Listening to God’s Son: A Sermon From February 22 at Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community

When I was a kid and one of my parents used the phrase “Listen to me,” it was usually followed by some kind of statement which I knew required my obedience. It was never said in a way which would have led me to believe that all I needed to do was “listen” and then I could go on doing whatever I wanted to do. It was usually intended that I either stop doing something or start doing something. It certainly wasn’t always done in a stern way. If my mom said that tomorrow morning, my sister and I needed to get up when she called us and help pick strawberries, then we pretty much knew that we were expected to do just that. Listening to my parents meant that some kind of action on my part would need to follow.

The scripture which we are gathering around this morning describes an event, the transfiguration, which most of us probably know is an important one if we want to understand who Jesus really is. Something beyond the everyday happens when Jesus takes three of his disciples along with him up to the top of a mountain. Jesus’ clothing become “dazzling” - probably whiter than Oxyclean or Tide could ever get them. People from the distant past show up and start talking with Jesus. A cloud appears and a voice comes from it, speaking to the disciples with great authority. Then it’s over. And the person at the center of this extraordinary activity says to the others, “Don’t tell anyone what you saw here until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.” A strange thing to say given what has just taken place, don’t you think? And why were only three disciples there? Why not more? Why not a big crowd?

All of this strangeness and wonder leaves us asking “what does this mean?” I certainly asked that question. It’s not a bad question. It’s a very interesting question. But it’s also a question that can distract us from what Mark wants us to hear through this story. Sometimes we can get so caught up in possible and various meanings that we forget that God wants to reveal something to us. The question that Mark’s gospel deals with throughout is, “Who is this Jesus?” And that’s what this story is about.

Of course this story is part of a larger story. And earlier in this larger story, we see Jesus asking Peter, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter gets it right, “You are the Messiah.” “Don’t tell anyone,” Jesus says. Yet Peter’s remarkable confession of Jesus’ messiahship is incomplete. He doesn’t yet understand that saying Jesus is the Messiah requires a commitment to obeying and following that Messiah all the way to the cross.

But why does Mark the gospel writer reveal this truth about Jesus in such a strange and slow way? It seems like Mark could have been more effective if he would simply and clearly present a story which doesn’t play these hide and seek games with Jesus’ identity. The transfiguration is kind of like that. Jesus seems to pull a “now you see me for who I am, now you don’t” trick. And then he says, “don’t tell anyone what you just saw.” If Jesus were a salesman, you have to wonder how successful he would be.

I think our confusion here comes from having a shrunken and tamed understanding of the confession that Jesus is the Son of God. We shouldn’t feel too bad since Peter had the same problem. Remember Peter rebuked Jesus for saying he would suffer and die and be raised again. No, the knowledge and the confession that Jesus is God’s Son is so much more than just mental knowledge or spoken words. It is knowledge that is revealed to us through the things he did and said, as well as through the miracle of the transfiguration. It is bodily knowledge. It is bodily because it reaches out and touches people with leprosy or uncleanness and heals them. It sits down at the same table with sinners and tax collectors and shares food and drink with them. It humbles itself to the point of self-sacrifice. Lamar Williamson says this in his commentary on Mark’s gospel, “There is no way rightly to understand who Jesus is until one has seen him suffer, die and rise again.” I’ll repeat that. “There is no way rightly to understand who Jesus is until one has seen him suffer, die and rise again.” Peter and the other disciples had not seen that yet.

The apostle Paul helps us see how this works in Romans chapter 12. This is such a wonderful piece of scripture.

1. I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God-- what is good and acceptable and perfect. 3. For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. 4. For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, 5. so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. 6. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; 7. ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; 8. the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness. 9. Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; 10. love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. 11. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. 12. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. 13. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. 14. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. 15. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. 16. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. 17. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. 18. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. 19. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” 20. No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” 21. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
In verse 2, we see the word “transformed.” That is how biblical scholars have translated the Greek word “metamorphoo.” The word “transfigured” in Mark is also translated from the same Greek work “metamorphoo.” Paul wants those who hear this message to be transformed into the kind of people who do the things that he lists later on in chapter 12. When you are not conformed to this world and trapped in its ways of thinking, and when you are transformed by renewing your minds and encountering the fullness of Jesus the beloved Son, then you are able to discern what God wants and become obedient to that in the body of Christ. You can serve the Lord. You can be patient in suffering. You can bless those who persecute you, associate with the lowly, feed your enemies. You can overcome evil with good. Can we see how this is not being conformed to this world?

