by nurturing, nourishing, encouraging and celebrating the spirit of creative transformation in each other, in ourselves, in the stranger, and in our communities. We give a light of hope, a source of transfiguring energy, to our world. By expectantly seeking Christ in our world, we stay open to surprise, to transformation, and to blessing.