The Real You, Really (Matthew 17:1-9)

In C.S. Lewis’ book Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, the British author and Christian thinker picks up a metaphor about life many readers first encounter in Shakespeare’s Macbeth—the thought that life is a stage on which all our dramas play out.

Shakespeare’s treacherous king sees this comparison as a sign of life’s futility—“a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”—but Lewis pushes his readers to think about the roles all of us play in life; the ways in which relationships and expectations shape us and our efforts to manage how others perceive us.

In doing so, Lewis beautifully and creatively describes prayer as the gift given to us to elevate our status from poor, strutting, fretting players to complete and fully realized children of God.

It is prayer, Lewis states, that helps us understand who and whose we really are.

He writes,

I cannot, in the flesh, leave the stage, either to go behind the scenes or take my seat in the pit; but I can remember that these regions exist. And I also remember that my apparent self—this clown or hero or super—under his grease-paint is a real self with an off-stage life…[In] prayer this real I struggles to speak, for once, from his real being, and to address, for once, not the other actors, but—what shall I call Him? The Author, for He invented us all? The Producer, for He controls all? Or the Audience, for He watches, and will judge, the performance? (Letter 15)

According to Lewis, prayer is an exercise in finding one’s own voice—finding one’s real voice—through communication with the God revealed in Jesus Christ.

“The prayer preceding all prayers,” Lewis writes, “[the prayer that is the beginning of prayer] is “May it be the real I who speaks. May it be the real Thou that I speak to.”

The story of Jesus’ Transfiguration is about reality, about life as it really is.

Who is Jesus, really, what does it really mean to be his disciple, and what difference does it all really make?

Questions like these filled the air as Jesus and his disciples climbed the mountain on which the story of Transfiguration unfolded.

You see, the early chapters of the Gospels tell us that once Jesus entered the public arena, he quickly developed a reputation as a powerful teacher and healer in his home region of Galilee.

He demonstrated a special concern for his society’s outcasts—the lepers, the sick, and the poor, among others.

He showed a tremendous willingness to challenge traditions and attitudes that separated religious observance from doing good to others.

And Jesus established himself as a rabbi—as a teacher—by calling disciples to follow in his steps and to learn from his wisdom.

The Gospels also tell us how those disciples began to spread their wings by ministering throughout Galilee in Jesus’ name. They developed their own reputations as teachers and healers, took Good News to the poor and outcast, and, along the way, they began to realize that they were following an extraordinary Master.

In fact, immediately before the events recorded in this morning’s Gospel lesson, one of the disciples, Peter, confessed how extraordinary he believed Jesus was.

Matthew describes the scene like this.

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist but others Elijah and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” (Matthew 16:13-16)

Peter’s proclamation that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah of God’s People was a turning point in their ministry.

It closed one chapter and opened another, the horror and beauty of which Peter could not imagine, but a chapter that Jesus immediately began to write.

It was, then, as Peter’s words still echoed in their midst, that Jesus spoke, for the first time, about his own death and resurrection.

And as all that they had heard—the magnitude of Peter’s confession and Jesus’ response—settled over the disciples, Jesus pointed them in a new direction–the Way of the Cross.

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any wish to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life? (Matthew 16:24-26)

What happened next was a real cliffhanger.

A week passed about which we know nothing.

None of the Gospels tell us about how the disciples responded to Jesus’ new approach.

Did they go home for a while to think things over—talk things over with their families?

Did they go sailing or fishing to clear their heads?

Did he really say that following him would require them to carry a cross? Really?

Truthfully, we don’t know what happened in the silence of that week.

All we know is that Jesus’ ministry was at a crossroads as his followers came to terms with the reality of discipleship’s cost.

That’s how the Gospels set the stage for the verses that are before us today.

Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became bright as light. (Matthew 17:1-2)

On that mountain, Jesus shined like the sun, Elijah and Moses appeared at his side, and the disciples were dumbfounded.

