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LINKS TO THE SERMONS |
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| “Transfiguration” February 3, 2008 The road from the Orlando airport into the city is lined with billboards, impossible to ignore because there is nothing else to look at – no mountains or trees, just some flat industrial buildings, some swamp areas and lots of billboards. All the billboards advertise the local theme parks: Disney World, Epcot Center, Universal Studios and Sea World. And not just one billboard each – a dozen for each one. One might think that there was nothing else in Florida worth advertising. After driving by the first wave of billboards something curious occurred to me; all the billboards for all the theme parks featured the same image – a thrill ride. Sea World didn’t have Shamu jumping out of a tank, they had a thrill ride. Disney didn’t have Mickey Mouse in front of Sleeping Beauty’s castle, a thrill ride. Universal didn’t have a move set or cameras or stunt men. Each billboard was a close-up of the faces of young people being hurled through space by some massive steel machine. And in every case the camera had captured the exact same expression on the faces of the thrill ride riders – that inexplicable and somewhat incongruous combination of euphoria and terror. It was probably an expression like that which was frozen on the faces of Peter, James and John on the Mount of Transfiguration. They were yokels from the hills of Galilee; now here they were on the mountain top seeing something beyond there imagination or ability to describe. Jesus was transfigured before them, what ever that meant. His face a clothes glowed in ways that Cheer detergent could only dream of. Was it a flash back to the way Moses glowed when he came back from his face to face meeting with God? Was it a flash forward to Jesus’ post-resurrection personage? What ever it was, it was the ultimate thrill ride. If the Bible was a theme park, this would be the picture on the billboard, Peter, James and John wearing those expressions of euphoria mixed with terror. If it was a movie it would have to have George Lucas for the special effects and Spielberg to give it the right blend of suspense and believability – like Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Just when you thought it was all over the next surprise would come along. The alien spacecraft show up right on schedule, with all there lights and agile maneuvers. Then the leave and the earthlings applaud and slap each other on the back. But it’s not over; another spaceship comes – even bigger – takes up the whole landing field. Then it goes but it isn’t over. The mother ship comes. You feel it before you see it, that low rumble that fills you with something like euphoria mixed with terror. Here it comes, belching out cloud banks as it moves for a cloak. It hovers over the earth base dwarfing everything below it. When it sounds the famous five tones it shatters the plate glass windows in all the buildings below. Then the door begins to open. This story is like that. First, Jesus is transfigured right before their eyes. But, it’s not over; then Moses and Elijah appear. But, that ain’t all – the voice - which is the unmistakable voice of God. It’s not hard to tell which of the characters in this story is the preacher. When other people are stunned into silence, preachers feel an urge to speak. Preachers think every experience in life is made better by surrounding it with verbiage; doesn’t have to be profound – anything to break the deafening silence. So, Peter speaks and says something like this, “Wow! This is great! – Really great! We are so lucky to be here. Let’s just set up camp and stay right here – doesn’t get any better than this.” The host church for the Orlando conference was Saint Luke’s United Methodist, a thriving church in a growing upper-middle-class suburb. And the first and most lasting impression I had of the church and everyone who was part of it was how pleased they were with themselves. When staff members spoke, they said something like this, “Wow! This is great! Really great! It is great to be here, to be us. We want to just stay on this mountain top forever.” The senior pastor made jokes about his fear that the bishop might move him from this idyllic spot. Obviously there was no place to compare with where he was, a mountain top, the pinnacle – “I am so glad to be me,” was his mantra. And why not? He had a huge beautiful sanctuary, state of the art sound, video and theatrical lighting. There were several choirs and praise bands, a dance troupe, an orchestra – a bell choir with so many octaves that the bass bells looked like five gallon buckets (took two big men to ring them) and the high bells were so small that only the dogs could hear them. Maybe that’s why they had a dog ministry – they did. They had a gymnasium larger than most high schools, a full time athletic director, a full time fine arts director, a full time chef. They had a full time human resources director to manage their 50 full time employees and 200 part time. They had more resources, both human and financial than they could put to use. They not only gave massive amounts to missions, every summer they sent their entire youth group on mission trips somewhere in the world. And it all just kept coming. It was good to be