Prayer and the Transfiguration

                                                              Last Epiphany 2014

Exodus 24:12-18; Ps2; 2 Peter 1:16-21; Matt. 17:1-9

Father Adam Trambley

March 2, 2014 St.John’s Sharon

Who’s in the house?  Jesus is in the house.  That’s right.

I want to use the account of Jesus’ Transfiguration to help us look at prayer.  In this passage, the parallels  to prayer are not so much about praying in a particular situation, but about a life of prayer in general where we come to encounter Christ and become like him, being changed from one degree of glory into another.

To start with, Jesus takes Peter, James and John up to a high mountain by themselves.  In any encounter with God, Jesus takes the initiative.  We pray because the Holy Spirit of Jesus cries out in our spirit.  We love God because he first loved us.  We can only respond to God, but his gracious initiative is so immense that we could spend our entire lives responding to that invitation and never exhaust it.  Just like for Peter, James and John, our experience of Jesus in prayer begins as he leads us.            

Where Jesus leads us is up a high mountain, away from the rest of life so we can encounter him.  We may be led alone, or led with a small group as Peter, James and John were.  We may be taken up a mountain for a period of time, or we might be brought into the sanctuary at St. John’s, or we could be led to a comfortable chair in a quiet corner of our house on a daily basis.  Wherever the location, Jesus wants to meet us somewhere without the jumble of our normal stimuli so we can experience his gifts to us.

Once they are on the mountain, the disciples see Jesus transfigured.  He shines like the sun and his clothes are dazzling white.  To say it another way, the disciples see Jesus as he is, resplendent in the glory that is his from the beginning and that became more fully manifest again after his resurrection.  Yet the disciples can see his radiance even in the midst of his earthly life as he prepares to take up his cross. 

Jesus appears to us also, in the midst of our lives when we follow him to a mountaintop where we can perceive him.  Occasionally, people do experience dreams or visions of a radiant Jesus coming to them, looking like he is described here.  But sometimes our experience of the fullness of Jesus’ presence in our lives is different.  Maybe we come to perceive how he was with us during particularly difficult times in our past.  Maybe we glimpse him touching us in the splendor of the natural world’s beauty.  Maybe we are graced with a sense of being truly forgiven for some sin and finally released from our guilt.  Maybe we are overwhelmed with a sense of his peace, or suddenly overcome with gratitude for all the good things around us, or feel an inexplicable joy welling up inside of us.  These or many other experiences of Jesus revealing himself in our lives can provide a transformative or even life-altering encounter as we experience ourselves being present at Jesus’ transfiguration.

Moses and Elijah are talking with Jesus because often our experiences of Jesus shining into our lives open our eyes to the whole communion of saints surrounding us as arrayed in the radiance of children of God, as well.  The First Letter of John says that when Christ is revealed we will be like him.  As we see Jesus arrayed in glory, we cannot help but begin to see others whose lives are lived in Jesus reflecting his glory.  Jesus is surrounded by the saints, not because he needs to be, but because he is the head of the body, and the healing and light he brings to us prepares us to live as radiant members of that same Body of Christ.  The more clearly we see God, the more everyone around us will seem godlike, as well.

Then, Peter speaks up.  “Lord, it is good for us to be here.  Let me make three booths.”  Peter’s words are ridiculous in the situation, but his intention is essential.  Of course it is good for them to be there.  If it wasn’t, Jesus wouldn’t have brought them.  And Jesus doesn’t need a shady booth to protect him from the sun.  He is shining like the sun.  But the response of Peter, to immediately offer whatever gifts he has in response to Jesus’ revealing his splendor, is correct, both for him and for us.

Our natural tendency when experiencing the overwhelming love we receive in an encounter with Jesus is to try to return it.  What we have to offer may make no more sense than what Peter does, but that doesn’t matter.  Just as parents post indecipherable crayon drawings in prominent places on the refrigerator, God honors our intention to love him, to serve him, and to draw more closely into his presence.

Then, as Peter offers himself, two things happen.   A bright cloud descends on them and a voice says, “This is my Son, the Beloved…listen to him!” 