Like them, the Transfiguration catches the eye of even the most casual observer because of its special effects—Jesus’ face became radiant, his clothes flashed like lightning, and God’s voice thundered from on high.

This is obviously a story about something very special happening to Jesus.

But the Transfiguration also captures the imagination of more serious disciples not simply because of the accompanying light show, but because it’s such a crucial moment in Jesus’ life story.

This is the bridge from Jesus’ early ministry to his final ascent in Jerusalem—his crucifixion and resurrection.

Because of its wide appeal, it’s not surprising that people of faith through the generations have had a lot to say about the Transfiguration.

It’s a manifestation of Jesus’ divinity—like his baptism, and something that the disciples remembered for the rest of their lives—like the Sermon on the Mount or turning water into wine.

It’s a moment in Jesus’ life that teaches us something about God’s glory.

It says something about holiness and beauty.

It tells us about God’s power, Christ’s mission, and his unique role in the story of salvation.

The Transfiguration was a defining moment in Jesus’ life. That’s why we celebrate it every year on this last Sunday before Ash Wednesday.

But for all the things that it teaches us about heady spiritual matters, I believe there’s a very practical lesson to be learned today from the Transfiguration as well.

It remains true that time spent with Jesus sets the stage for revelation and transformation.

With everything else that happened that day on the mountain top, with all the questions about crosses and whatever was going to happen next still hanging in the air, it’s so easy to forget that this is really a story about what happened one day when the disciples went away with Jesus–to be with him, to pray, to, in the words of the the old hymn, “walk with him and talk with him.”

And because he still comes to us, and walks with us, because Jesus “is living at your side every day to enlighten, strengthen and free you,” because we still pray, we can lift up the Transfiguration as a story about reality—the reality of a loving God who takes us to mountain tops and walks with us through life’s valley.

“[The invitation to walk with Jesus and to be a people of prayer,]” concludes Lewis, “is, at every moment, a possible theophany [--a visible manifestation of God]. Here is the holy ground: the Bush is burning now.”

We can also say that Jesus shines with heaven’s light right now.

He meets our questions and doubts with grace right now.

He desires communion with you and me, he offers healing and compassion, he empowers us to be our real and true selves right now.

Friends, the Gospel invites us to be real so that our eyes may be opened and God’s own self revealed in our midst.

According to C. S. Lewis, prayer is an exercise in finding one’s own voice—finding one’s real voice—through communication with the God revealed in Jesus Christ.

“The prayer preceding all prayers,” Lewis writes, “[the prayer that is the beginning of prayer] is “May it be the real I who speaks. May it be the real Thou that I speak to.”

May the time we spend with Jesus on this Transfiguration Sunday spark just such a new beginning for every one of us and for his Church.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Image: Walsh, George. Kingdom of God, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN.

The Strength of Fools (1st Corinthians 1:1--2:16)

At the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said,

“Everyone, then, who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall because it had been founded on rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its fall!” (Matthew 7:24-27)

There’s a promise that’s implicit in this teaching. It’s the promise that Jesus offers to his listeners a foundation on which to build their lives that is strong, durable, and able to withstand the proverbial storms of life.

Although their fears and old habits made it difficult for Jesus’ first disciples to truly live by this promise–(even their best efforts to do so, like our own, often failed)--the words that Jesus said, the things that Jesus did, and what these things revealed about who Jesus was, did, in fact, become the Church’s example, guide, and cornerstone.

As an old hymn reminds us, “The Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ, her Lord.”

This focus on Jesus’ life, ministry, and how he still changes people’s lives ultimately helped believers discern a model for Christian discipleship and the message Christians seek to share.

Think of this discernment process as both learning how to take Jesus’ promise to heart in one’s own life and learning how to share that promise with others in a way that is genuine and authentic.

Scholars of the New Testament have given a name to this distillation of ideals, intentions, and messaging. They call it the kerygma, a Greek word that means “proclamation” and it describes the essential, fundamental ideas of the Gospel.