them. They talked about somebody donating a few million dollars that they weren’t sure yet what to do with. They were on the mountain top. After the waves of envy in me subsided, I remembered what Jesus said to Peter in this story for my first Sunday back at my church. Jesus said, “No we are not going to stay here - because this isn’t where we live - this isn’t who we are.” We are going back down the mountain to where the air is not so pristine and rarified, back where things are more confusing and choices less clear - back to where the real people are. We ended the reading too soon. As soon as Jesus gets down the mountain the real world closes in; the sick close in on him with their demands. If that wasn’t enough to make him want to run back to the hill, he has trouble with the IRS – no kidding, tax issues. Then in the middle of a staff meeting an argument erupts about status and pecking order. But, Jesus doesn’t run back to the mountain to be sheltered in the comfortable presence of Moses and Elijah. As Luke tells it in his gospel, “He set his face to go to Jerusalem.” When things were tough, he made up his mind to go to where they would be even worse. Coming down the mountain meant hardship; Jerusalem meant death – because that was his calling – that was where the ministry was. In the workshop I conducted for the conference, I confessed that I was not the pastor of a mega-church. The reason I went to the “Large Church Initiative Conference, I told them, is because there is no small, old, declining church initiative conference. When my presentation was over a guy came to speak with me; the Director of Evangelism for Asbury Seminary. He said he was going to start work immediately on organizing a small church initiative conference. Here’s why. He said he has believed for a long time that true discipleship is born out of struggle – small churches know about struggle. Hardship, lack of resources (Human and financial) Anxiety, fear, uncertainty and disappointment: these are the things most churches live with on a daily basis. He said he believed that the churches that were struggling just to stay alive were the crucible where authentic discipleship was forged. Don’t hear me wrong, I still retain a bit of envy for what they had at St. Luke’s. And don’t misunderstand; there was no question that the folks there loved Jesus – no doubt there. They honored Jesus in every way and bent every effort to serve Jesus. But, I never got any sense that they needed Jesus. The disciples learned that they needed Jesus, and that if they had Jesus they didn’t need much of anything else. He set his face to go to Jerusalem. The disciples knew what that meant and went with him. They left the pinnacle experience and the holy glow and headed down the mountain. When the senior pastor of St. Luke’s was talking about his 16 year tenure at that church and how much he wanted to stay right there for the rest of his career, I thought to myself, maybe some day he will be lucky enough to serve a church – like this one. If we ever did make it to the mountain top, it was a long time ago. Our resources are not unlimited. Buildings are getting old, community is getting old, people are getting old. We don’t have five worship services all overflowing. We have two, one here and one in the chapel; neither is full or is ever likely to be. We get just enough new members to make up for the funerals. We don’t have any full time staff other than me. Our paid staff works more than they are paid for and most of our ministries are maintained by volunteers – some for a long time. Some are getting pretty tired. They have other issues, health issues, family, financial, but they keep on coming. How long can we keep it up? – we don’t know. Will we still be here for the next generation? – hard to say. We live with uncertainty, anxiety, disappointment, plans that don’t materialize, a shortage of just about everything. It’s not just our condition, it’s our identity. It’s the sort of environment in which true disciples are forged; people who are learning that Jesus is really all we need anyhow. And that, finally, Jesus is all we have to offer the world, and that is as good as it gets. We are people, who in the midst of the crush of life, set our faces to go to Jerusalem, because that’s where he is going and he has beckoned us to follow. And in our weakness we discover that Jesus is really all we ever needed, his grace is sufficient. So, the plane lifted off from central Florida and landed me back in Southern California. My wife and daughter met me in our ten year old Honda with the ding in the fender and brought me to the parsonage off the parking lot of the church on Hollenbeck and San Bernardino Rd. And a voice inside my head (or my soul) said something like this, “This is great! I’m so lucky to be here!” I wanted you to know that – and that I come to this calling as your pastor with that enigmatic mix of euphoria and terror – buoyed up by the certain knowledge that what ever else we may not have, we have Jesus - and Jesus is all we need. Maybe they who travel light, travel best. Brothers and sisters, lets be on our way; lets set our face to go to Jerusalem, not because we are strong but because his strength is ours. His grace has brought us safe this far, and grace will lead us home. |
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