Glorious Moments

Sermon for February 14, 2010

Scripture: Luke 9:28-36

Have you ever had a glorious moment? I'm talking about one of those brief intervals when your perspective shifts ever so slightly, and in an instant you have a child's sense of wonder and delight in the natural world. You may feel drunk on spring sunshine and bird song, or be struck dumb by the grandeur of the mountains.

At home in wintertime I love to see the sunset glowing through starkly beautiful, bare tree trunks; the icy road on fire with reflected light...Glorious moments....Sometimes you can't believe what your eyes are perceiving, like the tree full of angels, like William Blake did when he was a small child. You probably shake your head, and take another look at reality—but you know, in your heart, that you are standing on holy ground. Just for a split second, you become vividly, almost shockingly, aware of God's shining presence in the world.

These moments of glorious beauty aren't limited to the outdoors—God can shine through the ordinary in many other ways. You may sense God's presence when you see a child take her first wobbly steps, or in an older person's face lighting up because of your visit. The joy such a moment calls up can take your breath away. Think back—I bet each one of you can recall similar sacred times.

Glorious moments need not be beautiful or traditionally heart-warming, either. It is a mystery, like much of life, that this holiness not only breaks through the mundane, but even the painful. Dying people who are at peace can seem to radiate God's presence as if the Holy Spirit couldn't wait to gather them into her arms.

At these holy times, reality may appear quite different; but it is no less real. In fact, I would argue that this kind of God-drenched vision is more real than what we notice ordinarily. God's glory bubbles up around and through the everyday, permeating everything, if we can learn to stay awake to see it.

When Peter, James and John went to the mountaintop with Jesus, they were coming off a difficult stretch emotionally. It wasn't very long ago that they had participated in the miraculous feeding of more than five thousand people with the meager lunch of a poor boy. What a high that must have been! And then their beloved leader told them that he was going to be rejected, suffer and die...what a roller coaster ride down. Peter, especially, must have been bitterly disappointed to hear Jesus' was leaving them to carry on the ministry alone. How would they manage?

You must have had similar feelings when you first heard that your pastor Jim was leaving—how will we be Sojourners without him? How will we manage?

Jesus' news to the disciples came with quite a challenge to them, “Don't run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I'll show you how.” [ The Message , Luke 9:23-24] You may be more familiar with the New Revised Standard Version: “Take up your cross and follow me.” Strange words indeed. But we all suffer. Pain and sorrow are part and parcel of human life. And when Jesus took on human life, he took it on fully; even to die a traitor's death.

Less than a week later, Jesus allows his trusted inner circle a glimpse of the divine. In this glorious moment, they see him transfigured, in dazzling white clothes, accompanied by Elijah and Moses, two important figures who probably symbolize the law and the prophets, the Jewish faith and traditions that Jesus came not to abolish but to fulfill.

Can you imagine how startling this revelation of Jesus' true nature must have been to the disciples? Peter blurts out, “Master! This is a great moment! Let's make three monuments.” Already Peter is trying to stifle God. He tries, as we often do, to freeze the moment, to enshrine God in the remembrance of a past time, rather than letting God be God, free and alive and unfettered by us.

As if in response to Peter's babbling, a voice from the cloud says, “This is my Son, my Chosen . Listen to him!” And suddenly the glow disappears, and Jesus stands alone.

We all need these mountain top experiences, and they don't have to take place on a mountain. Just like the disciples, we too need flashes of God's glorious otherness. But more importantly, we crave certain knowledge and real experience of God's nearness, and of God's amazing, unconditional love. I firmly believe that God is as near to us as we are to ourselves and each other. God's shining presence is accessible to us as the ordinary surroundings we take for granted.

But as Paul has said, “the world blinds us to the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.” We are often weighed down with sleep; we let our to-do lists; our cares and disappointments crowd our minds and spirits. We may play endless scenarios in our minds, going over and over past hurts and resentments like a tongue touching an aching tooth; or perhaps we cast ahead to the future, previewing worries for tomorrow.

Sylvia Boorstein, who writes about meditation, gives us this analogy: If we rent a movie and then discover we've seen it already, or if it contains previews of coming attractions but no feature, what do we do? Watch it again and again? No! We don't waste time, we return it. Yet we can replay past disappointments and future worries over and over in an endless loop, and miss the glory of God. To catch a glimpse of the divine, we have to live in the present moment, because that's God's time, and it is sacred.

It's hard to do, isn't it? Our analytical minds are always taking over. Our hurts blind us, and our busy schedules numb and exhaust us. So the first thing we need to do is slow down, and use our physical senses to see and hear; smell and touch rather than think.

See if you can regain your childhood sense of wonder, what the Buddhists call Beginner's Mind. Experiment with looking at things as if seeing them for the first time; that is holy seeing.

Secondly, trust your own experience of the holy. God gives us each the divine moments that we are ready for. In a book called A Tree Full of Angels , Macrina Wiederkehr calls them “frail and glorious moments,” because we see the divine in the midst of our human frailty. Sometimes we may feel too weighed down by sin, or captive to old self-images and ways of thinking, but God trusts us with God's glory. God has embraced our human frailty by choosing to become incarnate as a human being.

Look for your glorious moments everywhere; in nature, in other people, and even in the midst of pain and suffering. And then, as Macrina writes, “let those moments bless you and energize you; feed and heal you.”

I had a glorious moment once while riding the Metro to work in DC. When I worked downtown, I was usually pretty grumpy about riding the Metro.. most people sit there silently, glumly —so I would listen to meditation music and pray…and one day I happened to look up, and everyone, all those grumpy people, were shining and golden. I was in awe….and then, I was given to know that this is how God sees us…shining and glorious…

Rejoice in your own glorious moments, give thanks to God, and use them as fuel for the soul. But then come down off the mountaintop.. if only to look for your next glorious moment. We need to keep moving so we can follow the still-speaking God who is always at work in the world to bring light out of darkness.

Our God says, “Listen.” Are you paying attention? This Lent look and listen for signs of God's Chosen One. Be ready to follow Jesus, wherever he may lead. And shine bright! Thanks be to God.

Patricia Barth

February 14, 2010

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