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You are here: Home / Archives for Transfiguration

Last Epiphany 2020: Under our noses

February 23, 2020 by Cam Miller

Text for Preaching: Matthew 17:1-9, “The Transfiguration”

I know people forever changed by battle,
both on the ground splattered by blood,
and in the air singed by fire
while beholding a face through the glass
of another cockpit.

I know people forever changed by childbirth,
those for whom it was inside out
and the ones for whom the experience
was outside in.

Accidents and catastrophe
have transfigured and disfigured and re-rendered
more humans than can be counted,
lives ripped open and
torn asunder without warning.

The angel of death tip-toeing near,
touching the spine or whispering in the ear,
has changed many lives
for both good and bad.

Millions are enraptured almost weekly –
a Pentecostal fever
shivering the brain and racking the body
until encased in a dead faint.
Whether such drama has ever changed a life
I cannot say.

Few of us can point to a single moment,
a pencil spot in time
upon which everything changed for us –
upon which nothing going forward
would ever be the same.
And yet…all of us – all of us – have turned on the dime
of such moments.

We probably did not recognize
the gravity of the moment
the geography of the spot
the singularity of the minute or second
the separation of before and after,
but it was there
when we were.

In fact, all of us
have more than one moment
that changed everything going forward
and rendered everything we left behind
as just so much history.

It is surely a measure of grace
that we do not recognize those moments in real time
because we might never have chosen
what we did choose
and our lives would be lesser for it.
But that is how it is with us:
nearly every moment
transforming
and transfiguring,
and thanks be to God,
we do not even know it.
Moses,
Elijah,
Buddha,

Jesus, and Mohammad
were each taken up
and rendered differently –
changed in an instant
of enormous transformation.

Not only them,
but mystics in every religion
write poetry and songs
about being changed in a razor-thin trice –
a twinkling flash of power
beyond forethought
or control.

This is how we live,
you and me even,
but we just hate to see it
as it actually is.

Ironically, we would rather pretend
that our lives are routinely ordered
because in that kind of world,
we call the shots.
We try to see randomness, change,
and transformations as unusual,
unique,
the exception
to all those plans
and the likeliest of scenario
we imagine for our futures.
That child we gave birth to,
the only one
that could have only been created
at the very moment that his or her conception took place,
a moment we likely never noticed,
became the child we have grown accustomed to
and may even imagine we planned.

That spouse we chose
and probably do not associate with randomness,
took place as a result of endless choices
by so many other people,
known and unknown,
that to call it “our” choice
seriously underestimates the role
of other people
making other choices,
many of which were random and ridiculously
improbable.

The concept of the self-made man or woman
singularly carving out
his or her own destiny
is laughable.

The thin vision
of our lives as chosen and ordered
and the result of a good plan,
is dim vision at best,
and more truthfully, blind.

I have nothing to say about the so-called
“Transfiguration” story we hear twice a year
in the lectionary readings.
As far as I can tell,
it was told to one-up Moses and Elijah,
and later, among Gentiles,
as some kind of evidence
that Jesus was the biggest
and bestest of them all.
As a story it has very little,
if anything, to say to us
about the lives we lead.

But it does serve to remind us,
or at least it can,
that every next moment
is ripe with possibilities
we do not expect
and likely do not see
because of the assumptions we make.

The events
and people
and experiences we live
are braided with singular moments
and delivered to us
via people and events
we did not have control over
and receive often without input.

This is obvious to us
when something big comes along that we were not expecting
but it is equally true in every moment,
even though we are asleep to it.

We probably could not tolerate
hyper-sensitivity to this truth
but it would bolster our humility
and open our minds
if we were a tad more awake.

While we do get to make plans
and work toward goals
and anticipate rewards and accomplishments
for our efforts,
we should also be keenly aware
that nothing we have done, accomplished, or will do
is without the participation of countless other people
contributing to the trajectory of our lives
and the triumphs and defeats we have known.
In everything we do
and plan to do,
both randomness and serendipity
play a role.
And so we are changed,
transformed even,
by singular moments in time
we did not recognize
and often cannot trace back
or put our finger on.

