Born Again (and again and again...)

 

The Deposition, by Michaelangelo, 1550. Nicodemus, Mary Magdalene and Mary the Mother of Jesus, removing Jesus from the cross. Michaelangelo was carving it for his own tomb. His face is the face of Nicodemus. Unfinished. In frustration he destroyed part of it, and was never able to complete it.
(read more HERE)

John 3:1-17

There is no bible passage more recognized, memorized, beloved, despised and exhausted than John 3:16, known as “the gospel in a nutshell.”It used to be when I heard this story what I heard was John 3:16. And I had all sorts of opinions and experiences related to this bite-sized good news – from the scary teenagers that tried to evangelize me with it in a pizza place when I was 12, to the first time I saw it on the bottom of an In-and-Out Burger cup. It’s a little American shorthand instructional for how to have a good life, or at least, how not go to hell. Believe in Jesus and you’ll have eternal life! Easy-peasy! 

But life changes things; it changes us. And this time what utterly stood me still was a verse I didn’t even know came from this same conversation, something that for most of a lifetime of being a Christian has meant nothing to me, but now, unexpectedly, does. It is this line: The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’

 

That’s because for nearly a year and a half, a few of us, one with terminal cancer, gathered online for morning and evening prayer, and once a week we read these words aloud together as part of our evening prayer. And every Monday, when we would get to these words, they irritated me. (I even admitted this to the others once). Because I didn’t get it. And I still don’t. How are people like wind you hear but don’t know where or how or why?  What does that even mean?  What is this “being born of Spirit" business? Why does it all have to be vague and confusing and difficult? Why can’t it be a simple formula, pray this prayer, take these steps, be saved from death; believe in Jesus and everything will work out?

And so, I first want to say, I feel you, Nicodemus.  

Nicodemus is our second guide through Lent. First we had Lazarus, who dies and comes back to life, both through no fault or accomplishment of his own, by the way.  In love, the love between Lazarus, his sisters, and Jesus, they all feel their way through death and resurrection, and life after resurrection.

 

Now we have Nicodemus, dear Nicodemus, this wise leader, respected teacher, sneaking out of his house hoping his neighbors don’t see him slink off into the darkness, searching out a slightly suspect, intriguing and dangerous, radical street-preacher, Jesus, about whom the rumors are swirling and whose words won’t leave Nicodemus alone. 

 

I imagine him moving through the shadows, driven by a yearning he can’t understand or articulate. Feeling his way through the darkness, with that tangled ball of question pressing in on his heart, pondering the realities of loss and death and the inexplicable places where light does not seem to shine and perishing feels imminent and real. 

 

And when he does get to Jesus, (the one John has introduced to us as the light that shines in the darkness, the light that no darkness can extinguish), he can’t even form a question. His questions and longings built up under the surface, he says, “Some of us think that you are from God...” hoping Jesus will pick it up from there. Jesus does, but infuriatingly, by introducing more confusing concepts, when he answers, No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.

So now Nicodemus can ask outright, What does that mean?? How is that even possible?

 

Speaking as though God’s kingdom is so foreign it cannot be recognized by us as we are, in this world as it is, and also as though God’s kingdom is somehow happening right here and now and when something happens to us that we don’t control, we can actually glimpse it and experience it, Jesus reminds Nicodemus of a strange time way back when the people were wandering in the wilderness, waiting for God’s deliverance and they were dying from snake bites. God saved them in a weird and inexplicable way-  they needed only to look on a snake God had told Moses to create from bronze and lift before them, and they would live.

And then Jesus says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him will not perish...”

 

But we are perishing, actually.  All the time. Anxiety and hidden sadness plague us. Injustice and cruelty prevail. Marriages disintegrate; friendships break down, our dreams fall apart, our bodies fall apart. Catastrophes strike, inconveniences disrupt, sorrow and terror have their way all the time, and we feel life slipping away: in the words we cannot take back, and the choices we cannot have back, and the clock we cannot turn back.  We know all about perishing.  And we are quite accustomed to doing things, saying things, buying things, and sacrificing things, striving in the frantic attempt to keep from perishing. We’ve even turned the very words of Jesus in this story into one our strategies! Because what would be better than a religion that gave us a simple one, two, three steps to guaranteed eternal salvation and earthly happiness! 

