Jesus is Introduced to the Disciples

           I am captivated by the story of the Transfiguration.  When Rosie and I were in the Holy Land on a visit, we spent some of our time in Galilee.  As a part of that tour, we visited Mount Tabor, the supposed site of the Transfiguration.  We got to the top of the mountain and heard a group of German tourists singing in the temple that has been built there.  There was a mist covering the whole of the place and it was easy to picture Jesus with Peter, James and John praying there.  It was the first time, I think, that Peter saw Jesus for who he claimed to be and heard the voice of God proclaiming Jesus to be his Son.  Peter lays this out in his second letter which we heard as our Epistle this morning.  It was absolute proof to him of what he had already suspected. 

            The powerful thing about this story is that these three disciples were really the only ones who had access to this kind of proof: the voice of God declaring the identity of Jesus.  Jesus told them not to tell anyone about it until he rose from the dead. Others could have watched him do his healing, his incredible preaching and thought that there was something beyond mortality about Jesus, but Peter, James and John had heard the voice of God tell them without a doubt.

            It wasn’t important to Jesus that everyone know that he was the Son of God. He wasn’t an egotist.  Jesus was in our lives to show us the presence of God.  He did this with compassion and care.  When he found someone in need, he took care of them. He offered in his Sermon on the Mount some ways for humanity to deal with the law.  Love your enemies is the best of these, but unlike the Pharisees his focus was never on who was keeping the law and who wasn’t.  What Jesus looked for as he walked through the villages and the towns and saw the crowds was always human need.  His apostles went with him, watched him and learned a great deal about what God’s presence means in this world.  After Jesus crucifixion, resurrection and ascension, they set out to continue that God-given ministry in the world.  You and I are the inheritors of that ministry.  It is our job to continue to offer compassion, forgiveness and mercy to the people whom we encounter in this world without asking them if they have done anything at all to obey the rules.  That is why we don’t have any rules at Atonement about who can receive the sacrament and who can’t.  Simply come to the altar, hold out your hand and I will give you the bread.  Then take the chalice to your lips to receive the wine, or dip the wafer in the chalice if you prefer.  The point is that you receive the sacrament offered by God, not that you have to earn it.

            I have met many people who have not kept the rules and have found themselves outcast because of the things that they have done.  What I have always hoped for them is that they can find their way back by receiving compassion, forgiveness and some level of understanding.  When that happens, it is a great victory for the presence of God in this world.

            We live in a fascinating society where people are blamed for their religion, for the color of their skin or for their ancestry.  We have some great agencies who try to reform our culture to accept all of us, no matter what religion, color or ancestry that we have.  I admire Amnesty International for the work that they do to free people who are unjustly held against their will.  I admire the NAACP for the work that they have done for decades to improve the lives of the African American population in this country and I love the way that religious leaders have helped us to understand the differences that we have in the ways that we worship our God and how our various prejudices have created pain in many lives.  But sometimes our religious leaders don’t help at all and are part of the problem.  The ones who promote their own denomination over all others or accuse Muslims of terrible crimes and encourage our prejudice are not helpful and keep the problem growing.  Jesus loved the people whom he met.  He encouraged understanding and told us how important it is to love one another. 

            I am appalled at the religious bigotry that seems to be abroad in this land.  The bombing of Muslim mosques and the killing of a whole African American bible study group in Charleston, South Carolina by a demented white nationalist who believed that people of color  were somehow inferior to him and needed to be eliminated.  There has been a trashing of Jewish cemeteries in St. Louis and in a blessed way a Muslim group has stepped up to pay for the damage.  They have done a wonderful thing. The point is that our Lord taught us to care for each other.  He accepted everyone who came to him, and sometimes they taught him.  I love the story of the Canaanite woman with the sick child who was outside of the Jewish faith and who came to Jesus asking for help with her child.  Jesus told her that it wasn’t right to give to the dogs the bread that was for the lost sheep of the house of Israel.  She replied to him that even the dogs get the crumbs that fall from the table.  Jesus was struck by this woman’s powerful faith and he healed her child and learned something in the process that God’s incredible love was for the whole of humanity, not just the people of Israel. 

