Pentecost 2018, May 20, 10 am, St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Newport, Arkansas

Pentecost 2018, May 20 10 am

St. Paul’s Newport

 Acts 2:1-21, John 20:19-23

What a privilege to be here in Newport with you today on the third biggest day of the Christian year. Following Christmas and Easter is the Day of Pentecost, when a gale wind blew through a house on a back street in Jerusalem and equipped Jesus’ disciples with everything they needed to turn the world upside down. It was God’s own breath,/ the Holy Spirit, the most mysterious and least typecast person of the Trinity, the muse and soul of Christ’s church.

We have Christmas pageants and Easter parades, but Pentecost may be the only celebration that Hallmark has not put out a line of cards, and we haven’t yet met anyone who invites friends and family over for Pentecost dinner.

 Perhaps we are spooked by the Holy Spirit. Some of us may even remember when we called it the Holy Ghost, which adds an even more macabre effect. Others have heard enough about what happens in spirit-filled churches to leave Pentecost to the Pentecostals./

Today is the day when Jesus’ disciples receive the miraculous good news that their bodies are about to take the place of Jesus’ body in the world. The same Holy Spirit that has filled him is coming into them, so that they have all the power they need to carry forward his ministry in his name.

The day of Pentecost is also celebrated as the birthday of the church, not any particular church, but the whole state of Christ’s church united by God’s breath /and empowered by God’s Spirit. All over the world today, people are wearing fiery red clothes to church, releasing balloons, reading the gospel in foreign languages, or blowing out candles on a cake in the parish hall that says, “Happy Birthday, Church!” in red frosting./

 If you want to know why a church has a certain personality, find out how that church began. If a particular congregation is founded to oppose something, then you can bet that opposition will remain as part of that church’s DNA and its relationship to the world. If a church is born like St. Paul’s Newport, to embrace something,/ then you can expect to find that inclusive posture passed down to each generation.
That makes it all so interesting why we have two very different birth stories told us this morning. One is from John, and one is told by Luke. The two different stories are written for different times and places and from different theologies.

 John’s story happens on Easter evening while the eleven disciples are locked inside an upper room in a house in Jerusalem. Whenever we experience traumatic events, nighttime takes on new meaning. Ordinary fears are magnified, and we go around locking windows and doors. However, Jesus gets in without a key. He does not need doors and windows. John says he simply “came” and stands among them. “Peace be with you,” he says. Then he shows them his ID, the wounds in his hands and his side.

 Then Barbara Brown Taylor describes Jesus doing something creepy and mystical. He commissions them by breathing on them, opening his mouth and pouring what is inside of him into them so that their hair poofs up and their eyelashes flutter. They can smell where he comes from, not just Golgotha and Galilee, but back before the world was being born. They smell Eden on his breath: salt brine, river mud, calla lilies. Their own lungs fill up with what he breathes out. His breath brings back to life all that fear had killed inside of them. It is the second Genesis, as they are created over again by the power of the Spirit coming out of Jesus’ mouth.

“Receive the Holy Spirit, “Jesus says. With a gentle breath, he transfers his spirit into his disciples, who now become the guardians of that Spirit. According to this Gentle Breath story about the birth of the church, the church has received the Holy Spirit. The world has not. It is the church’s job to carry that Spirit out into the world.

A birth story like this creates a distinctive form of church. Some Gentle Breath congregations forget about the “send” part that Jesus says: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” They like being breathed on so much that they stay right where they are, clapping their hands and praising God for the breeze/ without ever unlocking the door.

 Other congregations do hear the “send” part and take it seriously. In these congregations, each member’s job is to go out into the world and find those who don’t know about the Spirit and bring them back inside the church so they can meet God in person.  