More importantly, do we see how the confession that Jesus is the Son of God is something which we must believe in our hearts and minds, but also in our mouths, and our arms and hands, our legs and feet? We believe this with the whole of our bodies, and that is one very critical way in which we act as witnesses for the Son of God and his kingdom, and his rule, his way of living.
Back to considering the transfiguration. What keeps us from hearing the message in this story? What keeps us from being gripped and shaped by it? Perhaps it’s the blinding light. Maybe it’s the presence of these Old Testament characters or the odd idea that Peter seems to blurt out of nowhere. Or maybe it’s our over-familiarity with it. We know this story – it’s about Jesus flashing his glory for us. It’s about his power and authority finally being made visible. Those things are true enough, but we can still get tripped up by the fact that this happens in the presence of only three people who are told to keep quiet about it.

The Word of God (and by that I mean the scriptures and the person of Jesus) won’t let us remain in our confusion or our misunderstanding anymore than Jesus allowed Peter to remain in his confusion and misunderstanding in chapter 8 when Jesus said (and I’m paraphrasing), “Understand this, you who just confessed that I am the Messiah: I am going to be crucified and then be raised again. Your human understanding is misleading you. You need divine understanding. I am calling you to take up the cross and follow me to where I am going.”

Today, we Christians sometimes try to understand things in the Bible by dividing them up. Then we say that we like this part over here, but we don’t like that over there. We want things to conform to our way of thinking. That’s understandable. There are many hard sayings and teachings and stories in there. I would suggest that we have a hard one here before us today which we might be tempted to divide up: “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him.” If these words of God are split up and sorted and sifted through our own understanding, our Christian faith becomes weakened. For instance, if we say Jesus Christ is the Son of God with our mouths, and do not do what he calls us to do, then our witness is inconsistent and we become hypocrites. If we say that Jesus might not really be the Son of God, but we still ought to do what he says, we have removed the authority from the one we want to obey. If Jesus is just a really good guy, then he becomes one teacher among many, many other teachers. And what would make Jesus a better teacher than the others?

Now I don’t want to pick on the Christians “out there” who do what I just described. I want to pick on us. And I’ll use the best example I know of – me. It can be easy for me to get caught up in the finer theological points of who Jesus is with respect to the Trinity, and Christology, and ecclesialogy. Debating and discussing that stuff is a lot of fun for me. And I think those are good things. But I can forget to do what I am talking about. I can forget that I have neighbors who I barely know. I can forget that the poor and the weak and the lost are not far from my house.
And sometimes, but not as often, I can get caught up in the “listen to him” part, wanting people to obey Jesus even if they don’t know who he is. I can ask “why don’t those people over there do what I think is right?” I can be tempted to think that people have to do what Jesus taught even if they don’t believe he is God’s Son.

But the transfiguration story crashes into those tendencies and exposes them as misleading and untruthful. I am a follower of Jesus, God’s Son. We are following Jesus. God says “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him.” He has loving authority, and it is completely trustworthy. This Jesus will faithfully lead us to places we would never have planned to go. He suffered. He was crucified. He has been raised to new life. He is the Beloved. He loves us. And his transfiguration calls us to be transformed into listening followers of Him, who is the Son of God. Amen.
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On faulty thinking and basic amentality

Sentimentality poses the most insidious threat to Christianity in modern times.  The earth-shaking truth of the gospel is seldom heard in clarity by anyone, save those who silence their minds amidst the cacophony of competition to true Christian discernment.

Sadly the gospel itself seldom has more competition to deal with than on Sunday morning, for where two or three are gathered, so five or six opinions seek to rule the day.  

Applied Theology (in the professional pastorate) has a unique place among the professions.  For we have learned that anyone who can read can think theologically.  

Further, humanity is of the opinion that the deepest truths of the world are somehow up for interpretation based on a variety of factors that vary from individual to individual.  

I agree with Stanley Hauerwas, who has argued that one of the best things that could happen to North American Christians would be if the Bible was taken out of their hands.  