This bright cloud is an important metaphor for the development of a closer communion with God.  A cloud is by nature dark.  When we are in a cloud, we can’t see, and it can be hard to hear.  Clouds, like thick fog, are disorienting.  The bright cloud surrounding us once we have offered ourselves to God means that we will experience the light of God’s presence and relationship with us in the midst of times and places that are confusing for us.  We may not experience God in our day-to-day sense and feelings, but through those times when we feel like life is askew and we are coming into events from the wrong direction.  We may not have a warm fuzzy feeling of Jesus around us, but only know him in the dark places of pure faith where we find ourselves in doubt, anxiety and fear, including fear of God’s continuing presence and love in our lives.  As we move from trying to get God to come into our lives in favor of actually entering into the fuller life of God, we will pass through times and places that surpass our ability to comprehend.  These bright clouds will be beyond anything we can deal with in our limited human capacities, and we may feel utterly discombobulated and alone.  Yet, we are still moving closer to God, so however anxious the cloud may make us, God’s brightness is illuminating the depths of our souls.

But God does not leave us in the cloud without assistance.  The voice from heaven tells us to listen to Jesus, and this direction to listen points in three directions.  On one level, the voice is telling Peter, and also us, not to worry about booths or any of the other ideas we have that would keep us busy enough so that we don’t have to move into God’s bright cloud.  Our offer is welcomed, but not accepted.  The second reason for this instruction is to highlight Jesus’ words when the disciples are overwhelmed with fear from the cloud.  Jesus says, “Get up and do not be afraid.”  God wants us to know that even in the darkest and most disorienting pieces of our lives when we feel abandoned by everyone including God, we do not need to be afraid.   Jesus is still coming to us, and touching us, and bringing us up.  We need not fear.  Jesus is with us even when we are surrounded by clouds.  Then the third reason for the instruction is a reminder that we are supposed to follow Jesus’ teachings.  Instead of deciding we are special because we saw Jesus transfigured, or setting up a transfiguration gift shop, or whatever else our egos could come up with, we are meant to continue living into the fullness of life described in the Sermon on the Mount and the rest of Jesus’ instructions.  We are going to have a hard time developing a deeper life and encounter with Jesus if our actions consistently turn ourselves away from his goodness and love.  Instead of building booths, Peter was meant to go out to all the world and preach the good news, because that’s what Jesus told him to do.  We are meant to do likewise.

Then the disciples see Jesus, alone, presumably as he was.  In the midst of intense prayer and experiences of God, whether euphorically good like seeing Jesus transfigured or terrifyingly disorienting like going through a bright cloud, we keep coming back to normal life where we share Jesus love and good news with others.  Our encounters with God should help us live out that love more fully, which is the real point of all prayer experiences.

The transfiguration provides us a model for on-going, lifelong encounters with Jesus whether they occur on mountaintops, when seeing him in radiant glory, or when we are stuck in bright clouds.  Most importantly, whatever we are experiencing in life, we can know that Jesus is holding his hand out to us to lead us into the fullness of his life, and that prayer is an important part of our response that helps us take his hand.

Jesus Is In the House

                                                               Epiphany 7A 2014

Leviticus 191-2,9-18; Ps 119:33-40; 1 Cor. 3:10-11,16-23; Matthew 5:38-48

Father Adam Trambley

February 23, 2014 St.John’s Sharon

In seminary, to show that we were both cool and devoted to God, we had this thing where somebody would yell out, “Who’s in the house?” and everybody would yell back, “Jesus is in the house.”  So let’s just try that – I say “Who’s in the house?” and you all respond “Jesus is in the house.”  Who’s in the house? Jesus is in the house. Good.

This morning’s readings bring us the next section in the Sermon on the Mount, a portion of the Law of Moses from Leviticus, a stanza of psalm 119 praising God for his instructions, and an appeal from Paul to the Corinthians to be what God has called them to be.  I want to highlight some of the instructions we heard today before focusing on the importance of what Paul is saying about the local church.

