Here's today's sermon. In case you get curious :) the readings for this Transfiguration Sunday were Exodus 3:16, Psalm 97:1-,56,10-11, 2 Peter 1:16-18 and Matthew 17:1-8. I hope you enjoy the sermon.
God’s voice
To start with the first reading, this is the classic story about Moses and the burning bush. God shows His power by turning the laws of physics upside down. He makes it clear that the place of His presence is always a place of holiness and He identifies himself, which in itself is huge. He is not just any god, He is, as He says to Moses:
“The God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”.
I expect that many of you as children would hide your face from something that frightened you; be it a scary monster on tv or an angry mother. I, in fact, still do that. Like all children Moses also hides his face in fear as he encounters God. He is not a child but then again God is not a scary monster or an angry mother either. God is God; the creator of the universe, the giver of life and death. He is, despite His infinite wisdom, love and compassion, also frightening.
God’s frightening side is also what makes Him holy and it is always a part of the presence of God. Holiness is an attribute of God, and we use it often. The problem is that it is also very hard to describe in any other words. How would you?
The two things that first come to my mind are that holiness is connected with God’s hugeness, vastness, and with the fact that He is perfect. Regardless of how your describe holiness, in any case, in the face of His majesty you would have to be a pretty tough cookie to not crumble. This is, however, also the good news. Who else could take on pure evil and be able to destroy it? The fact that we realize our smallness in front of God is also the very reason there is all the reason in the world to turn to Him and to trust Him.
Now then the two other readings; there is St. Peter’s account on what happened on the holy mountain and finally there is the Gospel text itself. We have Moses, and Elijah, we have Jesus and Peter, James and John and again – like in the first reading - the voice of God. In the face of these three readings a tiny preacher sits and wonders what there is that I could say that would in anyway come close or at least not diminish the message of these stories.
The Gospel text was written close to 2000 years ago and has not lost a bit of its power. In fact the problem is that especially Moses, Jesus and Peter have become these larger than life characters that we’ve seen in movies and paintings. And God’s voice, then? Well, I at least know exactly how it sounds and moreover it seems to speak in English very much the same way as narrators of the trailers of action movies. You know the style: “ONE MAN, ONE MISSION, ONE LIFE AND JUST ONE DAY….”
It doesn’t really help that the setting then is that all of this takes place on top a mountain; to be more precise on top of the holy mountain, of all places. Again movies strike. I see the beginning of the movie Sound of Music flashing through my eyes although the mountains of Israel hardly can be expected to look anything like the mountains of Austria and most likely no one was singing “The hills are alive with the sound of music”. Then there is of course the Cliffhanger and any movie ever made with the camera angle of a helicopter or an airplane. You see long sweeping panoramas of mountain ranges.
Some of us have perhaps visited Israel and have an idea how it looks like there but when it comes to God’s voice the fact is of course that we have no idea how it sounds like. In my heart He never ever uses an action movie trailer voice and neither does He speak English. How He sounded to Moses or to the disciples that we do not know.
The only thing we do know is that they were all very, very frightened and yet they stayed. Perhaps because there really wouldn’t be any use in running away from God but I tend to think that more so because God’s presence is nonetheless also the fulfilment of everything our heart desires.
One of the most magical things in this is something which Christians usually do not notice but which is important to Jews; namely the presence of Moses on the holy mountain. Moses finally stands on the soil of the Promised Land; the very same one God let him see from the top of another mountain, Mount Nebo, but which he never entered.
Coming back to how we envision the pivotal passages of the Bible. We have all to some extent been affected by the imagery and sounds of both popular and classical art when it comes to the Bible. In today’s case, if you go to church regularly you encounter the stories relating to Transfiguration each year. And the risk is that repetition does not make you dig deeper into the story but rather makes it tedious.
I admit that this is also were the skill of the preacher comes in. If nothing I say resonates with anything in your life you can hardly be expected to get excited about it. That is of course fair enough. However, the thing is that God reveals Himself to us in many ways and one of the most powerful ways of doing it is this book, the Bible. Despite or perhaps because of its age, complexity and yes, sometimes incoherence it is the word of God. It is worth our attention, passion and love. It is worth our time and our interest. No matter how poorly your preacher is able to talk about it, it is worth spending time with.
On the same token, though, do not be fooled by those who say that the Bible is the answer – to which the proper response is “What was the question then?” Bible is nothing of the sort. It is a combination of so many voices and so many ways of understanding, interpreting and talking about God that it is always going to bring forth more questions than answers. That is the wisdom of it. Its inherent beauty is that of a hidden treasure.
The more you read it the more your see glimpses of that treasure, the more you see God. You will get answers, yes, but they will be very different from what you expect – and much, much more interesting.
A preacher can only really point you towards a direction. Sometimes it is towards prayer, sometimes towards love, sometimes towards community and sometimes towards the basic source of our understanding of who and how God is, in other words towards the Bible. Don’t let preconceived ideas and the odd or judging ways of others of interpreting it stop you. You have the right to question, be mystified and appalled by some passages but do not give up. There will also be places where you are struck by the beauty of the word, the wisdom of it all and the amazing grace of God.
