GENESIS PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Monday, March 28, 2011

27 March 2011 “Jesus Is Where He Finds You” John 4:5-42

Jesus is clearly a man who knows his audience. In our gospel lesson last Sunday we read the story of Nicodemus. This Sunday we have the story of the unnamed Samaritan woman. Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman. They couldn’t have been more different, yet Jesus knows them both and adapts his responses to them accordingly.

Nicodemus, we learned, was a leader of the Jews. The woman, on the other hand, had no status in the Jewish world. Nicodemus came to Jesus by night. Jesus comes to the woman by day. Nicodemus wants something from Jesus. Jesus, on the other hand, wants something from the woman.
Nicodemus tries to use reason with Jesus and is confused in the process. The woman engages Jesus in what turns out to be a rich theological discussion and understands who he is and what he offers her.

Nicodemus doesn’t understand how Jesus’ teaching can be. The woman not only understands, she leaves her water jar and went back to the city to share the good news with the people. Nicodemus seems to drift off in the story doing nothing. The woman begins to share the good news with those who do not know it. She evangelizes to the people and they invite Jesus to stay with them and he does. Many more believed because of her action and his word, for they heard for themselves and they learned that Jesus is truly the Savior of the world.

There are in these stories striking similarities in our lives. As Jesus was one on one with Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman, Jesus is one on one with us. Whether we go to him or he comes to us, it doesn’t matter. Both happen.

Usually, like Nicodemus, we go to Jesus when we need something, speaking our prayers of petition. Just as likely, Jesus will listen instead to our hearts. That is the place where Jesus truly wants to engage us. It is with our hearts that Jesus fills us with his profoundest wisdom, his greatest strength, his unlimited love and his saving grace.

Less usually it seems Jesus is the one who initiates the contact. The scripture makes is clear, Jesus does seek us out. He tells us things about ourselves no one else knows. He teaches us things about himself we certainly don’t know. Jesus, we learn, wants something from us. Something we don’t know we have to offer. Something only God can want. In the process, our lives are changed forever.

I believe it is our nature to try and figure these things out. To try and figure God out as we try and figure our own lives out. Like Nicodemus, we use our best reasoning ability. We aren’t always so bashful with God. We will generate enough courage and try and reason out our situation, thoughts about our life and God’s and how they might have meaning together. We do have a history of success with our courage leading the way. Using our brains to know who we are and how we are to live our lives results in practical, productive and workable answers.

Yet we find ourselves filled with doubt in the middle of the night and we struggle with where to turn for help. We don’t really understand how Jesus’ teaching can be true. It lacks good reason. We see our lives in contrast to Jesus’ teachings and we are confused like Nicodemus. So we dig safe trenches in our lives to which we crawl for safety while we gather our wits about us for the next assault on our confusion about what’s important. In our illusions we drift off, away from Jesus, until the night becomes so dark we seek him in our despair.

Then we learn how Jesus is seeking us all along. Oh, this is such good news. The Samaritan woman engages Jesus in a discussion about God that has depth and insight and follows Jesus lead. Not her own. In this way, she not only begins to understand who Jesus is, she begins to understand about her life and the sole purpose for which she lives.

Consider for a moment that we are to write our name into the story, that we are the unnamed. In so many ways we see hope and possibility through her we may never otherwise find.

Notice how she engages Jesus in a critical dialogue seeking him, not relief for herself. Jesus says, “Give me a drink”. The Samaritan woman said, “How is it that you, a Jew, asks a drink of me, a sinner.” Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink’, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” She presses Jesus about this. “Sir, where do you get that living water?” And Jesus answered with greater detail and truth, “…those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty…it will become in you a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”

For the first time in her life she believes there is a nourishing possibility for her like nothing that has come into her life before. She asks Jesus, “Sir, give me this water,” She opens her heart and soul to Jesus, in her new found faith she holds nothing back and reveals herself, her intellect and her heart, to what Jesus already knows about her. She offers her life to him. She begins to understand, Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ who will come and proclaim that those who worship him will have eternal life. She knows when the Messiah comes he will proclaim all things to us. Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.” Poor Nicodemus never made it to this level of understanding, belief, faith, or salvation.