To start with, I hope we don’t have to spend too much time explaining why it is wrong to put things in front of blind people so that they trip and fall, or why we shouldn’t make fun of deaf people behind their backs when they can’t hear us.  I hate to think about what was going on in ancient Israel that God felt a need to include those commandments.

Leviticus also instructs farmers not harvest all of their fields, but to leave some of the harvest for the poor and needy to gather.  God is reminding us that even the things we think of as ours, and even what we have worked hard to obtain, still belong to him.  More than that, he allows the poor and needy to redeem some of his claims.  If we don’t leave some margin in our work for others, we are probably being selfish with God’s gifts to us.  That margin of generosity will be different in our lives than for ancient farmers, but the concept is important.

Another important concept here is that holding back wages to pay someone later is equivalent to stealing.  If people need their money, once they have done the work they are entitled to it.  No one should have to go get a payday loan for money they have already earned.  We also hear not to profit by the blood of your neighbor.  At a basic level this means don’t lie about them in court to get their stuff.  At a more general level, especially in today’s economy, we should try to be aware of the ways that our own buying choices might contribute to the misfortune of others.   

Many of the items in Leviticus are familiar to us: don’t steal, don’t lie, don’t treat people differently whether they are rich or poor, don’t hate people, don’t take revenge on people or bear grudges against people, and love your neighbor as yourself.    

The verses from today’s psalm give us words to thank God for how good his instructions are to us.  They remind us both how much we need God’s help to stay focused on his way of life and how much better that way is for us than the alternatives.  One line of this psalm, however, always hits me: Turn my eyes from watching what is worthless.  We have so much that passes for entertainment, or even on some level news, that is worthless or worse.  Television and on-line programming are both excellent at keeping us hooked so that our eyes stay glued to the screen.  Yet we waste so much time on worthless things that we wouldn’t even miss if the power went out for a day.  How many relationships are underdeveloped, how much useful work is undone, how much art and beauty and music remains unexpressed, how much rest is left unslept because our eyes zone in on something worthless and we can’t break away?  This line is important for us to pray: Turn my eyes from watching what is worthless.

In the Sermon on the Mount today, Jesus gives us some very difficult instructions that all flow from the instruction to love our enemies and pray for our persecutors.  Fundamentally, we are instructed to change our hearts from loving only those people who we believe are worthy of our love to loving everyone as God our Father loves everyone.  This love is not easy or natural for us, but we are still called to love like God.  Moreover, Jesus does actually mean all of the specific instructions he gives which are the practical consequences of a heart overflowing with love for everyone.  We really are not supposed to retaliate when we are injured.  If people want our stuff, including our time or our labor, we can actually give it to them, and even offer them more, and trust that God will take care of what we need.  Part of the secret to living this way is knowing that because we are children of God we are actually stronger and richer and more capable than those in the world, so we can do with less or bear more burdens or suffer indignities or even be crucified without losing the most important thing, which is the love of God in Jesus Christ that has been poured out on us.  We can strive, then, to be perfect like our heavenly Father.  Part of God’s perfection is being able to love everyone, even at the greatest of costs, and we strive to love like him.

Who’s in the house? Jesus is in the house.

All of these different instructions are meant to help us create a community that lives according to the values of the Kingdom of God.  Paul has an important reminder for such a community.  He says: Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?...For God’s temple is holy and you are that temple. 

The first important thing to note about what Paul is saying is that his words are directed to the local church.  He is not saying to Christians as individuals that they are God’s temple.  He is telling the people gathered into the local church in Corinth that together they are God’s temple where the Holy Spirit dwells. 

The second important thing to note is that the local church in Corinth had serious problems.  They had different factions based on different apostles who had come through and taught them.  They had divisions along class lines.  They didn’t always have the highest standards of morality.  And they had some people that seemed much more concerned about the earthly wisdom of the day than the gospel of Jesus.  In fact these problems were so serious that we have a Christian leader sending them a letter of instruction a generation after Saint Paul dealing with the same basic issues. 

