Our Common Companions

Exodus 24:12-18, Mark 9: 2-9

A Sermon Preached by: the Rev. Dr. E. Scott Winnette

February 22, 2009

I love a good story. There is a Vietnamese folk story about the afterlife. Well, it is really about our lives together, our community. It goes like this. After we die we are transported to a beautiful room that has a very large table. The table is filled with an abundance of beautiful fruits and foods. We all have a seat at this table and we are hungry. There is one condition. You cannot use your hands to eat.   There is no cutlery provided, only chopsticks. And the chopsticks are 3 feet long.   It will easily become a hell of starvation and frustration if you try to serve yourself with the chopsticks, for it will not be possible. It will quickly become a heaven of comfort and satisfaction as you learn to feed the person across from you at the table. The community is built in mutual service and love. We have been enjoying a sermon series about our life together: our common cup, our common call, our common connections and today our common companions. Today is Transfiguration Sunday, a perfect Sunday to pull the themes of our common life together.

While I was researching today’s scripture I wrote two sermons. I could not choose so I will offer you both.   The first will be about a paradigm shift in divine/human communication. The second will be about Jesus re-balancing our passions for self-preservation as a community and our mission to give ourselves to the world. 

Jesus asked Peter, James and John to walk up with him a high mountain. Now the high mountain places were and are considered locations of special encounter with God. We all have special places where we encounter God: here in the Sanctuary, in Covenant Hall, the Library and Lounge of this church where we study the scripture together, and the places where we serve our neighbors. For many of us we meet the holy at the beach or in special rooms in our homes. We are met by God when we teach our children God’s love and Christ’s grace. 

Well, Jesus invited the three disciples to climb the mount with him for prayer. Picture it!

The three disciples are pulling out a picnic lunch and Jesus steps a bit higher and then he is transfigured before them. His clothes become whiter than any bleach could whiten. Now I don’t imagine this means that Jesus was transformed from an old Jesus to a new Jesus. This is a shift in the disciples’ perception of Jesus. Their view is transformed. They in that moment see the brilliance of God’s love within Jesus. They see the power of God. The story foreshadows the Ascension of Jesus after his resurrection. 

            The moment echoes Moses on Mount Sinai when he encounters the brilliance of God. But there are distinct differences. One, Moses went up the mountain alone. This time there is a community. Jesus invites his friends to join him on the mountain. The other difference is that Moses could not bear the holy, brilliance of God; he needed to avert his gaze. The disciples could see Jesus; they could maintain their relationship with him.   And then it gets better, Moses and Elijah appear. It is a divine huddle.  They see Moses and Elijah murmuring with Jesus surely strategizing for the faith community.

Can you hear me? Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? Don’t you love the Verizon commercials? They are effective and annoying. Remember the bespectacled guy with the crowd behind him. There is a connection to our text this morning; the crowd represents all the people who make that phone connection happen - all who work to connect your Verizon call. Rather than Moses and God alone on the mountain, rather than the model of communication where the underpaid CEO Moses comes down from on high with all the divine answers, we get a community on the mount, we are given a paradigm shift in communication in this story with Jesus.   Like the Verizon commercials’ crowd we have the host of the faithful up on the mountain all working together to hear God. The three disciples represent the fresh crowd of followers; Moses represents the organizing followers of the Torah; and Elijah represents the justice seeking Prophets. There is a crowd on the mountain. 

            It is like God saying, “Can you hear me? Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now that you have the history of faith with you, while you have the brilliant love of Christ before you.” God cries out, “This is my son, my beloved, listen to him! Listen to him? Listen to him.   When you listen to him, you hear me too for I am incarnate within him.” It is a foreshadowing of the Priesthood of all believers, of the Body of Christ, of the Church.   Rather than an old model where we think a very few people can hear God; we are all commanded to Listen to God’s Son, Jesus.    We come together as a people to listen through our worship and prayer. We come together to listen through our study of scripture, and as we serve each other and our neighbors. Where two or more are gathered in Christ’s name, God is present – a new offering of divine/human communication. 

Now for the second sermon.  Picture the fellowship on the mountains particularly the

three divine dignitaries: Jesus clearly filled with God’s love and power with Moses and Elijah. Jesus is the Lord. Moses represents the Law and Elijah represents the justice of God. 

Moses having listened to God helped free the people from slavery in Egypt.  He then went up Mount Sinai and came down with the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments.  He is attributed the authorship of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures. Moses represents the law; Moses represents the creation and protection of a society and faith – its boundaries and the resourcing that protected the people and the institution. 

Now we all know that human institutions fail and in time even Israel failed. Because

of human corruption and sin the structures of Society too easily exclude and exploit others. The people fell into injustice and began to exclude others and began to exploit the poor. So in response God called forth the prophets, not to abolish the ways of Moses but to correct those ways and to pull the people back into God's vision. God called the Elijah’s to seek justice reminding the people to not allow their protection of the institution to pull them from God’s missio dei, God’s mission of love to the world. 

Standing between Moses’ (structure and order) and Elijah’s (justice and ardor) Jesus balances their powers. Both sides are necessary. Jesus as Lord balances the powers of the institution and its security and the justice vision of God. Remember the story of Jesus healing on the Sabbath. He does not abolish the Sabbath law, he simply reminds the people that it was established for their benefit – that the law should never prohibit love of neighbor.

I have a metaphor that presents itself when I look to the three on the mountain. But don’t take it too far or too literally.   Jesus is similar to the ideal executive branch of our government providing leadership for all of us. Moses is similar to the legislative branch providing the structure of society. And Elijah is similar to the judicial branch providing fairness and justice.

Now to bring it home we need both camps at Bradley Hills. We need to help each other pick up the chopsticks that we might share God’s heavenly banquet with each other. We need our Moses camp to make sure our bills are paid, to take care of this building, to ensure that we have regular ordered worship, to ensure that we survive and thrive, a rich community of spiritual friends in this space for decades even hundreds of years.    

We also desperately need the Elijah camp to remind us not to spend more on ourselves than we give away. We need the Prophets camp - to ensure we give as much as we keep. To ensure we care for our children and the ill and the weak among us and beyond us. We need the prophets to constantly point us to God’s Mission. We need them to keep us from focusing too much on ourselves and to keep us from getting fixated on our structure and our comfort. We need the Elijahs’ to ensure we pause and listen to Jesus’ voice for justice.   We need them to urge us to not over-organize our worship in ways that inhibit the Spirit of God or make our worship so prescribed that it not be welcoming to strangers. 

Empowered on the Mountain of Transfiguration we listen to Jesus, our executive, in our Bible study and in our worship that we might find the right balance between our passions for our community and our passions for God’s mission.  Next week we start Lent. Let us worship together, let us serve together.     All of us are invited to help during our Lenten Service Day – there is work for the Moses and Elijahs’ among you. We will care for our own grounds, we will provide for our neighbors in mission, and we will gather to enjoy food and then Kyle’s recital as work weary friends. 

Together, we are the Community of Spiritual Friends at Bradley Hills -- Common Cup, Call, Connection and Companions. Amen. 

May it be so. Amen.