February
3, 2008 Des Moines
Text: Matthew 17:1-9
I'm told
that Martin Luther King, Jr. got so discouraged one time that he was ready to
quit the fight – give up on the prospect of bringing about significant change
in the civil rights for people of color, and just go back home and recede from
public view. “Once” -- right! I have to imagine that weary discouragement haunted him more
than once. But the despair of which I've
been told was this time met with a vision – an “epiphany” I'll say, given this
season we are concluding this week; a “manifestation of God's presence and
Spirit.”
According
to the story, King heard a voice and identified it as the very voice of God
telling the weary preacher that he had to go on; that God had called
him to this work, and would sustain him in it.
And whether we believe in “voices” or not, something happened, because
as we know King was, indeed, sustained, and did, in fact, go on.
The Irish
talk about such experiences in spatial terms – as “thin places,” where two
worlds meet; where the usually thick cartilage buffering heaven and earth
narrows to such wafer thinness as to permit one to reach over into the
other. Some believe there are literal
“thin places” -- spiritual hot spots like Sedona in Arizona, like the island of
Iona in Scotland, like Mecca or Jerusalem or Mount Sinai. But for others, “thin places” are less
literal and more experiential – as any place where our hearts are uniquely
opened – a small inn in Vermont, a campsite in Yosemite National Park, a
Colorado vista, a vesper center at church camp, a particular piece of music or
painting or poem; a burst of fireworks against a night sky; a clarifying moment
like we talked about last week; a person; a ritual.
One of
those places in my life was the service that took place some 26 years ago in
Abilene, TX during which certain of my credentials and commendations were read,
a sermon was preached, and I – the object of all this attention – was directed
to kneel at the steps to the chancel while the elders of that congregation and
miscellaneous ministers who had gathered for the occasion placed their hands on
my head and shoulders and prayed for the ministry I was beginning. It was, in the tradition of the ancient
church, an “ordination.” A “thin place”
par excellence.
But just
what is the “action” in a service of ordination, and who is the intended
audience? In an objective sense,
ordination is the official act by which the church sets one apart for ministry. It doesn't so much impute assets or install
in the candidate gifts and graces that were not there before, but rather
affirms the church's recognition of those that already were. It is, in a way, an official authorization to
serve the church in this particular way – a kind of Good Housekeeping seal
of approval denoting that this person has successfully satisfied the basic
minimum requirements for the task. In
that sense, the intended audience is the wider church whose interested eyes
might every now and then fall on this person with a ministry in mind.
But more
often than I ever dreamed I find myself thinking about the comment made by one
of my seminary professors. Ordination,
he asserted, for all its potential value to the church, is ultimately for the
benefit of the candidate. “There will be
times,” he told us, “when you will doubt your abilities; doubt your gifts;
doubt your calling. In the midst of
those seasons of doubt,” he said, “ordination will stand as a kind of
collective reminder and reassurance –
that though you may not be able to see them, the church has recognized
your gifts and affirmed your graces; the church has seen God working in
you in ways that make you suitable for this work. Ordination,” he asserted, “more than anything
is the church's gift to help you remember.”
I think of
that clarification as I read this familiar story. For whose benefit did this mountaintop
experience take place? Was it for Jesus,
perhaps needing some encouragement and validation at this point in his
ministry? Was it for the disciples,
and by extension, all of us latter day disciples who routinely need a little
dose of confirmation when our faith begins to wane from the difficulties or
perhaps merely the distractions.
Why, I
wonder, did this episode take place – and why now, at this point in the
story? After all, as far as we are
concerned we have already heard a voice from the heavens claiming Jesus as
God's very own beloved. When he was
baptized we heard that voice and those words on the wings of God's descending
Spirit. Why this “deja vu all over again?”
And what
are we to make of the mysterious visitations and affectations? According to the story, it wasn't until they
heard the voice from the heavens that the disciples fell to the ground in fear,
but I've got to say that if two dead people were to suddenly appear in my
company, that would be quite enough to get me looking for a rock to hide
behind. And Jesus, bleached and
radioactive. What's this all about?