God’s voice
To start with the first reading, this is the classic story about Moses and the burning bush. God shows His power by turning the laws of physics upside down. He makes it clear that the place of His presence is always a place of holiness and He identifies himself, which in itself is huge. He is not just any god, He is, as He says to Moses:
“The God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”.
I expect that many of you as children would hide your face from something that frightened you; be it a scary monster on tv or an angry mother. I, in fact, still do that. Like all children Moses also hides his face in fear as he encounters God. He is not a child but then again God is not a scary monster or an angry mother either. God is God; the creator of the universe, the giver of life and death. He is, despite His infinite wisdom, love and compassion, also frightening.
God’s frightening side is also what makes Him holy and it is always a part of the presence of God. Holiness is an attribute of God, and we use it often. The problem is that it is also very hard to describe in any other words. How would you?
The two things that first come to my mind are that holiness is connected with God’s hugeness, vastness, and with the fact that He is perfect. Regardless of how your describe holiness, in any case, in the face of His majesty you would have to be a pretty tough cookie to not crumble. This is, however, also the good news. Who else could take on pure evil and be able to destroy it? The fact that we realize our smallness in front of God is also the very reason there is all the reason in the world to turn to Him and to trust Him.
Now then the two other readings; there is St. Peter’s account on what happened on the holy mountain and finally there is the Gospel text itself. We have Moses, and Elijah, we have Jesus and Peter, James and John and again – like in the first reading - the voice of God. In the face of these three readings a tiny preacher sits and wonders what there is that I could say that would in anyway come close or at least not diminish the message of these stories.
The Gospel text was written close to 2000 years ago and has not lost a bit of its power. In fact the problem is that especially Moses, Jesus and Peter have become these larger than life characters that we’ve seen in movies and paintings. And God’s voice, then? Well, I at least know exactly how it sounds and moreover it seems to speak in English very much the same way as narrators of the trailers of action movies. You know the style: “ONE MAN, ONE MISSION, ONE LIFE AND JUST ONE DAY….”
It doesn’t really help that the setting then is that all of this takes place on top a mountain; to be more precise on top of the holy mountain, of all places. Again movies strike. I see the beginning of the movie Sound of Music flashing through my eyes although the mountains of Israel hardly can be expected to look anything like the mountains of Austria and most likely no one was singing “The hills are alive with the sound of music”. Then there is of course the Cliffhanger and any movie ever made with the camera angle of a helicopter or an airplane. You see long sweeping panoramas of mountain ranges.
Some of us have perhaps visited Israel and have an idea how it looks like there but when it comes to God’s voice the fact is of course that we have no idea how it sounds like. In my heart He never ever uses an action movie trailer voice and neither does He speak English. How He sounded to Moses or to the disciples that we do not know.
The only thing we do know is that they were all very, very frightened and yet they stayed. Perhaps because there really wouldn’t be any use in running away from God but I tend to think that more so because God’s presence is nonetheless also the fulfilment of everything our heart desires.
One of the most magical things in this is something which Christians usually do not notice but which is important to Jews; namely the presence of Moses on the holy mountain. Moses finally stands on the soil of the Promised Land; the very same one God let him see from the top of another mountain, Mount Nebo, but which he never entered.
Coming back to how we envision the pivotal passages of the Bible. We have all to some extent been affected by the imagery and sounds of both popular and classical art when it comes to the Bible. In today’s case, if you go to church regularly you encounter the stories relating to Transfiguration each year. And the risk is that repetition does not make you dig deeper into the story but rather makes it tedious.
I admit that this is also were the skill of the preacher comes in. If nothing I say resonates with anything in your life you can hardly be expected to get excited about it. That is of course fair enough. However, the thing is that God reveals Himself to us in many ways and one of the most powerful ways of doing it is this book, the Bible. Despite or perhaps because of its age, complexity and yes, sometimes incoherence it is the word of God. It is worth our attention, passion and love. It is worth our time and our interest. No matter how poorly your preacher is able to talk about it, it is worth spending time with.
On the same token, though, do not be fooled by those who say that the Bible is the answer – to which the proper response is “What was the question then?” Bible is nothing of the sort. It is a combination of so many voices and so many ways of understanding, interpreting and talking about God that it is always going to bring forth more questions than answers. That is the wisdom of it. Its inherent beauty is that of a hidden treasure.
The more you read it the more your see glimpses of that treasure, the more you see God. You will get answers, yes, but they will be very different from what you expect – and much, much more interesting.
A preacher can only really point you towards a direction. Sometimes it is towards prayer, sometimes towards love, sometimes towards community and sometimes towards the basic source of our understanding of who and how God is, in other words towards the Bible. Don’t let preconceived ideas and the odd or judging ways of others of interpreting it stop you. You have the right to question, be mystified and appalled by some passages but do not give up. There will also be places where you are struck by the beauty of the word, the wisdom of it all and the amazing grace of God.
No comments:
Post a Comment