The Church has spent almost two thousand years being tempted to add more to that basic message–saying “Yeah that stuff is really important, but so is this and that” and a lot of those efforts, while well intentioned, only made things more complicated.

Church history is full of people who thought they were sharing an essential Christian message, when, in truth, they were really sharing the ideals and values of their culture, race, nation, or party.

One way to think of kerygma, then, is as a teaching device intended to remind Christians of every age that their mission, to borrow a phrase, is keeping the main thing, the main thing–and the main thing for Christians is making disciples of Jesus Christ, not copies of themselves.

Talking about the kerygma, therefore, takes us back to the very beginnings of our Faith–to a time before denominations, tall steeples, stained glass windows, and potluck suppers.

Actually, that’s wrong. Even in the beginning, there were potlucks.

Regardless, we should understand that this is real “back to the basics” stuff.

The New Testament authors tell us that the kerygma is about Jesus’ resurrection and the new life and renewal of Creation he makes possible.

It is about grace, forgiveness, and the transforming power of the Holy Spirit.

It’s good news that’s meant to lift people up, not hold them down.

Unlike the creeds that it inspired, however, the kerygma of the early Church was never worked over, edited, and codified into precise language.

That being said, a few years ago, Pope Francis gave all Christians a beautiful and useful definition to consider.

Writing in “Joy of the Gospel,” Francis wrote, “(Our kerygma or essential proclamation is this:) Jesus Christ loves you; he gave his life to save you; and now he is living at your side every day to enlighten, strengthen and free you.”

I think this quote from Francis is wonderful and I want to use it as our starting point as we unpack what Saint Paul is saying in chapters one and two of 1st Corinthians.

“Jesus Christ loves you; he gave his life to save you; and now he is living at your side every day to enlighten, strengthen and free you.”

It’s fair to say that this gets to the heart of the message Paul shared with the people of Corinth during his ministry there–a ministry, the scripture tells us, that kept Paul in town for 18 months.

Given his investment of time and energy in that place, Corinth was something like a proving ground for Paul. He saw successes there and failures, too. He knew the people–their strengths and weaknesses, what they had been through, what old habits still constrained them, and the potential they still possessed.

Accordingingly, his letters to Corinth make up a significant portion of Paul’s theological and literary legacy, including the revelation in book one chapter one that he understood how foolish his message truly was.

It’s there that he wrote,

For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God….For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength. (1 Cor. 1:18-25)

This talk about foolishness is more than a nice turn of phrase to Paul. It’s actually a profound statement about some of his deepest convictions.

Afterall, he was writing at a time and a place where anyone with half a clue knew exactly who had all the power—and it wasn’t a crucified Jewish rabbi.

It was Rome. Rome had the money. Rome had the influence. Rome was willing to destroy you and everything you cared about if you got on its wrong side.

That’s what strength looks like!

But that’s not what Paul called strength.

As goofy as it sounded and as foolish as it was, he kept pointing believers back to Jesus as the source and example of real strength, power, and value.

For Paul, the cross was history’s hinge point and the way in which the barriers that divide people were tumbling down in Jesus’ name was evidence of a force against which no man-made wall could stand.

[For] God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to abolish things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. (1 Cor. 1:27-29)

Friends, I think Paul’s insights into foolishness are as timely today as ever, because everyday we are bombarded with grandiose displays of what we’ve been told strength looks like.

We’re seeing vice celebrated as virtue by people who think that cruelty and arrogance makes them look tough, like real men.

We’re seeing communities turned upside down, lives ruined, and people killed because our shared humanity has been trumped by zombie nationalism and blatant racism.

We’re seeing–even in redacted emails–how some of the world’s richest and most famous men have degraded women and children in the most grotesque ways imaginable.

And we’re told the people who do such things are the powerful ones because they decide who lives and dies. They can satisfy all of their selfish cravings. They make more money in a day than our families will make in ten generations.