 

But instead of clarity, answers and tactics, Jesus talks of wind and water and spirit and not knowing where things come from or where they are going. He describes unpredictable, unimaginable realities that require we give up our security and control. And then he talks not of what we should do, but of what God does, what God did, what God is already and always doing. For God so deeply and fully loves this perishing world that God gave the only son…and whoever relaxes their being into the being of God will know real and abiding life.

 

In John, remember, believing is trusting. It’s not accepting a set of facts you can argue with or slapping an admissions-paid entrance sticker on your chest.  Believing in Christ means opening up and leaning your whole self in, Trust in me and you will find life indestructible, Jesus says.

He isn’t giving Nicodemus a foolproof, comprehensible approach to cheating death. He is inviting him into a life so pervasive it encompasses even death.

 

God so loves this world that God came into this world and is saving it. God Is bringing life out of death, and hope from despair, and joy from sorrow, and healing from brokenness, and leading everything toward a time when perishing itself will perish. This is wind-you-hear-but-can’t-grab-hold-of, born-not-of-logic-and-understanding-but-of-water-and-spirit, mystery-and-firmament, God-breathed, word-spoken life-out-of the-void-of-nothingness, resurrection-from-death’s-finality, Holy Spirit-transformation, unquenchable-light-shining-in darkness, sit-back-and-take-it-in-because-you-didn’t-make-any-of-it-happen kind of salvation. 

 

Being born at all was not our doing, how silly of us to toss around “born again” like it's something we achieve!  How dare we use belief in Jesus as a label, a guarantee of our eternal destination that we individually acquire by following some back of the box directions?

 

Maybe we should let ourselves be with Nicodemus on this one. Admit we can’t grab hold of this, can’t make this make sense. Because maybe that’s Jesus’ point. The Kingdom of God is not something we grab hold of; it grabs hold of us. It’s invading the whole world, and we don’t get to decide how that happens. We can be caught up in it, swept up in the transformation of the whole cosmos, or we can be oblivious to it. We can trust in it, or we can miss it.  But we don’t control it.  We don’t make it happen. We don’t avoid pain or perishing by applying some eternal life conversion formula. We listen for the sound of the thing we can’t explain. We let it move through us and take us where it will.  

 

The teacher must let go everything he thinks he knows to be brought into the world—this tired old, wounded world, this gorgeous, poignant, precious world—all over again, like a vulnerable newborn, ready to receive the mystery and be swept up like the wind. He must be born from above, born anew. And Jesus has implied back to him that the reason he’s there at all, with his questions and his longing, is because he has been. He’s glimpsing the Kingdom of God.

 

We are all feeling our way through the darkness, with our own tangled balls of questions pressing in on our hearts, pondering the realities of loss and death and the inexplicable places where light does not seem to shine and perishing feels imminent and real. And so, we are invited, especially during Lent, to ponder, How might I be being “born again”? What competence or sureness am I letting go of to receive God’s care, and to trust I am held like an infant? What keeps me from experiencing the uncontrollable salvation of God in the world?  

 

Nicodemus disappears back into the shadows after this encounter, and we will briefly see him just twice more in the gospel of John and in no other gospel. The next time we see him he is subtly advocating for Jesus to the council by reminding them that the law gives people a chance to defend themselves against charges.  And the last time is after Jesus has died.  

John 19:39-42 says, “Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night, also came,” (implied is in broad daylight, where he could be seen by any and all) “bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds. They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews. Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. And so, because it was the Jewish day of Preparation [for the Sabbath to begin that evening], and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.”

 

So we never really know what Nicodemus thought about what Jesus said, where it took him or what it did inside him.  But that’s not ours to know – not of him or of each other, or even, perhaps, of ourselves. God knows what God is doing – in us, in the world. God knows where it is going and how it will get there. For our part, we get to ‘assume the stance of least resistance’ to being swept up in the love and salvation of God. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. May we continue being born anew.

Amen.

Where Jesus Is

 

Mark 9:2-9

It’s so cold out there that one of our church families froze clothing into statues in their yard, and someone in my facebook feed froze an egg half cracked open, balanced in the air on a frozen puddle of egg white on the sidewalk like a pedestal. It’s so cold you can hammer a nail into wood with a frozen banana, and throw boiling water in the air to make a puff of cloud that doesn't fall back down.  Maybe those are the ways to celebrate what has come to be called The Transfiguration, because words can’t do it justice.
 