This is a very Jo/han/nine idea of church. There is nothing wrong with it, but it is not the only biblical birthing story of the church. //

 Luke has a different image of the delivery room for the church’s birth in Acts. The disciples are still in a house, but Luke’s story takes place fifty days after Easter instead of on the same day. There are about 120 people crowded in a house instead of 11. The doors and windows are not locked because the people inside know they are waiting for something to come in from outside. According to Luke, the last thing Jesus says is “Stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” While they don’t have a clue what It looks like, they open all of the doors and windows so whatever IT is, can get in.

On the day of Pentecost, “it” turns out to be something even Luke has difficulty describing. It starts with a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it fills the entire house where Jesus’ followers are sitting. Then it bursts into divided tongues like flames above their heads, but when they open their mouths to shout, “Watch out! Your head’s on fire,” different words comes out. It comes out instead, speaking languages that none of those Galileans ever learned. Perfect strangers, foreigners, have to tell them they are talking about God in their native language.  The disciples are behaving so bizarrely under the power of God’s Spirit that the only description some bystanders come up with is drunk.

“They are filled with new wine,” but Peter says no. “Its only nine o’clock in the morning,” and then the Spirit rescues Peter by giving him something to say in his language. He opens his mouth and speaks about an old prophecy from the Hebrew prophet, Joel, who foresees days like this when God’s spirit is poured out upon all flesh,/ not just chosen people, not just eleven male people, not just church people but all people, young, old, male, female, slave, free.

Peter’s proclamation of this prophecy on Pentecost is the sign that EVERYONE upon whom the Spirit has been poured is recruited to spread the word. God’s fiery, transforming spirit is LOOSE in the world, and from this day forth the church’s job is to FAN it, wherever it is found.

In Acts we hear about the birthing of an alternative church, not a Gentle Breath congregation but a Violent Wind congregation, propelled more by God’s sneeze than God’s breath,/ where such a strong wind blows toward the open doors of the church that people must lash themselves to the pews to stay inside. They come back one day in seven to rally, to rest and reflect, but then God’s finger goes back under God’s nose and it is back out into the world again, /not just to take the Spirit out but to discover it in all of the surprising people upon whom it has already been poured.

Members of Violent Wind congregations count on the Spirit to guide them as they go out into the world in search of Holy Fire. They may find it absolutely anywhere: at a disaster relief station, in the beauty parlor of a nursing home, in a prison as is here at Newport, at line at the grocery store, around a family supper table, at a dinner for the homeless, at VBS, at Camp Mitchell.

How do they know when they find it? Wherever the Spirit is, there is heat and light.  People’s lives are being changed around that fire, and they are so excited about what is happening to them that they sound positively sloshed, only it is not new wine they are drunk on but God’s own spirit, so generous that it cannot be contained by any human institution.

One of the worst things that Christians have ever done is to reduce the word “church” to mean a building, or one group of people who meet inside that building. We can imagine trying to explain this to the violent wind God by saying, “Honey, I shrunk the church.”/////

As different as John and Luke’s church birth stories are, what they share in common is that the church doesn’t have to have a sign out front, a Sunday school, a copy machine, or adequate parking, although these things certainly help. All it has to have are some people with a story about how their life together began, and what it is like to be LOCKED UP, short of breath, waiting for God knows what ./  They do know what it is like to be revived by some mysterious divine breath,/ whether it comes as gently as a sigh, or so violently that it turns the furniture upside down./

Best case scenario, most churches have an obstetrical team trained in both Pentecost deliveries./

These stories do not give us a clue where God’s wind is going, but they do tell us that God gave the church to the world; not to possess the Spirit/ but to be servant ministers for the Spirit, out in the WORLD, wherever the Spirit calls and leads us. Happy Pentecost!

      Barbara Brown Taylor, “God’s Breath,” Journal for Preachers, Pentecost 2003, pp 37-40.

