Sermon: Last Sunday After the Epiphany

The Rev. Allan Sandlin, associate rector
> click here for the Scripture for the day

If you were to ask a Harry Potter expert about the meaning of transfiguration, she might quote Professor McGonagall’s introduction to first-year students at Hogwarts:

"Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts. Anyone messing around in my class will leave and not come back. You have been warned."

In the world of Harry Potter, we see things and people changed from one thing into another. Students turning pairs of white rabbits into slippers, Hagrid trying to change Dudley into a pig, that sort of thing. Complex and dangerous it may be, Professor McGonagall, but when things get transfigured at Hogwarts, we often laugh. A lot.

In this morning’s gospel, we hear once again the story of The Transfiguration. There’s nothing magical about this moment in Jesus’ life, though it is an awe-inspiring vision.

The Hebrew scriptures add to the splendor of the day with this extraordinary story of the ascension of Elijah taken up into a whirlwind with chariots and horsemen. Even St. Paul gets into the act describing the light of God shining in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

In Mark’s gospel, Jesus led Peter, James and John up onto a high mountain and he was transfigured before them, his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. Here on the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, we have one more epiphany, the most profound of them all. Some call it a theophany but biblical scholar, Morna Hooker, more accurately calls this moment a christophany, the moment when we recognize “who Jesus Christ really is.”

The transfiguration of Jesus was a brief window for those three disciples to witness the human Jesus become something more divine just for an instant, a glimpse of his divinity bathed in bright light. It’s easy to read this story and be awed by the vision of a dazzling Jesus. It has a beautiful, breath-taking look to it, and some scholars think it points toward the resurrection or maybe it’s even a resurrection story that the author simply inserted into the wrong part of the gospel. It’s surprising and comes totally out of the blue and we want everything to stay this way: triumphant, with bagpipes singing and the world ablaze with the glory of God.

It fits so well with one view of the church: the Church triumphant, the Church that is always right. The Church that is always on the winning side, the side that loves prosperous, successful people. From the mountain-top, transfiguration perspective, it’s not hard to imagine just such a place, just such a way of being church.

But then my sermon-writing time gets interrupted by an e-mail from a good friend in Germany. One month ago, her 51-year-old husband was killed by a speeding car while riding his bicycle to work. She’s asking lots of questions of God these days and she’s really dreading Ash Wednesday. Her faith has always been strong and clear and quite certain about things like heaven and sin. Now, her world is suddenly unsteady and she holds onto her two daughters very tightly.

And then there’s Cynthia, who cuts my hair. On Friday she told me that 3 more of her clients have lost their jobs in the past 2 weeks. In church this morning, sitting close to you, perhaps, are friends who are out of work or are anxious about whether they’ll still have a job next month.

And these days, my prayer list now includes 4 friends who’ve been diagnosed with cancer since the first of the year. All of them are really good people. All of them go to church. They have children and grandchildren who adore them.

How does this transfigured Jesus, this bright and shining image of God, help us make it through the night? We might echo the man with the unclean spirit who earlier in Mark’s gospel asked: What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?

But pay attention to this: into this vision of transfiguration, which seems to be all about seeing, all about beholding the divine Christ, come these words spoken from the cloud: This is my Son, the Beloved, listen to him! God doesn’t tell us to look at Jesus, to marvel at his radiance, soak up some of those rays emanating from his divine being… God tells us to listen.

Listen to what, I wonder? Jesus doesn’t say a single word while up on the mountain. He’s silent. Maybe, just maybe the disciples had the words Jesus said to them in chapter 8 still ringing in their ears. Just 6 days ago at Caesarea Philippi, this is what he told them:

If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lost it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it…

Or maybe they were supposed to remember to pay attention to what Jesus said the next time they were talking with him. On their way down the mountain that day, Jesus returned to the theme of suffering, reminding them of what he’d already told them once before about the Messiah who would suffer. Listen to him. Listen to Jesus and know that he comes among us as one who suffers, one for whom life was not easy, one who knows what it’s like to be human. Wholly and completely human.

Maybe the transfiguration does make us think of Easter, maybe it does point toward the resurrection. But when we listen to the story in context, we begin to sense that the cross stands behind it and on either side of it and runs right through the middle of this glorious transfiguration. So we hold the two together somehow knowing that the cross is the place where we might begin to make sense of our suffering or at least, the place where our suffering is joined with Jesus’.