Jesus knew words couldn’t work here. He tells them not to talk about this moment till after he’s risen from the dead, when they’ll recognize that the laws of physics, and life and death, and time and space don’t always apply, and it will be fun to recall that one time on the mountain when Jesus all glowey and the mvps of the faith were back from the dead chatting him up.  
Still, they whispered to each other all the way back down the mountain, “What does he mean by risen from the dead?” 
Because, whattity what??
 
So maybe next year on Transfiguration Sunday we’ll just listen to ethereal music, or watch amazing colors, or contemplate some unfathomable intricacy of nature or boundless mystery of space instead of turning to words to try to understand what’s happening here. 
 
But perhaps the gift of this scene –for us today but for the disciples there on the mountain and for Jesus himself – is the mystery of it. The inexplicableness of the encounter.   
 
Peter at least has his wits about him enough to recognize that whatever this is, it’s important, so he jumps in with a strategy, Let’s just stay here never leave; we’ll make each of you a dwelling.  But he’s quickly shushed by an almighty cloud, and by the words of the gospel writer apologizing for him – he didn’t know what he was saying, you guys, because they all were terrified.
 
This captures it all! Peter thought. The glory of Jesus revealed! Here is where we should stay. Here is where the truth is, the way is, the life is. Right here. 
 
But the moments of mystery and wonder are not where Jesus remains.  As soon as they get back down the mountain they are confronted by the utterly anguished father of a child tormented by illness and demons, whom their prayers couldn’t heal. And in Matthew, Mark and Luke, these two scenes come back to back, like a boxed set, like they belong together: the mountaintop glory and the valley despair.  You can’t have the one without the other. 

Who is Jesus? Both of these. We see him revealed in the limitlessness of the inexplicable mystery and wonder on top of the mountain AND in the heartbreaking barriers of impossibility below. Both are where Jesus is, and both are part of the disciples’ experience of following him. 
 
Jesus says to the boy’s dad, “How long has he been like this?” And he invites the father to tell his story of pain, to speak of the affliction his son has experienced his whole life. How long have you suffered? And Jesus listens and receives him. Then he heals the boy, and blesses the father, and calls the disciples again to follow.
 
The voice on the mountain said, This is my son, the beloved, the embodiment of my love, listen to him. The same voice said at his baptism, This is my son the beloved, in whom I delight. Then immediately Jesus was sent into the wilderness where he was tempted to use his power to protect and save himself, tempted to get the recognition he deserves. Hungry, tired, weak and emotionally spent, he was tempted to claim and stay in the glory. But instead, he chose to claim and dwell in his humanity and weakness. And there is where God’s angels were able to minister to him, and restore his strength. And he was sent to minister from that place of being met by God in his weakness and need. 
 
Why can’t we just live up on the mountain in touch with the transcendence all the time? Peter thought, What else matters when there is this? 
 
And yet, there is also that. And Jesus came for that, not for this. Jesus came for the broken children and the anguished fathers and the temptations we all face. 
We swing between the mountains and the valleys, the transcendent glimpses that there is something more, tastes of joy or terror, moments where we feel absolutely alert and awake to the deeper, where words don’t make sense and can’t contain it, and the complications, temptations, stuckness, brokenness, sorrow, desperation, impossibility.
 
The world the needs redeeming; we need ministering to. And while the inexplicable glimpses of glory feed us, God’s redemption ultimately doesn’t come through these mysterious, unexplainable moments of transcendence.  It comes through the transcendent one taking on our humanity and letting what breaks us break him too. It comes when Jesus dies, just like every one of us and all those we have loved and will love will die. It comes when Jesus goes through death and comes out the other side and death no longer has the power to define or determine reality, and the glory and the brokenness come together in the person of the risen Christ.  
 
And so much of life is lived not even purely on the mountains or in the valleys or even in the wild swings between, but in the midst, the both/and – where in the midst of the sorrow we have a flash of joy, in the midst of the tension, a feeling of letting go, in the midst of fear, a moment of trust and absolute love. And very often we don’t have words for these glimpses of glory; they are not experiences that make clear, logical sense.
 
