Thresholds Sunday
TEXT: 2
Corinthians 4:3-6
Glowing Hearts
Today,
according to the church’s calendar, is the final, climactic Sunday of the
season of Epiphany – the season sandwiched between Christmastide and Lent when
we pull out everything from telescopes to microscopes to catch glimpses into
the ongoing ways that God becomes manifest among us. At the center of the story is the trip that
Jesus makes up some unidentified mountain along with Peter, James and
John. At the summit, their small party
is miraculously, mysteriously joined by the long-dead Moses and prophet Elijah
who together watch as Jesus is visually transfigured. According to Mark, Jesus’ clothes “became
dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them.” According to Matthew, his face “glowed like
the sun.”
It wasn’t a
random confluence of personalities or events.
Moses, you might remember from the book of Exodus, had climbed a
mountain of his own and had hidden in a cave there to watch the backside of God
pass by. On that same mountain he had
received the law that was to define and shape the identity of the people to
whom they were delivered. Years later,
the prophet Elijah, running from the wrath of the queen and his own
disillusionment with the God he had served, climbed up that same mountain, and
crawled into that same cave. From that
protective perch, he, too, encountered the presence and power of God in the
still, small voice that whispered new life into his soul. And now Jesus, atop a mountain of his own,
joined by these two veterans of divine encounter, meets God in his own
life-rearranging way.
Interesting
enough, so far as it goes, as an oddity of holy history. But according to the Apostle Paul writing
some two decades later, it isn’t merely “yesterday.”
“All of us,”
he assures the Corinthians, “with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord
as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from
one degree of glory to another…”
And then in
this morning’s reading, Paul goes on to claim that “it is the God who said,
‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the
light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus.”
God, in other
words, is still transfiguring; still bringing light into shadows – a
transfiguring, enlightening work that has something, apparently, to do with
us. Our ministry has something to do
with participation in the dispensing of light, which is ultimately the
reflection of the very glory of God.
Not that any
darkness remains. Where we live, of
course, all forms of life are affectionately respected. Conflicts, both interpersonal and
international, are resolved peacefully and amicably. The goods of the world and its natural resources
are equitably shared and distributed.
The hurts and hopes of all are attentively heard and understood. The planet, itself, flourishes under the
stewardship of a human community united in common purpose. You know:
light.
Right! (Perhaps you can hear the tongue in my
cheek.)
In reality,
Ø the Iowa Legislature can’t even agree
on the need to condemn bullying in school!
Ø Our own federal government can’t even
disavow the concept of torture without crossing its fingers behind its back and
winking.
Ø Once upon a time, 20% of the earth
was belted by rain forests – think of them like stem cells of the planet. Today that number is something like 2% and
shrinking.
Ø Despite decades of concern over
global warming and the inhalation of carcinogens, we drill and burn just as
much oil as ever – if not more – and show no signs of changing our
behavior.
Ø And despite our congenial resolve to
listen, the volume of our shouting betrays a more fundamental determination to
simply be heard.
Ø Just last year, at the very same time
that the global community – and our own congregation – were commendably
rallying to respond to the pain inflicted by Tsunami and hurricane, hundreds of
thousands were dying unnoticed in the Darfur region of Sudan, while a third of
that region’s 6 million people were displaced by conflict, disease and
famine.
Ø Here in the land of opportunity and
plenty, a new survey released on Thursday by “America’s Second Harvest,” shows
that more that 25 million Americans receive emergency food assistance each year
– 2 million more since its last
survey 5 years ago. The survey reveals
how possible it is to work a full-time job and still not have enough money to
feed your family, forcing more than a third of those surveyed to choose between
food and rent, utilities, mortgage payments, medicine or doctors visits. [1]
Ø And reporters still give us daily
updates outside the courthouses where the trials of corporate executives
contorted by greed are underway.
The threshold of a culture of peace
is still in front of us, not behind. Even
in the Christian community, our track record is not all that positive.
Ø We decry the terror and destruction
perpetrated by the radicals of other faiths, but it is hard to ignore the fact
that many of history’s more egregious atrocities – the Spanish Inquisition, the
Crusades, the marginalization and genocide of native Americans, the Holocaust,
abortion clinic bombings, the Guyana mass suicides – were perpetrated by those
who vocally and self-righteously included themselves within the Christian fold.
Ø The divorce rates of Christians and
non-Christians are virtually indistinguishable.
Ø And we have not learned how not to
fight – even within the faith community.
The church is just as likely to bludgeon and bruise and then walk on its
wounded as the thugs on the street and the armies on the battlefields. We just do it in the name of Christian love
and concern for the integrity of the church.
So where, one
might ask, is all this transfiguring light?
Where in all this darkness is this radiant glory? I believe it is flickering – like the candles
whose light we share on Christmas Eve.
It is flickering in those moments when forgiveness and humility scratch,
like a match, against the roughness of estrangement and flame into
reconciliation. Flickering, and catching
hold in the moments of grace shared between disparate individuals who allow
something of heaven to break out and glow between them.
Howard
Thurman, one of the greatest African-American preachers of the last century,
was invited early in his ministry to visit
When Singh
asked Thurman to explain the cause of his amusement, Thurman observed that
these two learned men had spent their entire morning acting as if they were
engaged in battle. Singh, a Hindu, and
Thurman, a Christian, had sparred for position, each extolling the virtues of
his own tradition while gently attacking the other. ‘You are right,’ said Singh. ‘When we come back this afternoon, let us be
wiser than that.’
Later, when
they did return to their conversation, it was with a new intention and point of
view. As Thurman recalls it,
It was as if we had stepped out of social, political, cultural frames of
reference, and allowed two human spirits to unite on a ground of reality that
was unmarked by separateness and differences.
This was a watershed of experience in my life. We had become a part of each other even as we
remained essentially individual. I was
able to stand secure in my place and enter into his place without diminishing
myself or threatening him. [2]
Flickering, in
the hearts and voices and deeds of those in whom the creating word has been
heard calling light out of darkness.
Flickering – like the light of the knowledge of the glory of
God in the face of Jesus Christ…
…showing the way across the threshold
to a culture of peace.
Flickering, may we pray, in us.