Yet in the midst of all their issues, which by the way we still have in our churches today, Paul says that their congregation is where God resides in Corinth.  He is reminding them how important their community is.  Corinth was a pagan city with numerous temples to any number of pagan gods and all manner of other unchristian behavior.  The Corinthians could go anywhere for all manner of philosophy, religious festivals, fertility rites, magic charms, spiritualized self-help and or to make offerings to idols in return for luck, warding off evil spirits or cursing enemies.  But anyone who was looking for the living God had to come to the Corinthian church.  Anyone looking for resurrection in the midst of death, anyone looking for strength to love others to the foolish heights of Jesus, anyone who was convinced that a personal God loved all his children enough to bring salvation and healing through his Son, anyone, in short, looking for God’s temple where his Holy Spirit dwells, was only going to find that temple where the church met.  That temple in Corinth – the local church -- was vitally important.

Do you know, brothers and sisters, that we are God’s temple and that the Holy Spirit of God dwells in us?  Do you know how vitally important that temple is?  The world around us desperately needs this holy Temple of God.  Only in God’s temple are they going to find what they need.  And the need is great.

Nowhere else but in the Temple of God will anyone find people living according to the commandments we’ve been hearing these past few weeks, either the basic community laws from the Old Testament or the self-sacrificial love of the Sermon on the Mount.

Nowhere else but in the Temple of God will anyone find the light and salt needed to overcome the world’s darkness and dreariness.

Nowhere else but in the Temple of God will anyone find the good news that God loves them so much that Jesus Christ has come into the world to forgive their sins and allow them to live a new life of purpose and meaning in him.

Nowhere else but in the Temple of God will anyone find the real presence of Christ in the bread and wine, and be able to become a living member of the Body of Christ.

Nowhere else but in the Temple of God will anyone find the hope of the resurrection breaking forth into a world still bound by the chains of death and despair, and once again this week our community desperately needs to know resurrection.

Nowhere else but in the Temple of God. 

So we live like the Temple of God, doing our best to keep the commandments and to be perfectly loving as our heavenly Father is perfect.  As we try to live as that holy Temple, we trust we will get whatever we need.  Providing a Temple for himself in the midst of our area is so important to God that everything is put out our disposal, whether the world or life or death or the present or the future, and that pretty much covers everything.  We belong to Christ, through whom all things were created, and he wants to dwell in our midst so he can love us and bring healing and salvation to everyone in this region through our life as his church. He is our foundation, he will protect us in our struggles, and he will provide us whatever we need if we are willing to accept it.     

Brothers and sisters do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?  Or to put it another way: Who’s in the house? Jesus is in the house… Who’s in the house? Jesus is in the house… Who’s in the house? Jesus is in the house.

Of Anger, Adultery, Oaths, and Idiots -- Matthew 5:21-37

                                                               Epiphany 6A 2014

Ecclesiasticus15:15-20; Psalm 119:1-8; 1 Cor 3:1-9; Matt 5:21-37

Father Adam Trambley

February 16, 2014 St.John’s Sharon

In today’s gospel, Jesus is continuing his teaching in the Sermon on the Mount.  He is drawing on the Old Testament, but doing something different with it.  In the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, God gave commandments, statutes and ordinance of how to live in a community of God’s people.  Some of the instructions were based on a recognition that life is messed up, that nobody’s perfect, and that we need a reasonable rule of law to keep society working.  Jesus is not providing guidelines for good government, however.  Jesus is laying out the principles for the eternal Kingdom of God. 

These ethics of the Kingdom that Jesus lays out, prepare us for eternal life in two ways.  First, living into Jesus’ instructions turns us into the kind of people that can be eternal citizens of the Kingdom of God.  Nobody wants to spend eternity with somebody walking around calling people names, staring, and ending every conversation by offering a pinky promise.  Second, only by living out Jesus commandments will we become people who could actually be happy living in an eternal community.  Unless we want to feel that we are trapped in heaven with a bunch of idiots, prostitutes, and liars, we have to stop seeing people that way, and begin to look upon people as the glorious, beloved creatures of God that we all are.  Trust me -- people who we avoid as unbelievably annoying today aren’t going to get less annoying when we get to spend eternity with them unless one of two things happens.  Either we leave the heavenly courts and go down to another floor because we’d rather be in hell than deal with them – and, if we’re honest, we’ve all felt that way about somebody sometime – or we learn to see them in a different light.  The Sermon on the Mount instructs us how to live like citizens of the Kingdom of God now, so that we can manage it when we experience it fully.