So we are asked to live in the paradox. Always. In the tension and the honesty of it –that the complications and temptations and divisions and weakness are real and they feel insurmountable. But also that we are held in a reality that transcends all the limits and boundaries of this world and calls us to something deeper, and wider, and eternal, that holds us all together in love. Both are true at the same time. Just like Jesus was both fully God and fully human. 
 
We exist inside the constraints of this world in all our messy, broken, impossible situations, but also inside a bigger story of love so powerful it transcends all limits of space and time. We live in the paradox of the piercing division in our families, communities and country, and also connection and belonging so deep we are joined not only with those around us but also with those gone before and those to come.
  
Our faith exists in tension, the paradox that runs deeper than logic.  
So we watch for the glimpses of beyond while we live utterly here.
 
Can we entrust ourselves to the one who embodies absolute love and walks this earth as the great paradox of God’s unlimited otherness and also persistent nearness?  The father of the boy trapped in seizures says it best, I believe, help my unbelief. I trust, help my untrusting heart. 
 
Jesus will soon say again to Peter, James and John, “Come with me” and they’ll follow him to the garden, where he will pray with so much fear and intensity that he sweats blood, begging God not to have to face death. I can’t help but think these three needed thismoment to get them through that moment.  But maybe so did Jesus.  Unspeakable glory and wonder exist alongside unspeakable horror and suffering.  Jesus takes on our horror to bring us into his glory.
 
There is one command in this text: Listen to him. Listen to Jesus. And sure, you could go back and read the things in the bible that he said and let those in. That would be a lovely way to listen to him.  See who Jesus is, what he says, what he does, let that speak to you. 
 
But also, just listen. Maybe we can cultivate a posture of openness to Jesus. In his humanity, in his divinity, in his risenness and presence with us even now. 
 
Jesus, help us listen to you.  

You who were tempted and afraid, who cried and died, you who sits at the right hand of God far above all powers, through whom the whole earth had its life spoken into being. You who listen and receive the whole of us and our stories when you set us free and bring us healing. 
 
We’re tired, Jesus. We’re despairing. We’re divided and in pain. We’re struggling. Some of us are sick. Some of us are angry. Some of us are lost, or hopeless, or afraid.  
 
Help us listen to you. We want to see you and what you are doing. We want to live guided by your love—nothing less, nothing else. 
 
So help us to follow you where you lead, and seek you where dwell – right alongside one another in our weakness and our need – where you minister to us as we minister to each other. There is the way, the truth and the life, there you are.  

And from time to time, to help us through the valleys, please give us the mountaintop moments of mystery and wonder too. Thank you.  

Amen.

No longer settling for stories

Matthew 2:1-12

In our house, on Christmas Eve we leave cookies and a note for Santa, and Santa has always written back.  The notes vary, but have always carried similar, strong themes.  But much to Andy’s and my surprise, it’s largely gone unnoticed, until this year, when age, maturity, and a reluctantly rethought story have shined a different light on the notes’ consistent contents over the years. 

This year, Santa’s response read, “Dear Maisy, Thank you for the cookies.  First, Sorry is in order. A reindeer deer pooped by the tree. I had Khaleesi clean it. What a nice dog. So sweet, and talking about sweet, what a dad!  One of a kind!  I love that guy.  He really helped me with some Mrs. Claus issues! Wise. So glad to call him a friend. All the best!  Santa”

Nobody likes to have their stories taken away.  We hang onto our stories for all sorts of reasons.  Even if they don’t make sense or don’t correspond to our experience of the world, we often keep telling the same stories. They could be magical ones that make the world feel brighter.  They could be hurtful ones, like “I’m not good enough” or “Those people are the enemy.” Or they might be helpful stories that tell us who we are and help us frame the world, like “This is who I am.”  

Stories provide perimeters, but even the positive ones can keep us stuck, can keep us from being curious or courageous.  Sometimes, looking at our really familiar and well-worn stories, and considering that there may be something more, or even just different, can open us up to God’s Spirit in unexpected ways.

The Christmas story is this way.  We’ve extrapolated all kinds of details over time that are not there but have been injected back in as essential, and while it makes for a good pageant, much of it is likely not true. So let’s take today, the day of Epiphany, insight, Aha!, the day we celebrate with the Magi God’s self-revelation to the whole world, for the whole world.  Epiphany is a good day to open ourselves to God’s self-revelation anew, by looking again at the old stories.

