Hope for the Journey

Mark 9:2-9

February 15, 2015

Transfiguration

Transfiguration
James Janknect

Today is Transfiguration.
The day that we remember when Jesus and

the disciples go  up on the mountaintop and suddenly,

Jesus is changed, transfigured, he’s pure white,

he’s glowing with light. And he is talking

with two great figures of the faith,

Elijah and Moses. It’s beautiful,

Some say that this is the resurrection story

put in the middle of the gospel.

It has some of those qualities.

Some say it’s a testament to the divinity of Jesus

Showing his relationship with the great prophets

and leaders of ages past. That’s true too.

What it is is a vision.

And this vision was given to help the disciples I think.

The vision is beautiful, wonderful,

so wonderful that Peter offers to build three worship stations

and permanently post their whole ministry right there

at the top of the mountain.

But that’s regarded as a silly thought right away.

Their ministry is down at the bottom of the mountain.

Immediately after this, they go back down the mountain.

Back down to the poverty, the pain, the sickness, the hunger

the dysfunctional and oppressive systems of the world.

They have to come down again.

because there is more work to do.

But I think that the vision that Peter, James and John

received at the top of the mountain,

helped them through when they got back down.

The vision let them know that they were doing the right thing,

they were following the right person.

That Jesus really was the son of God.

That is the power of a vision.

It gets people through hard times.

Now a days, we don’t put too much

credence in visions.

If someone said that they saw Jesus glowing in light

speaking to Elijah and Moses,

most of us would be suspicious,

wonder if that person is in their right mind.

Were they crazy, did they get enough sleep?

Those kinds of visions are not held in high regard today.
But that doesn't mean we don’t have visions.

Today, our visions are our imaginations,

pictures of a better world, a better situation

or they are glimpses of things

that assure us that a better world is possible.

Today, God still gives us visions of pure love,

kindness, community, sacrifice, and joy.

We see people helping other people, welcoming,

standing up for others.

We see people who are in desperate situations,

coming back to rejoin life and the world.

We see peace where there was war,

joy where there was sadness, hope where there was defeat.

Those are visions.

Things that we can come back to

when things don’t look so good for us.

When our lives get difficult, sad, or downright awful.

We can return to our visions of love and beauty and hope

Those things that going through the difficult times.

At Gethsemane, we have a vision.

We have come together and over the last year

the council has written our vision.

A statement that paints a picture of what

we want to do and be in the future.

Our vision statement is:

To empower a servant community that overflows

with God’s grace, justice, and welcome.

Not quite as impressive as Jesus glowing on a mountain,

but it serves in some of the same ways.

To get to that vision, we took what our congregation did best,

what we valued, what we seemed to  gravitate to,

and we prayed and asked God to show us

what we could be if we did all this well.

And over time, we got an answer.

We saw that we would be a community that serves like Jesus served,

that we would empower other people to serve too.

That our community would feel God’s grace so much

that other people would feel it, just by being around us,

That everyone would be welcomed into

our community and know of God’s welcome through us.

And we saw that we would overflow with God’s justice too.

That we would help make God’s vision of the kingdom

a reality in this world:

where everyone was treated like a child of God

and get an equal chance in this world regardless of their state in life.

where people would be fed and housed and clothed.

And our community would have a part in making it happen.

It’s a good vision. It is a great image of what is possible.

But there is still work to be done

We have to make a plan and then after that,

we have to make those plans a reality.

  

And we have to do actual work of ministry here,

down at the bottom of the mountain

Where people are not empowered to serve,

Where people don’t know and trust God’s grace and welcome,

and we don’t know how to share it.

Where God’s justice is not evident, and people still suffer.

But when things get difficult or downright awful,

We always have our vision to return to

to remind us where we need to go, and what is possible.

This Wednesday is Ash Wednesday,

the beginning of Lent.  The difficult time in the church.
The time of the church where we do the hard spiritual work of

examining our own shortcomings and frailties,

our vulnerability and our sins.

And we walk with Jesus through his ministry,

his betrayal, arrest, and his way to the cross.

But before we go there,

we get a taste of glory, a taste of beauty,

a taste of hope, a glimpse of the resurrection that is to come.

We see Jesus on the mountain top,

We see the heavens opened up and hear God’s voice say

“this is my son, the Beloved, listen to him.”