            Our continuing mission is to take that ministry to everyone who is in need and to make sure that they are included in the warmth of God’s love and mercy.   We can do that by paying attention to who we see in this world as we go through our lives.  Provide whatever help that you can and God’s powerful presence will be seen in the world.

           

            

Loving Our Enemies

     We have been listening to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount for the past several Sundays.  It is a powerful statement, beginning with the Beatitudes that lift everyone who is suffering into the firm hands of God and continuing into statements that broaden the Ten Commandments in ways that we sometimes have a hard time keeping or even understanding.  Love your enemies is a difficult thing to do particularly in these times that we are living in where this nation seems to be so divided between right and left, Republicans and Democrats.  We have groups who are for the president and those who are focused on repudiating everything that he says and does.

            But loving our enemies is a key to peace.  It leads us to Jesus’ final commandment:  be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.  That sounds like something that is impossible for us mere mortals, but the word “perfect” means something other than what we generally use it to mean, such as when my wife cooks dinner, I always tell her that it is “perfect”, meaning that it is the best that I could ever hope for.  I believe that what our Lord means by perfect is for us all to be complete, to be moral, to be all that we can be.  That may not qualify as perfect according to our vocabulary, but it brings us closer to each other, and that is what Jesus intends. 

            Loving one another begins with listening to one another.  There are many things on which we can disagree without being enemies.  Listening to each other is how we learn, how we change our minds, how we can come to agreement in part, even if we can still disagree in whole.  I usually learn something when I have a discussion with someone about things that we see differently.  In these conflicting times, it is essential that we be open to each other and to share our opinions without rancor.  If we can do this, we will all learn and be better for it.  I also think that is the way that we can come to the kind of peace that our Lord wishes for all of us, the peace that passes understanding.

            In this time of conflict, I am particularly worried about the status of immigrants in this country.  We seem to have a great concern brewing that allowing people to cross our borders is dangerous.  In my family, both my father and mother had foreign accents in their homes as they grew up.  My dad’s father, my grandfather, came from Stoke-on-Trent in England.  He had been a carpenter in a pottery factory in that town and when they came to America, they settled in East Liverpool, Ohio because they had pottery factories in that place.  My mother’s father, my other grandfather came from Halsingborg, Sweden.  He became the superintendent of Carnegie’s steel mill in Vandergrift.  Both of these immigrants brought great talent and wisdom to this country and they are the reason that I am here. But the immigrants in my family were all white people.   Those who are black or brown, African Americans, Latinos and Arabs have a different problem.    I remember being in an airport once waiting for a flight.  A group of Muslim men went past me heading for a gate to board their plane.  I was startled by this, not because I was afraid, but because it was different.  There are currently many refugees fleeing from the chaos in Syria. They are Arab and most of them are Muslim.  Some of them are finding homes in European countries.  We have currently barred any of them from coming to this country.  I know that some of them have great talent and wisdom and could help us in many ways just as all of our former immigrants have helped us.  I would hope that our current disagreement about who can enter our country can be settled fairly quickly and that some of them can be admitted.  It would do all of us good.

            Our Lord loved us all so much that because of his way of life and his preaching, he was finally rejected and tried by the establishment, crucified and buried.  Three days later, he rose from the dead and gave to us all the promise of eternal life.  I am always awe struck by Easter.  It is the most improbable of feast days.  None of us have any proof at all of eternal life.  It is something that we accept because of our faith.  Faith is a wonderful word that expresses what we generally know without concrete proof.  One of my favorite theologians, Marcus Borg, called himself an eternal life agnostic, meaning that he didn’t know about eternal life at all.  He died earlier this year, so I am sure that his concerns have all been settled now.  That really doesn’t matter.  What our Lord has given us is the certainty that our lives will continue into eternity with our Lord and our God and with each other.  That is the best gift that I can imagine.

            While we are living our lives in this world with each other, the closest that we can come to God’s heavenly kingdom is to find ways to live in peace together.  Listening and caring is the way to do that.  Know always that God loves you.  Jesus says that God sends the rain on the evil and the good.  We are all here together and peace is the way that our God wants us to live in this world.  God’s blessing is with us as we do this.