First of all, we’ve spun a whole wide and detailed narrative set in some kind of New England barn scene, where Mary and Joseph have their baby alone in piles of hay, surrounded by animals, just minutes after they stumble into town, Mary gasping with contractions atop a donkey, and Joseph frantically pounding on doors, being rejected by the whole city, and finally being pointed to a stable out back by an either grumpy or apologetic innkeeper.

More likely they’d been in Bethlehem for some time, weeks maybe. And the whole scene I just described is just what imaginations gone before have made of these two sentences, “While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child.  And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn."

What we Western, modern folks don’t know about that time and place could fill a stable,  unlike people in that region and time, who didn’t use stables, but instead housed their animals at night inside the family home, not in a separate outbuilding away from the house.  Imagine a simple home, sometimes with a bedroom, and a larger general living room. It often had a guest room attached to the end, or on the roof.  

The main room was a split-level, with a small lower area where, at night, the animals were brought in from the outdoors to sleep in the dwelling with the family.  The first job in the morning was to bring them back out.  The larger room, where the family cooked and ate their meals and generally lived their lives had carved into the floor of the higher level right near the lower level, an indentation, a built-in manger, so that the animals could reach their head up from the lower level and eat from it.  

Finally, the Greek word translated here as “inn” is not the word Luke uses for a commercial hotel in the story of the Good Samaritan, it’s actually the word he uses for “ guest room” when the disciples come seeking a spare room for the last supper. 

Mary and Joseph are returning to the land of Joseph’s people – in a culture of deep, pervasive hospitality. They were not visiting somewhere they’ve never been and stopping at a crowded Super8 along the freeway. Most likely they were staying in the simple peasant home of relatives, or even friends of friends– this would have been common. When the time came for Jesus to be born, there was no room for them in the guest room, so they delivered in the living room, and placed the baby in the manger in the floor next to them.  

And now, we can use our imaginations to explore the story some more.

Remember silent Zechariah and pregnant Mary and Elizabeth?  This first community of the promise –whose lives had been invaded by transcendence, now sharing together the secret of the universe’s redemption, along with the mundane and challenging ins and outs of pregnancy?  Mary stayed with Elizabeth until John was born, probably assisting with the birth and celebrating with them, before setting out for home, 3-4 months pregnant by that time. Remember, it’s a several day, nearly 100-mile journey. 

A few months later, when Mary and Joseph set out for Bethlehem, they followed the same path Mary took, and arrived at their destination, about four miles past Elizabeth and Zechariah’s town.  While they were there, Mary’s time to deliver arrived.  Elizabeth was probably there with Mary for the birth of Jesus. How could she miss it?  God had given them to each other to share this experience; why wouldn’t Elizabeth come and help?  Maybe there was no room for them in the guest room because little Baby John and Zechariah were sleeping there!  Who knows? But the not knowing opens up the chance to consider how else God might have been at work.  

Because I think of Joseph - now in on this story too, it’s become his destiny, his purpose. The angel came to him in a dream and he is now becoming Father of the Messiah.  But he didn’t have a community, like Mary did, to share this.  What if he is given Zechariah?  What if, after his own angel encounter, and the nine months on the sidelines while the Holy Spirit worked in these two women’s wombs and he adjusted to being part of the story of God’s inbreaking, in all that silence, Zechariah now gets to share the words of hard-won wisdom with Joseph?

After Jesus is born, Mary and Joseph settle in Bethlehem for a while. Joseph works as a carpenter and they figure out how to be a family and how to be parents, and what to do with all they know of God’s plan, which isn’t much at this point but that heaven has invaded earth and God has entered in, holding this reality alongside the reality of diapers and spit up and teething and the ordinary business of raising a baby.  

And surely these days they must have gazed at his tiny features, bleary with new parent fatigue, searching for signs of divinity in his perfectly human baby face.  And probably Mary still pondered all these things in her heart on a regular basis. I like to think they stayed friends with the shepherds and regularly shared potlucks or campfire sing-alongs. Maybe a couple of them especially took a liking to the child, and Uncle Omar and Uncle Seth carved toy sheep for the toddler Jesus.