I really do believe
that were we to ascend a mountaintop
from which we could see all the moments of our lives
spread out in detail before us,
we would be blown away by what we saw.
The crazy whacko-mystical story
about Jesus, Elijah, and Moses on a cloud
is nothing compared to the transformations in our lives.

If only we could see our lives
as they actually unfolded
and suddenly recognize the patterns
and interconnected events and people
we have always considered unrelated,
we would be speechless.

There is no real “so what?” to this sermon,
it is more like a sunset
or a dramatic spray of the milky way
on a perfectly clear night.

Just something to look at and say,
“Wow, we’re really small, aren’t we?”
And then bow our heads,
hold our hearts,
and say, “Thank you.”

 

 

 

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Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: Change, Transfiguration, transformation

Last Epiphany C, 2019: Cloud Dancing Without Wings

March 3, 2019 by Cam Miller

Honestly, I am more of a rabbi than a priest,
although I wouldn’t stack up intellectually
with most of the rabbis I have known.

I say I am more rabbi than priest,
because I am much more interested
in juicing the gospel stories
for all their practical spiritual wisdom
than I am ogling at the splashy supernatural stuff.
I want to know what Jesus taught
and where he pointed for us to walk,
rather than be asked to believe events from 2000 years ago
that have never entered the purview of my own experience.
Sure, I can handle the little mystical moments:
the still small voice
and the glimpse of something
through the veil of insight.

But don’t ask me to pass judgment
on water-walking without skies
or cloud-dancing without wings.

I have known plenty of people
graced with the ability to accept such stories
with open arms
and open minds
and open hearts
and I have marveled that they could do so.
I wish that was me,
but I am an unrepentant Thomas
who believes it
only when my own fingers
have felt the slick, wet wounds
and seen the blood stains move.

I am so much more comfortable
with Marie Howe’s description of an inkling of something.
“Once or twice or three times, I saw something
rise from the dust in the yard, like the soul
of the field – rise and hover like a veil in the sun
billowing – as if I could see the wind itself.
I thought I did it – squinting – but I didn’t.
As if the edges of things blurred – so what was in
bled out, breathed up and mingled…I saw it.
It was thing and spirit both: the real
world: evident, invisible.”

I wish Luke had done that with his transfiguration story.
Imagine Luke telling the story
from the poet Marie Howe’s perspective:
“Oh, about eight days after Peter
had sort of, kind of,
acknowledged Jesus as the Christ,
Jesus took Peter, James, and John
and went up on the mountain to pray.

And while Jesus was praying,
the disciples slept, as was their preference.
Peter, slightly aroused by his own snoring,
squinted open the slits of his eyes ever-so-narrowly,
and for an instant, he thought he saw Jesus
with two other people standing in a fog.
‘Once or twice or three times, he saw something
rise from the cloud there on the mountain,
like the very soul of the rock – rise and hover like a veil
in the sun billowing – as if he could see the Almighty itself.
He thought he did – squinting – but he didn’t.’”

You see, if Luke had only written something like that,
it would have been left to our own imaginations.
If he had made it more like a abstract painting,
or a poem
or a song
we could really get into it
and talk about how to interpret it.
Instead, it is more like a coloring book
where we are left to color inside the lines,
and if we don’t, we appear to be woeful scribblers.

Maybe it is just me,
and not very many of you share my struggle.
If so, God bless you for your patience.
Now that I have gotten that off my chest though,
we can move on
and knock on the door these readings lead us to.

Clearly, Luke knows that Jesus
stands in the shadow of Moses
and his story let’s everyone know
that while Moses went up on the mountain with God,
so did Jesus.
While Moses shined with the light of God,
so did Jesus.
While Moses received the commandments from God
so Jesus received wisdom from on high.

Trust me, this parallelism is no coincidence.
All through the gospel stories,
from the birth narrative
to the Passion of his last week and death,
the parallelism between Jesus and Moses,
and Jesus and Elijah, (the other great prophet)
is granular and intentional.