We don't appreciate that which we get for free.  

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Tony Jones, American Empire and the Hauerwasian Mafia

Tony Jones recently posted an entry on his blog about why the United States is not an empire. The primary reason he gives is that "an empire has, by definition, an emperor," and "the Bush-Cheney oligarchy ... do not represent an emperor." Genius! What brilliant deductive reasoning!

And rather beside the point when you consider how many right-wing political types have been lauding the emergence of the American Empire, Charles Krauthammer and William Kristol being two of the more popular ones. Robert Kagan would be another one. These neo-conservatives are not ashamed of the global military influence of the US to say the least - go here and learn about these folks and what they want. From another corner, Patrick Buchanan (another political type who would not call himself a "progressive Christian") has accused the USA of behaving like an empire. Yes, that's an old school conservative criticizing the current neo-con love affair with American imperialism.

And not all who accuse America of being imperialist would say that it's a phenomenon that began with Bush-Cheney. The Monroe Doctrine, Manifest Destiny, and the New World Order were around before they got selected, and those ideas will certainly linger on no matter who replaces them. Michael ("Guido") Northcott's An Angel Directs the Storm is a good telling of this story.

It's odd that Tony would be so particular about the use of the word "empire" when he is rather sloppy with his use of the word "mafia". You know the "Hauerwasian Mafia" - those guys who come in and blow away Niebuhrian realism with reckless abandon. Oh, for sure, reading After Christendom would make any delicate-minded, hard-core Zwingli follower cry all over their TULIPs. But Hauerwas and those influenced by him are hardly gun-toting guys who control the crime in their cities and put bullet holes in people who don't see things their way. Has a horse head ever ended up in Tony's bed?

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Greg Boyd Says Mennonites Should "Cherish Their Treasure"

Greg Boyd has a good blog post here on a topic that some Mennonites and also non-Mennonites have been musing over. The question he asks is, Why are so many Mennonites embracing either the political left or (even more so) the political right when their tradition calls them to embody the politics of God's kingdom? Read it.
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More Evidence that the State is not the Keeper of the Common Good

I finished reading Top Secret Tourism by Harry Helms a few weeks ago. It's an incomplete list of the major government locations in the US which were or are involved in some kind of activity which the government wants to keep under wraps (mostly, anyway) and out of the everyday thoughts of the average person. A number of the sites listed were established for something called "Continuity of Government". This program began in the 1950's during the buildup of Cold War fears that the US and Russia would annihilate each other with their growing arsenals of nuclear weapons. For instance, if Washington, DC were attacked or threatened with attack, critical functions of the government would need to be moved out of harms way. Thus underground facilities were built near Berryville, VA, known as Mount Weather, which were capable of withstanding a nuclear blast. Other sites which were built (which are safe from radioactive fallout but not from a direct hit) are at Boonsboro and Hagerstown, MD, Mercersburg, PA, and Harpers Ferry, WV. Various departments would retreat to their designated location should the unthinkable happen.

A few years ago, William Cavanaugh wrote an article called "Killing for the Telephone Company: Why the Nation-State is Not the Keeper of the Common Good". The main thrust is that states (particularly Western ones) tend to be seen as the "keepers of the common good" in that society. He goes on to argue that the church is actually that space where the common good of the gospel is preached and practiced. Along the way, he makes the case that the state's history of development is really characterized by an idea of salvation from the common fear of death. Rather than the state being founded on a positive unity, it is founded on a negative one.

I think one of the things the existence of the Continuity of Government program makes clear is that the US government is not thinking of the "common good" first, or perhaps it sees it's own preservation as that common good. But that's not what most of us would think the common good is. While the government leaders are "safe" in the shelters, what is the "common" citizen supposed to be doing? Making do with plastic sheeting and duct tape? If the state is willing to "fight for our freedom" overseas, why is it only securing the safety of it's highest leaders here. And yes, I know the obvious answer: the government needs to continue functioning in the event of any kind of disaster. But the fact remains that the lives of government leaders have been deemed worthy of saving while the rest have been deemed worthy to be left behind. The call of the church is completely otherwise: self-sacrificial ministry and care for those who are deemed "the lowest" in our society, as well as a decentralized leadership that is nonetheless united by the Spirit of Christ. I would even argue that historically the church has a valid claim to the title "keeper of the common good" (hospitals, relief work) while the state does not, but that will have to wait for another post.

