"See Again"

Sermon Text: Matthew 17: 1-9

For many years I had a brightly colored piece of paper hanging on the wall of my office with two words on it: “See again.” It came from an activity during a class I led here on Marcus Borg’s book The Heart of Christianity. The leader’s notes from the curriculum asked me to print out pieces of paper with different phrases from one of Borg’s chapters and hang them around the room. During class we talked about what each of the phrases meant to us. I liked the one that said “see again” so much that I couldn’t bear to throw it away. It hung on my wall for several years and it kept falling off, over and over again. So I had to keep hanging it up over and over again…I have a sneaking suspicion that the not-sticky-enough tape was probably the Spirit’s way of reminding me I needed to see that piece of paper again.

I have discovered that I need to be reminded, from time to time, to see again. I have a tendency, like many of us do, I suppose, to see something or someone, make a few judgments, commit a few things to my memory, and then just kind of lock those observations into my brain as fact. I have to really remind myself to wake up, pay attention, and SEE AGAIN – perhaps most especially with the people and places that I encounter on a daily basis.

I had a hilarious conversation one time with one of my dearest friends from college, Clint. This was probably five or six years after we had first met and Clint was telling me how he had described me to someone who hadn’t yet met me. He described me as having chin-length hair. Now at the time of this conversation my hair was probably halfway down my back. I said, “Clint, what are you talking about? I don’t have chin-length hair.” He said, “You don’t? Huh. I guess you don’t. I think I just categorized you in my brain as a person with chin-length hair because that’s what you had when we first met. I never updated you in my brain.”

Clint needed to be reminded to see again.

Seeing again matters. Maybe not so much in noticing that a friend has longer hair, but in lots of other ways. Because people change, the world changes, things shift. As co-creators with God, we have to be ready and able to see again at a moment’s notice.

I believe seeing again is a crucial part of recognizing the Reign of God as it exists in and around us each and every day. For me, the Reign of God is not some far off place or time. I believe it is a reality right here and now. I hope this doesn’t sound too New Agey to you, but I deeply believe that there are multiple layers to reality and that, beneath the routine of everyday life, the Reign of God lurks and calls to us. At times, we get a glimpse of it and it makes us catch our breath.

When we notice the Reign of God in our midst – when we take the time to see again – it is a moment of transformation. When we notice it, we are seeing what is true. We are seeing the real-ness that lies beneath the surface of our everyday encounters. We are privileged to see the world as God sees it, and not just as we humans typically see.

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As we sit here on the final Sunday before Lent, the lectionary gives us stories of transformation. I believe that many of us approach Lent hoping to be transformed, so it seems only appropriate that we have two very rich stories of radical change – both of which occur during mountaintop experiences.

A brief word about the liturgical year for those of us who were raised in traditions that didn’t observe the cycles of the Christian year. Today is the final Sunday in the season after Epiphany. If you’ll reach back with me all the way to January, you’ll remember Epiphany Sunday – the Sunday where we talked about the magi visiting the Christ child. The church has called that Sunday Epiphany because it was a moment when a new reality was made manifest to those who visited Jesus. It was, in fact, a transformation, just like the one we witness today.

Since Epiphany, we have journeyed through a season of Ordinary Time. Ordinary Time is anything but ordinary – we have heard Jesus’s teachings, have witnessed miracles, have pondered who God is calling us to be in the world.

Ordinary Time is called Ordinary not because it’s typical, but because the Sundays are numbered with ordinals (for the record, this is the 9^th Sunday of ordinary time).

Ordinary time is interrupted by the season of Lent, followed by Easter. Lent begins this Wednesday, on Ash Wednesday, and will continue until Easter Sunday. It is a period of waiting for the Resurrection of Christ. Many Christians consider it to be a time of intense spiritual devotion – some folks give something up for Lent in order to focus their energy more fully on God. Other people might add in a new spiritual practice – again, attempting to become more fully aware of God’s presence in their lives.

And today – this very morning – marks the point where we, as a people, turn together towards the seasons of Lent and Easter. If we journey carefully together through Lent…and if we take seriously the invitation to see again during these weeks, we will emerge transformed. It will be a difficult few weeks – the lectionary stories are filled with cruelty and fear as the murder of Jesus draws near.

I believe that we will need to lean on each other as we move through Lent. I also believe we need to remind ourselves of the presence of God during this season. Although we enter a season that marches slowly but surely towards death – we also enter a season that culminates with God’s gift of life.

I hate to ruin the end of the book for those of you that haven’t read it, but the story of Jesus’s death doesn’t end on the cross. Although Jesus appeared to die at the hands of the government, the deeper reality was that death could not conquer the abundant life found in Christ.