Up on the mountain we can open our ears to listen to what Jesus wants to tell us. Up on the mountain we begin to sense that the church God dreams of is a place where people who are hurting, who are worried about their children and grandchildren’s future, people who are addicted to alcohol or drugs, people whose lives are falling apart…God dreams that people like this, people who can see themselves for real, will come together and listen to what Jesus has to say.

In Mark’s community, that early Christian church he was writing for, people were experiencing all kinds of doubt and failure. Down in the valley, it was hard to keep going, hard to have much of a vision for an abundant life, a growing church, a spiritually healthy life. But when they see things from the mountain top, when they see Jesus just for a moment from the inside out, they remember God’s promise to them at baptism, how they were marked as belonging to Christ forever. And all of a sudden, Jesus isn’t the only one called Beloved. Those who follow Jesus begin to recognize that whatever happens, whatever hardships and loss and sorrow they will encounter, God will continue to call them Beloved.

According to the church calendar, we leave our Epiphany mountaintops after today and begin the descent into the desert of Lent. We move from Transfiguration splendor and glory to Wednesday ashes on our foreheads and litanies of repentance. From being comfortable with who we are to being discomforted by who God might be calling us to become and the places where God might be leading us…

That astounding moment of transfiguration didn’t last long. Jesus didn’t stay up on the mountain. He came back down into the desert. We still encounter Jesus in the desert as well as the mountain-tops of our lives. Wherever people are hurting, where people are struggling just to make ends meet worried about making the mortgage payment, where people are broken, lonely and wounded, where they are going through a divorce, mourning the loss of a spouse, enduring chemotherapy, that’s where Jesus is. And that’s where he leads us…

From up on transfiguration mountain, Jesus was indeed already looking beyond the desert to another hill. Jesus was headed to the hill of Calvary. The cross on that mountain was his destination and that cross is the intersection of our life and his life. That is where we meet him, where our mortal life comes into contact with his mortal/immortal life.

Jesus invites us to journey with him toward the cross and bids us listen and watch for Christ in each other as we walk that road together. And Jesus longs for us to hear him calling us Beloved in all those life-changing, transfiguring moments that surprise us on mountain-tops and in desert valleys. Amen.

Sermon: Fifth Sunday After the Epiphany - Youth & Children's Sunday

Mary Margaret Winn, guest preacher
> Scripture for the day

Today’s gospel seems like a fairly straightforward lesson about the healing power of Jesus. He comes to Galilee, heals the fever of a friend, performs some miracles, casts out some demons… pretty normal “Jesus” things to do. But I don’t think this is really about Jesus’ high profile, memorable actions. Rather, I think it is about the people’s response to these actions.

Life is all about choices. What to wear each day, what to have for lunch, how we are going to treat others, and so on. But before we can make these decisions, a choice has to be presented to us. In my English class, we are reading Flannery O’Connor, the quintessential Southern religious writer. In all of her stories, there is a character we call a “candidate for grace” or someone who has not yet seen or understood the love of God. This character has some sort of sudden, often violent, revelation about his or her spirituality or personal characteristics. After the initial shock, they begin to process what they have learned about themselves, God, and others. And then the story ends. O’Connor leaves it up to the reader to determine what the character is going to do with their new-found Grace.

In one story, Mrs. Turpin, a Southern, middle-class woman, enters the waiting room at a doctors’ office and strikes up a conversation with the other patients. She continuously insults people based on their “class” while at the same time praising herself for being such a good Christian woman. Finally, one girl becomes so angry that she hurls a book at Mrs. Turpin’s head and attempts to choke her. After the action dissipates, Mrs. Turpin makes her way home to finish up her chores for the afternoon. In the “pig parlor” where she raises hogs, she begins to really process what has happened to her. She hoses down the pigs, ends her inner monologue, and walks back to the house. We had to decide whether or not she was going to act on her epiphany.

This scenario is a lot like our relationship with God. At some point in our lives, we start to notice the wonder of His grace. This realization may come gradually through everyday experience and observation, it may come in a fun Sunday school assignment from Father Deneke, or it could hit you like a book between the eyes as it does for Mrs. Turpin. Regardless of what prompts this moment, we have to process and react to how this “revelation of love” affects us emotionally, spiritually, and socially. Then we act.

One way that people can act is by spreading the Word. For me, this is like the first time I visited Yoforia. Yoforia is a place in Virginia Highlands that sells frozen yogurt. But not just any frozen yogurt-- this stuff is unbelievably delicious. Three different flavors with an endless supply of toppings. I fell in love, and the next day at school, all I could talk about was Yoforia and the “best dessert ever.” I wanted everyone to know about so they could go try it and fall in love just like I did.

