Christopher Thomas
Sermon for the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, Year A – 2/23/2020
Feast of the Transfiguration
Exodus 24:12-18
Psalm 99
2 Peter 1:16-21
Matthew 17:1-9
“I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light.” – Barbara Brown Taylor, “Learning to Walk in the Dark”
Transfiguration.
The notion, why, the very idea, that something, or someone, or some ones, can come into contact with another something, or someone, or some ones, and be changed. Fundamentally, radically, altered, changed, meta-morphosed, from a cellular level, out, is mind-boggling to me. My brain dances with excitement.
Transfiguration.
Things are moving in ways we cannot begin to ask or imagine, but we should, and we must imagine! Why not? Imagine. Our great God gave us the gift, the supreme gift of imagination, so let’s use the gift, and imagine how we might…transfigure…
So many exciting things happen when you “trans,” when you go beyond, what you, me, us, we, can see with the human eye.
Trans…formation
Trans…scendent
Trans…cultural
Trans…gender
Leaps of faith, leaps of faith that we make when we are able to go beyond the boundaries of what can be seen, reaching into new possibilities, nirvanas, innovative and more beautiful spiritual stasis.
Transfiguration.
Dazzling. Radiant. Resplendent. Luminescent.
Humanity struggles. Words are inadequate. But Word (Capital W, Logos), is never inadequate. It is always just right. God is always just right, in a transfiguring sort of way.
And so, as I consider “transfiguration,” or maybe “trans-anything,” I get excited, because I am going out and beyond the banality of myself, into God-space, intentionally seeking an encounter of life-changing proportion.
Now, I have found that these things do not happen where I am comfortable. Maybe they do for you, but they do not for me. My comfort has to be challenged for “trans…,” for me to go beyond myself, to happen. I have to be pushed out of my comfort zone. God doesn’t come into my living room, hand me a drink and say, “Let’s do some transfiguration Fr. Christopher.” I have yet for that to happen.
I have to go, not always, but usually by some applied force, into the arena of transfiguration, to encounter transfiguration, to be opened up for transfiguration, for the process of transfiguration to take place. (Transfiguration, I have found, does not happen in isolation. Transfiguration takes place in relationship, to and with God, and others!)
Now, I don’t always have to go back to Genesis, to the beginning, to the starting point, each and every week, when I’m preparing to preach, but I did this week. I had to. It was important, and necessary, to this process of transfiguration. And so, I went all the way back to, “In the beginning…” I wanted to see, in all of this creating that God was doing, and God was busy doing a LOT of creating, and pronouncing, and ordering, and making some sense out of chaos, I needed to see something for myself.
So here’s what the Word says:
“In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness God called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the very first day.”
Now, I rooted around through some different translations, because I was on the hunt for something. I wanted to find something. Because somewhere, somehow, some way, we, individually, and collectively, have put some words in God’s anthromorphized mouth that I don’t think are there! I couldn’t find anywhere that God says, “And the Dark was very very bad!”
I think that’s something we’ve done! Because God created some light, that God must have meant that darkness was bad. We’ve had thousands and thousands of years to build a bogey man (a bogey person) and associate that bogey person with all things dark. Light, good. Dark, bad.
Where do these things come from, but the human mind?
Depending on how you believe, we’ve had around 6000, or 200,000 years to perfect this ridiculous notion, this insanity.
Whoever wrote this stuff down, I am sure, if he (because that’s who wrote this stuff down, the “he’s”) knew how we’d get it twisted up, would have been sure to write down God’s heart, “God saw the light and the dark, and they were all very very good!” I know it!
We might go right back to this miscommunication, this misinterpretation, this misrepresentation of God, to see where the problem begins. Is this where color-shaming comes from? This could be the very seat of our soul-sick problem. Maybe we need to go back to ground zero for some transfiguration. Whaddyathink?
