In a slim little book entitled Why Preach? Why Listen?, William Muehl writes: “It is incorrect, I am persuaded, to believe as many do today that the problem of idolatry is the tendency to identify the wrong thing as God. That is, we make a god of money or power of sex or status and so on. The crux of the problem is not, I suggest, the identification of the wrong thing as God, but the very process of attempting to identify the divine in particular terms, the effort to cram the massively complex nature of the Most High into some single principle of interpretation” (p. 33). Muehl is correct, I think. In our Gospel lesson this morning Peter, James, and John, in one overwhelming moment, come face to face with the awesome majesty of the transcendent Christ. On the mountain where they had gone to pray, Jesus’ appearance was transfigured before them and they saw not simply Jesus the teacher, the healer, the man of compassion and grace, but the one about whom John would write: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Fear over came them and Peter, who was often inclined to speak first and only later to think about what he said, proposed that they build three dwellings on the mountain for Christ, Moses, and Elijah. Peter, like followers of Jesus for centuries afterwards and still today, sought to reduce the awesome holiness of Christ to something he could understand, to a dwelling that might be visited from time to time. We are no different, for we too are inclined to want to confine the Almighty to the dimensions of our own understanding, experience and convictions. So, God becomes a Presbyterian, Baptist, Congregationalist, Methodist, or Roman Catholic. God is a left-leaning liberal or a right wing reactionary, a Democrat or a Republican, a sexual libertarian or sexual ascetic. And if we do not define him in terms of our theology, ecclesiology, or political ideology, then it is in terms of our own experience. Those who really know God have felt God’s presence in the warmth of their hearts and the power of emotional experience. Those who really know God keep a rein on their emotions, for they know that human emotions are fickle and that God is best known and best served through the utilization of the mind and the intellect. This inclination to confine God to the limitations of our own experience and knowledge is not restricted to Christians. Oregon is 49th, next to the bottom, among the states of the Union in church attendance. While Oregonians may not be particularly church-going people or even Christian people, we are, nevertheless, rather spiritually oriented people. Portland, for instance, has the highest per capita in the nation of people who have been dubbed “cultural creatives,” that is, people with a reverence for the gift of nature, its beauty and fragility, and who bear a sense of responsibility for its care and preservation. These are people who, for the most part, eschew traditional Christian theology and ecclesiastical organizations, perhaps in part because of belief systems rigidly interpreted and rigidly imposed upon them at some point in their life’s journey or because of their perception that all Christian theology and community is so structured. But they are also people who are spiritually hungry and who seek to connect with the divine wherever it may be found, often in and through creation. Their search reflects, I think, the elemental hungering of all human beings for the holy, for God. As St. Augustine put it centuries ago, “our hearts are restless till they find their rest in Thee.” We are both physical and spiritual creatures and both aspects of our nature require nurturing. Much of twenty-first century American spirituality might be termed “cafeteria style spirituality.” We take a little of this and a little of that—Native American religious practices, teachings of the Buddha, Christian theology, contemporary self-help books—and construct for ourselves a religion or spirituality that suits us and our needs. What is true for one person may not be true for another and that’s perfectly permissible because in this way of seeing life and God all truth is relative—relative to one’s own needs at the moment, desires, and feelings. And the idol, of course, in which we have sought to “cram the massively complex nature of the Most High” is me. The reality which is God, however, begins not with what seems right to you or me, with what fits in with our view of the world, or with our own inner yearnings, but beyond us, beyond time, beyond what we can see and touch and feel, beyond even the farthest fringes of our imaginations. The holiness of God, that is the essence of God’s being, that which makes God uniquely God, transcends all human power fully to define and therefore to control. As one author put it: “Even the sum of all the attributes and activities of ‘the holy’ is insufficient to exhaust its meaning, for to the one who has experienced the presence (of the holy) there is always a plus, a ‘something more’ which resists formulation or definition. Its connotations are as divine as the cultures which seek to describe its mysterious nature, but common to all is an awareness