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Rez is a community where Jesus welcomes, shapes, and sends disciples for the good of our neighborhood. No matter where you are in life, this is a place for you.
Life Together In The Goodness Of God
You're doing all right. Have you ever had an experience in your life that was so good, you feel like, you wish you could just freeze it and hold on to it and be there for the rest of your life? If you have, you'd probably go back to this memory like I do and just replay it again and again, right? Just savoring it, enjoying it again as if you were there again. Last was just like, felt like seriously last night, but it was two nights ago. Friday night, Father Scott, I think that was a memory for you that you will cherish. I will cherish that memory with you, too, of Scott's ordination. That's one of those memories you'll go back to again and again and freeze it in your heart and in your mind and go, oh, yeah, that was good. For me, personally, the most recent one besides that one, of course, is the Benito Bowl on last Sunday. Me and my Latina friends, we're just like taking it in and crying and just like, yes, this was so good. I keep going back to that moment. I played it a million times more. Some of those memories, some of those moments are so pivotal. They're so rich with meaning. They're so moving to us that we need them to stick with us for a really long time. We enjoy them that way. I wonder as I describe this, which memory might come to mind for you? Do you have one of these? I'm sure you do. What sweet memory do you have that you cherish, that you wish you never had to leave, but you bring it back again and again? I think that this is what the transfiguration must have felt like for the disciples. Even in the moment, by the way, I switched really slightly. I switched out the icon here so we could take a look at it. Even in that moment, the disciples were not wanting to leave. They're wanting to build huts and stay there, freeze that memory and live in it. This memory of their friend, their Lord Jesus of Nazareth being transfigured, dazzling light with Elijah and Moses beside him. What a powerful experience. I could see why they would want to remain in it. But the memory of that experience would shine far beyond the moment of that mountain. And it actually would come up again for them and carry them when they are in the valleys as well. And in those dark places, when it's maybe not sort of like that summer camp high right on the mountaintop, they're going to need to be carried, to be strengthened by that memory. And this is our invitation to this morning, friends. As our colleague said this morning, we ask God to grant us that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear our cross and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory. Strengthened and changed is what the prayer said. This is what I want to consider with you this morning. How our encounter with Christ's glory, Jesus illumined before us, how our encounter of Jesus transfigured even amidst our troubles may strengthen us and change us in real life. If we can go backwards a bit with our readings, I want to start with Peter's writing years after this experience. And if sometimes we read scripture and we sort of forget that these are human beings who are relaying a real experience that they had, right? We think of it sort of differently, at least I do in my head. But it's really helpful to hear Peter writing in his second letter years later, insisting, for we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. We didn't make this up, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. They're eyewitnesses. And this is their testimony, friends. Peter wants us to know we actually saw this in real life. We ourselves heard this voice, he says, come from heaven. And here's why it matters. This experience made, as he says, the prophetic message more fully confirmed. I imagine that Peter was so emphatic about what they experienced on that mountain because they needed it to carry them through the difficult times, the times that weren't as great as this. Jesus's face shining like the sun, his clothes dazzling white, Moses and Elijah talking with him. Can you imagine? Moses and Elijah and Jesus just, you know, having a cigarette and a conversation top of the mountain. Not a cigarette, don't smoke. But just chit-chatting in front of the disciples. Notice the seventh day detail in scripture that we heard in all of the readings. God rested on the Sabbath day of creation. Moses received the law on the seventh day on Mount Sinai. And now Jesus has transfigured on the mountain on that seventh day. Can you imagine seeing with your own eyes Jesus of Nazareth flanked by Moses and Elijah who represent the fullness of the law and the prophets now fulfilled in the person of Jesus of Nazareth? No wonder Peter wants to build dwelling places in that moment, to never leave, to freeze that moment, to enjoy it, to stay there. Who wouldn't want to? But then the cloud comes in the story. The voice speaks. It doesn't explain the vision or interpret this light, this light of creation and exodus and the law and the prophets. Even though all of those images are all there, we don't get a tour of that explanation in the moment from that voice. The voice doesn't take questions and ask how you're doing. The voice simply says to the disciples, this is my son, my beloved. With him I am well pleased. Just like at the baptism. Do you remember that? It should sound familiar. But then the voice also says one more thing. Listen to him. Listen to him. This is the simple truth we need to take in this morning, I think. How are we carried? How are we strengthened and changed as the prayer says? When we encounter the person of Jesus, that's one thing. We also have to then actually listen to the teachings of Jesus and obey. Listen. I mean, it's not rocket science, right? Listen to him, the voice says. If we're to be strengthened for difficult times in that valley, if we're to be changed into the glory of the Lord, it will only begin if we obey this first command. Listen to him. That's it. Can you take your life as you have it? As you experience your life, can you imagine your life, our life as a community, as a church here