Meanwhile, the moment Jesus is born, a strange star, or light, rises in the sky and astrologers from a far-off land – with completely different customs, religion, beliefs, practices, outside the perimeters of this story so far -  set out to discover the King they believe has come.  And God is getting ready to shake the stories again - Herod’s story of his own power and invincibility, and likely Mary and Joseph’s story of a Jewish Messiah, come to overthrow the oppressors and set Israel free.  
God is coming for a different reason, for a purpose beyond the stories they’ve told for generations.  God is coming for the whole world.

The Magi who come bring three gifts, but there were not likely just three of them.  It could’ve been a whole contingent; all we know from the language is that there was more than one.  It takes these travelers many months, likely up to two years, to reach the Holy Family. Jesus is quite certainly no longer in the manger, and probably not even still in diapers.

They come into town and meet with King Herod, getting their own jolt that the King they seek is not the king of this land, nor was he born in the palace to royalty of any kind.  Instead, when they finally find him, he is in a peasant’s home, with his mother. Perhaps he is just finishing lunch, or helping with the chickens, or playing with his carved sheep while she hangs the wash. 

I love imagining the Magi’s arrival and how things might have gone from there. How did they communicate back and forth? What languages or gestures did they use? How did the stories come out? Was there a big “reunion of those who are in on what God is up to” party with the shepherds and Elizabeth and Zechariah and little John?  After that long, undoubtedly grueling journey, how long did they stay? Weeks? Months? Just a few days?  Just a few hours?  Did they all crowd into Mary & Joseph’s guest room? Or was there no room, so they pitched tents nearby, or spread out into neighbor’s guest rooms? Did their arrival do anything to Mary’s pondering?  What was it like for Joseph’s faith and sense of the future to welcome these seekers from so far away?

And then a dream warns the visitors to go home by another road.  And then an angel tells Joseph to take the child and his mother and flee as refugees to Egypt, while the mad King Herod seeks to squash the potential threat to his throne.  And the one person in the story with a ton of power rages and kills and destroys and tries to cement his hold, and is dead from some really awful and painful illness less than two years later.  And the little family comes back from Egypt and returns, finally, to Nazareth.

Here is what all this is to say – we don’t really know how it happened.   We tell the story the way we’ve heard it, shaped by others’ stories, like, “mangers are in stables,” or “Messiahs belong to the Israelites,” but the realty was real– it was real people’s lives with real fear and real courage and real boredom and real confusion and real pain.  

God came into the real. God was born as an ordinary peasant child into a Middle Eastern, 1^stcentury village life.  These specific people- first some shepherds, and then some mystical foreigners from far away - got to meet him in the flesh – to hold him and hear him cry and see him drift off to sleep or wake up looking for his mommy.  They got to see him in with his dad, learning how to be human, with the walking and the talking, like every other one of us before and after him.  

God did this.  God came into this real world.  And God came for the whole world, beyond all our distinctions of nation and language and religion and difference and no powers that be could stop him.  God came for the entire universe, and even the heavenly bodies got in on it – broadcasting the message to any who would notice and follow that star.  

Beyond the material world, there is a reality of transcendence that we can’t begin to even contemplate.  And from outside our time and space and stories, God has come as far in as it is possible to enter, right into the thick of it alongside us, as vulnerable as we come.  This is real.  God is always coming in to the real.  And God is always beckoning us to lift our heads and let the light in, to open our hearts and receive the mystery.

But sometimes we get trapped in our stories. Our crowded stables and selfish innkeepers block the view of a star that shines where it shouldn’t be, brighter than it should be, calling us into the unknown to trust and seek and follow the God from outside who comes in.

Christmas has become a fairy tale.  But it really happened. And not necessarily like we think or have been told. God has become a fairy tale.  But God is really here.  And not necessarily like we think or have been told.

We’re in our year-long journey with grace, the abundance of God’s Yes to us. 

Here we begin "Grace in Presence."

Grace in the presence of God, both mysterious and unknowable, and also coming near, as ordinary as you and me.  

Grace in the presence of strangers, unexpectedly affirming the bigger picture, inviting us to reconsider our stories and open our hearts wider. 

Grace in the presence of those who are in on what God is up to, trusting alongside one another, feeling their way through together, and helping each other adjust to being part of the story of God’s in-breaking.  

