Mark 9: 2-9

2 Corinthians 4: 3-6

“Light Show”

Elizabeth Macaulay

My father was a great preacher. He was a little wacky and often challenging and in love with the gospel and he loved human creatures. He was a great preacher.

What he told me about preaching is this.

There are times when preachers can get carried away with the art of their creation. We preachers are as prone as any to make idols of our great creations. We love to scholarly pursuit and the crafting of words and the drawing together of diverse threads into a tapestry of great power.

In other words, we have egos that can be magnificent in their scope.

My father taught me what kept him grounded as he entered the pulpit week after week. What kept him writing sermons and sharing the gospel was this.

He preached for the one person in the church on that Sunday morning - or the maybe dozens - who were so battered and challenged by life that there was no where else they could imagine being.

It was for those people that my father prepared sermons.

The issue wasn’t around creating great works of fine rhetorical art.

The issue was: was the gospel shining through his efforts, and could people in the congregation see Jesus through them?

And so it is for my father’s daughter - that would be me - and all preachers who know that each one of us brings our whole self to worship - our warts and bruises and glory and grace.

The story of the transfiguration is the story of Jesus appearing in dazzling power before the very eyes of those who ought to have seen that power and dazzle all along - the disciples. Peter, James and John have been with Jesus, slept and ate with him, been present for healings and teachings and yet they have remained blind to his shine.

On that mountaintop, in a God-event similar to Moses receiving the ten commandments and Elijah hearing the voice of God in the power of silence, Jesus is changed in their viewing. Changed from a teacher greatly beloved and respected into the very presence of God.

And what is the first response to this dazzle? Keep it! Keep it enshrined on that mountaintop for all time so that it can be managed and depended upon, returned to when the world doesn’t feel all that shiny and dazzling.

Scripture tells us that Peter suggests to Jesus that maybe what they ought to do is build a dwelling place. One for Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.

Following that suggestion, we are told that Peter was terrified when he made this suggestion.

Following that suggestion, the three disciples and all of us listening in thousands of years later hear these words of God:

“This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him!”

And they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, only Jesus.

I want to consider how it is we let Jesus shine.

As church called to proclaim and live the gospel of Jesus the Christ, how do we listen for the voice of Jesus and how do we allow that voice to sound and shine through us?

I share a story with you about the seductive and destructive ways we have of following Peter’s strategy for dealing with the dazzling power of Jesus:

On a dangerous seacoast where shipwrecks often occur, there was once a crude little life saving station. The building was just a hut, and there was only one boat but a few devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea, and with no thought for themselves, they went out day and night tirelessly searching for the lost. Many lives were saved by this wonderful little life saving station, so it became famous.

So some of those who had been saved, and various others from the surrounding areas wanted to become associated with this station, and give of their time and their money and their effort for the support of its work. New boats were bought, new life saving crews were trained, and the little life saving station grew.

Some of the members of the life saving station were unhappy that the building was so crude and poorly equipped. They felt a more comfortable place should be provided as the first refuge of those who were saved from the sea. So they replaced the emergency cots and beds with better furniture in the enlarged building. Now the life saving station became a popular gathering place for its members, and they decorated it, and they beautifully furnished it exquisitely because they used it as something of a club.

Few members were now interested in going to sea on life saving missions so they hired life boat crews to do the work. The life saving motif still prevailed in the life saving club's decorations and there was a liturgical lifeboat in the room where the club held it's initiations, but professionalism had taken over and displaced the original purpose of lifesaving.

Now about this time a large ship was wrecked off the coast, and the hired crews brought in loads of cold, wet, half drowned people. They were dirty and sick, and some of them had black skin and some of them had yellow skin and the beautiful new club was considerably messed up - so the property committee immediately had a shower house built outside the club where the victims of ship wrecks could be cleaned up before they came inside.

At the next meeting there was a split in the club membership. You see most of the members wanted to stop the club’s life saving activity as being unpleasant and a hindrance to the normal social life of the club. Some members insisted upon life saving as their primary purpose and they pointed out that they were still called the life saving station. But they were finally voted down and told if they wanted to save the lives of various kinds of people who were shipwrecked in those waters, and dirty and wet, they could begin their own life saving station down the coast a little ways, which they did.

And as the years went by the new station experienced the same changes that had occurred in the old one. It evolved into a club, and yet another life saving station was founded. Well history continued to repeat itself, and if you visit that coast today, you will find a number of exclusive clubs along the shore which are very professional in nature. Shipwrecks are still frequent in those waters, but most of the people drown. (source unknown)

Last year, as the result of a bequest left to the church, the leadership of your church set aside $30,000.

We did that because we don’t want to be come a club. Exquisite to look at, lovely to be in, but distant from the drowning going on outside our walls.

The leadership of your church set this $30,000 aside for mission grants. Six five thousand dollar grants that we pray will be used to remind us as a congregation that we are called to be a life saving station.

The leadership of your church knows that if we don’t reach out in mission, beyond writing checks, we will be a people who are not living the call of discipleship - the call to unleash the healing power of Jesus in the world.

Listen. There are people drowning outside our church. People who know the ache of loneliness and poverty, people who are soul starved, people who wonder what this thing called church is really about because the church is so silent in the face of such pain. So they seek elsewhere for meaning.

And those who believe that the gospel is about the dazzle and hope of Jesus and the saving of lives. They wonder if church knows that story any more.

The churches that are growing and attracting new members are churches that know that their building and their staff and their congregation are called to be about the business of entering the rough and frightening seas of life and reaching out the power of connection through Jesus.

I sat in one of the most beautiful sanctuaries in town yesterday: Plymouth Congregational Church. I was there to attend a lecture by a visiting scholar from Union Theological Seminary. As I sat there, surrounded by stained glass and rank upon rank of organ pipes and wooden grace and well-heeled lecture attendees, I was proud of Plymouth.

Proud, because they had used an endowment to bring in speakers who challenged those of us present to embrace the gospel by wading into the life of the world around us.

Plymouth runs housing projects and educational projects and countless social justice projects and they could so easily have turned into an elegant clubhouse dedicated to their own comfort.

But they didn’t.

They started with what they had and they decided that they were going to be about the ministry of Jesus in the ways they could and we,

We are called to do the same.

Can you imagine what you could do with $5,000 to start a ministry here through your church?

How many children go home to empty houses in our neighborhood? What would $5,000 do to create an after school program where children would be welcomed with grace?

When is the last time this church sent adults on a mission trip? What could $5,000 do to help us get to our neighbors in the South so that we could help them rebuild from the hurricanes that shattered their lives?

When is the last time we worried less about paying our bills and worried more about how to be the light shine of justice and healing in Richfield and South Minneapolis?

How many lives could be touched, how many hands held out, how much shine spread and how much energy we would all gain by knowing that we are a part of the movement of justice inspired by the dazzle of Jesus?

Please, pray about your vision for our church and share your vision with others and write for one of the mission grants. The forms are in the office on the front desk.

Peter was in awe of the magnitude of God’s power. His awe led to fear, so he responded by seeking to contain the dazzle of Jesus.

May our awe, our amazement at the shine and dazzle of Jesus, cause us to make that dazzle and shine our own. Reaching out. Saving lives - even our own. Amen