CTransfiguration-2010

Exodus 34:29-35; Psalm 99; 2Corinthians 3:12-4:2; Luke 9:28-36

February 14, 2010

It’s Valentine’s Day –

A day to say ‘I love you.’ To everyone!

We start with our moms and dads,

then we get to exchange valentines with our classmates at school,

getting a special card for our teacher.

Then, sweethearts and spouses.

And now, I’m looking for that perfect card for ‘son and his wife.’

And my daughter and my granddog.

We go from little candy hearts with the words on them

to boxes of chocolates and flowers.

And, somewhere along the line,

you have to buy her a diamond heart necklace from Kaye Jewelers.

Every gift begins with Kaye’s.

It’s Sunday –

A day to worship God.

We come to church.

We sit, stand, sing, read, chant,

listen, we doodle in our bulletins,

we recite, kneel, pray,

give offering, take communion,

stand, sing, shake hands, and go to lunch.

There’s a baptism today.

We will typically put the baby in white,

renew our baptismal covenant,

make promises to the child and to God.

We will use water and oil

and present a candle to the family.

A day to go to Sunday School –

Children, youth, adults go to classes where they explore the life in Christ,

learn about themselves and the world,

express their thoughts through art, song, conversation.

Our youngest, the Godly Play class,

Have golden boxes on shelves that contain treasures.

The children can return to again and again

to take a box and open it up

and inside find all the pieces that tell a sacred story…

about the Good Shepherd, …

Containers for the sacred.

This building. Golden boxes.

The veil that covered Moses’ face.

The tents, or coverings, that Peter wanted to set up on top of the mountain.

We want to preserve the holy.

It is elusive enough.

When we experience it we don’t want it to fade.

So we build structures and golden boxes to contain it.

We form word, and song, and movement to remember it.

And…we have a religion.

Religion has the ability to lift persons and communities out of themselves

and place them in the context of the expansive, enduring reality of God,

to preserve experiences that are truly beyond our making.

Veils/traditions/practices/rituals –

They hold the holy

so we can have a dependable way to return to it.

Peter wanted to be able to go back up the mountain

and have the place marked where he witnessed the brightness of God

shining in and through Jesus, Moses, and Elijah.

We can return to this place, lift the veil off the cup and plate on the altar,

and open up the experience once again of Holy Communion.

And there are our personal places and rituals that we establish in our lives.

A chair and lamp are in place when we arrive there with our book.

A rock in the woods, a necklace around our neck, a ring on our finger,

Become a holder for us to return to, to keep with us.

We renew our baptismal vows, our marriage vows

to reopen the experience that changed our lives for better or worse!

When we return to these sacred veils, containers,

expecting to uncover and re-enter something very special again,

something is expected from us, too.

They can only be a present as we are.

We bring our selves, our own open hearts and minds,

our own experiences into a larger context

that fills life with meaning.

The minute an experience is reduced/contained/held in place for us, transcendence is sacrificed.

It can begin as a way to preserve, to provide some means for returning.

It can become a restriction to our access of the holy.

Paul shifts the symbol of the veil from being a covering

that Moses puts over his face to ease the fears of the people

to being a shroud that covers the mind

to keep it from full exposure to God’s glory and truth.

Paul wants to reverse the people’s understanding:

All of what we want to hold as sacred is to be understood in light of Christ.

Not the life in Christ understood in light of our veils and boxes.

We can understand glory in a miracle, the glow of the sky behind a mountain,

the pristine quiet of a snowy landscape…

a human life unscathed – preserved – the glory of the perfected human body,

The glory of the human mind, the glory of human potential,

of little Charisma perfectly healthy, happy, successful.

Baptism into Christ is when a person dies

to the temporary and sometimes unrealistic veils.

These containers of how we hold life teach us how to

emulate and imitate each other.

I only know that I want to be as healthy as you, as successful as you,

as attractive as you, as generous as you, as lovable as you, ….

In Christ we are given the way to die to all of this,

To follow Christ behind the veil into the depths of life

and rise with him to a new life in which we have full access,

full exposure to the brightness of God all the time.

God’s glory will be revealed in human betrayal, in human suffering, in death,

[and eventual resurrection]

when the powerful becomes powerless.

When Jesus died the temple veil was torn in two –

and the nature of God revealed for all time.

We go through this baptismal ritual for Charisma this morning.

It tells the sacred story, calls us back to our own baptisms,

and opens the veil for Charisma to step into this family of faith.