Now replace the frozen yogurt with God’s love. Some people spread the Word by bringing people to church, the same way I brought people to Yoforia. Others volunteer their time or money by doing missionary work, helping at a soup kitchen, or giving money to charity. Still others simply chat with the check-out lady at the supermarket, or (a rare occurrence in Atlanta) actually let someone into the lane while driving. The best way to spread God’s love is to show others that our actions are a direct result of our faith.

But there is also another reaction, or lack thereof. Some people forget about their revelation. As much as I love Yoforia, I have not been there in months; Mrs. Turpin may have continued her life as if her eyes were never opened. Our lives are so hectic—with school, work, the economy, family, and a multitude of other commitments—that we can often let everyday life get in the way of responding to God’s Grace, even though it is always there. If we are in a hurry, we can forget to thank the cashier at the gas-station, or even cut someone off on the highway. These actions—good or bad—are evidence to others about our faith.

But God has done his part…showed His love to us…and all He wants us to do is act. To take what we have seen and do something with it. Again, the purest, most effective way to spread God’s love is to act on our faith. In our Gospel reading, Simon’s mother-in-law responds to Jesus’ care by serving Him in her home. The people of Galilee respond by going to the synagogue to see Jesus at work. Simon acts by searching for Jesus in the early morning. Jesus is our model as he moves from town to town to “proclaim the message.” So we need to take what we see as evidence of God’s grace- a sister, a friend, nature, or even frozen yogurt- and act.

Sermon: The Feast of the Presentation

Angela Wiggins, seminarian
> Scripture for the day

The town I grew up in was small - big enough to have a movie theatre, but the theatre had only one screen. Since it had to appeal to all audiences, the wait between G-rated movies was months long. So I never really got into the genre of children’s movies. Besides, I was skeptical of talking animals – if animals talked, wouldn’t they speak their own language instead of English?

Then there were musicals; I didn’t get that genre either. It seemed like every time something happened, somebody would burst into song and interrupt the whole movie. I just didn’t get it.

What finally won me over was the release of the movie musical “Grease.” Or maybe what won me over was the long summer of waiting for Grease to make it to our theatre. We could endure the wait only because one of our friends bought the soundtrack.

That was also the summer our youth minister scheduled an out-of-town trip each week for the middle-school kids. As our mothers drove us on these excursions, we played the “Grease” soundtrack over and over, hour after hour, week after week. By the 4th of July we had memorized all the songs, complete with hand motions, and we kept on singing all summer. It was a long summer of expectation.

When I hear those songs now, I can still see us riding upside-down in the backseat with our beach-soaked hair dangling onto the floorboard, our torsos on the seat, and our legs folded over the back of the seat. Who knows why we did that, but when I hear those songs, “You’re the One that I Want” or “We Go Together,” I sing along and remember the joy, laughter, and expectation of that summer.

When Grease finally made it to town, we sang along with the movie. We knew the plot from all those hours with the soundtrack. That freed us up to gaze dreamily at John Travolta. But as soon as another song came on, we’d jump right back in. We knew it was time to pay attention. That’s the advantage of a musical – you always get a clue when something big is about to happen. You don’t have to guess if the next scene is significant; if it has a song, it’s important. Expect something.

I wouldn’t go so far as to speculate that St. Luke was an early writer of musicals, but he does use song in much the same way, especially when he tells the story of Jesus’ infancy. Something really big is happening, so Luke doesn’t just narrate. He doesn’t write a speech or a dialogue. He puts it in song and we pay attention. We expect something. These beautiful songs convey more than narrative can contain. When we hear these songs, we know something beyond words is happening. We remember these beautiful songs and continue to sing them, even tonight. These songs shape our understanding and remembrance of the incarnation.

Our Gospel lesson is from the second chapter of Luke, but let’s back up and think about chapter one also. In these two chapters Luke tells the story of the infancy of Jesus and he fills this story with song and angels. What is happening – God coming to live among us as one of us - is beyond human imagination. There is no way to explain this; the only way to tell it is with song and with angels. Like Zechariah, like Mary, like the shepherds, when we see angels, we pay attention. No matter what we have been expecting, God is about to exceed our expectations.