Joannna joannaseibert.com

Easter 6B 12 Step Eucharist, Love One Another

Easter 6B 12 Step Eucharist, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church  John 15:9-17, May 6, 2018

Little Rock, Arkansas

An Improvisation on Love in 3 Acts

Act I The Present: On our way here tonight

“Love one another. “

A Little Rock police officer pulls over a car on Mississippi just as the car approaches Evergreen. He asks the driver for his license and registration. “What’s wrong, officer?” the driver asks. “I certainly am not speeding.”

“No,” says the officer, “but I saw you giving that obscene gesture as you swerved around the woman driving in the left lane. Then I saw your flushed and angry face as you shouted at the driver in the Hummer who cut you off.”

“Is that a crime, officer?”

“No, but when I saw the St. Mark’s ‘Love’ bumper sticker on your car, I decided, “This car must be stolen!”

Act II

“No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

Just over eleven years. Monday, April 16, 2007, Blacksburg, Virginia, VPI campus, Room 204, Norris Hall.

Liviu Librescu, 76, a senior researcher and lecturer in engineering, a native of Romania and a Holocaust survivor begins his class in solid mechanics. Mr. Librescu and his class hear shooting in a nearby room.  The professor blocks the door to prevent the gunman from entering. Students take cover underneath desks and others leap out of windows. Professor Librescu never moves from the door even as the gunman, Cho Seung-Hui, continues shooting through the door. Directing his students to escape through windows, Professor Librescu is fatally shot by five bullets.

By blocking the door with his body, he saves all the students in his classroom.

32 students and teachers are killed. A 76-year-old Romanian Jewish refugee saves 21 of his students. Ironically the murder takes place on Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah).

Act III  Scene 1

The Past: Almost 20 centuries ago

“Love one another.”

The last supper is over.  Everyone’s feet are clean.  Jesus’ hands are wrinkled after washing all of them as he begins his Farewell Discourse.1 Jesus’ family is gathered around him as he reads the traditional last testament given by the head of a household before he dies.  “Little children, I am with you only a little longer. I give you a new commandment:  Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”

Jesus goes on like this for four whole chapters in John, telling his disciples at least 15 times about a new kind of love, not the ethical demand to love one’s neighbor, but to love one’s enemies, taking risks and making sacrifices to benefit OTHERS, even if we think these people do not deserve our love. Loving is the only commandment that Jesus explicitly insists his disciples keep. Ignoring it is not an option.2

Act III Scene 2  The Present one more time.

“Love one another.”

Frederick Buechner writes about four loves.3 “First there is the love for equals as a human being. This was Liviu Librescu’s love. Second there is the love for the less fortunate. This is compassion. We see this daily here in so many of you who care for those at the Food Pantry, for sponsors helping those in AA and Alanon recovery. Third, there is a rare form of love for the more fortunate, a desire for the wellbeing and love for those who succeed where we fail, to rejoice without envy, a love of the poor for the rich. This is the love of saints.

Fourth and finally, there is the love for the enemy, a desire for the wellbeing for those who mock, threaten and inflict pain on us. The desire of the tortured for the well being of the torturer. This is the love that Jesus taught and lived and died and resurrected. This is God’s love, Jesus’ love. It alone can conquer the world.”/

My prayer is that we will approach those who differ from us and say: "I agree with almost nothing you are advocating. I see God, the world, and our faith through a different lens than you do./ But I know that God loves us both, /and that Christ lives within both of us.   My prayer is that the love that initially is an action, not a feeling, will come alive in my heart and the hearts and minds of each of us starting this very moment, this very night. This can happen.  You in recovery know the secret. For these next 30 days we pray daily not only for those we love and those less fortunate, but we also pray for those more fortunate and also pray for those with whom we disagree and those who do us harm. At month’s end those with opinions different from us may not change, but I can promise you that God will change us.

1Barbara Taylor Brown, “Good News for Orphans,” Gospel Medicine, pp. 79-83.

2Susan Palo Cherwien, Reflections on the Lectionary, Christian Century, April 29, 2015. P. 21.

 3Frederick Buechner, Listening to Your Life, pp. 242, 302, 303.  

