A Sermon by The Rt. Rev. James Mathes

Untitled

The Rt. Rev. James Mathes

St. Margaret's Episcopal Church & School

The Holy Spirit touch our minds and think with them, touch our lips and speak with them and touch our hearts and set them on fire with love for you. Amen.

This is a unique experience for me this morning folks, I got a little sense of it last night, these guys were getting all the applause. But you know, I am a son of the South and so Jazz, I love it, it’s great, it reminds me of my youth and should I say, some of the more emotional religious experiences I had in a part of the country where in some ways we’re very reserved but when it comes to praying, we can pray with the best of them. And we can preach it.

I remember a story of an Episcopal priest, who went to a Baptist Church, and I’ve been to many a Baptist Church, and the story goes something like this. He was invited to be a guest preacher and he was all excited about that, he’d heard they talk to you and indeed they did — and he got to preaching and said Amen and MMMMM and then they started saying things like, “preach it brother, preach it brother,” and ah, his heart was warmed and then they said bring it on and after he concluded he sat down feeling real good about his sermon and after the service he told his Baptist brother that was just incredible, I felt just so great - and he said, “Well you did o.k. in the beginning and when they said Amen, they were with you, but when you said preach it brother something was missing. And when they said bring it home, well; they were finished, even though you were not.”

What a joyful day, what a joyful noise being made to the Lord. We come together today as the people of God to break open the word of God, to hear God speak to us. We break open the bread of Eucharist that we might be fed with the food of heaven. For today, we re-create Jesus’ feast with his disciples as our principal discipline and in so doing anticipate what the prayer book calls for - taste of the heavenly banquet. Each time as we gather as the people of God in this Eucharistic feast, we live, prepare for, and go forth, to be kingdom builders for Jesus. That is why we exist as the Church and yet today we come to this place as citizens of troubled and distressed world. We watch with greater and greater concern as religious strive builds in Iraq making us wonder if things will spin completely out of control and absolute civil war and this religious strive is echoed around the globe on the Continent of Africa, we see society being overwhelmed and changed forever by HIV and AIDS and if we come a bit closer to home in our own country, just last year, 25 million Americans sought assistance in feeding programs up markedly from years past. And in our church, we seem to be in fits about human sexuality and about scripture to the point that we are liable to tear ourselves apart. It is indeed a strange time to be the people of Jesus Christ.

The people of the Eucharist, the people of hope the people of a new creation, the people called to be kingdom builders. What precisely do we need to say to each other and to the world about Jesus? About our life of faith, about our future? In the Orthodox Church this Sunday, the last Sunday after Epiphany, is known as Forgiveness Sunday, there’s a course also the Sunday of the Transfiguration, when we hear the story of Jesus’ transfiguration on that high mountain. And I am reminded of a quotation from Robert Ferrer Capon, when he wrote these words “Forgiveness, forgiveness is never a tit-for-tat response to a sufficient external stimulus. It is a disproportionate extravagant laying-down of everything of expectation, hopes principles demands, even life itself. For someone, the forgiver absurdly decided to call a friend. What a friend we have in Jesus.” Capon is looking at forgiveness in a way that we usually we do not from the perspective of the forgiver rather than that of the forgiven.

And so, as we meet Jesus today, on a high mountain on a Sunday that is often connected with forgiveness I return to my earlier question. What precisely do we need to say to each other and to the world about Jesus about our live of faith and about our future? I suspect that the answer has something to do with understanding God as forgiver. And what that means to us as we climb that high mountain with Jesus and learn to live transfigured lives. And so I invite you to abide with Jesus for just a little while and see where it takes our hearts and souls. Perhaps you’re a John or a James, or a Peter. You join in the climb and you’re tired of climbing to that high peak and you’re not sure what the purpose of the trek might be. But you followed this Galilean prophet because he proclaimed that the kingdom of God has come near. You see the demons flee, you’ve seen the paralytic rise and loft, you’ve seen the blind able to see again, and you heard Peter affirm that Jesus is the Messiah, the anointed, and even though Jesus said, that to be held in secret, he then says to you and others, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Kingdom of God come with power. And here, on that high mountain, it has happened, Jesus was transfigured before them and his clothes were dazzling with white with such whiteness that no one on earth could bleach them - and there was Moses and Elijah talking to Jesus, it is a moment of absolute glory when the holiness of God is revealed, this is the consummation of the age. Moses and Elijah representing the law and the prophets are with the anointed of God - James, John and Peter have come to the heavenly resting place. This is perfection and completion of all that God has promised and what should we do but let’s make three dwelling places, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah, let us remain here. This is the end of our journey - Amen.

