The Last Sunday After the Epiphany  March 2, 2003

 

The Rev. Dayle Casey

The Chapel of Our Saviour

Colorado Springs,  Colorado

March 2, 2003

 

 

1 Kings 19:9-18

2 Peter 1:16-21

Mark 9:2-9

 

 
Do you remember Joel Barker's paradigm shifts? Do you remember how Barker said that we often miss the point of something because we don't see clearly, or don't see the whole picture? Do you remember how he said that we often see an event or a truth from one angle, but not from other angles? Often, in fact, we miss the direction life itself is pointing us in because our paradigms conceal it from us.

Culture is a way we human beings have of establishing paradigms, or patterns, for seeing reality and living life. And that's good, because we all need patterns to guide us in life. But such paradigms have a downside, because they sift our experiences and thinking through cultural filters. Paradigms make it easy for us to receive and see truths that are consistent with our cultural filters, but they also serve to block other truths, other realities, that may be there, but that don't fit the particular paradigms we've gotten used to living by. So a new or different reality or truth can be standing right in front of us, but we we don't see it because it doesn't fit the model of reality that we have already learned to base our lives upon.

Such filtering of reality can be costly, as it was to Swiss watchmakers. Forty years ago, the Swiss controlled 80 percent of the world's watch market. In the 1960s, "Swiss" was synonymous with "watch." But when some of the Swiss watchmakers' own researchers proposed something called the quartz crystal, a device for making time pieces electronically, watchmakers in Switzerland rejected the idea because such devices had no bearings or gears. Quartz crystals didn't fit the Swiss paradigm of what a watch was, and they rejected the new idea so completely, they thought it so utterly ridiculous, that they didn't even bother to protect it with a patent.

Now, forty years later, the word "quartz" is synonymous "Japanese," and Switzerland makes only a tiny fraction of the world's watches.

The point of all this is that Barker says that we need to have our paradigms shifted from time to time, and what I'm insisting this morning is that Jesus is THE paradigm shifter of history. Jesus provides a shift in the way human beings see God that is so radical that many of us, even many of us Christians, are inclined to reject it as thoroughly as the Swiss rejected the quartz crystal.

From the beginning of human history, people have been asking how one might come to know God. The Jews were told to read God's book. Read the Torah. Learn the Law. Teach the Law. Keep the Law. But one Jew, Jesus, said, "The Father and I are one; if you know me, you know the Father." In other words, the way to God is not to read a book, but to know a person. And the way to the kingdom of heaven is not through knowing the Law; it's not even through keeping the Law, because there is no one who does keep the Law except God himself. The way to God is through trusting the One who lives as God lives when God lives on earth. But nothing in time or space or history had ever prepared Peter and James and John for a truth such as that. 

Jesus had once asked Peter who Peter believed Jesus was. And Peter got the right answer. "You are the Christ," he said, "the Son of the living God." And Jesus had said that Peter was blessed because he could see that truth. Jesus had pointed out to Peter that God himself had revealed the truth to him, because there was nothing in flesh and blood, nothing in time and space and history and human culture, that could ever have prepared Peter to see such a truth, because human tradition, the human ways of seeing and filtering reality, just did not allow for Almighty God to come calling in person in flesh and blood. Like Elijah, Peter was at home with the idea of God's appearing on the top of a mountain in wind or earthquake or fire, but he had yet to understand how God could reveal himself in a still, small voice.

But even as Peter glimpsed the truth, it fled from him. Even as Peter saw the truth of Jesus, Peter wavered. He simply could not keep a firm hold on it, because this new truth bumped up against other assumptions, other paradigms, other cultural and religious expectations Peter and the disciples lived by.

This new truth bumped up against assumptions Peter had about what the Messiah would do when he came and about what he would be like. This new truth competed with Peter's expectations about a conquering Messiah; his paradigm did not provide for a Messiah who would say crazy things like "when someone asks for your shirt, give him your coat as well." Peter's culture carried with it assumptions that could not accommodate a Messiah who talks about turning the other cheek and about walking a second mile when all you're asked is to walk one. Nor could it accommodate a Messiah who talks about Peter's following him by taking up his own cross.

But Peter was trying to see, and there on the mountain that day Jesus was transfigured in Peter's presence. And a cloud came and covered the disciples, and a voice from heaven repeated the truth that had earlier been glimpsed briefly at Jesus's baptism: "This is my Son, my beloved. Listen to him."

But even though Peter got the right answer, his cultural paradigm still didn't allow him to see the whole truth. His paradigm was comfortable with God's being revealed in glory on the top of a mountain, but not with God's walking down the mountain to die on a cross. So Peter wanted to bottle and store the glory he had experienced on the mountain rather than live it down in Jerusalem. He expected the gain without the pain. He wanted the glory without walking the way to the glory. "Let's build some tents and live in the glory of God's presence right here on the mountain top!"

