THE GLORY IS THERE

THE GLORY IS THERE! DO YOU SEE IT?

(Preached on Sunday, February 6, 2005)

And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. -Matthew 17:2

It always catches you by surprise.

You are sitting at breakfast. The last day of a week-long Elderhostel. A couple you’ve talked to a bit on and off during the week come and ask if they can join you. The conversation wanders around bits of trivia from the tops of your heads. Then it turns serious, and they are speaking from the bottom of their hearts. Their middle-aged son has just announced that his is gay and they are trying to come to terms with that — psychologically and spiritually. Suddenly that almost anonymous couple is transfigured before your very eyes — changed from casual acquaintance to ... what?

Look up “transfiguration” in the dictionary and it says “dramatic change in appearance.”

The couple doesn’t look any different than when they first sat down — but, then again, they do.

Because the polite smiles are gone and you now look deeply into their eyes to see a loving mother and father.

But more than that, there is also a change in you, for you have moved from superficial small talk as well, and allow yourself to reveal some of your own pain and joy.

The chatty, cheerful waitress comes by and takes your used dishes and remarks about the weather and of course has no idea what is happening. How could she? Perhaps if she sat down and looked and listened she might discover the place in her own soul where she keeps the pain and love. But she has a job to do, and moves off quickly.

When the three disciples and Jesus were on that mountaintop, what was going on there?

Would a hiker strolling by have seen anything unusual? Could it be that the disciples sensed something so holy, so profound, so joyously painful, that the only way they could talk about it was to use images of clouds and voices?

We don’t know, of course.

It was a moment, just like the resurrection, when the glory and power and wonder and beauty of God broke through into this world of time and space and muck and mire.

It was a moment when time stood still as we measure time, when all the boundaries and limits that we know in this life were overwhelmed or expanded and eternity and infinity touched the earth.

Novelist Annie Dillard reminds us that those moments are just as likely to happen today as any other time in history.

“There is no less holiness at this time — as you are reading this — than there was the day the Red Sea parted ... There is no whit less enlightenment under the tree by your street than there was under the Buddha’s bo tree. There is no whit less might in heave or on earth than there was the day Jesus said ‘Maid arise’ to the centurion’s daughter, or the day Peter walked on water, or the night Mohammed flew to heaven on a horse. In any instant the sacred may wipe you with its finger. In any instant the bush may flare, your feet may rise, or you may see a bunch of souls in a tree. In any instant you may avail yourself of the power to love your enemies; to accept failure, slander, or the grief of loss; or to endure torture.”

God is no less active or present in the world today than during the times of Moses or Abraham or Jesus or Paul.

All that we ever see of God in the world are the works of God, the effects of God — the movement of the trees, the fluttering of a curtain in the window as the wind passes.

Frederick Buechner described it with these words:

“Through some moment of beauty, some sudden turning of their lives, most [people] have caught glimmers at least of what the saints are blinded by. Only then, unlike the saints, they tend to go on as though nothing has happened.”

All we can see is glimmers and glimpses, on occasion, and even then what we are seeing is sideways evidence. Projections.

The side effects of God in the world.

Maybe it’s a bush that burns without being consumed.

Maybe it’s a glow. Maybe it’s a cloud. Maybe it’s another human being who bears the marks of God’s hand in her life.

The point of this story is just this, that those moments do happen, when heaven touches earth and the glory of eternity breaks through.

They are brief. We long for them to remain, like Peter, wanting to enshrine them and dwell in them always.

But that is not the way it works.

For that would not be good for us or for the world.

The truth is, the moment passes, and then the question becomes what do we do with the glimmer of God which we glimpsed?

After all, life remains tough and crowded and difficult.

The test of any vision is what we do when we get back down to the bottom of the mountain. This is life.

We are called to make it a better place.

We called to make this a better church.

We are called to let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

We are called to love one another as Christ has loved us and to love our neighbors as ourselves and to love our enemies.

There are at least two responses we can make to the moments of transfiguration we experience.

The first is to make things beautiful. “Look at the blue in those tiny petals,” she squealed. “It is just so lovely.”

And it was. At least, after she showed it to the people in her tour group and her enthusiasm infected them.

They wouldn’t have seen the flower without her to notice it. The young, female tour guide in Alaska spoke of the tundra as “my back yard.” She was infectious as she shared the beauty of the tiny wild flowers from the windswept tundra most of us clods would walk right over.

There is beauty all around, but not fully realized until we notice it, enjoy it, proclaim it, and thus complete it.

It may be the beauty of a red sky at sunset, a simple flower others pass as a weed, or a grizzled and curmudgeonly friend that only years of relationship and experience with has allowed you to see the gentleness behind the gruffness.

God created the world. That includes our friends. Our family. Tiny blue flowers. Sunsets. Our job is to recognize their beauty — the beauty of God shining forth — to love it, and whenever possible, proclaim it. In this way we are witnesses to the transfiguration.

The second response is to allow the transfiguration to lead us to connect with others in a deeper, more profound way.

After all, we are good at keeping our distance.

Many times I’ve steered a conversation to something less demanding when I’ve sense that things were getting serious.

It’s so much easier to not get involved.

But God often wants us to get involved.

Such is Myra’s story. Myra was one of those church members who always helped at the bazaar and the pancake breakfast. She didn’t have any particular talent suited to these events, but she was always willing to lend a hand in any way she could. She sang in the choir — she had a passable alto voice — and she served on the social ministry committee. As the town librarian, she would occasionally see the children of the farmworker families who lived on the edge of town in a gathering of run-down trailers come into the library to work on a school project. She would talk to the children and came to know some of the them. She tried to talk about their families with others at the church, but never got much more response than the idea that they could come to the church rummage sale to purchase cheap clothing and perhaps the children could be allowed to eat free at the church pancake breakfast.

So, one day Myra decided to take a walk down by the trailer park. She met some of the children on the street she had come to know in the library. They invited her home with them and she met their mother, Beatriz. Beatriz apologized for her own appearance, the appearance of the children, and of the trailer. She said they struggled to make it on her husband’s earnings from picking the vegetables and fruit from the local farms. Myra asked how she could help, but Beatriz said they would make it on their own. Myra asked if she could come to visit again, and Beatriz agreed.

They developed a friendship over the weeks and Myra met some of the other women in the trailer camp. She discovered they had many talents — sewing, knitting, crocheting, quilting. She began to provide materials and invited the women to create things that could be sold at the next church bazaar. And when the time for it rolled around and the women of the church were setting up, in walked Myra, with Beatriz and all of her new friends, with all the things they had created: their offering tot he church which had shunned them. And the women held their heads high. And the women of the church stood in awe of these women, of their gifts, and of Myra.