SunFeb192012
Scripture: MARK 9:2-9; PSALM 50:1-6
Nearly four centuries ago, a group of Christians left the Netherlands to travel across the ocean to a new world. We call them “Pilgrims,” because pilgrims are people who go on a journey for religious and spiritual reasons.
This coming November, some forty Federated people will travel to the Holy Land for a ten-day visit. From the beginning of our planning, Peggie Jo Shinagawa, our lead organizer, has been adamant that we think of this as a “pilgrimage” and not a tour. Because we too see this as a journey of spiritual significance. Our intention is not just to tour the lands, to visit relics, to sight-see. Our purpose in journeying to that far-away land is to deepen our faith, to come closer to God, to have a richer sense of the mission on which God sends us.
In the book many of us will be reading during Lent, Christianity for the Rest of Us, Diana Butler Bass says “Emerging Christianity is about change—about changing from spiritual tourists to pilgrims—about transforming our selves, our congregations, and our communities. We [have a destination, and we] are going there, to a change of heart that revolutionizes one’s whole life” (p. 11).
So as we prepare for our Annual Meeting this afternoon, this is what we’re about here at Federated. We’re on a pilgrimage toward a world whose contours we can only dimly make out, a world in which everything we are and do is touched by God’s hand, and in which every place and every person and every community is the mission field in which the work of God might be carried out. Like our spiritual forbears of some four centuries ago, we’re on a pilgrimage to a holy land. And nothing will deter us.
The story of the transfiguration of Jesus is a kind of pilgrimage—it’s a journey with a deeply spiritual focus—and it’s something of a model for us. It’s striking that the trip up that mountain is not the idea of Peter, James, and John. It’s Jesus’ idea. It’s Jesus who says, “Let’s go up.” The disciples follow on a path that Christ has laid out. As a church, it’s crucial that we go on the journey that Christ leads, not our own. It’s not about what we think we need spiritually. It’s about what Christ knows we need at our core. It’s not about pursuing our own desires but seeking the desire of Christ. It’s not about self-fulfillment, but God fulfillment.
As with that long-ago trek to the summit, the Christian pilgrimage is also a trip up. Which means it can be arduous. It’s a challenge. It’s not all sweetness and light. It’s work. But with that hard work comes a reward, a sense of accomplishment, and a vista we were never able to see before. It may be hard work, but it’s also a great gift.
What’s most striking about this whole episode, though, is that when we go on this pilgrimage, and let Jesus lead the way, and climb the mountain we’re given to climb, we have the chance to be filled and nourished in a new way. Transfiguration happens to Jesus. And it can happen to Christ’s church, as well. If we let it. If we go on that pilgrimage. If we follow and climb.
“Transfiguration”: it’s an odd word. It’s fair to say, I think, that most days go by without our using it. It means literally “to change shape.” Jesus changes shape, and we’re invited to, as well.
Nobody is quite sure exactly what sort of changes the church will have to make in the coming decades in order to remain a vital and faithful force in the world. There’s a risk as we go forward. But that’s part of the excitement. Because the world is wide open. And if we listen carefully, we will discern a word from God that will move us, as pilgrims, toward the land of our longing.
We have hints of what that new and exciting future asks of us, and it’s what we at Federated are working toward. Here, in my eyes, is some of what that new future looks like:
The mountain God bids us climb, with Jesus as the guide, is one in which we are constantly growing in the faith. Transformation is the word we often use for that part of the spiritual journey. Prayer, worship, book study, and engagement with the Bible are some of the practices that can lead to our ongoing transformation. All of these provide opportunities to be fed and challenged and reshaped.
I know this makes me a little weird, but there’s nothing that excites me more than people catching on to the magical world of the Bible. Both our sons are studying religion in school, and one called recently to say that he had, just that day, had a thrilling Old Testament class, in which they had explored the significance of the very first stories in the Bible, the stories of God’s creation of the world, and how exciting it was for him to discover their incredible intricacies, beauties, and ongoing significance. One of his examples says so much. The professor told about how, in the first creation story in Genesis, after each day of creation, our Bibles commonly say that God looked at what God had made and saw that “it was good,” and on the last day that it was “very good.” Our son’s teacher said that the Hebrew original says something much more like, “Wow!” with the reaction to the last day as “Really Wow!” To learn that, to learn that God’s reaction to the world God has made is “Wow!” is to undergo a transformation of sorts. It’s maybe to see that this world is stupefyingly magnificent. It’s for us to look at the earth and say “Wow!,” to look at all its people and say “Wow!,” to look at the whole extraordinary package and say “Really Wow!” It changes our relationship with the whole thing. To really take that in is to be transformed.