And just as soon as he said that, the brilliance and radiance of Jesus left him. And suddenly Moses and Elijah were gone, and the disciples were left there alone with Jesus, alone with Jesus just as they had known him before. Just ordinary Jesus. And Jesus said, "It's time to go back down the mountain into the world, to walk the way of suffering and love all the way to Jerusalem and the Cross."

And boy, was Peter confused! And greatly disappointed. Because Peter's expectations allowed for a Messiah who shone like God Almighty on a mountain top, but they did not allow for a Messiah who kept talking about a kingdom one lives his way into by way of sacrifice, or by way of turning the other cheek and walking a second mile, or by way of giving up your coat as well as the shirt off your back when all the man asks for is your shirt, or by way of giving up one's own self, by way of dying for the sake of those you love.

Jesus came to shift Peter's paradigm. And he came to shift yours as well. And mine. He came to shift us from bad news to good news. He came to reveal God to us, to reveal that God is not out to win the world by force, but to win us through his love. He came to reveal that it is not the business of God to condemn the world, but to save it. He came to show us that God's business is not to punish, but to reconcile. He came to live the abundant life, that life which is God's own glory, that life which is found not in the getting and the keeping, but in the giving. He came to reveal that the way to heaven is not a matter of working hard in order to be saved, in order to become worthy of God's love, but a matter of seeing that you are the beloved of God, and that this is what makes it possible to know God's kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. 

Jesus came to reveal the truth -- that heaven is not a matter of how much I can get away with and still go there, but of how I can live the life of heaven beginning here and now. He came to reveal that the kingdom of heaven is not found in solitary glory with God somewhere high in the sky, but here on earth in the relationships we experience with one another.

Giovanni Bellini, a 16th-century Italian, has left us his painting of "The Transfiguration." In the painting, one disciple is running away from Jesus as fast as his feet can carry him. That's one human reaction to Jesus' transfiguration. "Let's get out of here as quickly as possible! If Jesus is God, it means that he is going to have claims on me I'm not ready for."

A second disciple, probably Peter, is kneeling in rapt adoration and awe. 

And the third reaction is perhaps the most interesting of all. There are other people there, all of them going about the ordinary work of their lives, caring for the crops in their fields, altogether unaware that anything out of the ordinary is happening.

I have not seen Bellini's painting, but I have seen that same truth painted on a mural in Holy Trinity Cathedral in Port-au-Prince. It's a painting of the baptism of Jesus, and as the voice from heaven is announcing the very same truth as the Transfiguration -- that Jesus is the beloved Son of God -- a Haitian woman is kneeling beside the river doing her laundry, completely unaware that anything out of the ordinary is taking place.

There are those of us, aren't there, who, because of the paradigms we live by, because of the cultural and historical and religious patterns we have assumed all our lives to be reality...there are those of us who live right next to the glory of God all our lives and yet fail to see it, and so are forever unaware that anything out of the ordinary is happening.

Like Tommy, the Tommy who was looking for God the way Peter was looking for God, the Tommy who was looking for God the way Elijah looked for God, the way you and I often look for God. Tommy's story is told by John Powell, a professor of theology at Loyola University in Chicago, in an email that has been making the rounds:

Twelve years ago, I stood watching my university students file into the classroom for our first session in [my] Theology of Faith [course], begins Professor Powell. That was the day I first saw Tommy. My eyes and my mind both blinked. He was combing his long flaxen hair, which hung six inches below his shoulders. It was the first time I had ever seen a boy with hair that long. I guess it was just coming into fashion then. I know in my mind that it isn't what's on your head, but what's in it that counts; but on that day I was unprepared and my emotions flipped. I immediately filed Tommy under "S" for strange, very strange.

Tommy turned out to be the "atheist in residence" in my [class]. He constantly objected to, smirked at, or whined about the possibility of an unconditionally loving Father/God. We lived with each other in relative peace for one semester, although I admit he was for me at times a serious pain in the back pew.

When [Tommy] came up at the end of the course to turn in his final exam, he asked in a slightly cynical tone, Do you think I'll ever find God?"

I decided instantly on a little shock therapy. "No!" I said very emphatically.

"Oh," he responded, "I thought that was the product you were pushing."

I let him get five steps from the classroom door and then called out, "Tommy! I don't think you'll ever find [God], but I am absolutely certain that [God] will find you!"

He shrugged a little, and left my class and my life. I felt slightly disappointed at the thought that he had missed my clever line -- [God] will find you! At least I thought it was clever. Later I heard that Tommy had graduated and I was duly grateful.

Then a sad report came. I heard that Tommy had terminal cancer. Before I could search him out, he came to see me. When he walked into my office, his body was badly wasted, and the long hair had all fallen out as a result of chemotherapy. But his eyes were bright and his voice was firm, for the first time, I believe.