God’s presence with and in each of us means that we go on in ways that are difficult to articulate and understand. But there is an Easter at the end of every Lent. That is a reality.

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These two mountaintop stories remind us that God is present in each and every season of the year. Once again, Matthew is comparing Jesus to Moses. Matthew seems to be saying something along these lines, “Hey, friends. Remember how, once upon a time, Moses went up on a mountain and waited a long time and then God appeared? Well, check this out. Jesus went up on a mountain with Peter, James, and John and was transformed into a divine version of himself.”

Some Christians have used this story as an example of how they believe Jesus’s divinity made him more powerful and God-filled than Moses. We even use a special word for what happened to Jesus – “transfiguration” – and that word isn’t typically applied to anything but this one story.

But the actual Greek word for what happens here is pretty straightforward. It’s a metamorphosis – literally a changing of form. A transformation. In the blink of an eye, Jesus’s friends saw again. And what they saw was a glimmering in Jesus that they hadn’t seen before.

They looked at him and noticed, perhaps for the first time, just how much he looked like God.

When we call it The Transfiguration with a capital “T” and when we say this is the moment when Jesus revealed himself as God, I think we’re really missing something. To me, this isn’t a story about the uniqueness of Jesus. It is a story about what God offers to each of us if we are willing to use our eyes to see…and see again.

God regularly transforms things in the world.

You blink your eyes and the man sitting on the curb with a sign pleading for work suddenly looks a whole lot like Christ.

You turn to face your toddler who is having a tantrum and suddenly an image of her, lying sweetly in your arms when she was two days old reminds you that God is present even in her shrieks and screams.

You roll your eyes at the talking head on the news and as you refocus on the screen, you suddenly become aware that he has a wife and children who love him dearly.

You go for a walk in your neighborhood – the same walk you’ve taken every morning for 15 years – and, this time, you notice a tree that reminds you of God. Has it always been there? How did you never see it before?

Our awareness of the Reign of God is tricky like that. Here one moment, gone the next.

If we’re really lucky, we get whole long experiences of it that last for a few minutes or even a half-hour. Heck, Moses was so lucky that he got to hang out on the mountain with a vision of God for forty days. But more often than not, there are fleeting glimpses like the one Peter, James, and John had of Jesus.

Much of the time, our ability to see clearly happens when something around us is transformed. When a person, place, or thing suddenly looks different, that should hit us as a big exclamation point jumping up and down saying, “Look at me! Something’s going on here!”

Sometimes what is going on is that God is jumping out and grabbing our attention in new and exciting ways. When Moses sat on that mountain for seven days waiting for God, you’d better believe he was waiting for a moment of transformation. He was waiting to get that feeling in his gut that God was ready to talk.

And when Peter, James, and John looked up and saw that their friend Jesus looked like different version of himself, they instinctively understood that his changed appearance was an invitation to rethink their relationship with him. They were issued an invitation to see their friend in a new light…and to respond to this new knowledge in life-transforming ways. After he is transformed before their eyes, the disciples fall down in fear, and Jesus says to them, “Get up. Be raised. Do not be afraid.”

Sometimes seeing again can be scary. Sometimes it knocks us off our feet. Sometimes we need to be invited to be raised….to carry on, to trust the ground beneath us even though it seems everything has shifted. 

Transformation is rarely easy. I have often heard many of you remember a time, just over a decade ago now, when the roof was literally falling in on this church.

The physical needs of our building had been neglected for too long and, when it rained, water literally gushed into the building through a roof that badly needed repair. The congregation noticed, quite suddenly, that the building had been transformed. And not in a good way. It was falling apart.

Instead of packing up and moving or giving up and leaving, the people of First United decided to mount a capital campaign and stay in this place.

My understanding is it was an “all hands on deck” kind of experience, getting this building back into a livable condition. Those of you who were here at that time have told me that that you watched, in awe, as the building was refurbished. Your amazement didn’t stem from the physical transformation of the building, though. Your amazement came from watching the transformation that was happening within the people of this congregation. Through their work transforming the physical building, the congregation itself found new strength, new purpose, and a new sense of call as a community of faith. The congregation took seriously an invitation to see again…to re-imagine itself in new and fresh ways; to be transformed.

I believe that God reminds us of his presence in these moments of transformation. God beckons us toward new possibilities when she revels herself in a changed person, changed place, changed thing.

As we journey through Lent together, let us take seriously the invitation to see again. Let us be on the lookout for transformations happening all around us. They may just be the voice of God.