But we can. We have come seeking earthly nourishment of body and soul and found life’s offerings may separate us from God. In our sinful nature we come to the well for water at a time of the day when others are not around so we will not have to be confronted by our sin, only to find Jesus waiting there for us. It is true, Jesus is waiting for us and when we show up he wants us to give him a drink of this life we think is so important, he will take it from us and give us in its place, a life that will become in us a spring of water gushing up to eternal life. The vessel we bring is our body and soul. Jesus will fill it for us.

Like our advocate, the Samaritan woman, we will leave our lives beside the well and go to the rest of the world proclaiming, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He is the Messiah. And many will believe because we have believed and lived our lives to teach his way.

In God’s amazing grace, in living as Jesus teaches us, in bringing others to Christ we accomplish what his disciples urged Jesus to do. When they returned to him they encouraged him to take some food. His response was, “I have food to eat that you do not know about…My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work…Doing God’s will brings about the harvest…and if we will but look around in our lives we will see the field is ripe for harvesting.” Many will believe in him because of our testimony.

We are the harvest crew that finds the people dying without Jesus.

The Rev. Arturo Malicara, a friend and hospital chaplain, reminded me often, people are indeed dying and they do not know Jesus, and each one of us who profess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior can help save them.

Ali Selem’s beautiful and understated 2005 film, “Sweet Land”, tells both the story of the power of love and the power of finding something wonderful that satisfies the deepest hungers and thirst of life. The film tells the story of a young German mail-order bride, Inge, promised to a struggling farmer, Olaf, arriving in Minnesota in the wake of World War One. The local minister and town judge both refuse to perform the marriage ceremony because, as they judged, of Inge’s socialist affiliations, her inability to speak English, and the loose morals and dissipated lifestyle of foreign women. Without rights or citizenship, with no family and no community – Inge stood alone, facing a hostile, unfriendly new world.

Though the marriage is forbidden, Olaf and Inge fall in love. Neighbors go to great lengths to make sure Inge knows she is not welcome, she does not belong, and that she is despised. Ignoring the disapproval of the townsfolk, Inge struggles to make a home and a life through hard work and devotion to Olaf. Conditions worsen, and they risk losing their farm. There is a deeply moving scene toward the end of the film where it appears the farm will be lost and Inge and Olaf are once again denied marriage. They stand outside the farmhouse with the local preacher. Olaf tells him that the farm is Inge’s home now, but the pastor shakes his head and says, “It can’t be. She doesn’t have the proper papers.” Her reply is that she has a home and citizenship and a marriage in her heart. The preacher says, “That’s not enough. It has to be real.” Inge than asks, “Do you have God in your heart?” The preacher stands mute for an unbearable time, than nods, smiles, and admits, “You’re right…my heart.”

It is by the faith and witness of a woman, an outsider, who reminds a community what is of true value, and creates a deep, abiding change in their lives. The townspeople repent, accepting Inge as one of their own, and stand with the young couple to save their farm.

We see in the character Inge the Samaritan woman by the well. An outsider who is found by Jesus and in the process, finds Jesus and a new life. Through her encounter with Jesus, and through our own, we find something of true and lasting worth – God’s spring of water overflowing with everlasting life.

That is if we have God in our heart.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Additional References:
Lectionary Homiletics, Volume XII, Number 2, Mar – Apr 2008, Pg. 28-35.
Pulpit Resources, Volume 36, No. 1, Jan – Mar 2008, Pg. 33-36.
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Wednesday, March 23, 2011

13 March 2011 Matthew 4:1-1


Matthew’s gospel doesn’t spend a lot of time drawing out the story of the birth of Jesus nor does it spend any time telling us about Jesus’ life as a child, a teenager, or even a young adult. The movement in the gospel is from his birth directly to John the Baptist proclaiming Jesus as the one who will baptize us with the Holy Spirit and fire. God then declares, “This is my Son, the Beloved with whom I am well please.” Then Jesus is lead into the wilderness.

 Apparently, temptation is what is in store for those with whom God is well pleased. I’m not sure how we should respond knowing temptation is our fate as believers. Or, thinking about it in another way, perhaps our comfort comes from knowing Jesus’ life was not so different from ours after all, even Jesus lived for a time in wilderness, pain and distress. It is comforting hearing how Jesus, though he had gone 40 days and forty nights without food, and even with great temptation, He did not loose his way.

