A Sermon for the Last Sunday after the Epiphany
The Rev. Patricia Gillespie
1 Kings 19:9-18
Psalm 27
2 Peter 1:16-21
Mark 9:2-9
Its been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.
Well, not really.
At least not in my part of Lake Wobegon
or in the Episcopal churches of Lake Wobegon.
I began the week by welcoming a new dog into our familey. Buddy makes six.
At Good Sam we're finishing up our wall repair, installing our historic windows.
At Our Saviour's we hosted World Day of Prayer on Friday.
At St. Stephens we buried our senior warden, David, on Saturday.
And then the usual ongoing stuff including
meetings and calls about a wedding, and three baptisms.
There's been nothing spectacular, no voices booming from the heaven, no voices from the earthquake or fire, no great transfigurations. Just the ordinary busyness of the life of the small church.
Some of us have been looking for transfiguration in a new model of the church -- total ministry. But this week things kinda look the same. We have a developing group of preachers, and they were wonderful last month, but the scheduling meant I preached three times this week and will preach three times next week too. Seems kinda like old times again.
Sometimes I wonder if change and transformation in the church might be one of those "cleverly designed myths" that Peter mentions.
I try to escape from the ordinary busyness and changelessness of the church and to work out my need for control and change by setting up a new website toy. At least there I can make things happen. There I can see sudden transformation where everything looks new. Maybe not shot through with the radiant glory of God – but at least radically different.
Yet throughout this busy and ordinary week I kept coming back to today's readings, waiting for God to speak, from the mountain, from the internet, from somewhere transfiguring. I ponder Elijah and the ‘sheer silence' or the ‘still small voice.' I try to go off into a quiet place and listen. But there is too much busyness this week. I try to focus the silence a bit with some help my friend, David.
David had asked for the music from ‘Chariots of Fire' for his burial service. I listen to that and wait for God to speak. I want something dramatic for a sermon. I hope a chariot of fire will come along like it did for Elijah even though Elijah knew God was in the silence not the spectacular stuff. I read again about the chariot of fire in the Bible. Oddly enough it happens that that is the reading that will be done today in the common lectionary used by most other denominations.
I read about the chariot of fire And I'm stunned by what was there all along that I hadn't seen. The chariot is ‘transfigured' for me– seen anew; or seen for what it really is, which is what transfiguration is about. Oh, yes, the chariot does show up for Elijah. But he doesn't get to ride in it! What it says is that Elijah was taken up in the whirlwind. Probably whisked off quietly, while everyone else was diverted by the spectacle of the chariot of fire. Perhaps it was the same wind where Elijah had looked before when he was on the mountain whining to God about the Israelites.
I begin to wonder if God isn't hiding in the ordinary stuff that's been there all along. And we just didn't see it. Peter, James, and John were given new a new vision not out of the blue, but of the same old rabbi they'd been following. The transfiguration happens when we are given the eyes to see God at work in our world. Transfiguration is the ultimate Epiphany, the ultimate way God shows Godself to us. Transfiguration happens in our ordinary lives.
Our lives are being gradually transformed, changing ‘from glory to glory'
while we are looking for a spectacular sign.
We're talking evolution here.
One of my favorite shirts has the Christian fish on it.
But the fish has little legs ... and it has "Darwin" written on it.
I don't believe that is heresy or unchristian.
I think it's a theological statement about how God works in our lives.
Change isn't easy, and perhaps God has pity on us and makes that change gradually.
Kinda of creating us as we go along.
When the dry land appeared, and the creatures of the sea couldn't get around on it, God created legs for some of God's creatures. When the world around us changes and the church doesn't seem to work as well as it did before, God provides "new legs" for the church to get around. Not a radical change, but a new way of using the potential that is already there. Maybe we're getting our new legs in the ministry team. But we haven't forgotten how to swim either. The ordinary ministers of our churches still minister big time in some of the "good old ways": This week, these ministers organized an ecumenical service and provided an incredible array of goodies for the reception; musicians provide last minute, sometimes last second, worship support; ministers arrange for old church windows to be made new again and they wire sound systems in parish halls for overflowing funeral crowds; And as they do this ordinary work, they are radiant with Christ's love.
It's been an ordinary and quiet but transfiguring week in Lake Wobegon.
It's only rarely we see the blinding light on the mountaintop, or the earthquakes or chariots of fire or radical models of ministry. More often God shows Godself in the quiet moments, in the kindness of a friend, in the ongoing ministries of our tiny parishes. In those evolving glimpses of God at work, our lives become radiant with Christ. We only need open our eyes and seek God's face there.
As powerfully as a blinding transfiguration, the gradually increasing soft glow of our changing lives dispels the darkness and shows us God – our God who speaks in our hearts and says, "Seek my face."
Your face, LORD, may we seek.