Saturday, February 14, 2015

"The Image of God" - February 15, 2015

Mark 9:2-9


            There was one Halloween when the weather was unusually warm and I was sitting outside with a group of neighbors.  We each had our bowl of candy and we were enjoying hanging out in between clumps of trick-or-treaters.  Since it was a reasonably close-knit neighborhood, we were able to do the bit where, as the kids came along, somebody would ask, “Do we know you?” and if the answer was, “Yes,” to try to guess who was behind the mask.  About halfway through the evening, someone came along dressed as an old lady, and someone said, “Do we know you?” to which she nodded, and we began running through a list of all the teenagers on the block.  No luck.  Then somebody had an idea and began naming people’s grandchildren.  Still no luck.  We were stumped, so we just handed over the candy and shrugged.  The trick-or-treater turned away and started down the sidewalk, then saw a candy wrapper on the pavement and leaned over to pick it up.  All of a sudden, everyone sitting there shouted at the same time, “It’s Tom!” then started laughing.

            All he had to do was pick up a piece of litter, and it didn’t matter how he was dressed or the scarf on his head or how he tried to walk all bent over or the rubber mask on his face.  It could only have been him.  It was my next door neighbor, who was about seventy years old at the time, and whose wife referred to him as “Mr. Clean”.  We had a three-foot snowstorm that year and he not only shoveled off his sidewalk, but he also shoveled off every inch of his front yard (right onto mine and the people’s on the other side).  That’s all it takes, sometimes.  One small gesture or act can tell a great deal about who’s in there.

            There was a moment like that during Jesus’ earthly life, a moment we call the Transfiguration, when his most inner self became undeniably clear and obvious.  Mark tells of that moment this way:

“Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. …Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!’” [Mark 9:2-4, 7-8]

It’s almost as if there were that moment when Jesus lets his friends into some sort of big secret, taking them up the mountain and letting them meet some of his other friends, and letting them see him as he is.  He is a figure of glory.  He is one whom the holiest and most faithful people, Moses and Elijah, respect. Somehow, he is able to cross the line freely between heaven and earth, time and eternity, and to help others do the same.  He is the one whom the voice of God claims as God’s own.  All of that became apparent up there on the mountain. 

Then when the moment cleared, James and John and Peter were confused and scared because,

“Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them anymore, but only Jesus.” [Mark 9:8]

Only Jesus.  Don’t you think that might have left them with the question, “Who is this guy?”  Over the next few weeks, the weeks of Lent, I’m going to be offering a series of sermons on some of the answers that they and many people since then have come up with: “The Suffering Servant”, “A Religious Reformer”, “The Source of Life”, “A Martyr”, “The King Who Is Coming”.  Those are only a few options.  Jesus spoke of himself as “Bread from Heaven”, “The Good Shepherd”, “The Way, the Truth, and the Life”, and we could go on and on because that question comes up over and over and over again. 

At the transfiguration, however, it wasn’t just a matter of explanation.  It was a moment of seeing, of revelation, of glimpsing what would underlie every role that he would ever fill and every title that he would ever be given.  In Jesus, we see God.  As the letter to the Colossians puts it,

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. [Colossians 1:15-16]

That is an extravagant claim.  That is one of those claims that goes beyond what we say when we describe seeing the love of God in someone’s life, or even of seeing God in them.  This is a claim not just about what he was like.  This is a claim about who he was.

            I’ve noticed that when people talk about God, it’s often in a distant, detached, clinical kind of way.  “If there is a God,” they’ll say, using God as a hypothesis or an explanation for their observations.  Or maybe they’ll set God up in opposition to something they already believe so that they think they disprove his existence.  “Since there is good evidence for evolution,” they might say, “the idea of a Creator must be a human invention and therefore false,” as if God were somehow necessarily opposed to science or faith opposed to reason.

            Then along come the gospel writers with their tales of God becoming human and the New Testament with its talk about Jesus having been God on earth, among us, even one of us.  The possibility of using God as merely an explanation or a philosophical framework disappears. 

            We live, we humans live, in a world of particulars.  If there is to be an understanding of love, it will come to us through the people who love us and the people whom we love.  If there is to be an understanding of compassion, it begins that moment when we first recognize another person’s sorrow or suffering and our hearts break in a way that they should.  If we are to know hope it will come because we have seen that the worst that can ever happen to anybody is not what it seems, and that God intervenes on behalf of life even if it means rolling away the stone set across the mouth of the grave.  (And the good news is that he does.  We know it because we’ve seen it.)

If you want to talk about God at all in any meaningful way, the gospels tell us, you cannot talk in theoretical terms.  You have to talk about this person: this first-century, Aramaic-speaking, woodworking, tax-paying, fish-eating, joke-telling, friend-making, occasionally homeless, occasionally angry, sometimes impatient, constantly loving, Palestinian Jew named Jesus.

            It’s fine that you think that God is love.  He showed what that meant to people that nobody could stand to be around. 

It’s good that you believe that God is all powerful.  He did miracles.  He also refused to use his power, even at the expense of his life. 

It’s terrific that you see God as favoring justice.  Jesus knew what it was to face injustice, both on behalf of others and as a victim of injustice himself. 

It’s great that you consider God to be merciful.  Jesus knew that one of his own disciples would betray him to execution, and that the rest would deny knowing him or run away.  Now let’s talk about forgiveness.

            It’s amazing that we can talk about God at all, but let’s not just talk.  Let’s actually get to know him.  It seems to be what he wants.  In the words of the prophet Hosea,
           

“Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord; his appearing is as sure as the dawn; he will come to us like the showers, like the spring rains that water the earth.”  [Hosea 6:3]

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