That is because,
in those first generations after Jesus,
Moses and Elijah
were THE frame of reference.
That was the comparison that mattered.
To say Jesus was like Moses and Elijah
was to say the best thing possible about him.

But we do not get it,
because Christianity does not care
about Moses and Elijah
even though Jesus was deeply rooted in a reverence
for both of them.
We care about Paul,
and Augustine and Thomas Aquinas,
maybe even Richard Hooker and Karl Barth,
but we have nearly forgotten
Jesus’ frame of reference:
Exodus, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Micah, Amos, and Jeremiah.

So, whatever else this story
about Jesus on the mountain tells us,
it is telling us
Jesus didn’t come out of nowhere,
and he wasn’t the first of his kind.

It is telling us, that what he taught
was wisdom with deep roots,
and points to the prophets that came before him.
That is the first thing that we need to recognize
in this story in front of us:
that Jesus is a continuation of a millennia
of sacred wisdom.

The other thing we might notice,
is the idea that sometimes,
in some places,
with some people
and for a special moment,
that veil
between the human and the holy
thins.

I’m not talking about cloud-dancing
or water-walking,
though maybe some of you have had such spectacular views.
I am talking about moments
when we imagine we saw something;
or suspect that the insight or inkling we’ve received
had a source beyond our own brain;
or interpreted a suddenly fortunate connection
or turn of events, as something more than serendipity.

I doubt any of us here
have ever been enclosed inside a cloud
on top of a mountain
within a whisper of Jesus, Moses and Elijah,
but it would not surprise me at all
to hear many of us have had mountaintop experiences
when a long-term fog dissipated
and suddenly we could see clearly again…and
finally, we could breathe deeply again.

Likewise, it seems doubtful
that any of us have been handed tablets of stone
that set down in no uncertain terms,
the boundaries on our choices and actions.
On the other hand, I would guess
that more than a few of us
have received stunningly clear guidance
when we had been lost and without a clue
as to how we should proceed.
Such an experience is even more astounding
if we didn’t really understand the wisdom at the time
we received it, but
only later, when we were looking back on it.

Most of us, I am guessing,
would be hesitant to report that God spoke to us directly –
in an audible voice,
from out of a cloud
or the back seat of a car.
Yet we may be more willing to share an experience or two
with a friend we trust,
about when God spoke to us with clarity
in the audible voice of another person;
or through the words of a prophet;
or even in the whisper of a dream
or an inner voice.

It would not surprise me at all, in fact,
if there was near universal consensus
about an experience of the sacred
appearing “once or twice or three times”
rising up like dew
in the field of awe
over some natural beauty
or nature’s exquisite symbiosis.

People of faith
are precisely people of faith
because we have been there
when the veil thinned
and something of the holy
leaked through.
It cannot be manufactured
and it cannot be sculpted or controlled,
it can only be witnessed
and experienced.
Most of the time
it cannot even be explained
or described very well.
And, truth be told,
the more dramatic we are in the description
the less likely we are
to convey it.

We should not look
to the bread and wine of communion
to thin that veil,
nor the music,
nor the prayers,
nor the beautiful bond of community,
nor even Exodus and Luke.
But if we come to them with open hearts and minds,
at least in my experience,
we will routinely receive reminders
of those times the veil thinned,
and hints about where to look next,
or a vision of what came through
at some past moment
when the veil thinned between us.

And sometimes, in spite of ourselves,
the liturgy and the bible and the sacraments
do become the vehicles that thinned that veil.

Truth is, unlike my dog, we human beings
rarely live in the moment.
So we need reminders
and encouragement
and rituals.
We even need those difficult stories
like Exodus and Luke today,
so that we struggle instead of get complacent.

But how lovely it is
when those moments arrive like the next tick of a clock
and we become suddenly aware
that something in the moment
has shifted,
and there with us in real time is a presence
or a wisdom
or “a thing and spirit both” –
and we know in our heart of hearts
we saw it or felt it or heard it
and recognized it before it was gone.

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Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: Marie Howe, Thinning the veil, Transfiguration

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