Melchizedek

Sermon Prepared for Messiah Lutheran Church

Auburn WA, March 29, 2009 – 5^th Sunday in Lent

by Gregory S. Kaurin, Senior Pastor

Texts: Genesis 14; Psalms 110:1-4;

Hebrews 5:1-10; 6:13-20; and 7:1-28

“Melchizedek”

Let me start with a great story about Abraham that rarely gets told, years before he and Sarah give birth to their miracle baby. Abraham is known as Abram then. He is living in Canaan, which in 500 years will become the Promised Land of Israel, but now it is ruled by little city and regional kings that often make alliances and war against each other over grudges or for slaves and booty.

Turns out that a group of these kings make an alliance, go to war and defeat another group which includes the kings of Gomorrah and Sodom. Abram’s nephew, Lot, and his family are caught up in the crossfire and taken captive. Abram hears about it and grabs 318 of his trained warriors. He routes the enemy, recaptures the stolen treasures, and rescues all the captives. Returning from victory, he’s stopped by two kings.

The first is the priest-king, Melchizedek, king of Salem. Abram’s descendants will someday make Salem their capital city, Jeru-salem. But out of all these pagan cities and kings, this priest king shows up and brings Abram bread and wine and blesses him in the name of El-Elyon, the God Most High.

King Melchizedek says, “Blest is Abram by El-Elyon, maker of heaven and earth, and blest is El-Elyon who delivered your enemies into your hands.” In response, gratitude, Abram gives a tithe, 10%, of everything he has to Melchizedek, not as a reward or payment for the bread or wine, or for his blessing; it was a worshipful sacrifice to Melchizedek’s El-Elyon, God Most High.

The second to meet Abram is King Bera of Sodom. He tells Abram to keep all the spoils, to just return his people. Sounds very generous, but Abram tells Bera that there’s no way he wants the king of Sodom to have anything over his head, no strings.

In this painting from the 1400’s you can see Melchizedek handing a flagon of wine and bread to Abraham, who looks like he is awestruck and humbled. That, or he has a terrible migraine. Off to the left is King Bera of Sodom figuring out how to charm Abraham.

Here’s another from the 1500’s. The painter has Melchizedek dressed like a cardinal priest and holding his fingers in a Trinitarian blessing over the chalice of grapes. Who appears greater in this painting, Melchizedek or young Abraham?

So what was it about this priest-king Melchizedek that brought Abraham to his knees for a blessing? It was first, his experience of Melchizedek’s God. Second, it was his offer of a blessing, and of bread and wine.

First, in this Land that God had lead him to, Canaan, Abraham finally found someone who had heard the voice and served the same God that he had been following all his life. Melchizedek gave Abraham a tangible connection to God, a blessing from a man just like him, but through human touch, he experienced his God for whom he had been longing, searching.

And second: hospitality, simple bread and wine. No accident, I think. These are elements steeped in Jewish and Christian tradition and meaning, fulfilled at Christ’s Table to be sure, but that aside, it was also simple hospitality, open kindness to a tired and hungry soldier.

Hospitality. Some think that the fall of Sodom with Gomorrah, that their biggest problem had something to do with their sexual perversion and idolatry. Really it was about hospitality, their extreme lack of hospitality, the way they mistreated and abused outsiders, the vulnerable men and women who came to their cities.

That’s what got to Abraham: the hospitality, and a tangible experience of God, through Melchizedek.

To be honest, I didn’t realize what I was getting into as I dug into this for today. His name, Melchizedek, seems to mean King of righteousness. Even before Jesus’ day, there were amazing traditions about Melchizedek. A tradition grew that he had no parents, that he suddenly appeared on the scene. Others said that Melchizedek was actually Shem, one of Noah’s sons, still alive in the time of Abraham.

In fact, there is the priesthood of Melchizedek into which some Mormon elders are consecrated. Here’s a statue from the Temple Grounds in Salt Lake City of Peter, James and John blessing Joseph Smith into the Priesthood of Melchizedek.

Other traditions through the centuries connected Melchizedek to the angel Michael. Some New Age religions still claim that Melchizedek is another mystic being or immortal creature of God, even greater than the angels.

Others suggest that Melchizedek is an early incarnation of Jesus Christ himself, that they even looked the same. Here’s a more New Age, Cabala version showing Melchizedek as a being of light. You see, it gets weird.

But let’s cut through the exotic flim-flam and stick to what’s in the Bible. What was so different or important about Melchizedek?