God meets us with grace when we refuse to settle for stories and instead seek to be present to the real experience, in all its clarity and muddiness, all it’s ambivalence and fear, all its joy and sorrow.  That’s where God is.  Because that’s who God is now: Emmanual, God With Us.

(For more historical detail, see "The Manger and the Inn: A Middle Eastern View of the Birth Story, by Ken Bailey)

Magnetized and Listening

Matthew 16:24-17:8

I recently led a class on the Holy Spirit.  And I began with the assumption that every single one of us has had at least one inexplicable experience, at least one moment in life where we were pulled outside of ourselves, where we experienced something beyond, something transformative and extraordinary, something we would call God, the Holy Spirit.

I began with the recognition that every single person in the room had, in some way, at some time, tasted transcendence.  And then I invited people to share a story. When was a time you felt God? A time you knew God was with you? An experience that touched you that you can’t explain? A moment that shifted things for you?

And then the stories began to come out. Mysterious, moving, some both ordinary and miraculous at the same time, some downright astounding. Experiences that people couldn’t quite explain were shared, and the most common and appropriate response was simply, “Wow”. 

And we long for these – as human beings we crave these tastes of the beyond. Moments where the space between what is and what will be thins out, when the gap between earth and heaven becomes narrow - the thin places where God feels close. There is more to reality than we can see or understand; and we long for these glimpses that life is more fraught with splendor than it often feels.

The disciples, Peter James and John, get one of those moments today.  But talk about juxtaposition. Six days earlier Jesus gives them a big speech about how he will suffer and die, about how those who strive to save their lives will lose them, and only those who surrender their lives to God will find their true selves, and bewilderingly, about how they’ll have to take up a cross and follow him.

And then he leads them up a mountain.

This is the halfway point of Matthew; it’s hump day, as it were. It’s all downhill from here. The first half of the book and the season after Christmas that we’ve been in, Epiphany, has been about revealing who Jesus is, what the kingdom of God is about, making it all known.  But now a shift is happening, a turning point, and it pivots on the mountain.

Much of the first half has been set on a mountain as well, like Moses going up to meet God and receive the commandments, the description of life together with God, we’ve spent the first part of Matthew on the mountain with Jesus, in the “sermon on the mount,” direct teaching about the kingdom of God and what life looks like when it’s lived in God’s way of love and trust and connection instead of in the way of fear, self-protection, competition. 

And now they’re heading back up a mountain. But this time, they are distinctly not there for teaching or explanation. They are not getting a round two of a sermon, some truth about God, some challenge to chew on and apply to their lives. This time it’s an experience they can’t quite believe and don’t really know what to do with. 

Today they stand around like awkward evesdroppers with all the senses alert, watching Jesus suddenly take on glowing white robes and a face shining like the sun, convening with the forefathers of faith, these representatives of relationship with God milling around in conversation together like guests at some classy, celestial dinner party, and Jesus right at home among them, chatting away, and ignoring the three who’ve trudged up with him, like they aren’t even there, thunderstruck, watching this scene unfold.

It’s a moment of transcendence, of keen insight, a flash of recognition, things fitting together somehow – Moses, Elijah, Jesus, God, future, past, cosmos, meaning – it’s some kind of thrilling wakefulness and yet fantastic, removed and frightening.

And Peter does what anyone might, (but perhaps a bit more brazenly than you or I), he tries to make sense of it, to capture it, to bottle the mystery, to wrap it in logic and lesson, he INTERUPTS MOSES AND MESSIAH MID-SENTENCE, to blurt out, Hey Jesus, sorry to, you know, intrude, but I’ve just had the most perfect idea! I know just what we can do! Let’s build some tents right here, and you and Elijah and Moses can stay here forever, and we will too, and... 

But before he’s even finished getting the breathless suggestion out, a paradoxical “bright cloud overshadows them” and a loud voice announces, “This is my son, the beloved, in whom I am well pleased! Listen to him!”

The three onlookers fall to the ground in terror, arms over their heads like a tornado drill got real, every nerve ending vigilant, feeling, I imagine, like they might just die from the power and magnificent tremor of it all, and then, they lift their heads and it is only Jesus, standing there, alone.

When the dust settles all that is left is Jesus.

And He touches them, and tells them not to be afraid.