Maybe, as I
think about it, this “thin place” was all for the benefit of Moses and
Elijah. If ever anyone deserved some
affirmation, they should be entitled.
Both men served God valiantly in less than desirable circumstances,
undergoing hard times and serious dangers with precious little TLC.
For Elijah,
it was life as a hunted fugitive; hiding out, trying to remain faithful while
also trying to remain alive. Sure he had
his exciting successes – humiliating the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel in a
fiery demonstration, and pulling off various noteworthy miracles. But it was hardly all glory. And when he really needed a sign – really
needed some spiritual “get up and go,”
what he got was not thunderclap sounds from God or mighty winds, but a
puny little still, small voice.
And Moses,
after risking his life in front of the King of Egypt and nurse-maiding the
Israelites across the wilderness, what was his reward? A distant view from a mountaintop of the
promised land that, after all his work and heartache and risk, he would not get
to actually enter. It must have been
like being paraded through a cafeteria line to look at all the entrées and
options but not getting to actually eat any of it. That, and an unmarked grave.
Maybe,
then, this little confab on the mountain top was for the two of them – Moses
and Elijah; a little overdue recognition that all their efforts had not been in
vain; that something had actually come of their people, their fidelity, their
vision, their lives. All the law and the
prophets, incarnate in this one. It
doesn't take much. Just little things
suffice. It doesn't take much light
piercing the thick darkness to offer a little glimmer of hope. Maybe God was throwing Moses and Elijah a
bone.
It could,
of course, be that this story is more a hindrance than a help – more of a
separation than an inspiration. It
could, more than anything else, create unfortunate distance – calling
attention, as it seems to do, to Jesus' uniqueness rather than his
similarity.
Think, for
a moment, about an example I've already given.
Does celebrating Martin Luther King's birthday honor his accomplishments
at the expense of separating his work from our own? Do the red letters on our calendars
implicitly suggest that what he did was unique, extraordinary, out of the reach
of the rest of us? Wouldn't he, by
contrast, argue that what he was about is precisely the work of us
all? And what, then, of Jesus –
spiritually visited and all radio active.
Would Jesus want to underscore how he is like us, rather than how
we are different?
Not only
Matthew, but Mark and Luke as well include this story in their tellings, and
the second letter of Peter. What did
they all want us to hear in it, and how might this story nourish us? Well, of course I can't say with any
certainty – I have had no such special visitation. But I do think there is more than enough
grace here to go around – in a way that affords a “thin place” for all of those
concerned.
God knows
the disciples were always in need of some nudging and clarification, and if
seeing all the pieces assembled in one place – the personification of the law,
the embodiment of the prophets, the mountaintop, the glow of God's own presence
and the sound of God's own voice saying, in effect, “get it?” -- helped them
along, then well and good.
And are we
so blinded by our conviction about the divinity of Jesus that we can't
appreciate how his humanity might have appreciated a little encouragement and
affirmation along the way, as well?
And if
Jesus and his disciples could benefit from the experience of a “thin place”,
when they felt God and the company of heaven close enough to touch, can it be
all that terrible to admit that we could use one from time to time? It's easy to get discouraged. It's easy to get covered up and burdened down
– professionally, to be sure, emotionally and psychologically, but also
spiritually. It doesn't take all that
much to keep us going, but we, too, every now and then, need to feel the
nearness of heaven, the proximity of the holy in all its manifestations; every
now and then, we, too, need – if only for a moment -- to be paralyzed by glory,
to be visited by truth, to see between the cracks a little blaze of light.
Maybe
Leonard Cohen was thinking of those places when he wrote this chorus in his
song Anthem:
Ring
the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in. [1]
And maybe this story, itself, can be for us one of those
cracks through which the light of God gets in..
...to buoy;
...to encourage;
...to affirm;
...to bless.