 Our beginning with God is no less dramatic and we are no less vulnerable. For God makes a beginning with each of us. A beginning God initiates. God seeks us out and God engages us to be in a relationship of God’s own doing. This is dramatic and life changing stuff because we can know God only as God seeks and finds us.

 Henri Nouwen, the late Dutch Roman Catholic spiritual writer, wrote in his book “In the Name of Jesus” about how we just as well be ready, because in our relationship with God, with our fellow-creatures, and with ourselves as body and soul, we will have times of temptation similar to Jesus’.
 First, there will be the temptation to be relevant to the world and not to God, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” the tempter said to Jesus.

 Nouwen realized the temptations of this world when he moved from a 20 year career teaching at Notre Dame, Yale and Harvard Universities, to live and work with people with mental and physical handicaps who could not read and knew nothing of his former life.     

 About that he said, “These broken, wounded and completely unpretentious people forced me to let go of my relevant self – the self that can do things, prove things, build things…” He found himself completely vulnerable and “open to receive and give love regardless of any of my former life accomplishments.” He goes on to affirm, “I am deeply convinced that the Christian disciple of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self.”

 Our accomplishments, he thought, are not important. Underneath the world’s accomplishments is a deep current of despair, emptiness, and depression. What matters is that “God has created and redeemed us in love and has chosen us to proclaim that (only) God’s love is the true source of all human life.” Jesus said, “It is written, one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

 Second, there is the temptation to be spectacular, important in the eyes of the world, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from the pinnacle of the temple,” the tempter said to Jesus.

 Nouwen describes this temptation as the pressure to do something that will win great applause. Stardom and individual heroism are, he feels, aspects of our competitive society pervasive even in the church. In contrast, the authentic task is heard from the lips of Jesus to Peter, “Feed my sheep” (John 21). Nouwen affirms that we followers of Jesus Christ are “sinful, broken, vulnerable people who need as much care as anyone we care for.” Jesus said, “Again it is written, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”

 And finally, there is the temptation to be powerful, “”All these kingdoms of the world I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.”, his tempter said to him.

 As a university professor, Nouwen had been “in charge” and a powerful person. Among these people who were handicapped, it was different. He writes, “one of the greatest ironies of the history of Christianity is that its disciples constantly gave in to the temptation for power – political power, military power, economic power, moral and spiritual power”. It is easier to control people than to love them, he found. But our task is to empty ourselves and follow Jesus. The way of power is chosen, he writes, “when intimacy is a threat. Many Christian believers have been people unable to give and receive love.” Jesus said, “Away with you, Satan! For it is written, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.”

 Here are God’s beginnings for us this Lenten season. Here is God’s way of getting what God wants with us by saying no to the tempter and by lifting up for us the greater goods God has in mind for us. We will have to adopt Jesus way with temptation and learn to begin our new relationship with God by saying No to ourselves. Saying No to our distracting habits and lifestyles, those ones that distract us from God’s grace and God’s glory never forgetting Jesus can give us the grace we need to deny ourselves.

  I believe our greatest challenge this lent may be to begin again, with Jesus, to remember who he has called us to be. For Jesus has called us to be a follower, not of our own disciplines, but of his, loving sinners, feeding the hungry, bringing peace and justice to our families, our community, our church and our world. Giving something up would be so much easier.

 Jesus comes from the wilderness hungry and tired and just wanting a warm bath, a bite to eat and a moment to rest his weary body. But life won’t cooperate, Monday has come and he has that meeting he has been dreading the entire month. All he has to offer is scripture, the Word of God. His responses to the tempter come right out of Deuteronomy, God’s holy word. That’s what he knows by heart and God’s word is all he has the heart to respond with. The world of God becomes his response to life’s trials and temptations. That and the promise given him at his baptism, “This is my Son, the Beloved,” Jesus is God’s beloved, no matter what, all Jesus has is who he is. God’s beloved.

 And this is the only truth left in our own hearts, our promise, made to us at our baptism that we are somebody, we too are loved by God, we too are children of God. That is a lot to offer and all we really need to sustain us in the valley of the shadows in our lives.

 As Anna Florence wrote, “The waters of baptism are so warm and soft, and we don’t get to stay in them very long. The way back from the Jordan leads straight through the wilderness, and we go round and round until we are famished. We start to wonder, will I survive?