After the 14^th chapter of Genesis and before the Letter to the Hebrews, the only other time he’s mentioned is the 110^th Psalm which starts out with a line that Jesus quotes in his own ministry, “The Lord said to my lord, ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool’…” and then in the 4^th verse, “The Lord has sworn, and will not change his mind, ‘You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek’” (cf. Matthew 22:41-46). Those lines become a prophecy about the Messiah.

It meant that the Messiah would be both in the line of David, and at the same time before and greater than David. He would be a priest-king of Jerusalem like Melchizedek who served El-Elyon, God Most High, long before David, long before the Temple and Moses, before the laws and Ten Commandments and the Levitical Priesthood. He would be a priest to whom even Father Abraham bowed and gave a tithe, not out of expectation or obligation but out of gratitude, joy and faith.

Finally, in the New Testament the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews spent nearly 3 chapters describing how Jesus was that High Priest in the order of Melchizedek.

Hebrews 5:9-10 [Christ] became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him, ¹⁰having been designated by God high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.

Hebrews 6:19-20 We have this hope, a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters the inner shrine behind the curtain, ²⁰where Jesus, a forerunner on our behalf, has entered, having become high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.

Hebrewx 7:1ff This "King Melchizedek of Salem, …7:4 See how great he is! Even Abraham the patriarch gave him a tenth of the spoils. …7:17 For it is attested of [our Lord Jesus], “You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.” …7:22-24 Accordingly, Jesus has become the guarantee of a better covenant. ²³Furthermore, the former priests were many in number, because they were prevented by death from continuing in office; ²⁴but he holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever.

That’s a lot of time on this one prophecy, title, and image of Jesus, 3 chapters of the Bible, and most of us have barely noticed or heard of it!

If I stopped here, all you might walk away with today is a Bible study and better understanding of Melchizedek.

But there is so much more. For one, in the Letter to the Hebrews, this was a message given to Jewish Christians about an ancient Gentile Priest, outside of Abraham’s direct lineage, blessing the father of the three great faiths. When we are grafted into Christ, whenever we are baptized into this faith, we are grafted deeply into it. Sometimes we look at the Old Testament as if it’s not really our story, as if it was all just the precursor, the stories of the Jewish faith before we Gentiles get attached like an appendage at the end.

But if Christ’s priesthood goes that deep, and if we are the Body of Christ in the world, then when we talk about the priesthood of all believers, our faith, I now appreciate how very deeply Jesus Christ has grafted us into the story of the Bible, into the sacred stories, and the whole history of Salvation. This isn’t just their story, or His story. It’s ours. It’s your story, your family book.

Because, being the Body of Christ in the world, and together being the Priesthood of believers, Melchizedek’s faith and service has become ours.

When possible, face to face, our priesthood offers hospitality, food, and relationship with those that are tired, hungry. As Pastor Jon said last week, it is the same as giving it directly to Christ.

W

We are called to bless people, in silent and spoken prayers, in actions to be and bring Salem, peace, into our homes and workplaces, schools and neighborhoods. We are called to offer a place of worship, to offer this Table with Christ’s nourishment and blessings; to give people a reason, and a place to respond to God with tithes, gifts and song.

Cut through the mysticism, rituals, theology and confusion. Let’s make this simple. Like Melchizedek, who after all, was just a man like us, we are to feed and bless and worship. Amen.

hupago opiso mou, satana

Sermon Prepared for Messiah Lutheran Church

Auburn WA, March 8, 2009 – 2^nd Sunday in Lent

by Gregory S. Kaurin, Senior Pastor

Texts: Mark 8:31-38

“hupage opiso mou, satana”

This morning in the gospel lesson you heard the time Jesus almost swore… almost.

Try to put yourself in this scene. Jesus had just asked his disciples who people thought he was: John the Baptist, Elijah, or maybe a prophet. Then Jesus asked, “Who do you say I am?” and Peter answered, “You are Messiah, Son of the Living God.” He called him Messiah, the new King David, the one who would conquer and re-establish the Jewish Kingdom. I don’t know how Matthew the tax collector felt about that, maybe a bit fearful, but Simon the Zealot must have been high as a kite, and the rest of them somewhere between. “Yes! Finally!”

And then Jesus told them to keep it under wraps. Of course, that made sense. What had just been said was crossing the line toward insurrection, rebellion. A person could get killed or crucified talking like that.

