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Aug 9, 2009
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Sermon: Proper 14 (19), August 9, 2009 Year B
The Community Church of Wilmette
Too Much to Remember
If you recall, I ended last week's sermon with a statement about the importance of memory. I spoke of how memory can sustain us. I said:
All we need to do is remember the gift. Faith.
We need to remember...to remember God.
For such memory is eternal life,
and it will satisfy.
There is something else to remember as well. This week we remember the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For some people this may simply be too much to remember.
Some people might be running through a list of all the other questionable acts committed during WWII. I agree. There were many acts of evil and hatred. War is a crime. It's always a sin. A "just war" has perhaps never been fought.
Also, I am not suggesting that dropping The Bomb was the only act of evil committed during WWII. Not in the least. Firebombing London or Berlin, not to mention the concentration camps...Good God, may we never forget that…there are plenty to choose from. WWII was one of the darkest periods in human history and it was orchestrated in part, ironically, by a majority of so-called Christian nations. We have a lot to answer for. Certainly.
We simply didn't know it until it was too late. We took a shot in the dark and changed (ended) the lives of millions of people...billions if you include the lingering shadowy fear of another nuclear attack by briefcase if not by a high-altitude jet aircraft. We unwittingly set ourselves up to live in a persistent militarized state with the rest of the world. Indeed, it is often too much to remember.
This is not the only memory held before us today. This week many Christian traditions also remember the Feast of the Transfiguration.
The Transfiguration is that moment in the story of Jesus when he is on the mountain with some of the disciples and Moses and Elijah are present. Christ is bathed in light and God’s voice is heard. The disciples cower in fear and suggest that they should build a monument of some kind. Jesus says no and asks that no one speak of what happened until after his work is done.
In many churches this week there were vigils, candles lit, and prayers and blessings for the fruit of the earth. Prayers. Light. Blessings. The light revealed on that mountaintop is the true Light, the Light that shines in darkness, they will say.
Some days we confuse our own created lights, even the atomic kind, with the Light of God, with the shining presence of a Transfigured Lord. We build our altars and monuments and we lean back confident in our own ability to...I don't know. Solve our own problems? Make the world in our own image? I cannot say. Such a life may be too much to remember.
The whole of the Gospel of John was composed with a specific memory held in the forefront of John's imagination. He remembers the Transfiguration. Each word in the Gospel story that Jesus uttered is the word of a Transfigured Christ, a Resurrected Jesus. John's Gospel is unique in this way. Matthew, Mark and Luke focus on the more “earthly” Jesus.
The Transfigured Jesus shows us a new light, a new reality that is there for the choosing…and how we might choose it. In John’s Gospel Jesus tries again and again to help us understand what it all means.
In John chapter 6, in all those passages about bread, Jesus is practically begging for us to choose him, to choose life over death.
That's what the choices are: life or death.
Jesus speaks of the manna from heaven. It is from heaven. But its purpose is to sustain the living in the moment. It’s food for the desert. No more and no less. It’s a gift, but it is not an eternal gift. It’s not a soul-restoring gift. It just keeps you from being hungry for a little while. Jesus offers something more, something eternal. Jesus offers himself.
William Sloan Coffin, that famed preacher from Riverside Church in New York City, is quoted as saying:
The devil is always suggesting that we compromise our high calling by substituting the good in place of the best.
This is what Jesus is after in John’s Gospel. This is what it means to live eternally. This is what it means to turn to Christ. Sometimes we'll choose a good decision (what may feel like the only one available to us) in lieu of the best decision, which is to follow Christ. Our best is not necessarily about an informed effort or long hours, it is about faithfulness in Christ. It is not manna. It is Jesus.
Jesus’ audience is confused as they are unable to see who Jesus really is apart from his family. Life is often a muddled mess and saying that any one thing is always and forever wrong is…well, challenging (though one may successfully argue that the Holocaust, genocide, is forever wrong). Still, for the most part, ethics is slippery. We cannot always know in the moment what the right thing to do is. We are limited. We are often in the dark.
What is the right thing to do? What are our choices? Today, where are these shadowy places?
“In Christ there is no darkness at all,” writes John.
“I am the bread of life,” says Jesus.
Violence is the fruit of a fallen world. We know how to navigate that world. We even know how to polish it up a bit. Christ calls us to something else entirely. Jesus wants us to live into a redeemed world. He wants us to have not just good things, like manna, but the best thing: eternal life. Eternal life is never a stop gap, never the lesser of two evils.
So often humanity settles for the lesser of two evils. Jesus never settles. Jesus always asks for more and God always sends grace. Grace for imagination. Grace for generosity. Grace for sacrifice. Grace for Love. Everlasting Life is always something else, something surprising, and something new…and it always gives life to the entire world.
Can we today find ways to navigate the redeemed world Christ has given us?
Can we choose the best?
Can we choose to turn to Christ?
Today I pray again for peace, for non-violent solutions to violent problems, for humility in scientific research, and for a clearer understanding of our place in the world…a place where we stand in Christ’s light. Transfigured.
May we turn toward Christ's light, partaking of him, his body. He is the bread that truly sustains. His light brings only life, and life for the entire world.
God made the world, and God made humanity in God's image. May today be the first day when all live like this were true.
Amen. |
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