The first item Jesus addresses in today’s reading is murder.  Certainly unlawfully killing people is wrong.  Jesus says that just as wrong are the anger and scorn arising in the heart that are the internal states equivalent to the outward act of murder.  Attacking people with words, or even with glares and attitude, can be hurtful.  At the same time, all of those actions demonstrate an attitude of the heart which says we are somehow entitled to judge people.  We decide, based on whatever criteria are in our best interests at the moment, that we are better than other people.  We divide humanity into two groups – ourselves, and maybe a few people like us, and the vast multitude of fools, idiots, morons, goober-brains, doofusses, incompetents, slow drivers, frustrating coworkers, and, of course, people too stupid to figure out how to use a cash register correctly when we are in a hurry.  The more we write people off as somehow beneath us, the less we are able to love them, and the more we allow our own frustrations and resentments to overcome our peace and joy.  Psalm 1 says “Happy are they who have not…sat in the seats of the scornful” for a reason. When we look upon people with scorn, we trade the fruits of the Holy Spirit for the barrenness of our own selfishness, and we have placed ourselves outside the community of the Kingdom of God.

Just to be clear, Jesus is talking here about a certain kind of anger.  Anger in the face of injustice is a virtue that provides motivation to correct wrongs and protect the weak.  Virtuous anger is always directed toward the creation of a just order, however, and not towards revenge or retribution against individuals, and is never about me getting my way, however right I know that I am.

From murder, Jesus moves onto sex.  From Old Testament times, and almost every other time, people accepted that committing adultery was wrong.  Jesus goes beyond that, however, to say that looking at people with thoughts of committing adultery is pretty much the same.  When we stop looking at people as God’s beloved children and instead look at them as means to our own pleasure, we’re not ready for membership in the Kingdom of God.  Our sexuality is designed to draw us closer in love to other people and to bind together a marriage.  Leering glances, dwelling on sexual thoughts, and the entire industry devoted to pornography drive wedges between marriages and twist the focus of our sexual energies inward onto ourselves instead of outward in love and service of others.  Here we aren’t just talking about a thought or feeling that leaps through the mind.  Jesus’ discussion is more about whether we choose to dwell on and even act on lustful feelings, or if we strive to see people and treat people with the love that God has for them.

Jesus uses an exaggerated example to show how essential he sees this purity of heart.  “If your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away.”  Church teaching is pretty clear that we aren’t supposed to take this passage literally – and having met no Christians recently with a self-inflicted eye-patch, even the most Bible-thumping of preachers can see Jesus’ metaphorical intent.  But Jesus does want us to see how far we are supposed to go, even when it is difficult, to do the right thing, even when the right thing is in our hearts and minds, and even when we could hide those sins pretty effectively from others, at least for a time, if we tried.  (Of course, hiding our sins, even private ones, instead of confessing them does cause us problems and makes us put up barriers between ourselves and others.)

Then Jesus talks about divorce, and he compares divorce to adultery.  We need to note what Jesus is saying here.  He is saying that divorce causes the same kind of damage that adultery does.  Divorces destroy families and relationships, cause significant pain and suffering to those involved and to those around them, and can result in the same social and economic difficulties, especially for unmarried women in Jesus’ day, as adultery does.  But Jesus is not trying to set up some sort of rule here, or making church laws about when people can get divorced or remarried.  He is saying that if you are married, you are supposed to do whatever you need to do to stay married.  Certainly marriage is hard.  Certainly marriage requires sacrifice.  Certainly marriage is meant to be until death do us part. 