In fact, that’s what Jesus went on to tell them, but he went beyond dangers, to make it sound like certain defeat: there will be suffering, rejection and death. So, someone had to stop this talk. Peter, the one who had just verbally anointed Jesus, pulled him aside, “This isn’t how you motivate the troops, Jesus. What kind of talk is this?”

But Jesus answered, “hupage opiso mou, satana!” At least that’s how Mark’s New Testament Greek put it. And nearly all our English Bibles translate it the same way, “Get behind,” or, “Go away from me, Satan!” But the whole scene was more dramatic, and Jesus was much more specific than our translations let on. Jesus didn’t just turn from Peter to see the disciples. He “turned about” from Peter. In other words, he pulled and turned away from Peter, put him literally at his backside, and facing the rest of the disciples, said those words. First “hupago” doesn’t just mean “get” or “go,” but it’s two words that brought together mean to lead or get pulled under.

Then Jesus said “opiso mou,” directions: to the back of me, which carries an insult all by itself. So put it together, “Sink away from the backside of me.” In other words, Jesus said, “As I turn my backside to you sink away… go down to …?” Ah.

I remember very clearly how much trouble I once got into when we were playing cowboys, and I swaggered into a room and hollered, “What in the H* is going on in here?” Hoo, boy! Mom did not like that. And it didn’t help my case when I appealed to the TV, or the Bible. “It’s in the Bible, Mom!” “Not like you said it.”

And then he added the name satana, right out of his own Aramaic. It meant “accuser” or “tester” with an implied deceit. So Jesus doesn’t quite go there, doesn’t quite swear at Peter or Satan. It’s accurate to say that he told Satan to go bury himself.

And I don’t think Jesus was calling Peter names. Instead, it was that voice of temptation. In Matthew’s gospel, when Peter called Jesus the Messiah, Jesus answered, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father in heaven!”

In the same way, when Peter tries to distract Jesus, with good intention, whose voice does Jesus hear in that? Coming back to him at this opportune time, tempting him? Jesus wasn’t only tempted in the wilderness back at the start of his ministry as we heard last week, but along the way, and even as he hung on the cross, and those around said, “He saved others, let him save himself. Come down from there if you’re really the Son of God.”

I think it’s important to realize that Jesus didn’t face those temptations once, and then <> the Tempter left him alone, but throughout his ministry, from the tests of the religious leaders, and his most intimate well-meaning friends. “Come on, Jesus. Not like that! You’re not a servant or a slave. Take power. Show them!” Or before Pilate, “Who’re you to claim kingship or truth? Don’t you know I have the ability to release you or to crucify you?”

Satan’s name refers to his tests, his temptations away from faith or resolve…anything to tear us down. We’re not talking about sweets or caffeine temptations here, but maybe the voice that leads to things like that, the voice that tells you or reminds you of your emptiness, inadequacies. Come on, what’s one more drink? Really you deserve this. You won’t make it. What’s the point, anyway? Accusing lying deceiving voices.

Or the voice that tells you to take charge, be tough. The one that lets you lash out in anger, to try to take control through out-shouting, swearing, out-maneuvering, manipulating or winning the argument, when the Spirit is telling to be quiet, be still, listen…

I may not have had to overcome forces like drugs or gambling, or alcoholism. And yet I understand Hamlet’s confession to Ophelia when he says, “...I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things …I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves, all.”

So what is God to with us? Are we hopeless and lost causes? Well yes, on our own we are, lost in this haze of being half-decent most of the time, pretty awful some times, but never good enough to make it …on our own. So, yes, we need forgiveness, we need grace. We need it more than we are ever aware.

And for the sake of his kingdom, we need shaping and strength, to want and to allow God to change us, and our habits.

You may not know it; I’ve told a few people that I smoked cigarettes for a few years, just prior to getting married, no more than a half a pack a day at my worst. It lead to my first real use of the Jesus prayer that Pastor Jon talked about last week, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Or, for me the shorter kyrie from the start of our service, “Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.” I quit smoking at the start of my marriage, I’ll admit because Pauline explained my options, and I didn’t like the alternative. So, I used my cravings as a kind of trigger to remind me to pray that prayer. It’s harder to break your promises when you’re praying. Even with that, it took me more than five years before the craving stopped. I’ve done this for other temptations as my little way of saying, “Get thee behind me, Satan. Go bury yourself.” And that’s not bad, not a horrible thing to include in your own fasting or Lenten disciplines.

But here’s the downside. As my craving for cigarettes became less frequent, what do you think happened to my prayers? [Because I had tied them so closely to my cravings, they became less frequent, too.] Was I really developing my relationship with Christ, or using him as a patch? It’s amazing what God puts up with!