 We forget, we do not have to prove we are loved by God, being loved by God is God’s description of who we are, his beloved.

 We are the ones God has chosen to not have to live by bread alone, but we live by every word from the mouth of God.

 We are the ones God has chosen to not have to put the Lord our God to the test. That Jesus is our savior is evident because Jesus is the sign God has given us. And we confirm the truth of Jesus by trusting in him and looking to him and giving our lives to him.

  Dear ones, we are the children chosen by God to worship and serve God alone. Our proper response this Lenten season is thankfulness and gratefully getting on with the life God has chosen for us, a life not of our making, but of God’s making.

 The true bread of life, the real security where our lives will not be dashed against a stone, and the assurance of our heavenly kingdom might elude us if we allow ourselves to be lead by anyone other than God.

 It is only by grounding our identity in the life of Christ, as Christ alone claims us by the grace of God, that we will emerge from the wilderness and be fed, loved, comforted, and glorified by God.

  God seeks us out for this life, and we need not worry, whomever God seeks, God finds.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever. Amen.

Additional resources:
“Christian Century”, Christian Coon, January 29, 2008, pg. 21.
“Pulpit Resources”, William Willimon, February 10, 2008, pgs. 25-28.
“The Presbyterian Outlook”, January 28/February 4, 2008, pg. 15, 19.

Monday, March 21, 2011

20 March 2011 “God’s Love” John3:1-17



  No one seems more confused this morning than poor Nicodemus. To be fair, we should hear how he has been set up. From John 2:23-25; “When Jesus was in Jerusalem during the Passover festival, many believed in his name because they saw the sings that he was doing. But Jesus, on his part, would not entrust himself to them because he knew all people and needed no one to testify about anyone, for he himself knew what was in everyone.”

 It is clear Nicodemus didn’t have much of a chance with Jesus. He comes to him by night. He was, after all, a leader of the Jews. It wouldn’t be good for his career for him to be seen with Jesus.  Not realizing Jesus’ full power, Nicodemus starts out slow. He begins by stating the obvious. “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God.” Jesus, for his part, gets right to the point; he knows Nicodemus has come to him with a hidden question. He knows what is in his heart.

 Nicodemus’ unasked question is similar to the one in Matthew 19:16, when the rich young man asks, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” Nicodemus, we discover, is really worried about his future. He wanted to be with God. This was to his credit. God offered safety and security in this world and the next. Nicodemus wanted to be saved and he saw Jesus as the way to his salvation.

  Jesus knew this was his real desire, so he teaches him about who can see the Kingdom of God.  He teaches him that to be in the Kingdom of God, we must be born from above. Now, this is where we join with Nicodemus in his confusion and nod our heads as he asks Jesus, “How can these things be?”

 We were keeping our grandsons in San Antonio a few years back. One night, just before I fell asleep, the coyotes starting howling like only coyotes can. I chuckled. Here we were in a nice part of northwest San Antonio and behind the houses across the street, in the arroyos behind those houses, was quite a large pack of yapping coyotes. Even home security systems won’t keep that sound from invading your psyche.

 We know the world is a dangerous place. We read about it in the newspapers, hear about it on the radio and television, know it with far too much detail from the stories our friends and neighbors tell and from the trials and tribulations in our own lives. Howling coyotes are just a gentle reminder. Inner and outer demons lurk about and we seem comforted by the security systems that cut the risks of invasions of space in our lives.

 Nicodemus responds to Jesus’ claim with a confused question about entering as babies again in our mothers. Clearly, the idea that before we were born we lived safely in our mother’s womb has merit. We were all attached to the secure system our mother’s provided for us before our birth. Then life takes over and we search for what is missing. We search for a missing security. But Nicodemus is right. We cannot enter there a second time.

 Jesus explains to a confused Nicodemus, no one will be safe in this world unless they seek the kingdom of God by being born from above.  What Nicodemus doesn’t see is that Jesus is inviting him to a new inward birth where he will find eternal security, where he will become a disciple of Christ, where we will all see the Kingdom of God when we are born anew from water and Spirit.  In our baptism we have this new inward birth.

