First Baptist Church, West Hartford; Year A; Transfiguration Sunday; 3/2/14; Erica Wimber Avena
Exodus 24: 12 - 18 Matthew 17:1-9 In Good Company
Prayer: God of the mountains and the valleys of our lives, we pause now, in this place apart, to hear of and to look for your glory. Whether you come in dazzling light or quiet word, help us to interpret aright your leading in our lives, and your good news for the world. May the words of my mouth… We begin today with prayer. Matthew, Mark and Luke each give us an account of the story of the time when Jesus prayed on the mountain with some of his disciples and he was transfigured. His identity is revealed and he communes in the good company of those who have gone before him. He prepares himself for his future work – this is followed by his teaching ministry and leads right into his entry into Jerusalem and the events of the week before his death. Jesus prays. I would like to request from you, as a congregation, that we begin this Lenten season together with prayer, simple, honest, grounding prayer. I’m quite serious about this. It sounds perhaps old fashioned, maybe too evangelical sounding, maybe too new age – I get my labels mixed up. What I mean by it is a period of inward reflection, lingering over the words of scripture, a time of listening to one another, and a period of prayerful reflection. So that we can attend to the ways that God is moving in our souls as individuals and as a congregation. Traditionally Lent is a season of prayer and repentance/ forgiveness, and I can’t
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think of a better way to begin. What is the nature of God’s call in our own lives? And what is the shape of the future ministry of this church in this community? 1. Jesus often taught in parables: and I’d like to tell you a parable, in this case a true story: My father was a Professor of Botany at the University of Oregon in Eugene, where I grew up. My father ultimately had many wonderful accomplishments including being awarded a medal at Windsor Castle by Princess Margaret in a somewhat medieval ceremony involving costumes and royal protocols. But all of that is a story for another day; today I would like to relate to you what was probably the low point of his career. Dad had a Doctoral student who became his Post-Doctoral student by the name of Roger. Roger was brilliant, but he was an odd guy. He was easily Dad’s most promising student. Roger had an unusual affinity for the scientific process – which is actually not a frequently occurring trait! Roger had a knack for running useful experiments, a knack which most mortals just don’t have. Dad used to say that Roger could take an experiment that wasn’t going to work out (and most of science is documenting what doesn’t work – tedious business) and shifting it ever so slightly, not violating the experiment, but shifting things ever so slightly to gain ultimately useful results. Roger was amazing. He published profusely, he was frequently cited. He was golden; he had a brilliant future. But everyone who met him said, “Roger, brilliant guy…but odd...” Roger got a job at the University of California and off he went.
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Years later when I was in High School, Roger called our house. He was coming through town and wondered if he might stop in to say hello. My Dad was thrilled. My parents invited Roger and his family to dinner. My mother made the baked wild Chinook salmon dinner that she usually made for distinguished out of town guests – an Oregon thing. As we sat at the table it became clear in the course of the conversation that Roger …had… left science altogether. A stunned, shocked silence fell over the members of the Wimber family. A sales pitch followed. Roger asked us to join him in selling Amway products; his reason for his visit. I remember the silence that followed his question…the way it hung in the air. How we struggled to grasp what had changed. My father gently suggested to him the logical flaws in any pyramid scheme. Roger persisted. We eventually got him out the door – “if we wouldn’t join him in selling Amway, would we at least buy some soap?” – but it was hard. Hard to maintain civility, hard to witness my father’s deep disappointment in his most brilliant student, hard not to laugh at Roger… or to cry for him. For weeks afterwards I would catch my father walking around the house shaking his head, his hand on his forehead in disbelief, asking himself, “was there something I could have done…?” There were two things that were very obvious to me that day; one was that it wasn’t ultimately Dad’s fault. Dad’s responsibility in that relationship was to teach
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– which he did. Dad had a lot of access to Roger, but he could only guide him, he couldn’t make his decisions for him. The second thing I decided was -- that I never wanted to be like Roger! Roger had the benefit of many years of careful preparation and education. He had meaningful dialogue with the leading scientific thinkers of his day, he contributed to the larger scientific process. He turned his back on it all, without indicating that he even knew the value of what he had turned his back on, and instead he dedicated his energy to …Amway. I’m not so much against Amway – I’m certainly not against soap. It’s just so much not where Roger’s genius lay – it didn’t use any of the skills and talents he could offer the world and make a unique, valuable contribution. I tell you that story because it is the inverse of the transfiguration story. It raises the question of what we do with the traditions that shape us. How do we move forward, knowing what we know, loving whom we love, being who we are, with the tasks that are ahead of us? (I know enough to know I don’t want to be Roger!) In prayer, Jesus appears and manifests the great leaders of faith: Moses and Elijah. These two are not by accident, Moses brought us the 10 commandments and the law, Elijah called God’s people back to their right minds, to rightful worship, even when every last one of them had abandoned God and it
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came down to just him. Jesus is in good company, the company of those who’ve gone before him, who’ve prepared the way for him, and for this moment. Jesus isn’t healing lepers, or teaching the crowds, or answering yet another of Peter’s questions. In prayer he communes with the past and considers his future, and you can imagine he has a great deal to discuss, as Jesus prepares to walk into his immediate future. His future is difficult, it is an ambiguous path. There will be betrayal, pain, together with the warmth of friendship, and the touch of human love as when Mary will bathe his feet in perfume and dry them with her hair. There will be sorrow; and his task lies ahead of him as he faces towards Easter. For Jesus, it was Moses and Elijah on the mountain in prayer. It was enough perhaps that Peter and James and John had been there to see it. That they would know his heart, that they would remember who Jesus talked to in that prayer, to prepare him for a life that would promise forgiveness and redemption for us all. 3. Whose words do you take with you into prayer? Are you communing with your most important people, like Jesus did? Are the problems important that you take to prayer, or do you meet petty voices in prayer that vex you? Are your prayers the same or different than others have prayed? A lot of us want the same things. Many of us face major issues which many well known leaders have faced, do we commune with them, meditating on their words? (Or with the annoying
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person who spoke before thinking…?) When you sit quietly in prayer, here at church, or at home, or up on a mountain, or walking out of doors, or when you rise early in the morning or traveling to see someone. What is the company are you keeping? Mahatma Gandhi said: “Prayer is not an old woman's idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action.” He was in a position to know. Prayer focuses us, by taking the priority off of doing things and places it onto being in the moment. And prayer, when applied correctly always draws us ultimately back into the world and into action again. As it did Jesus. He did ultimately walk down from that mountain, and engaged his ministry, first healing an epileptic child...and finally ending at Calvary. I hope ultimately that we will do this as a church. I’m not sure when, but when the time is right, or as the Bible says, in the fullness of time. We will take up the question of what it means to be God’s people, as individual disciples and as part of God’s church. Let’s pray that it will be inspired, prayerful action.