12 Step Eucharist, Luke 11: 14-23, The Mute and The Hound of Heaven

12 Step Eucharist Luke  11:14-23, Jesus, the Mute, the Hound of Heaven

Wednesday, March 7, 2018 5:30 pm

Jesus seems attracted to demons like a cadaver-sniffing Scotch collie. He smells them out and they without question know his scent as well. Previously in Luke, Jesus casts out a demon who came out of a man  in the synagogue in Capernaum/ on the Sabbath no less.  He casts out the multiple demons named Legion from the man in the tomb bound with chains and shackles and kept under guard in the country of the Gerasenes. As soon as Jesus reaches the bottom of the mountain where he was transfigured to a dazzling white, he sniffs out and rebukes a demon who also immediately picks up Jesus’ scent and convulses a young boy to the ground. Jesus releases the cruel demons in the daughter of the Syrophoenician woman after her “crumbs for the dogs under the table” answer which prompts Jesus to extend his ministry to Gentiles, and of course Jesus cures Mary Magdalene of not one/ but seven demons.    

Tonight, Jesus casts out only a single demon from a person who is unable to speak. Usually those who cannot speak have the root cause of deafness as well. Since they have never heard speech, they cannot imitate the sounds. They most often have an amazing mind, but people think they are useless, “dumb” is the word, because their thoughts and intelligence are locked up inside of them like a bank vault with no combination. We can understand how the crowd is amazed when they hear the man or woman in our story now freely speak and communicate.

Perhaps classic movie fans have seen Johnny Belinda where Jane Wyman plays an isolated small-town Canadian woman who is deaf and cannot speak and is branded the unfortunate word, “the village idiot.”  Wyman is healed of her demon as she is taught by her country doctor, Lew Ayres, how to communicate with newly developed sign language. Wyman never speaks in her academy award winning performance and expresses herself with her hands in this classic 1948 movie about prejudice!/

Of course, we have another chance to experience what it is like to be mute in this year’s academy award winning best picture, the fantasy drama, The Shape of Water, where a sea creature  heals a mute “woman” named Elisa.  

 But let’s leave the movies and first century Palestine and think about

where in our culture/ today are we mute and deaf and in need of healing? People in addiction cannot speak their truth and are mute because of the anesthesia brought on by drugs, alcohol, commercialism, materialism, or whatever is filling their God hole. I lost my voice when I became an alcoholic. I knew I could not speak out or otherwise people would know I had been drinking too much. Some addicts and alcoholics become loud and noisy, but what they say makes no sense. They also are mute and indeed do say and do “dumb” things./

Lent is a special season of the year where we are to ponder where we have been deaf and have not heard the truth, have been mute to the messages from God about being the person God created us to be./

We do not have to live with our demons. There is a way out. For those caught in addiction, people all over the world are recovering, being healed, in the 12-step program offered here tonight. /

 Maybe some of us are deaf and mute to the needs of others around us who are suffering, and we have not spoken out with our voices and our hands and our feet against their injustices.  Maybe because of our social disease of busyness, some of us are deaf to those we live or work with, and have been mute, not telling them how much we care or love them./

Jesus is here tonight to remind us that the finger of God can not only cast out demons in first century Palestine but also in the twenty-first century Little Rock, on the other side of the scientific revolution.

Keep remembering that is why we are “gathered” here with him at this table tonight, asking that the Christ within us  release the demons that keep us from forgiving others and ourselves, the demons that keep us from asking for forgiveness for the harms we have done to others. Christ, “the Hound of Heaven,” 1 has stopped to rest here, waiting to heal these demons.  We are at the right place. We only have to turn around/ and realize that it has been the outstretched finger of Love relentlessly following after us all along.      

1Francis Thompson, The Hound of Heaven.