 What Jesus meant was the Holy Spirit must implant in our lives that which has its origin not on earth, but in heaven.  In our baptism we are participating in a washing away of our old self, the sinful self, to dissolve us from all previous behavior that separated us from God in our sin. In a real sense we experience, just as Jesus did, a death and a resurrection. We experience the death of our old self and the birth of a new life, where we accept a new baptismal name, that of disciple.

 We join Nicodemus this morning in this search for eternal life and like him we come to Jesus in the night, for we too have our desires and our questions. Because he loves us, Jesus answers our questions of substance by first revealing to us who he is. For in our knowledge of who Jesus is all questions are answered.  

 So, we join Nicodemus and ask: Are you the one who will bring security back into our lives? We hear the coyotes howling and we want to know. Are you the one?

 These are fair questions, like Nicodemus, we have heard things about Jesus. How he performs miracles and water is turned into wine, evil spirits are taken from people, people are healed from disease and from infirmities, people are even raised from the dead, and thank you Jesus, our sins are forgiven. But can we be sure? Are we so skeptical? No miracle like those in scripture has ever happened to us. How can it be true what they say about Jesus?

 I don’t know, perhaps the worst thing we can do is ask Jesus a direct question. We see what good it did Nicodemus, Jesus read his heart and his answer just may have made things even more confusing. Be born from above? Be born of water and spirit? Believe in Jesus and we will not perish and we will have eternal life? Really, who is this Jesus anyway?

 It has been suggested that those of us who are confused and filled with questions about Jesus should take Nicodemus as our patron saint during Lent. We should strive to be as Nicodemus was these 40 days of Lent, come in out of the dark and ask Jesus anything that is on our minds, absolutely anything. Jesus can handle it. Jesus can answer any question.

 We must prepare ourselves however. Jesus will likely read our hearts and tell us about the inward change that will be necessary if we are to ever truly know who he is.

 The unexpected truth we will discover is that Jesus is the sovereign, living God who, rather than our making sense of God, God makes sense of us. Do we understand how impossible this seems? God, being God, will make sense out of us. We may think our life is grounded and secure as we try and make sense of God but, no matter how hard we try or how good our intentions, we cannot.  

 The totality of our security rests instead in the comforting truth that God has made sense of us all along. God seeks us out and liberates us from ourselves. God finds the core ‘us’ that we have hidden from ourselves and loves us. God finds us and, if we will listen, God will make complete sense of our lives.

 God can do this because God made us and it is God’s desire that the Holy Spirit will live in us. It is God’s desire that the power of Jesus’ love and redeeming grace will consume our lives and we will be made one with God for we will be born anew, becoming one with the kingdom of God, believing in a God who so loved the world he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

 This dear one’s is our real security.  Ben Campbell Johnson tells us, “This is the depth of relationship we have with God when we learn to be open to God so that we can learn to love God with all of our hearts; it is to know ourselves as we appear to God; it is to respond to the initiatives of God’s grace that shape our lives and transform us so that we participate intelligently in God’s plan for the world.” A plan that includes us in God’s kingdom when we have the desire that God’s will becomes ours.

  Most of us are familiar with the letters in the paper written to Ann Landers. One recently could have come from Nicodemus. It read;  “Dear Ann: I am not a religious man. In fact, I consider myself an atheist. I am also very ethical and have high moral standards. I donate to more than a dozen charities. I am kind to animals, children, and the environment.  I would never raise my hand to my wife or children, and I treat them as the precious people they are. I strive to make the world a better place and understand those different from myself. I am intelligent and kind, and stand up for what I believe.  I never impose my beliefs on those around me. So, why is it that as soon as people find out I don’t believe in God, they tell me I am going to hell? One woman said, “You cannot possibly have good morals if you don’t believe. “ This is non-sense. I know plenty of “God-fearing, church going folk” who have rotten moral standards, I am sick and tired of people making moral judgments about me based solely on the fact that I do not believe in religion. How can I get these well meaning, but mistaken people off my back? Signed, Unbeliever in Maryland.”

  Ann responded;  “Dear Unbelieving friend, You sound a lot like someone else I know, a man named Nicodemus. Oh, Nicodemus was a religious person, in every sense of the word. He went to the synagogue, kept the laws and was a believer. That is not what you have in common with him. Nicodemus also lived an upright life: he was kind and responsible, intelligent and thoughtful. He was as comfortable with his life as you seem to be with yours.