And a crescendo, from heaven perhaps, with clap of thunder seems to be the Divine explanation point! This is my Son, the Beloved, listen to Him. And then in an instant, all is back to normal. Or, nothing will ever be the same. You see in the story of Jesus’ earthly ministry, it certainly as Mark presents it, this is the turning point. From this moment, Jesus sets his face resolutely toward Jerusalem and the cross. Make no mistake about it. The journey is not over. This is a decent from the mountain to the worst of humanity in order that the best of creation maybe found. It is a decent into death so that new life may come, it is the way the truth and the life that is found in the sacrifice and surrender of Jesus. It is the move that we take during the season of Lent that we are about to begin. The disciples learn in this progression that there is no heavenly place on this earth, not on a high mountain in transfigured glory - and not in Jerusalem their destination. We are to follow and listen to this Jesus and all that has happened and all that is about to happen. And everything, everything is about a God who loves us completely. It is all about the forgiven and about leaning on that quotation of Capon’s; it is disproportionate extravagant, laying-down, for someone the forgiver has absurdly decided to call a friend.

And so today, on this Transfigured Sunday, we are called not to stay at the point of glory but to descend with Jesus as the one who completely shows us the nature of God as forgiving. And of those who listen to Jesus and follow Jesus, we rightly ask what this forgiving God would ask of us. And it is simple. To be forgivers in our own lives, to extravagantly lay-down everything for those we call friends, friends and humanity that we know and do not know, friends in Christ who are seated among us and as Jesus noted elsewhere, friends that we name our enemies.

And so in a world of wars and poverty the church with division and often acrimony, we are followers of a forgiving God, it is His way, His truth, His life. In our Eucharistic life today and in all days, we are tempted, we are tempted to see this sanctuary and worship as a resting place, as the prayer book says, a place of solace only and not of renewal. It is to be sure a moment of transfiguration where we see mortal elements of bread and wine made Holy and Sacred to be the transfigured glory of Jesus in our midst - but we do not remain here. We are a people who forgive like God who leads us through and with Christ. And so we move from this place and live a transfigured life as forgivers for Jesus Christ’s sake. And here, here’s our cross. As forgivers we must feed those who give, we lead with a giving heart. It is all about self-emptying and surrender. It is a process of letting go.

Imagine the witness that we can give to a world that seems all about grasping and holding winning at all costs. Imagine what we say to those who see retribution as a right. And, imagine what we can say to those who feel abandoned, fearful, oppressed or simply left behind. What we say is that we have been over-whelmed by God and Christ who calls us friends and because we have met that Divine forgiver, we are changed. He comes to us today and says, “Take my body and eat, and my blood and drink; become a part of me that you may be in me and I in you and then bless the world as a part and passion of my compassion a kingdom breaking into the world that says, you are forgiven. You are mine, I love you forever.”

When Jesus and the disciples left the mountain, everything seemed normal again, but nothing would ever be the same. They were touched by God’s forgiveness. As we leave today everything will seem normal, but nothing however, will ever be the same. You have been touched by God’s forgiveness, it is in you carry it to those need to hear, I love you, as the word of God. Carry it in your own brokenness to a broken and battered world that through Christ is being made new. And now, let us descend from the high mountain, onward to Jerusalem.

Amen.

Send comments to Webmaster, email: webmaster@stmargarets.org