That’s what strength looks like–or so they would have us believe.

Oh, may we never be so foolish as to fall for such nonsense.

Because remember, “Jesus Christ loves you; he gave his life to save you; and now he is living at your side every day to enlighten, strengthen and free you.”

And if that’s true, if our proclamation is from God, then there’s a power at work that those who’ve given themselves over to violence, greed, and depravity can never possess.

If the real power is in Jesus and his love, then all these arrogant displays that surround us are but signs of fragile egos and the manifestation of sin’s weakness—“for the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

Jesus said, “Everyone, then, who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.”

For that reason, I don’t think it’s ever a bad idea for Christians to give some thought and prayer to maintaining and upholding the basic essentials and foundations of our Faith.

Such efforts have been at the root of every genuine revival and godly reform history has even known.

Even so, I don’t find it particularly useful to compare our present situation to those faced by Christians in the past—as if it somehow matters that another generation faced so many more challenges than ours, or seemingly had it so much easier.

What does matter, however, is the quality of the foundation on which we’re building our lives and the witness that we bring to this moment–to our moment.

God’s foolishness is timeless like that.

“[For] God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.”

There’s a promise that’s implicit in Jesus’ teaching. It’s the promise that he offers to his listeners a foundation on which to build their lives that is strong, durable, and able to withstand the proverbial storms of life.

You see, “Jesus Christ loves you; he gave his life to save you; and now he is living at your side every day to enlighten, strengthen and free you.”

There are people just beyond the doors of this church–maybe even on this side of the doors, too–who need to hear this message because they’re being crushed by this world and its nonsense.

Will we be foolish enough to tell them that Jesus loves them, too?

Will we know the power of the cross, find strength in love, and experience grace in the hope that overcomes our imperfections and weakness?

Will we build our lives on this sure foundation?

I pray that we will–that we will know Jesus, share Jesus, and love like Jesus today and forever.

Image: Holzmeister, Clemens, 1886-1983. Crucifixion, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN.

Courtroom Cacophony (Micah 6)

To Kill a Mockingbird, Law & Order, The Crucible, Judy Judy, Legally Blonde, the Seinfeld finale–it may come as a surprise, but the popularity of these movies and television shows can actually help us unpack a sermon preached by the ancient biblical prophet named Micah more than seven hundred years before the birth of Jesus.

But first, did you notice what those movies and shows have in common?

All of them are either set in or see their climatic scene take place in a courtroom.

And that’s where our approach to the scripture begins this morning.

You see–authors, playwrights, screenwriters have been mining the conventions and rituals of courtrooms for material for centuries.

The Greek author Aeschylus wrote history’s first courtroom drama, or at least the oldest surviving example, in the four hundreds B.C.

Shakespeare explored the dramatic potential of courtrooms. So did Charles Dickens, Verdi, Dostoevsky, and Andy Griffith, to name a few.

Basically, storytellers working in every form and genre of storytelling have found court proceedings to be a useful tool for making their point or entertaining their audience.

And when we give it a little thought, it’s easy to understand why.

Courtrooms create endless opportunities for drama and keep open the possibility that the good, the bad, or the ugly among us might enter the stage at any moment.

Courtrooms are inherently places of conflict. Why else would a story end up there?

Judges and juries aren’t necessary when everyone agrees that a handshake or a “My bad. Sorry about that” are sufficient forms of restitution.

No, courtrooms are places of division and disagreement where accusations are made, defenses are presented, and someone–a judge or maybe someone just like you–has to decide what really happened and if someone is lying, misremembering, guilty, innocent, or just really unlucky.

Courtrooms bring to mind some of our highest ideals–things like truth and justice–but they’re also places where some of our worst characteristics and behaviors are recounted and put on display.

Courtrooms allow equal access to the salacious and the virtuous, they invite unexpected twists, turns, and revelations, and, more often than not, they allow their stories to end with a verdict or a resolution.

What more could a storyteller want?