 Yet Nicodemus seemed to know there was something missing. When a new prophet, preaching a message of love and forgiveness came to town, Nicodemus realized he was searching. He was searching for the presence of God in his life. He went by night, anonymously to see Jesus.

 You have come anonymously as well. I wonder if you, too, are seeking God’s presence. I wonder if you are seeking love and forgiveness. Do you, too, sense something missing in your life? The language you use to describe yourself is telling; you say that you are ‘sick and tired.’

 There is good news for you. It is the same good news that Jesus spoke to Nicodemus. It is the good news of life, born of water and spirit, life for Nicodemus, life for you, life for all people. The good news for all of us is that God is present in our lives, bidden or unbidden, God is present.
 Your friend, Ann”

 Dear friends, here is our Lenten focus, the desire to have God’s will in our lives. Living God’s will brings the security we desire. Living God’s will fills the missing void in our lives. Living God’s will frees us to live by God’s love and God’s grace. As God’s will fills our heart with joy and our lives with strength and security, we are being saved.

 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him many not perish but may have eternal life.”

Let the coyotes stop their howling, we can truly rest now in peace.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.  Amen.

Additional Resources:
“Lectionary Homiletics”,  Volume XIX, pgs. 21 – 27.

06 March 11 “It’s a fearful thing to be with Jesus” Matthew 17:1-9



 Growing up it did not take much for my father to get my attention, especially when something had gone wrong. I could see it in his face before he spoke. During those times, I was quite attentive, as you might imagine, so I would miss nothing he said. My very behind depended on it!

 When we are afraid, there is something about how our attention becomes so, well, attentive! It is as if there is an automatic survival response system that becomes fully alert and our senses fix in rapt attention to our situation. Survival and anxiety and fear all play into this system.

 From our gospel reading this morning we can only imagine the fear Peter and James and his brother John must have felt.  The day had begun innocently enough. They had been taken by Jesus, whom they trusted completely, and led up a high mountain. They were alone there, with him.

 Then suddenly and unexpectedly, Jesus was transfigured before them. “His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white.” Just as suddenly, Moses and Elijah appeared to them and began talking with Jesus. They must have shouted, “Where did these guys come from, what’s going on, should we run or what!”

 Peter, wanting to make sense of what was happening, tried to ground these sudden and unexpected changes to something that made sense to him. He offers to build a place out of the sun and the wind and the extreme conditions for Jesus and Moses and Elijah. Peter was trying to control the scene and perhaps his own sanity.

 Then, BAM, while he was speaking, God showed up! God showed up in the form of a bright cloud. And from that cloud God spoke, saying, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased, listen to him!”

 Peter and James and John were laid out on the ground after this, they were overcome with a fear they had never thought possible.

 Admittedly, this scene would change any ones understanding of fear.

 How could these relatively new apostles, who were still trying to understand who Jesus was, ever pay attention to what God was saying in the midst of such fear? They must have thought their world had come to an end. Even if they understood what was going on, how could they find comfort knowing who Jesus was if power such as this were in him, the power of God, a power that brings people from the beyond, a power that brings God to speak to mortals.

 There is, of course, something otherworldly about Jesus. But, being his disciple could get you killed! How could anyone possibly be safe following Jesus up to any mountain top or anywhere else for that matter after this?

 Lord, we want desperately to follow you, but we don’t want to die in the process. At least not until we understand who you truly are. Isn’t that the key? Our ultimate safety just might depend on our understanding who Jesus truly is and who we will become in return if we live our life listening to him and accept his call to come and follow him.

 So, we try. Jesus underwent a metamorphoses, his human nature began to be affected by his divine attributes. Moses and Elijah show themselves so we will know Jesus’ life is aligned with God’s law and God’s prophets. These were the folk Jesus was being compared too, yet there was more to come. God trumps everything. God shows up too.

 It was God, speaking from a bright cloud, who in his great love for his Son, clothed Jesus with glory and encouraged him with a bracing re-affirmation of his continued love, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased”. One reason God says this is so Jesus will be comforted, will get up and not be afraid of his fast approaching agony there on the cross. Next week is Ash Wednesday. Next week Lent begins.

 God was showing us that Jesus and the apostles need not be afraid for God is a God of love. Jesus and the apostles need not remain overcome to the point of falling down in their life because when God shows up, we can have courage, our God is a God of hope.