Joanna  joannaseibert.com

Lent 1B Wilderness Trip

Lent 1B St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Little Rock, AR

Wilderness Trip Mark 1:9-13

February 18, 2018

 Lent always begins with Jesus sitting in the wilderness, being tempted by the devil, his hair still wet from his baptism by John. As soon as Jesus comes out of the water, the dove that lit on him turns into a guide bird with talons, leading him away from the river, thrusting him into the desert/ while God’s voice still rings in his ears: “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.” (Taylor)

Jesus gets this spectacular green light from the commission on ministry at the river/ as the sky opens and the boundary between heaven and earth is removed; but immediately Jesus is presented with these special general ordination examinations he must pass before beginning his ministry.  Amazingly, God does not administer these tests, but the devil does, which points to a strange, almost Job like relationship.

 Jesus also does not wander into the wilderness by mistake. He is led there by his new travel agent, the Holy Spirit, the comforter, our helper in time of need, who guides him not to a quiet three-day silent retreat at a peaceful monastery/ but delivers him instead to the devil, to a forty day canonical examination in the wilderness.  Things keep getting worse.  According to Luke’s gospel, this final exam by Satan takes place at the end of forty days, when Jesus is starving, has run out of his own resources, and might be open to a little help./

What about all this DEVIL talk? Does it make you uncomfortable?  It does me.  Devil talk is red orange, and Episcopalians tend to prefer beige and Brookes Brothers blue. We don’t usually speak about Satan.  Except in reality this devilish figure appears at the very beginning of our faith story cleverly disguised as a serpent tempting Adam and Eve.  You may also recall promises made at your own baptism: “Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?  I do.  Do you renounce the evil powers of this world that corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?  I do.”

Well, these are the exact same questions put to Jesus  alone in the desert after his baptism, except his examination is after a 40-day spiritual wilderness experience, and our baptismal examination takes less than 4 minutes while we are dressed to the nines and surrounded by all who love us. So, Lent is our yearly opportunity to stop, rest, renew, and remember our baptismal vows just in case we weren’t conscious or may have spent too brief a time agreeing to them in the first place.

On this Lenten renewal journey, besides reading the gospel of Luke with Episcopalians all over the world, I would like to recommend two other entertaining books by CS Lewis as we discern more about how evil works in our lives. (Busch)   The first is The Great Divorce, Lewis’ classic about why people in Hell stay there.  A busload of the damned go on a holiday excursion to the outskirts of Heaven and are warmly invited in. But even after experiencing Hell, they continue their same self-centered reasoning, reject the peace offered by angels, and with one exception return to the bus. My favorite passenger on the tour bus is the bishop who must return to hell because he is scheduled to give a lecture or sermon there on the meaning of God.

The Screwtape Letters is a series of correspondence from the devil, Screwtape, who sends diabolical advice to his nephew, Wormwood, assigned to negotiating/ into the infernal regions a young man, known only as the Patient, who  devilishly, daily is presented with mundane and spectacular temptations. /

 Typically, Mark, our minimalist, gives few details about Jesus’ own encounter with Screwtape so we go to the recent readings in Luke, our gospel Lenten study, to learn more about what happens in the wilderness. This is the devil’s examination: First he tempts Jesus to perform miracles to take care of his own needs: Command these stones to become loaves of bread. Next, he tempts Jesus to call on God for special protection: Throw yourself down from the temple. Finally, he tempts Jesus to take control of all the kingdoms of the world: All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.

All along, the devil suggests that Jesus deserves better than what God is giving him. If God cannot do better than this for his son, /maybe Jesus should start shopping around for another father. Jesus is tempted to rise above the helplessness of the human condition and seize power, something better for himself—to make himself a full Monty breakfast; to whistle up some angel bodyguards and start planning the largest and  most spectacular inauguration ever, as president of the world. After all, wasn’t he just recently told he is “the beloved son of God.”/

 Jesus is modelling for us how to discover what being the “beloved son of God” really means./

  At this first rest and renewal stop on our Lenten pilgrimage, Jesus gives us the answer straight away. Jesus proves who he is,/ NOT by seizing power, but by turning it down. God’s Beloved will not perform miracles for his own use. He will not ask for special protection. He will remain human, accepting all the usual risks. Barbara Brown Taylor reminds us that a Son of God is someone who listens to every good reason in the world/ for becoming God’s rival/ but instead remains God’s SERVANT.