Postscript: Let me make it clear that I'm not saying that "the big one's coming so dig your backyard bomb shelters to save your own butt." I am simply following the logic of the government's plan to its apparent conclusion: "We are indispensable. You... well, good luck. We'll pray for you."

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Band Concert or Religious Service?

I went to a band concert a few weeks ago. The Massanutten Brass Band played on the lawn at James Madison University. They were awesome. They played some good tunes, and they were good at it. My son and I loved the "Imperial March" from Star Wars, and all of it was top notch. But this post is not intended to be a review of the concert so much as a critique of the culture that the band concert took place in. Of course, they opened with "The Star-Spangled Banner" (that was the opening prayer). Most civic events do. And, of course, some people in attendance sang along and a few even placed their hands over their hearts. Many of the songs were patriotic marches with one or two Christian hymns sprinkled in as a perfunctory nod to the role Christianity plays in our culture - as a support to the greater, overriding ideology of America.

It would appear that America is a highly religious nation, but its dominant religion is not biblical
Christianity. Its dominant religion is America. In the concert, the overwhelming theme was the greatness of America. The hymns were brought almost as a sub-theme.

It's interesting to think about the heated debates about the appropriateness of religion (or maybe faith is the current buzzword) in politics. I'm thinking that that discussion completely misses the elephant in the room that I've been talking about - Americanism. People kill for it, people die for it, they sing its praises, they want it to rescue them from terror or poverty, they give large chunks of their lives to serve it. Liberals and conservatives alike. Christian and anti-Christian alike.

America is its own god. Now where's my John Philip Sousa record?

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Charles E. Fuller and R.E.M.

Here's what can happen when you load up your MP3 player (actually a PDA, but I couldn't call it an MP3 player when I was buying it) with recorded broadcasts of the 1930's thru 1950's radio show called the Old Fashioned Revival Hour and the R.E.M. albums from "Out of Time" to "Around The Sun", and then listen to them all intermixed and in a loop while staining the outside of your house for three weeks: you start thinking that the one might be talking about the other.

I did anyway, and something jumped out at me after hearing the choir on the OFRH sing the song "Heavenly Sunshine" for the 13th time followed by R.E.M.'s "Shiny Happy People." I thought to myself: "Michael Stipe is taking a jab at the Christians who are caught up in a heavenly, sunshiny faith which makes them care less about life in the dirt of the planet Earth, forgetting that the Word became flesh."

I grew up hearing rebroadcasts of the OFRH on the local Christian radio station. Both of my parents heard it in their conservative Mennonite homes. The founder, fundamentalist pastor Charles E. Fuller was a gifted preacher who had a good command of his tone of voice and diction. He could string parts of different Bible verses together and come up with a coherent sentence, and finally punctuate it with a self-assured "Thus saith the Lord." Very inspiring..., but sometimes (too frequently) untrue to the original verses which were strung together. Maybe that's why the Christian faith he preached was mostly about how to comfort oneself with the knowledge that their ticket to heaven was secure and that one didn't need to be troubled by wars, strife and sorrows in this life. The United States of America was (pre-)destined to win all her wars anyway.

Sometime in the 1980's, I started listening to R.E.M. After a few albums, I caught on to Michael Stipe's riffs on Christianity. And I think that he has some pretty valid critiques that serious Christians need to pay attention to. Fuller's otherworldly flavor of Christian faith wasn't invented by him. He came from a stream which was reacting to the postmillenial liberalism of the Social Gospelers. To him, faith was not intended to bring about the Kingdom of God on earth. It was meant to save souls from eternal damnation.

Stipe's response is reactionary also, but in it we can see a call to reclaim some of what the Social Gospelers were after - the Kingdom of God must be visible on earth through the actions of the church. A faith that can only witness to premillennial hope is usually one that also rejects the connected gospel calls to love God and love neighbor - including those neighbors who are our enemy. It preaches a Jesus who can't be followed. Following might look too much like attempts to earn our salvation. In truth, following Jesus is simply working out one's salvation.

Thanks for the reminder, R.E.M.

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