And then, I suppose, they stand up and head back down the mountain. 

I picture them shaken, subdued, not quite sure what to say, not knowing what to do with their hands, their thoughts, stealing glances now and again at Jesus’s weathered brown face and dusty, worn robes, and wondering if they’d imagined it all. On the way down the mountain he tells them not to tell anyone what happened up there. 

As if they would. 

Who in the world would believe them? 

What would they even say?

But something has changed. Something has irreversibly has shifted them, I bet. Magnetized them, in a way. Oriented them, pivoted them to him in a new way. They’ve glimpsed beyond. They’ve gotten a peek at something they can’t explain but which feels more true and real than anything they’ve ever known, for which the appropriate response may simply be, “Wow”. 

Why, I wonder, has he asked them to come along, Peter, James and John? His followers, his friends; why did he bring them? 

For their sake? For his own?

Come with me! He says, And like kids tagging along with mom to an appointment, they came, and stood on the sidelines watching the unfathomable, glowing Jesus chatting with Moses and Elijah. About what? What were they saying to him? Giving him advice? Asking questions? A pep talk?  

Whatever it was clearly not about the three of them, not really even for the three of them. They were onlookers to the scene, participant observers in Jesus’ reality as he plugs in, as it were, to his source, the absolute affirmation of his divine purpose and place, even if just for a moment. 

The first half of Jesus’ ministry began with the voice of God, claiming Jesus as the beloved, the son, in whom God is well pleased. It is the core, the thread that holds him to his identity and purpose through the harsh wilderness and the miracles and teachings that follow.  And now he hears it again, as he sets his face toward the cross and the deliberate journey into suffering, misunderstanding, hatred and death, This is my son, the beloved, in whom I am well pleased. 

In a short while he will invite them again, Come with me, and he’ll go to the garden to pray; he’ll endure such anguish that he will sweat blood, and wish desperately that he could skip out on the horror he’s about to endure, and he’ll surrender himself to God, and to what is ahead of him.  They will watch and wonder, will fall asleep alongside him and wake up, and struggle to make sense of that experience as well.

Right after the disciples witness Jesus’ strange and momentary transformation and head back down the mountain, they are confronted immediately by the father of a tortured kid they couldn’t heal – and it comes up this way, by the way, in this order- these two parts of the story, back to back, in Matthew, Mark and Luke, like they belong together, like you can’t have the one without the other.

In every telling of the transfiguration the disciples go from this terrifying, exhilarating experience of limitlessness immediately to this troubling, frustrating and humiliating experience of helplessness.  They swing from great euphoric insight and conviction, to utter impotence and impossibility, confronted by the ministry they could not do and tagging along after a Messiah who is headed for a cross.  And Jesus heals the boy, and blesses the father, and calls the disciples again to follow.

But despite the fact that the only command, the only concrete thing they can take away from their moment of transcendence, their experience on the mountaintop is the very direct order: LISTEN TO HIM, they struggle to hear him, they resist what he has to say. 

No matter how much he tells them the cross is coming –and it is, the whole second half of Matthew is heading there –no matter how much he says he is not here to take them out of the world but to come into it, not here to prevent suffering but to share it, and that we too must follow him there, they can’t quite wrap their heads around this.  It continues to elude them.  Perhaps until that moment in the garden. Or perhaps not until the cross itself.  Or maybe, they don’t ever really hear it until the resurrection.

Maybe it’s then that it comes back to them, a flash of recognition, things fitting together somehow – Moses, Elijah, Jesus, God, future, past, cosmos, meaning – the thrilling wakefulness, the touch of Jesus, maybe it’s then that they finally hear his words on the mountaintop, Do not be afraid.

As we walk into Lent, and into Matthew’s collection of Jesus’ cryptic parables, we will seek to listen to Jesus. Jesus, who faced all the temptations and struggles of being human from the core of his belovedness in God. Jesus who says, Come with me, and Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it, and Do not be afraid.

Lent invites us to go deeper, to be open to God with us who both comes to us in mystery, and meets us in our messiness. Who gives us the inexplicable gift of momentary glimpses beyond, and ceaselessly stands with us in our impossibility and helplessness. 

This Lent, may we be oriented to Jesus in a new way.  May something shift within us that draws us ever into deeper faithfulness and trust.

Amen.