One thing Luke makes clear about his characters is their piety and devotion. They are people who love and serve God, people who understand that God is at work. People like Simeon who wait in expectation to see salvation. Like Mary and Joseph who bundle up Jesus and take him to the temple, just as they were expected to do. People like Elizabeth and Anna who go about their daily work – at home and in the temple – while they wait for the fulfillment of God’s promises. They are expecting redemption; they are expecting God.

And God is up to something that day. Mary and Joseph bring Jesus to the temple, and the Holy Spirit brings Simeon. Anna the prophet is already there, at prayer, just as usual. They’re doing ordinary things, the tasks expected of them, but God is doing something beyond their expectations. Their redemption is at hand in the most unexpected way. The distance between heaven and earth, between God and creation is gone. God is right there, right where they are. God is right here, right where we are.

Luke announces this in-breaking with angels. Nothing less would do. Gabriel appears to Zechariah and to Mary. A company of angels announces the birth of Jesus to the shepherds. The Holy Spirit prompts Elizabeth and then Simeon to recognize the fulfillment of God’s promises, to recognize the presence of the Lord. Zechariah, Mary, and Simeon respond with songs of praise. Like any good writer of a musical, Luke alerts us with these songs that something significant is happening. We know to look for God in the story.

Luke is a great storyteller; he doesn’t try to explain how all this could happen. Instead, he records the amazement of Zechariah and Mary and Simeon in song. These are songs of amazement, but not disbelief. Although this is not how they expected their hopes to be fulfilled, they recognize that God is doing something beyond expectation.

So they sing. They sing praise to God and proclaim God’s goodness that is beyond expectation. They had trusted God’s faithfulness, but God has surprised them. Simeon sings, “These eyes of mine have seen the Savior, whom you have prepared for all the world to see.” Tonight, as we celebrate the Feast of the Presentation, we join Simeon in this canticle of praise. In this song we celebrate the fulfillment of God’s promise and we remember. Just as favorite songs from our youth transport us back in time, in this ancient song we relive our redemption in Christ. We join in singing praise that the light of the world has been revealed to us.

We try to find precise words to explain what has happened. In my former work, tax accounting, we had tricky words that made no sense to anyone but us - and the IRS. One set of tricky adjectives was “realized” and “recognized.” For most people, these words have similar meanings, but not for tax accountants. A realized gain meant a profit has been made, yes, it’s happened, but you don’t have to do anything about it. Just sit tight. Everybody liked that kind of gain. A recognized gain, though, meant a profit has been made and you’ve got to do something about it; you’ve got to claim the income and pay the price. And, well, you know what that means.

While these words seemed like secret code to our clients, they understood the distinction between the words determined whether they had to share their profit with the IRS. It’s nice to know an investment has paid off, but most would rather not recognize the gain.

All too often, that’s our response to Christ. It’s nice to know Christ has happened, but we’d rather not do anything about it. We’d rather live as if the Light of the World wasn’t shining in the darkness.

Singing about light and salvation with Simeon is lovely, and remembering the joy of our salvation is important, but it’s not enough. For Simeon and for Anna, the recognition of Christ, our light and our salvation, was life changing. They were no longer expecting redemption; they were proclaiming redemption. Verse 38 says Anna “kept speaking about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.” The encounter with Christ has given Anna new work and a new way of living.

Luke must have written the next verse, verse 39, with a sly grin. He says, “When they [Mary and Joseph] had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth.” If we didn’t know what happened next, we might think they went back to life as usual. But we know the next chapter of the story – Jesus at the temple at age 12 – and we know how the story ends. We know they can’t go back to what life was before. Once we recognize the light of the world, life is no longer the same.

Let’s sing with Simeon and join in Anna’s praise. But let us also be open to being transformed by encounter with Christ. Let us live in the light of Christ.

Amen.

Sermon: Fourth Sunday After the Epiphany

The Rev. Dr. Deborah Silver, assisting priest
> Scripture for the day

Been to any good exorcisms lately? That’s a question that’s sure to stop conversation at most proper dinner parties. But as you listened to the Gospel reading this morning, what may have caught your attention more than anything, and hopefully you were listening, was the man with the unclean spirit crying out to Jesus, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?”

Now the safest, and perhaps we might think the sanest, way to deal with this story of the unclean, or some translations say demonic spirit, is to remind ourselves that we are sophisticated, 21st century people who no longer believe in this primitive way of seeing the world. However, well known preacher Fred Craddock puts it this way, “No service is rendered simply by announcing that we no longer believe in demons. Although that is true, for most, not believing in demons has hardly eradicated evil in our world.” Good point. If you are in any doubt that evil still flourishes in our world I wonder on what remote desert island you have been living lately. In fact, I would even venture to say that what the world is in desperate need of right now is a Jesus untamed by our image of the gentle Shepherd holding the lost lamb. No, we need a demon-tossing, Spirit-possessed Son of God, who acts with divine authority and proclaims that the boundary between heaven and earth has been pierced and the reign of God is at hand.