"Tommy, I've thought about you so often. I hear you are sick," I blurted out.

"Oh, yes, very sick. I have cancer in both lungs. It's a matter of weeks."

Can you talk about it, Tom?" I asked.

"Sure, what would you like to know?" he replied.

"What's it like to be only twenty-four and dying?"

"Well, it could be worse."

"Like what?"

"Well, like being fifty and having no values or ideals, like being fifty and thinking that booze, seducing women, and making money are the real 'biggies' in life."

I began to look through my mental file cabinet under 'S,' where I had filed Tommy as strange. (It seems as though everybody I try to reject by [some kind of] classification, God sends back into my life to educate me.)

"But what I really came to see you about," Tom said, "is something you said to me on the last day of class. I asked you if you thought I would ever find God, and you said, 'No!' which surprised me. Then you said, 'But He will find you.' I thought about that a lot, even though my search for God was hardly intense at that time.... But when the doctors removed a lump from my groin and told me that it was malignant, that's when I got serious about locating God. And when the malignancy spread into my vital organs, I really began banging bloody fists against the bronze doors of heaven. But God did not come out. In fact, nothing happened. Did you ever try anything for a long time with great effort and with no success?

"You get psychologically glutted, fed up with trying. And then you quit. Well, one day I woke up, and instead of throwing a few more futile appeals over that high brick wall to a God who may be or may not be there, I just quit. I decided that I didn't really care about God, about an after life, or anything like that. I decided to spend what time I had left doing something more profitable. I thought about you and your class, and I remembered something else you had said. [You said that] 'the essential sadness is to go through life without loving, [but that] it would be almost equally sad to go through life and leave this world without ever telling those you loved that you had loved them.'

"So, I began with the hardest one, my Dad. He was reading the newspaper when I approached him."

"Dad." "Yes, what?" he asked without lowering the newspaper.

"Dad, I would like to talk with you."

"Well, talk."

"I mean ... It's really important."

The newspaper came down three slow inches. "What is it?"

"Dad, I love you. I just wanted you to know that."

Tom smiled at me and [spoke] with obvious satisfaction, as though he felt a warm and secret joy flowing inside of him.

"The newspaper fluttered to the floor," Tom continued. "Then my father did two things I could never remember him ever doing before. He cried. And he hugged me. We talked all night, even though he had to go to work the next morning. It felt so good to be close to my father, to see his tears, to feel his hug, to hear him say that he loved me.

"It was easier with my mother and little brother. They cried with me, too, and we hugged each other and started saying real nice things to each other. We shared the things we had been keeping secret for so many years.

"I was only sorry about one thing. [I was sorry] that I had waited so long. Here I was, just beginning to open up to all the people I had actually been close to."

"Then, one day I turned around, and God was there. He didn't come to me when I pleaded with Him. I guess I was like an animal trainer holding out a hoop, 'C'mon, God, jump through. C'mon, I'll give You three days, three weeks.' Apparently God does things in His own way and at His own hour. The important thing is that He was there. He found me. You were right. He found me even after I stopped looking for Him."

"Tommy," I practically gasped, I think you are saying something very important, and much more universal than you realize. To me, at least, you are saying that the surest way to find God is not to make Him a private possession, not [to make God] a problem solver or an instant consolation in time of need, but rather [the surest way to find God is] by opening [up] to love. You know, the Apostle John said that. 'God is love,' he said, 'and whoever loves, knows God. Anyone who lives in love is living with God, and God is living in him.'

"Tom, could I ask you a favor? You know, when I had you in class you were a real pain. But (laughingly) you can make it all up to me now. Would you come into my present Theology of Faith course and tell them what you have just told me? If I told them the same thing, it wouldn't be half as effective as if you were to tell them."

"Ooh ....I was ready for you, but I don't know if I'm ready for your class."

"Tom, think about it. If and when you are ready, give me a call."

In a few days Tom called. [He] said he was ready for the class, that he wanted to do that for God, and for me. So we scheduled a date. Tommy never made it, however. He had another appointment, far more important than the one with me and my class. Of course, his life was not really ended by his death, only changed. He made the great step from faith into vision. He found a life far more beautiful than the eye of man has ever seen or the ear of man has ever heard or the mind of man has ever imagined.

Before he died, we talked one last time. "I'm not going to make it to your class," he said.

"I know, Tom."

"Will you tell them for me? Will you . . . tell the whole world for me?"

"I will, Tom. I'll tell them. I'll do my best."

So, to all of you who have been kind enough to hear this simple statement about love [and God], thank you for listening. And to you, Tommy, somewhere in the sunlit, verdant hills of heaven -- I told them, Tommy, as best I could.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.