 God’s message to the disciples gives us this hope. God tells us, listen to my Son, my beloved, listen to his teaching about who I am, so you will know who you are to be.

  So, we try. This story is a foretaste, a glimpse of our future, where we will be receiving Gods’ love, receiving God’s grace, receiving God’s peace and then, the most radical thing, giving these same gifts away. Giving them away to a world hungry for peace, for love, for justice for all.

But, we must be prepared for the shock to our system and our life when we finally begin to sense the power of who our God is. Our shock will be immediate and sudden when we truly know God. Yet, just as suddenly, Jesus will respond to calm us because of his love for us. This is the good news that is at the heart of the Christian life. Jesus calms us because Jesus loves us.

  While we know this is true we cannot ignore our fear. Our very behinds may depend on it. Jesus’ disciples were perhaps the most fearful of all. In one case, they were innocently out fishing, it was what they did for a living. Jesus is with them asleep, the winds rise. It seems all is lost. They are afraid. In another, the women coming out of the tomb feel all is lost, they have discovered Jesus’ body is missing. They too are afraid. Often Jesus tells his followers, “Don’t be afraid,” but they experience fear anyway, especially in the presence of Christ, and perhaps we do too.

 We become anxious when our normal life becomes abnormal even in the smallest ways and our brains revert to fight or flight or hide mentalities. This is normal and all too familiar.

 Yet, New Testament fear is not your normal kind of fear. With Jesus, if we want to follow him we must be on fullest alert to pay attention, to take up our own cross and to follow him. When we sense his demands on our lives, the narrow way to which he calls us, then we become afraid and our attention must be absolute. It is essential, because we do not really know the way. But Jesus assures us, I am the way, and the truth and the light.

 So, we try. We try and we begin to see that our God, who comes to us in Jesus Christ, is a living God. We see his loving, but demanding face, and we sense the dangerous journey that lies ahead when we follow him, when we devote our fullest attention to him. That attention then brings Jesus to us. Remember, he loves us. He will touch us and say, get up and do not be afraid, for I am with you, this day and for the rest of your life, in this world and the next. I am with you.

  I’ve said before, we come to church hoping to come into real and direct contact with our living Lord. We come knowing that if we do have a glimpse of Jesus, if we do feel the warmth of his presence in our hearts, we will have to give up any notions that our life will ever be the same. We’ve had glimpses enough to know that when the Holy Spirit really gets a hold of us, well, we in return, cannot get enough of that same spirit. When we begin to live in holy union with Jesus, we want more, until we are consumed with Jesus’ being in our lives and ours in his.

As Methodist Bishop, William Willimon says, “Church is about the possibility of a threatening, though life-changing encounter with the Risen Christ. Church is about seeing God’s way and will in our world – a way so very different from our ways - and then having to say yes or no to walking that way.”

 The truth of who God is, known to us in Jesus Christ and brought into communion with us in the Holy Spirit, scares people to death. For believers like me and you, why, we gather each Sunday knowing this is the truth, we have encountered Jesus here, and we are scared of life. Life without Jesus that it is.

 As Willimon says, “Jesus has appeared to us in all of his radiant glory. He has reassured us, told us to rise and follow him, promised to be with us every step of the way, no matter what the journey holds.”

 We follow him because this story this morning about the Transfiguration of Jesus before his disciples on a mountaintop, where God speaks, is actually a story about each of us.

 The face of God is seen in the transfigured Jesus. We who are believers know about Jesus being God as well as man. We too, on our own journey, have discovered God in Jesus Christ and believe he is our Lord and our Savior, we believe we are to be his disciples for we believe he is our God.

So, we try. We try, remembering the wise counsel we have received. We cannot escape the light God will shed on our path. We cannot escape God, Immanuel among us. God will find us in our homes and in our work-places. God will find us when our hearts are broken and when we discover joy. God will find us when we run away from God and when we are sitting in the middle of what seems like hell. So “get up and do not be afraid.”

 Get up and do not be afraid, and share this radiant hope with the world, follow Christ. Get up and be not afraid, for Jesus is the Son of God, beloved, with him God is well pleased, and if we will listen to him, God will be well pleased with us too.


In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen                                                     

Additional helps:
“Feasting on the Word,” David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, Editors, Year A, Volume 1, pg. 456.