in South Austin, how our lives would change if we were better at listening to the words of Jesus. And can I just say as a caveat, not the words that you remember and the favorite words you always sort of go back to, but all of his words. You know what I'm saying? Christians, me included, too conveniently recite and go back to those words that we most love. And those harsher words, those words of challenge, those prophetic words of justice and loving your enemies and praying for those who persecute you. We don't like to listen to those words as much, but we must listen to him and the fullness of everything he said. And when we would do that, could you imagine, friends, how our lives would change? Our strength, it won't come from protecting what's ours. I know we've been taught and trained to do this. That's not where our strength will come from. Or from the privileged keeping their heads down when injustice rolls through our neighborhoods. That's not where our strength will come from. Or from the voice that says to you, you're not good enough. You're not worthy if people only knew. The strength that God gives, it doesn't depend on that voice. It doesn't depend on your intellect. It doesn't depend on your career or your clever strategies for life. The power of God doesn't depend on listening to the right podcast, taking the right vitamins, or reading the right books. The strength that God gives doesn't depend on your self-worth or your net worth. The strength that God gives depends not on your past, not on your failures, and it doesn't even depend on your success. The strength God gives only comes from encountering the living Christ and listening to him. Amen? Amen. Actually, really good news. Because none of what you have to show for is what provides the strength of God in your life, but only what God has done despite you and for you and to you in love. Grace, this is where the strength of God comes from. And we respond by listening to that voice and obeying. And that's when God's strength flows through us and begins to actually transform us and change us. And when we learn to listen to his voice on that mountaintop, when we gather, friends, by the way, at this mountaintop, that's why this is elevated, this is that mountain, this is the transfiguration of the Lord, and therefore the transfiguration of our own lives. When we learn to listen to his voice at this mountaintop, when we gather here, we still will hear that voice in the valley of our life, in the hard times, when things aren't so easy, when we feel alone and overwhelmed. And even we can hear that voice if we train ourselves, even when the world is shouting at us. This is exactly what we see in the life of Janani Lu'um, who is the martyr that we are going to be observing this Tuesday in our cycle of prayer and our feast days. He was the Archbishop of Uganda who stood up against Edea means brutal dictatorship in Uganda. He's sort of like the, I like to think of him as sort of the Oscar O'Meara of Uganda, right? My man. And we celebrate him this Tuesday. He preached against the oppression and the injustice of this awful regime. And because of his preaching, he was summoned to the presidential palace. Everybody knew that this was a death sentence. And in the face of certain death, Janani said this, I can see the hand of God in this. He walked into that palace not because he had a death wish. He didn't want to become a martyr, but because he'd seen Jesus, spent years listening to Jesus, years of prayer, years of actually reading the Bible and studying the words of God, years of receiving Holy Eucharist and being transfigured on this mountaintop, years of fellowship with brothers and sisters in the church, years of letting God's voice shape the ears of his soul so completely and thoroughly that even the shouts of evil threats, even coming from the president of Uganda, could not drown out the voice of Jesus, the voice of God. Even being gunned down in the president's office, which ended up happening as a traitor, that could not put out the light of Christ that was ignited in his life. He made no peace with oppression, his colleague says, but lived as one sealed by the cross of Christ. Some of you this afternoon will experience your own mountaintop experience. We have a three o'clock confirmation makeup service with the bishop and a baptism that's going on. Ali's going to get baptized. Some of you will have a new experience, a new memory to hold onto and take in and freeze and enjoy. This will be a moment with Jesus. And like those disciples, like Janani Le'um, like all of us, you'll come down from that mountaintop and be sent into the valley of regular life in all of its troubles, sent to those suffering, sent to those that need love, sent to your enemies to love them, sent to face darkness and become agents of transfiguration in this broken world. Amen. Thank you. But here's the gift, friends. Even though we are sent into that valley, here's the gift. We don't go alone. We're not sent on many errands for the Lord. Jesus isn't like, Peace out, see you next Sunday. Good luck out there. Right? We don't go alone. We don't go only on our own memories either. When we come to this table and we consume the body and blood of Christ, we are transfigured into the glory of Christ. And we live at this mountain. We take this mountaintop with us in reality more than just in our memory. Jesus goes with us, ahead of us. And we go together. You're in good company. We practice listening in here with the prayers and the reading of Scripture and even the words of institution at this table and the commissioning. We practice listening to all that is said in here, spoken and also, by the way, in silence, the things that can only be heard from the voice of God. We learn to listen here, hearing, this is my body given for you, for instance, in order that we can listen out there, always and continually. We see Jesus in here, in the wine and the bread, but that only teaches us to also see Jesus out there in the lives of those around us and really everywhere in this world. May we, friends, be strengthened as we come to this mount of transfiguration. And may we be changed from glory to glory so that at this mountaintop we can find Jesus and God's good work out in the valleys. Amen?