This is the Jesus we encounter in Mark’s Gospel. It is the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. He takes his newly appointed disciples with him to the synagogue at Capernaum. The people in the synagogue are amazed at what they see and hear. The people do not focus on demons or on what they have to say, or how Jesus effectively exorcizes them. The people are amazed by this new teacher whose words carry with them authority and power to make the unclean, clean.

The sudden and unexpected arrival of this tortured man offers a profound teaching moment for Jesus. The exorcism story drips with irony as Jesus, a man possessed by the Spirit of God, faces off with a man possessed by the demonic. This battle proves to be no contest for the demonic contingent that resides in this man. They recognize who Jesus is, “I know who you are, the Holy One of God,” while everyone else in the synagogue stays strangely silent.

A child of God is delivered from his bondage, and there are no shouts for joy or spontaneous prayers of thanksgiving. The words of the Prophet Isaiah echo in the background – “Is not this the fast that I choose to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?” – and yet no one notices that what the Gospel of Mark signaled in Jesus’ baptism when the heavens are “torn apart” is happening now before their eyes. [1]

As the people in the synagogue maintain a safe distance from Jesus, speculating among themselves about this new powerful teacher, we hearers of Mark are invited to follow Jesus into a whole new world. New Testament scholar Brian Blount says that we are invited into “Mark’s world of Jesus walking around possessed by the power of the Spirit of God. In such a world you either go with the man and help him create the holy chaos he’s creating or you find a way to stop him so you can get your people back in line.” [2]

The Gospel of Mark puts us on notice from the first chapter that the boundary-breaking, demon-dashing, law transcending Son of God has arrived in the person of Jesus, and he expects of his followers far more than “amazement”.

What does Jesus expect of his followers? What does this Jesus of Nazareth have to do with us?

There is a story attributed to Cherokee wisdom:

One evening a grandfather was teaching his young grandson about the internal battle that each person faces.

“There are two wolves struggling inside each of us,” the old man said. “One wolf is vengefulness, anger, resentment, self-pity, fear…

“The other wolf is compassion, faithfulness, hope, truth, love …”

The grandson sat, thinking, then asked: “Which wolf wins, Grandfather?”

His grandfather replied, “The one you feed.”

Which one do you feed? It’s a question well worth asking ourselves, as individuals, as the church, as a community, as a nation.

In times of personal or national crisis, it may be more tempting to hunker down and feed the wolf of fear and resentment than to feed the wolf of compassion and hope.

There is plenty out there to feed our cynicism, fear and self-absorption. There are lots of voices claiming authority, seeking our attention and vying for our allegiance. Which wolf do we choose to feed? How can we even tell the difference?

And that, my friend, is why you and I are here this morning. We cannot identify and feed the wolf of love and compassion on our own. We need each other. We need the Body of Christ. We need the food of hope and grace whose singular nutritional authority comes from God. We need to be fed with the Spiritual food that nourishes our souls when we gather at God’s table.

We cannot do it on our own and we know that. It is why we say the Confession of Sin before the Eucharist. We know all too well our own capacity for choosing evil and our own need for forgiveness. And that’s why we come here.

It’s here that we pray for God to deliver us from evil, to vanquish the demons, that is, whatever binds us and prevents us from loving God and our neighbor as ourselves.

It is why in the Prayers of the People we pray for all those in power and ask God to
“Guide the people of this land, and of all the nations, in the ways of justice and peace; that we may honor one another and serve the common good.”

It is here that we are fed on the Scriptures and nourished by the sacraments that make us one and transform us at the same time.

It is here that we find encouragement to commit ourselves to the grand work of loving God and the hard work of loving our neighbor.

It is here that we meet the Holy One of God who has the authority to call evil out of us, to forgive us, to transform us and to empower us by the Holy Spirit to proclaim in our own words and deeds the coming of God’s Kingdom.

And it’s as we leave this place
and follow the light of Christ into the world that we,
we of all people, have been given the authority to speak,
and live, and heal in ways that feed a hungry world.

And that is truly amazing.


[1] Gary W. Charles in Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 1, p. 313, Westminster John Knox Press, 2008.
[2] Ibid.