But Jesus is also not saying that marriages never die.  He recognizes that sometimes something has happened that ends a marriage, and he gives the example of unchastity.  This provision isn’t meant to be a legal requirement that people have to prove in order to get a divorce.  Instead, Jesus is acknowledging the painful reality that sometimes a divorce doesn’t destroy a marriage, but merely recognizes what has already happened.  While not meant as an easy excuse not to fight for a marriage, and many marriages are worth fighting for even when there has been infidelity, these verses are also not meant to add to the pain or burden of divorced people, or to keep them from redemptive second marriages.  God is against divorce because of the pain and harm it causes, and most divorced people understand how horrible divorce can be.  Once a marriage has died, God wants to bring healing, redemption and growth, not further punishment, to those involved.

The final topic of today’s portion of the Sermon on the Mount deals with oaths and vows.  Jesus’ instruction is simply to avoid them, for two reasons.  The first reason is that we don’t really have control over the future, so when we swear by things we are making promises to God that we can’t necessarily keep.  In Jesus’ day, people came up with things that sounded important to swear by, but left them some wiggle room.  Instead of swearing by God, they might swear by heaven or by Jerusalem or by the hair on their chinny chin chins. (OK, scripture says “by your head” but same difference.)  Jesus assures us that all creation has some relationship to God, so don’t invoke him when we can’t guarantee what will happen.  The second reason not to swear is that swearing erodes our integrity.  Everything we say should be true, whether we swear or not.  If we say “yes” we should mean “yes”, and say “no” if we mean “no.”  If we are only trustworthy when we cross our hearts and offer to die and let someone stick a needle in our eye if we lie, we’re in trouble already.  Or, as Shakespeare has Juliet say: If thou shalt say aye, then I will take thy word, yet if thou swearest, thou mayest prove false.

Of course, sometimes in court we may need to swear to tell the truth, or to take an oath of office for a position of public service.  These acts are, again, the imperfect legal requirements of a broken world, and we do them when necessary.  But we should never be in a position that our character would make someone believe they need to require that of us.

So if Jesus wants us to change our hearts in these rather difficult ways, how do we do it?  Truly living into the Sermon on the Mount is the work of a lifetime, but these three steps can help.

First, we have to decide we actually want to live like citizens of the Kingdom.  We could just get by in life.  Our culture is certainly awash with insults and swearing and sexual imagery.  We have to decide that being decent people isn’t enough – we want to do the hard work to be saints.  We want to be the people that bring God’s light into the world.  We want to be citizens of the Kingdom of God that is arriving today.  If we don’t make an internal commitment to living a godly life, we will never be able to do the work to transform our hearts and create new habits.

Second, we need to pray.  On the one hand some kind of prayer that lets us sit in God’s quiet presence each day will invite the Holy Spirit in.  The Holy Spirit will then work at easing our anger and turning our desires toward God.  On the other hand, prayer in the moment for other people will help us do what we need to do when we face temptation and difficulty.  If we are feeling angry or annoyed with someone, a prayer for them is better than an insult.  If we find our eyes lingering where they need not be, praying for that person is a good way to remember that they are a child of God.  If we find ourselves about to slip up with our tongue, a quick silent prayer like “Thy word be done,” can be most helpful.

Then third, we can confess when we mess up.  No matter how hard we try, we will sometimes fail, and God’s grace and forgiveness are always available.  If we ask someone to be an accountability partner for us, we can help keep ourselves from going too far of the rails, as well as getting back on them quickly when need be.  If you are interested, please talk with Deacon Randy or me about finding accountability partners.  Knowing that someone else is with us in the struggle, and we are going to tell them when we find ourselves falling, often provides the support necessary to do what God wants us to do when we get weak.  Christianity is not a religion that can be lived alone.  We need to trust each other not only with our strengths and gifts, but also with our weaknesses and failings.  God gave us each other because we need each other.

Jesus has a better way of life for us than the least common denominator of decency.  Jesus wants us to be part of a loving, life-giving, eternal community in the Kingdom of God.  Let us make the decision to live into it, while praying and supporting one another until we reach it.