You know what he really wants? Do you know what God wants more than temptation-free, clean-nosed, non-smoking mini-Jesus’s running around? He wants people to know the height, breadth, depth and length of his love. He wants his relationship with us, his forgiveness, to shift the way that we look at ourselves, our bodies, and other people; he wants us to start seeing his love in them and in us. Of course, he wants that love for us to change bad habits. Obviously, he wants his love to inspire us as his Body to take active roles against violence, degradation, injustice, molestation, the works! What Almighty Father wouldn’t want that for his children?

But we should never lose sight that it is God, through Jesus, who defeated evil and sin, who continues to tell the devil to sink down and away. Jesus was not taking back his blessings and promises to Peter. He was separating Peter from selfish doubts, calling him back into relationship. Because when Jesus turned back around, Peter was still standing there. It was the voice of fear that had to obey Jesus.

As the country song I listened to yesterday tells all the stuff of life that tries to tear us down, “You might win this round but you can’t keep me down, 'Cause I'll stand back up.” We will stand back up, every time and at the last. Not by our own might or even our own will to survive, but only because Jesus, for our sake, when the time was right, let himself get knocked down, grabbed hold of us, and with all the strength of the Father, Son and Spirit, stood up, leaving our accuser, Satan, to sink in his dust behind him.

Locusts and Ashes

Sermon Prepared for Messiah Lutheran Church

Auburn WA, February 25, 2009 – Ash Wednesday

by Gregory S. Kaurin, Senior Pastor

Texts: Joel 2 and Psalm 73

“Locusts and Ashes”

We could spend a long time on the 2nd chapter of Joel. Our Ash Wednesday passage focuses on the call to repentance: "Rend your hearts, not your garments." Or, to put it in plain terms, "Change your life, not just your clothes."

Every year I find it jarring that—just after we put ashes on our heads—we always read these passages from the Bible against practicing our piety for everyone else to see. And there it is!

Seems a bit ironic, maybe even like we’ve been set-up. There may be a witness, or evangelical, value to wearing visible crosses, but that's not the point, not why we do it. Instead, these are mainly meant to be personal reminders, yes, of our mortality, and also reminders of the eternal promise and mark God placed on us. We face our honest humility, and place ourselves in God's hands.

We talk about the symbol of the ashes, but you might know what makes those ashes stick: we mix the ashes with olive oil, an ancient healing balm. A week and a half ago at the healing service I mentioned that one of the reasons we use olive oil for anointing is because of how readily our skin tends to absorb it.

So, mixed with ashes, in the form of a cross, it's meant to run deep, call us to real honesty, so that we can find forgiveness and healing by being more honest with ourselves, and God.

Back to this lesson from Joel, and the specific context: he preached some time after the exile. The people had returned to Israel and rebuilt Temple, about 400 BC. And even more specifically, Joel’s message comes after or during a plague of locusts, not just one, but several waves and different stages of development.

Listen to Joel 1:4 - "What the nibbler has left, the grown locust has eaten, what the grown locust has left, the hopper has eaten, and what the hopper has left, the shearer has eaten."

But even before this description of the locust invasion, Joel commands them, "tell your children about it and let your children tell their children, and their children the next generation!" (1:3). And they did, so that now, we're still reading about some locust invasion that went through Israel close to 2400 years ago!

Why? What's the value in hearing about this ancient locust invasion and Joel's view of it? Most of us don't buy into his idea that God uses natural disaster to punish us for individual or national sins.

We don't buy into it, but when something happens, it does cause us to pause a bit, doesn't it? Sometimes it hits very close to home, and we think, "That could've been me; could have been my son or daughter on that plane, or in that wreck, or storm?"

Or sometimes things do hit home. We lose, and lose, and physically or emotionally, we feel close to bottom. Times like that we can get very introspective, when faced with tragedy, or death, and a search for meaning: why?

And this is where the prophet Joel comes in, especially these first two chapters. Because, aside from seeing the invasion as a judgment, and a sign of the end times, more important, he saw it as a time to get real with God and faith.

Rend your heart, not your garments. Take this as a chance, a time to “change your life, not just your clothes.” So that your life, and how you use it, is more in tune with what you say you believe.

Honest prayer; let’s start there. Once in a while, Pastor Jon or I have made you start over when you're reading one of the psalms. When our voices aren’t matching the words we're saying, it becomes clear that we're just reading. Worship and liturgy is not just a bunch of words that we recite, but a message that we express as if we actually believe what we're saying.