Those  who practice contemplative or centering prayer will recognize that as Luke describes the temptations, Jesus never  dialogues with the devil. “Instead of being trapped  in a noisy commentary with the thoughts that Satan puts in his head, Jesus quotes lines from scripture.”  (Laird) This is similar to the prayer word used in centering prayer that refocuses the pray-er from  distractions.  When we are approached by temptations, distractions, Jesus’ example is not to engage with them, but instead “look over temptation’s shoulder” and re-center with a prayer word. Martin Laird calls us to keep a prayer word with us which is “an anchor in the storm and a bulldozer gently “excavating the present moment.” Great idea! While we read Luke and Acts this Lent and Easter, look for a word or phrase that can be a prayer word against temptation and evil. //

 St. Mark’s Sabbath theme this year is Remember, Rest, and Renew. During these  40 days as we try to rest and listen to the Spirit within us, how will  we recognize evil and temptation interfering with our renewal? I am  reminded of that powerful line by Kevin Spacey in the movie, The Usual Suspects: “Perhaps the greatest accomplishment of the devil is to make us believe that he does not exist.”  

My experience  is that  evil does not show up with horns and a tail, wearing red tights. The Prince of Darkness is the grand force of subtlety, reasonable, charming and convincing.  That dark power in my head says, “If you are a child of God, shouldn’t life be going a little smoother?” This is my favorite: “Are you the only one working today/ while every one else is sitting around eating bonbons?”/

The tempter in Eden and in the desert does not ask, “Do you wish to be as the devil?” but suggests, “Do you wish to be as God?” There is no mention of the debauchery associated with temptation. No self-respecting Satan would approach a person with offers of personal, social and professional RUIN. That is in the small print at the bottom of the temptation. (Craddock)

We also think that the evil one’s greatest temptations are the sensational ones:  sex, money, drugs, alcohol, gambling—the fluorescent temptations. Not true. The work of Screwtape is accomplished in the mundane, day-to-day, small decisions that harden the human heart. The real work of evil is in the small resentments we cling to, in the raised eyebrow, in the snort of contempt. It is in the relative or co-worker or  friend we refuse to forgive. It is our self-righteous attitude about those different from us. It is our refusal to forgive those who have harmed us. It is in the hatred we think we disguise behind a well-mannered look. It is in our blindness to the human needs and suffering of others---that is where the real devil’s work is done, in the normal activities of our daily lives. (Busch)///

We are invited today to retrace this desert journey which Jesus also took/ to become acquainted with our own humanity, to begin to know when we are living in self will and when we are living in God’s will.

Today we are invited to take Jesus’ same journey into the desert of our soul./ The struggle against evil in the world begins within OURSELVES./// But this gospel makes promises about this renewal journey:  we are guided by the Holy Spirit, we have the journal of one who took this Outward Bound trip of the soul 2000 years ago, and we are told we will be ministered to, waited on, by angels and even wild beasts.  We go in with one guarantee. When we journey into our wilderness to rest and renew,/  we will learn about places where we desperately need healing and forgiveness,/ and we will always meet Someone we never expected to be there at that bus stop in the middle of nowhere. We will always stumble on to Jesus/ who has already been there/ and who is waiting there/ to welcome us/ and carry / all the baggage we brought with us.

Barbara Brown Taylor, “The Wilderness Exam,” Bread of Angels, p.36-40, 1997.

Kenneth S.B. Campbell, “In My End Is my Beginning,” Homily from Church of the Epiphany, Ash Wednesday, 2002.