There’s no question that countless generations have understood and experienced the same pulse racing energy we feel when we’re watching the cross examination of a star witness or listening to a powerfully delivered closing argument.

This brings us back to Micah.

Micah, like his prophetic peers, saw a direct connection between the unjust and immoral behaviors of God’s people in ancient Israel and Judah and the national calamities and crises they were facing.

Specifically, the problem in Micah’s day was a war with Assyria that the people were sure to lose.

The gist of his preaching, therefore, was that since the people had allowed their hearts, minds, and institutions to become rotten and no good, they were going to go through some things, but that repentance, changing their ways, and returning to lives of integrity–even as they experienced the consequences of their actions–was their best and most faithful hope.

This is the background for chapter 6, in which Micah imagines or envisions a courtroom drama to deliver this message.

We only read a few verses of the scene this morning, so we need to pull back a bit to appreciate what’s happening here.

In verse 1, for example, God brings the charges.

Hear what the Lord says: Rise, plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice.

Hear, you mountains, the case of the Lord, and you enduring foundations of the earth, for the Lord has a case against his people, and he will contend with Israel. (Micah 6:1-2)

So Micah casts God as something like a prosecutor, the people as the defendant, and the mountains and Creation itself as the jury.

As the passage unfolds, the charges reveal a people who have forgotten what God has done for them. They’ve lost all affection. They’ve given up on the relationship.

And when they finally have a chance to defend themselves–they only prove how dire the situation has become.

The scene looks something like a neglected spouse pleading for attention, pleading for their partner to become a part of the family, to take an interest in what’s happening in their lives only to have the other say, “What do you want? Some flowers? A nice piece of jewelry? A vacation?”

"With what shall I come before the LORD and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?"(Micah 6:6-7)

What comes next is the most famous line Micah ever wrote.

The speaker is a bit ambiguous. Is it the jury or the prophet himself? Maybe it’s meant to be anyone in the room who’s paying attention.

It could even be a shout ringing through the courtroom as the judge bangs the gavel and calls for order.

Regardless, the words are iconic.

He has told you, O mortal, what is good, and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?( Micah 6:8)

How could the people be so thick-headed? How could they be so clueless? How could they think that over-the-top, osentatious displays could fill a yearing for genuine connection and realtionship?

Case closed. The people were guilty.

The rest of the chapter is the verdict and the sentence, and it’s not a pretty sight.

Thus says the Lord,

Can I forget the treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked and the despicable false measure?

Can I tolerate wicked scales and a bag of dishonest weights?

Your wealthy are full of violence; your inhabitants speak lies with tongues of deceit in their mouths.

Therefore I have begun to strike you down, making you desolate because of your sins. (Micah 6:10-13)

It’s a stinging rebuke, the kind of which we find throughout the prophets, but it’s the rhetorical question at the center of it all, the courtroom cacophony, that endures.

O mortal, what is good, and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8)

The intervening centuries have done little to dislodge these words from the core of our faith and practice. Far from it, in fact, as Jesus’ ministry–from the Beatitudes to the Cross–only underscores their importance, reminding us that while the grace of God’s mercy and forgiveness are always offered to us, we’re called to live like grace matters—like this relationship with God matters—and that what God delivers is better than all the treasures promised by greed, violence, arrogance, and deceit.

For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength. (1 Cor. 1:25)

Asbury Church, what is good, and what does the LORD require of you–even as your heart breaks when the powerful trample on the weak, when the rich buy and sell the poor, when the promises of this nation that you thought would elevate all of us are being used as a cudgel to degrade, diminish, and even destroy life itself.

Do justice and love kindness and walk humbly with your God.

As we seek a deeper understanding of the prophet’s words for our lives and for our times, may our hearts be renewed, may our neighbors be blessed, and may we rediscover the power of the Good News that truly sets people and nations free.

Thanks be to God for this Good News. Amen.

Image: Chris Potter, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons