A Sermon preached by: Scott Winnette

February 18, 2007

Something Special

 

            Transfiguration -- I will spend no energy this morning trying to explain what happened.  In the transfiguration moment we hear God’s eternal imperative voice demanding we “Listen to Jesus.”  If we learn anything at all from this passage. If we learn a lesson from the story of God’s public naming and blessing of Jesus as his Son, let it be a call to watchful prayer.   Let it be a call to watchful prayer as a community. Let it be a call to define our community beginning with prayer. 

            Note as you study the Gospels that busy Jesus prayed a lot. He prayed on boats, he prayed on the prairie, he prayed on the mountains, in the synagogue, in upper rooms, in the valley. He escaped the rat-race life of a charismatic leader and prayed. He prayed alone following his baptism and he heard God’s voice of approval. 

            There was something special about that man. We call him the Son of God, the Messiah, our Lord and Savior; we esteem him very highly, even believing in the mystery that he was completely God while utterly human. We collectively remember the Shekinah of God, the heavy glory of God filling him with power. Yet, with all the favor of God’s divine DNA, Jesus still prayed.  But not just alone, his prayer was not an independent spirituality, a singular self-actualizing effort. His prayer always directed him to the people. And he tried to teach his disciples to pray with him. Jesus yearned for his friends to join him to be fully present to God with him in prayer. It is important that Jesus invited three of his friends to join him on the mountain in prayer.   Unlike Moses and Elijah who encountered God’s heavy glory alone, he popularized prayer, teaching corporate prayer. But the three favored disciples just didn’t it. It is important that he invites these same three friends to join him praying in the sorrowful Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus seeks to create a praying community. The disciples just didn’t get it. They hoped for every other kind of community: a militant community who would wrest their people’s freedom from the Romans, a respected community who was honored in the synagogue, a powerful community of lieutenants to a miracle-making Messiah.   They just did not get it. Jesus wanted their community to be defined first by prayer and then by actions of God’s justice, God’s compassion, God’s mercy-healing of the rifts of the world. 

            How do you pray? Let me confess to you that I am not stopping in my busy routine often to climb mountains to pray; I’m not praying in boats, prairies, or upper rooms, with my family, in my office, in the library, my kitchen or even in this inspiring space. I grab a book, the newspaper, turn on the television or check my email, the first moment I am done with the work of the day. Now, I have a good morning prayer routine, but I’m not daily leaving my laptop and desk-phone to come in here to pray. I don’t think I get it anymore than Peter, John and James. I certainly don’t practice Jesus’ commitment to prayer. But I want to!

            How do we pray?   Let me confess to you that too many of my public prayers are words conveying nothing. Too many of our collective prayers seem to be a lip-service to an old ritual of a by-gone superstitious church.  You cry out as a congregation for a deeper spirituality. An answer is in our text today; learn how to pray together. When we climb with Jesus, pray with Jesus, listen for God’s Word with Jesus, God’s glory will surround us and we will be guided down the mountaintops of prayer into the world to be Christ’s healing people.  The secret to a spiritual life begins in loving God in prayer and serving our neighbors in love.

            Do you remember what the three friends did on the mountain and in the garden?   They dozed off.   They were so exhausted with following Jesus around, gathering the baskets of bread and fish leftovers, straining to understand his parables, striving to guide him to be the leader they privately wanted, so exhausted that they nodded off.  They did not understand that Jesus’ insight into people’s lives, his compassion, his wisdom in interpreting scripture, his miracle-making power originated in his prayer-life, in his regular attendance with God. 

Can you remember those pre-caffeine high school days in class?   I remember daily sitting in high-school geometry on the back row with my head propped against the wall, desperately trying to stay awake. My head wobbled, and my eyes drooped. Don’t you hate the times in life where you know you should be listening and you just cannot keep your eyes open?   I to often gave into the lethargy perfecting a method to not get caught asleep. I learned to keep one eye open. I alternated shutting my eyes -- left eye for awhile and then the right eye. The teacher could look over and see that I was wakeful even with a cyclop’s vision.   One day I fell deeply asleep with one eye open. I was awakened by the Geometry teacher standing in front of me marveling at my one glazed-over opened eye. She had asked me a question in class and when I did not answer realized I was asleep. How many signs of God do we miss in our world because we are simply too weighed down and weary with the heaviness of our other priorities? 

            Do you want to experience the Shekinah glory of God? Do you yearn for a bright clarity in your life that would guide your living and give your life new meaning? Do you desperately desire that Bradley Hills become the family of spiritual friends where you know you are cherished? Do you despair knowing the violence in the world, the pain and hunger of so many? Do you despair that nothing can be done to really make the world better?   DO you want to participate in the positive transformation of the world. Then learn to pray better. Then learn to pray together. This space sits open and empty almost every day. Call some friends to join you here to pray. Bring your family here once a week to sit together in prayer. You could have a weekly meeting in this space to pray for peace.   As Presbyterians we are required to pray before every meeting and we meet a lot. Now if we could pray before each meeting better, really pray as Jesus taught, this Church would take off in a bright trajectory of faithfulness. God comes when two or more are gathered in prayer.    Believe it! Learn to experience it!

            Please don’t wait for Jon, Karen, Gail or me to design a stimulating prayer service or to hand you panacea book on how-to pray?   Even Jesus could not convince the disciples to stay awake with him in prayer. You have to decide to prioritize prayer into your life. You have to decide as a church to be driven by prayer rather than studies, surveys, world needs, or powerful preferences. We are demanded to re-visit our priorities, the way we spend our time, particularly the way we spend our most valuable waking time. We are promised holy transfigurations when we devote ourselves to God in prayer.

            Jesus and his favored disciples climbed the mountain to pray. Jesus prayed and was transfigured before them. Moses and Elijah appeared. The mantles of prophetic authority to rescue people, transform society, and create community were conveyed to Jesus in that Holy moment. Jesus descended the mountain into a crowd of people who sought a new humanity. He immediately healed a young boy bewildered by demons. We are Christ’s body in the world today. In the mid-1980s, the re-uniting Presbyterians of North America proclaimed in our Brief Statement of Faith, this summary statement of Jesus’ life: 

Jesus proclaimed the reign of God: preaching good news to the poor and release to the captives, teaching by word and deed and blessing the children, healing the sick and binding up the brokenhearted, eating with outcasts, forgiving sinners, and calling all to repent and believe the gospel.[1]  

            Jesus lived, demonstrating the value of each person and witnessing to justice in the world.   In the manner of the prophets before him, Jesus incited fear in the privileged.   He was murdered by those seeking to protect their power. He rose from the dead, declaring God’s ultimate and redemptive transformation of unjust principalities and powers. Resurrected, Jesus again climbed up the mountain with the disciples. Jesus was transfigured. By the wind and Word, he anointed the disciples with his power and authority to rescue people and transform society seeking God’s Ultimate Redemption.    Before Jesus departed into God’s mysterious embrace, he commanded the disciples to return to the world and to share his Gospel of love. 

            They didn’t get it in that Transfiguration mountain-top moment. They didn’t get it when the resurrected Jesus ascended to the heavens. They didn’t get it until one fearful day they gathered desperately wanting to know what to do without their Jesus. Seeking to understand who they were to be – whether they were to just return to the way things were forgetting him and his radical teachings – whether they should defiantly stand before the Romans as martyrs -- whether they should just seek asylum in a neighboring nation --- Seeking to discern who they were to be, they came together to pray. On that Pentecost day, the disciples finally got it, that all along Jesus was teaching them to pray together. That day they prayed together and the very power of God came down and filled them with divine glory, light and purpose. When we pray together, God’s Spirit comes down from the heavens, God’s Spirit gathers from the mountains, God’s Spirit rushes over the oceans to fill us with the prophetic energy of Jesus. Stay awake this Lent, learn to pray this Lent and watch as the Spirit transforms us into a new community.

            We, the Church, are the disciples’ inheritors of Jesus’ power and God’s call. We Presbyterians summarize this call confessing:

 

In a broken and fearful world the Spirit gives us courage to pray without ceasing, to witness among all peoples to Christ as Lord and Savior, to unmask idolatries in church and culture, to hear the voices of peoples long silenced, and to work with others for justice, freedom, and peace.[2]

There was something special about Jesus. Praise God! He taught it to us.

 

May we pray so. Amen.

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