Stewardship is another way in which our faith is transformed. When you realize that Jesus talked more about money than any other subject—more than about sin or morality or sex—you come to see that what we do with our money matters more than just about anything else we do. Our tenacious hold on our money is one of our biggest impediments to growing in faith. To realize that, and to more and more give away large chunks of that money—to let go both of that money, and of its enormous power over us—is to be freed of one of the biggest albatrosses holding back our faith. More and more, our transformation, our transfiguration, will entail a whole new approach to our money. We have many extremely generous givers here, but to be frank, Federated needs more leaders in stewardship, more people who know the deep joy of giving substantially and graciously. And yes, it will help the budget. But the real reason for more tithers is not to fatten a budget. It’s to foster a deep sense of generosity.
So transfiguration is about seeking God with our minds and souls and hearts. And it’s about deepening our generosity. These are practices. They’re disciplines. And as we practice them, we are made into new people. From the inside. It’s relatively easy to undergo transfiguration on the outside. A makeover, a haircut, a new wardrobe: these have a way of freshening us up—feel free to admire my new haircut, by the way! But the kind of change God seeks has to do with changing our insides.
The most recent issue of The New Yorker has a long and fascinating article about one of the first people ever to receive a face transplant. After an electrical accident essentially burned his face off, a team of doctors gave Dallas Wiens a new face. “Wiens had no memory of the electrocution or the hours leading up to it, but he later spoke of having had a religious experience. At the moment his head touched the high-voltage line, he had a profound sense of dying, of being sucked into an infinite void, which he understood to be Hell. ‘I saw every sin flash before my eyes, and then I felt a pain that I never before or since felt,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t physical and it wasn’t internal. It was like being forsaken, that’s the only way to describe it. I remember crying out and hearing nothing, and it was utter impermeable darkness. It was basically separation completely from the divine, and then coming back with God’s arms around me, and an overwhelming sense of peace’”—Wiens’ equivalent of being told that he, too, is God’s beloved child, with whom God is well pleased. In fact, “Wiens began telling people that he would not undo his injury; he had lost his face, but he had found family, religion, and a way to become a better person. ‘God took my whole life and gave me a new one,’ he explained” (Feb. 13 & 20, 2012, pp. 70, 71).
Transfiguration is about realizing that there is nothing more important than the God who is at the center of everything. So there are at least two more things that Federated is called to. One is to claim and affirm that holy power in our lives, and find ways to “tell our story” to friends and neighbors. We’re invited to really take in that we are all God’s beloved, and to find gentle and inviting ways to convey that to the people we know. “Telling our story” is a vital part of any healthy church.
And the other thing we’re called to is to realize that in order for the circle to be complete, there’s a deep need for all of us who have received that profound peace to pass it on to others. That’s why developing and cultivating ministries is at the core of our pilgrimage here. It’s why our Governance and Ministry task force has done the extraordinary work it has done in focusing us on that task. The church of Jesus Christ, and the world itself, will be strengthened as we extend the grace of God to those who need it. Church renewal has everything to do with finding a place, or places, to contribute to the larger whole.
The psalm we read earlier begins with a compelling line: “The mighty one, God the Most High, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting” (50:1). Summoned! At every moment of our lives, we are being summoned to something: to dream big dreams, to attend to the God whose love upends every expectation, to practice new and radical generosity and hospitality, to find ways to tell our story to people who may desperately need what Federated has to offer, to find avenues in which to give ourselves for the sake of the healing of the nations. We are being summoned, in the words of the hymn we sang earlier, to be transformed by the grace of God into beautiful creatures who radiate that grace wherever we go. “Will you let my love be shown, will you let my name be known, will you let my life be grown in you and you in me?” (“The Summons,” v. 1) And in the words we will sing now: “Summoned by the God who made us . . .,/ Let us bring the gifts that differ and, in splendid, varied ways,/ Sing a new world into being, one in love and one in praise” (“Sing a New World into Being,” v. 1).
That is what we are summoned to, today and always: to sing a new world into being, by the grace and love of God. May we be on that pilgrimage. Can I get a loud and enthusiastic “Amen”!