Transfigurations happen when I, you, me, we, get pressed out of our comfort zones, and that is happening all around Peter, and James, and John (and all the others) in Matthew’s story. You have to go up to the mountain, escape the normal, usual, mundane, banal, to get some space for transfiguration. And our God does not disappoint! First Jesus is transformed. And then Moses, and Elijah show up! How exciting!
I love Peter! Because Peter is me, and I am Peter! “I love this! This is so cool! I don’t ever want to go back! Let’s build a booth around this moment and stay here forever, Jesus!”
“Oh, silly boy, silly, silly boy.” Guess what? You must have equal parts of light and dark to make transfiguration. You don’t get transfiguration without BOTH! Maybe that’s because both light and dark are good!
Barbara Brown Taylor figured that out. The Episcopal Church of St. Thomas the Apostle is going to figure that out.
Your Rector and Vestry have agreed and voted to sign our church on as supporting members of a new initiative in the Dallas community, called 24HourDallas. 24HourDallas was founded out of conflict that arose between bar owners and restauranteurs and neighborhood residents, who were chaffing over the intersection of light and dark, day and night. The initiative initially was about ways to help both sides find ways to coexist, but the mission quickly transformed, transfigured, into something much bigger and much broader.
Now, it is said that 11:00 am is the most segregated hour of the week, but in fact, the greatest segregation happens between those who occupy the light, those of us who are able to work and play during the day, and sleep at night, and those who must work at night and find their rest during the day. Our world, our privilege, is geared toward the former. Why, because light is good, and dark is bad, right? God said it, and so it must be.
No, it is not. God did not say it, and I am here to tell you it is not. Light and dark are not value judgments, but our privilege has made light and dark into value judgments. 24HourDallas’ mission is about changing that. It is about changing how we view Dallas between the hours of 9 pm – 9 am. It is about realizing that while you are asleep, an economic engine is humming away making your safe sleep possible. And yet, privilege is making it difficult, if not downright impossible, for the folks who inhabit the night, the dark, to do that very thing.
How do people in south Dallas who clean Parkland Hospital in the middle of the night (and those of us who inhabit the day definitely want a clean Parkland Hospital) get to work when DART doesn’t run? Or you have to make three transfers and it takes 2 hours to get anywhere? Or you get paid some ridiculous, unlivable wage? Or you can’t go vote because you have to choose between voting and sleeping?
There is socio-economic injustice interwoven into the fabric of dark versus light, day versus night. 24HourDallas is going to help us, St. Thomas, “Learn How to Walk in the Dark,” as Barbara Brown Taylor so aptly puts it in her title.
Now, if you have ever lived in New York City, you are very familiar with the concept of the third rail. People will tell you, if you ever fall onto the subway track, for goodness sake, avoid the third rail; it is what carries the voltage that powers the entire subway system, and you will be fried immediately.
I am very keenly aware of the third rail. I have worked in denominational church long enough to know what the third rail is, and it is privilege. Very simplistically speaking, if you get to do something that someone else does not get to do, that’s privilege. If you get to drive on the toll road because you can afford a toll tag, then you’ve got some privilege. If you are sitting here this morning and not at work, then you have some point of privilege. If you work during the day and sleep at night, and not the other way around, you have privilege. You get the point.
Conversations around privilege are the third rail, particularly for pastors. They can end a priest’s honeymoon faster than most anything I know! It is a sensitive topic that deserves much hard, well-thought-out work. And we, St. Thomas, are going to do that work. And 24HourDallas is going to be a vehicle to help us to do that work, to have those conversations, to experience the goodness of darkness, and we are going to be transfigured.
I am not going to live in fear of that third rail. I am not! I am not going to be afraid of the dark because some old bogey man didn’t get God right back in Genesis. That is absolutely insane. Light and dark are both very very good. We’re going to celebrate both of those at St. Thomas. We’re not only going to learn to walk in the dark, we’re going to learn to dance in the dark, and not be afraid of the dark or those who inhabit the dark. We are going to celebrate it!
Because, “…the only real difference between anxiety and excitement is our willingness to let go of fear.” – Barbara Brown Taylor, “Learning to Walk in the Dark”
Amen.