When we're saying the confession and absolution, I pray to God, that once in a while we actually feel guilty, maybe even near tears, so that his forgiveness and grace actually gives relief.

In our Monday night Bible study we've been talking about the honesty, and the raw human emotions in the prayers of Psalms. The same should be brought to our prayers and liturgy.

“Unless we know how to approach a word with all the joy, the hope or the grief we own, prayer will hardly come to pass” -Abraham Heschel.

Make it real.

Maybe the best and most helpful words from this Old Testament passage in Joel, are found as you read on. After the locusts have eaten, after you've been hit and hit again by life what does God have to say to you?

Sometimes it just doesn't match. Young good people get hit with tragedy, and that doesn't seem fair. And those who live long lives watch their friends get sick and they go to all their funerals, and that can get depressing, lonely.

Some people use a saying, right out of Joel, chapter 2, verse 25: "the years that the locusts have eaten." "The years." You see, Joel was not just talking about locusts that tore into their crops one year, but a series of hardships, tragedies, losses.

People use this phrase to talk about hard times, in business or personal losses, lost dignity, jobs, health, cancer, lost pregnancies and quiet empty grief, depression: the years the locusts have eaten. But that's just half the first line. In verse 25, God says, "I will repay you!" "I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten."

Now he's not talking about replacement. He's not saying that for every friend you lose he'll give you another just as good. He's talking about a life with him now, and someday in full glory. It doesn't end here, this isn't the last word.

Monday night in our Bible Study we were looking at Psalm 73 in which the writer talks about his frustration that all the greedy and slanted people seem to have it made. They get the clothes, the recognition. Why do so many good things happen to the scoundrels around us?

Psalm 73:16-17, he says, "When I really tried to understand this, all I got was a splitting headache ...until I entered the sanctuary of God." And then I remembered: destiny. One day, evil will end, unfairness will be wiped out, emptiness… filled. Even now, God walks with me, gives me a peace others don't feel.

Verse 23 - "God, I am beside you, you hold me by my hand. You wisely and tenderly lead me to new places, and afterwards, you take me to your glory."

I enter the sanctuary with God's people, and it dawns on me that I don't have it so bad. If the eternal God is holding my hand now, and promising me a place with him and life forever? That’s the mark, the mark of promise on your forehead.

You are free to clean that cross off your head, whenever you feel good and ready, but already the healing oils of that cross have been absorbed into your skin and body.

Scars will remain, loneliness and loss ache, guilt still bites, but there is room for healing and faith, because it is this God, the same God who did more than put an ash-cross on his forehead, but wore it on his back, nailed it to his flesh and image forever, died with it, but rose.

And then he said, "Neither will I leave you there, never will I leave you. I will repay all the years the locusts have eaten."

What on earth?

Sermon Prepared for Messiah Lutheran Church

Auburn WA, February 22, 2009

by Gregory S. Kaurin, Senior Pastor

Texts: Mark 9:2-9

Transfiguration Sunday

“What on earth?”

Now, I haven’t had a booming voice speak to me out of the clouds, but I have sat on mountaintops, I have had moments where things are suddenly powerful, meaningful. Like our dear Tahoma, Mt. Rainier. I’ve seen her enough now, that I know she is there even when the clouds are hiding her. She shapes us, our communities; she looms large enough to affect the weather, she gives direction.

Growing up in the middle of Montana, we have plenty of mountains, but if someone said go up to Cut Bank, or down to Helena, I knew they were talking about north or south, compass points on a map. Shortly after I moved here someone told me that I needed to drive “up” Hwy 7 to get to the town of Elbe, WA. I thought they meant I needed to drive north, and couldn’t understand their directions until I finally figured out that when you live close enough to the mountain, “up” can mean south or anytime you travel mountain-ward.

She gives us direction, shapes us. We can drive toward her, but if we intend to get anywhere in this state, we have to drive around her. Like this Kingdom of God that Jesus keeps talking about. We can be moved by the mountaintop experience, but to create any kind of Christian movement, to get anywhere with the message, we have to come down and move around it.

Each year, just before Ash Wednesday, we always end the season of Epiphany with Transfiguration Sunday by reading about this mountaintop experience. The passage says, “Jesus was transfigured before them.” The original Greek says that Jesus “metamorphosed” before them. It was an intense experience.