of an undefined and uncanny energy, a sense of the numinous, of the imponderable and the incomprehensible, an inarticulate feeling of an inviolable potency outside and beyond, removed and distant, yet at the same time near and fascinating, invading the everyday world of normal experience” (The Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible, Vol. 2, p. 616). To stand before God, “the Holy One,” is ultimately to stand before mystery, a mystery the depths of which can never be fully plumbed and which the human mind and heart can, at best, only partially comprehend. And yet, God wills that we know him and has sought to make himself known to us. The beauty and intricacy of the created order point us in the direction of God, but do not contain God. The psalmist exclaims, “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world” (Psalm 19:1-2). Creation itself, though it may point us in the direction of God, is not sufficient for us to know God. Again and again in the course of human history God has entered into our time, our circumstances, our need to make himself known to us. The Bible is the story of the divine/human interaction. In the calling of Abraham and God’s covenant with him; in God’s hearing of the cries of the Hebrew slaves in Egypt and sending Moses to lead them to freedom; in God’s covenant promises to them and through them to the world; in the cry of the prophets calling them back to God when they wandered away from God’s will and purpose for them; and ultimately in the birth cry of a child in the village of Bethlehem, God has entered into our world, our lives, to make himself known to us. The miracle of the incarnation is that the holy otherness of God has taken human form. The majesty, the splendor, the power of God has come to reside among us in the fragile life of a newborn child. In that one God has himself chosen to pour “the massively complex nature of the Most High.” In his life, his teaching, his character and conduct, and ultimately in his death, we have seen the very face of God, the love and life of God among us. In him God has drawn near to us, revealed himself to us, touched us with his love, and claimed us to be his own. Each of us, like Peter, James, and John, has encountered the holy. It may have been in an intensely religious experience—a profound, life shaping, transforming moment, when you stood before something that you could not begin fully to understand but which you knew had claimed you. Or it may have been in the ordinary rhythm of human life when the ordinary took on extraordinary significance and through it you felt the presence of God and you felt your life change. A few of those moments stand out in my memory—the strange peace that filled me the night I realized that my forty-six year old mother couldn’t win her battle for life; the indescribable joy I felt and can still vividly recall when I carried my newborn daughter from the labor/delivery room to the hospital nursery; an hour of solitude on the peak of a mountain in western North Carolina where it was so quiet I could hear the birds rustling the leaves on the ground. One cannot encounter God or be encountered by God and walk away unchanged. Peter, James, and John, came down from the Mount of Transfiguration affirmed in their faith that Jesus was indeed “the Christ, the Son of the living God,” but paradoxically they also descended the mountain with a deeper awareness of how little they really did understand about the one whose transfigured glory they had seen. The voice from the cloud had said: “This is my Beloved, the Chosen One, listen to him.” And as they “listened to him” they found that their understanding was deepened, their faith was strengthened, and their lives were transformed in ways they never imagined. Christ came to be formed in them; Christ came to be seen in them. When Moses came down from Mount Sinai his face shone “because he had been talking to God.” To stand in the presence of God’s holiness is to be transformed so that others may see in us the effects of that encounter. As Christians we are a holy people because we belong to a holy God. That holiness manifests itself, however, not in a “holier than thou” kind of life, but a life like Christ’s. It is a life in which people are faithful to their promises, seek to do good to their neighbors, love their enemies, seek justice, strive for the truth, honor the poor, welcome the outcast, stand with the weak, suffer for righteousness, forgive those who hurt them, and seek in all things to live in obedience to God’s will and purpose. We are a holy people, that is a set apart people but not an isolated people, for it is in us, in our life together as a community and in our daily living that God’s love in Christ, God’s holiness, is made known to the world. An African American spiritual which I wish I had thought of having us sing this morning summarizes this sermon in words far better than I can write. It goes like this: “Lord, make us more holy, Lord, make us more holy, Lord, make us more holy, until we meet again. Holy, holy, holy, until we meet again.” By God’s grace in Christ may it be so. Amen. J. Dudley Weaver |