Glenn E. Busch, “Talking to the Devil,” Preaching Through the Year of Mark, p.21-24, 1999.

Laurence Hull Stookey, “Lent 1, Year B, Tuesday Morning, January-March 2003.

Martin Laird, Into the Silent Land, A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation, pp 69. 123-125.

Fred Craddock, “Test Run,” Christian Century, p. 21, February 22, 2003.

joanna  joannaseibert.com

Last Epiphany B

Last Epiphany B

February 11, 2018 New Beginnings Church, North Little Rock, Arkansas

Mark 9:2-9

 My husband’s father, Bob, calls. He is experiencing excruciating back pain and can barely walk. My husband and daughter are in Greece. I get off the phone and seek the advice of colleagues who perform tests, and then I go with Bob to a specialist. As I impatiently and nervously wait, a lone older woman in the waiting room briefly reminds me of all those who do not have friends or family to call and must wait for long hours in emergency rooms in pain before answers come./

 The specialist says that my father-in- law has advanced metastatic cancer to the spine. The medical team starts Bob on a trial protocol. Two days later on my way home from church, I realize the hospital has been paging me. My father-in-law is in intensive care and has had a reaction to the new drug. My husband and daughter rush home from Greece. Bob is put back on a more standard treatment for his cancer. Our oldest son, Rob, takes a leave of absence from graduate school and moves back home to help care for his grandfather. Six months later Bob falls and breaks his hip. We can no longer care for him at home and go through all the decisions of nursing homes and assisted living that many of you have faced. Each day presents a new unfamiliar, often exhausting challenge of how to minister to someone we so dearly loved.//

The disciples in our story today also have faced one new challenge after another. They are exhausted by the nonstop demands of the crowds. Recently they were sent off  to cure and heal the sick. They have an amazing run of success and return to tell Jesus all about it. But when he takes them for a well-earned respite, more crowds interrupt them. The weary disciples beg Jesus to send the crowd away, but we all know what happens next—"fish sandwiches” for 5000, or probably 15,000 if we add in the women and children.

The next day  doesn’t feel much like a vacation either because Jesus starts telling them about his upcoming  suffering and death, something they might expect as well. We can’t blame them for missing the rising part on the third day. Heidi Neumark says, “when you think you are heading for the dungeon, anxiety and panic tend to block out everything else.”1

Eight days later they are still in no shape for mountain climbing, even to pray as Luke’s gospel mentions prayer as the reason for this ascent up this steep mountain for Jesus, Peter, James, and John. You know the disciples are wondering what is so special about praying on top of this mountain?/

 If I am honest, on most days, attempts to pray/ are a steep uphill climb on weary legs. If I make it, it is only thanks to my many faithful companions beside me in community,/ as it must be for yourselves, those who are  part of this faithful community  at New Beginnings, as well as  the communion of saints, past and present, that support all of us and pray with and for us.//

On top of the mountain, Jesus is doing all the praying. Peter, James, and John can’t keep their eyes open, according to Luke’ account, which connects the disciples’ humanness on the mountain of transfiguration and their inability to stay awake later at  Mount of Olives. Suddenly, just as sleep is about it overcomes the three, a brightness startles them. Their eyes open wide. Jesus, who must have reached the summit  slightly before them, now shines with a brightness they have never seen. His clothes become “dazzling white as no bleach on earth could make them.” I can’t resist saying,  maybe 1000 times brighter than the recent Tide commercials for the Superbowl!/  The disciples have an unforgettable experience of seeing the divinity of Jesus./ They also see two other figures as well talking to Jesus. Mark identifies the two men as Moses and Elijah who  speak in Luke’s account to Jesus about his departure that will be accomplished in Jerusalem. “The word departure comes from the Greek word for exodus, referring not only to the trip down the mountain and into Jerusalem, but also to Jesus’ death.1” Moses’ presence brings to mind the exodus of the Jewish people through the Red Sea from Egypt, and suggests that now Jesus will accomplish a second exodus, leading God’s people safely through the waters of death to resurrection, as Moses had parted the Red Sea and lead his people safety to the promised land./