To put it in context, if we back up one chapter, all three of the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell us that this happens after the Confession of Peter, when he calls Jesus “the Messiah,” (from which we get our name). Jesus then tells them that there are some with them who would not taste death until they had seen the Kingdom coming with power. So, about a week later on the Mountain of Transfiguration, he gives them this taste…

Most feel that this must have been near the summit of Mt. Hermon just north of Caesarea Philippi where Peter made had his confession.

There are a few great visions in the Bible that some people would like to say are just fiction, would like to purge it of the miraculous, calling it myth or metaphor. It’s pretty clear that something powerful happened on that mountain, and there was more than one witness. Years later, in his letter, Peter wrote about it in his own words. Look here in the first chapter of his 2^nd letter:

2 Peter 1:16-18

We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honor and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain.

“We were there,” Peter said. Harvey Cox speaks about these visions of heaven come to earth, eschatology, or end-time-visions. He says,

“Sweeping indeed…We can discard it if we must. There are thoughtful people who have done so. But we should not whittle it down to something manageable and luckluster” (Harvey Cox, When Jesus Came to Harvard, © 2006, p. 290.

But in his book, Harvey Cox goes on to talk about how mountaintop visions, both in the Bible and in our lives, should cause us to want to bring these kingdom moments down to earth. The mountaintop experience is wasted if it doesn’t change how we live in the city. After God’s grace has transfigured you and me, we are called to use it to change life around us.

When they came down off the mountain, Jesus said to keep it to themselves, at least until after his death and resurrection. It was an experience and a gift that he gave them, to inspire and move them. Maybe Jesus even thought that seeing him in glory, seeing Moses and Elijah, hearing the voice, maybe it would help them during the trial and crucifixion… give them roots, a solid foundation, faith.

But instead, they immediately got distracted. Pastor Jon and I often read and quote from Eugene Peterson’s translation of the Bible, The Message. Here’s how he translates that descent off the mountain,

Mark 9:^9-10Coming down the mountain, Jesus swore them to secrecy. "Don't tell a soul what you saw. After the Son of Man rises from the dead, you're free to talk." They puzzled over that, wondering what on earth "rising from the dead" meant.

Sometimes, as I’m studying a passage, I’ll get stuck on a turn of phrase… and how it can draw you deeper: What on earth? My mother said that a lot when I was growing up, “Gregory, what on earth… are you doing now?” “What on earth” means that something doesn’t seem to belong on earth; doesn’t seem normal.

In the positive, Biblical sense it might mean any time the Kingdom of God comes near. When this world and the Kingdom of God collide…wherever the mountain intersects with the city.

The disciples ask, “What on earth” can rising of the dead mean? In the literal sense, of course, Jesus was referring to his own resurrection… But it so telling that Jesus immediately re-entered the towns of Caesarea Philippi with these disciples and throws them back into the ministry of healing and teaching.

People will say that they experience God most in nature…and he is there in the still-quiet mountain scene or the powerful voice of waves and thunder. “Who needs a Temple, when we have this?” but we are wrong…to think that is where God sits, or remains. God is most powerfully present after he comes off the mountain, when he brings us down off the mountain to care for others, to engage them, feed them, hold them, listen to them.

The real Transfiguration, on earth, is about engaging others. And the more closely we do it, the more we get involved in what we are called to do, the more we will feel it. We still have a tendency to hang back and find excuses from actively taking part in Christian life.

I am very proud of our Food Bank, the way all of you as a congregation have responded to the needs of folks around us. And more recently the Community Dinners, putting our Gathering Space to use, inviting, feeding and sitting down, talking and listening to the folks who come to eat. What might happen if we bring those two resources together? So that a couple of times each month, we could feed, a few volunteers could sit, eat, listen, talk and even gently invite, and then give a take-home bag?

My brothers and sisters in Christ, the great commission, is to let Christ’s grace transfigure us, change us, into living examples of his compassion and love, so that other lives can be changed. Some will not be able to hear until they are cared for. But, just like God, the care we give needs to come with a face, arms, ears, and a voice.

When we take care of God’s creation, we are bringing the Kingdom down to the earth. Heaven and earth are, in fact, always connected. When we care for creation, or critters or other people, we living the prayer, “Thy will be done …on earth, as in heaven.”

The Transfiguration did not stop on Mount Hermon. Christ’s true Transfiguration was the way his gospel changed the world, by healing one person, and preaching to one village at a time.

That is what we are called to do.

Plans for this blog...

I will be using this blog to post my sermon manuscripts from worship, offering "suggested readings" and occasional thoughts.