But this dramatic change in appearance from man to God,/ is lost on the three disciples. They are terrified.  Peter expresses the confusion of his stunned companions by suggesting that they arrange to stay on the mountaintop, make dwellings or monuments to all three even though they still may have a partial awareness of Jesus’ real divinity.1///

On tops of a mountain we see the world differently. In the Hebrew Bible mountain summits are stages for crucial events. Noah lands on Mount Ararat. Abraham nearly kills  his son, Isaac, on Mount Moriah. God gives Moses the ten commandments on Mount Sinai, and today we hear about the transfiguration of Jesus on an unnamed mountain.2

We all have had those mountaintop experiences of seeing God in our lives, even if it is through a glass darkly./ Yet, truthfully,/ most of our transfiguration experiences occur below /at the bottom of the mountain, / where we daily work and play, /where theological bones take on flesh, and flesh becomes divinity, / That is where we will most see the transfigured face of God.. in places where premature babies are born and thrive, where loved ones and patients’ appearance change as they return to life from near fatal illnesses, where addicts and alcoholics find recovery, where we forgive those who have harmed us, and we are forgiven; where we forgive those who have not accepted us as  the gender God created us to be, where we see God in the face of a homeless man or woman at a traffic stop, or in our neighbor who irritates us, or in the slow and tired checker at our local grocery/, times where for a brief moment/ we see as a real person, we see Christ in one another.

A priest friend, Pat Murray, believes that perhaps Jesus, God, is transformed all the time, but only at certain times can we see the likeness God in each other, perhaps most often when we live in the present moment and in difficult times when we are experiencing “altitude sickness.”   ///

We all take turns taking Bob for his many treatments. As I look about the crowded waiting rooms, again for a brief moment I think of the very ill who do not have family to support them. How do they get here? How do they survive and keep coming back?/

 At one visit, Bob is too weak to dress himself after his examination. I see our son, who looks so much like his grandfather at an earlier age, / dress Bob, / pull up Bob’s baggy trousers, / tighten his belt/ and lift Bob up to stand. / The young and the old man hug each other./ I see the look they give to the other; one, the look of loving surrender, the other, the look of a loving servant. / They see the face of God in each other. / They each are transfigured in front of each other at the bottom of the mountaintop. /

Transfiguration also occurs the night Bob dies as he is cared for this last time by both of his grandsons. Bob lies in his nursing home bed/ unable to speak/ but his face shines like the sun as he radiantly,/ continuously/ smiles at his two grandsons he so dearly loves/ as we sit at the bottom of the mountain and he  begins his ascent. /

Today, if we listen carefully, we can still hear the voice that interrupts Peter: “Listen to him,” we are told. Listen for dear life. Listen to words of forgiveness and mercy, promises of paradise, words we will too soon hear from the cross. Listen without ceasing, on the edge of glory/ and on the brink of death.  We have heard this voice before at his baptism, “Here is my only begotten son with whom I am well pleased, listen to him.” Listen on this hill, but also listen later on another hill when darkness closes in.1////

“When cures and healing are beyond our powers, when the shine on a loved one’s face comes from tears reflected in the fluorescent lights of intensive care, / on such days remember to put yourself inside this very story, listening for the voice that urges us to stop and listen for his Voice.  When you are overcome with weariness and difficulty, remember to look for the transfigured  face of God in all those you will meet/for the Beloved, the Son of God, the son of Man, will always be there beside us and will  shine in the darkness,/ and the darkness will never,/ ever overcome it.1”

1Heidi, Neumark, “Altitude Adjustment,” Christian Century, p. 16, February 6, 2007.

2Thomas Jay Oord, Christian Century,  January 17, 2017.

Joanna Seibert  joannaseibert.com