Church #8: The Great Ends of the Church Transfiguration A

Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser

Church 8:  The  Great Ends of the Church 

2/23/20   Transfiguration -A

            Imagine this conversation -  Honey, I’m home!  How was your day, dear?  Well, I went climbing this mountain with my friends & Jesus, and suddenly he started to glow, and a couple of famous ancestors showed up glowing, too, & they talked, and a voice out of nowhere said we should listen to this beloved person.  Then... it all disappeared and things were back to normal and we came back down.  How about your day?  Well, after work, I worked on our taxes and fed the kids….

What - that’s not a regular occurrence at your house?

This morning’s texts are pretty way out of the realm of normal for us. They're holy encounters with God, encounters out of the ordinary day-to-day things like, say, going to work, going to school, preparing meals, preparing taxes and so on.  If we were to have an encounter like the disciples had in these verses, we might feel...what?  Overwhelmed? Like we need to call a counselor quickly?   Like maybe we were asleep and didn’t know it?  Do we declare that these texts must be made up and not real, and so flatten out universe to the one dimensional, material? 

Most of the time, our experiences with God are within the sphere of normal.  Sometimes we have rather mystical experiences - I have. I've been pretty nervous about describing them for most of my life, then I said, “Why not?” Why do I think that God the Creator of all the material world, is then bound by the material world?   There have been Christian mystics and Jewish mystics and Muslim mystics and Hindu mystics in many ancient writings.  God is Mystery - and sometimes we are graced to get just a glimpse of how “other” and beyond our imagining God is. 

What makes me think I’m smart enough to understand all that God is, anyway?  I mean, I can barely use the words “quarks” and “energy fields”, which are a part of our science.  There is so much known now in medicine that is beyond my scope, and in other fields as well.  I had a friend from Virginia who went to work with Microsoft some years ago - he told me that he was really unable to explain his work in words that most people knew, and that the things they were doing would blow my mind.  Our best and newest scientists aren’t even close to understanding all the process of life that God designed. And I think I ought to be able to understand all there is to know about God?

There are all kinds of mysterious and mystical experiences around us - getting carried away by art or music or inspiration; birth and death, those liminal edges of life’s beginning and ending.  Realizing the delicate balance of various habitats, including the one that makes life on earth possible.  Life, material life, is amazing.  God is responsible for it - and God transcends it. 

This is so much a part of the message and the truth that we as a church are about - learning to see the world as God’s, with God’s purposes and God’s message.  Remember the Great Ends of the Church that we mentioned last week - here they are again - in bigger letters...

This understanding and awe of God is part of the “Truth” referred to in the Great Ends of the Church, “4. the preservation of the truth.”  The concept of “the truth” is, to me, the whole realization of God’s existence, that the world and all that is belongs to God, that we are created in God’s image and BY God; that we are also fallen limited and mortal, and thus in need of the love and restoration of God, forgiving us and making us new creations through the work of Jesus, who is the Messiah, or Christ.  Christianity is a total world view, or perspective, or a way of seeing and understanding all that is - existence, reality, what have you -  the ultimate big picture.  It's the place where we as believers stand and consider the universe & our place in it.  It’s the reality of God, in which we live and move and have our being. 

In other words, it’s what Jesus calls the realm of heaven or the realm of God.  It’s our reality, when we come to faith in God.

The 1st Great End of the Church says that our purpose here is, “the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind.”  This includes the story of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection - however, it isn’t ONLY the life,death and resurrection of Jesus!  Salvation isn’t just the personal turning to God in faith, for forgiveness.  That's part of it  - but we limit God’s purpose of saving the world if we stop there. What JESUS called the gospel is the announcement that, in his very self, the kingdom of God had drawn near, and it was time to acknowledge this, turn around, and begin to walk according to that kingdom.  Jesus’ view was that God’s will be done on earth, as in heaven. - it wasn’t about dying and going to heaven and leaving the world to rot.   God wants us walking according to the realm of heaven  while we’re here on earth - involved issues of justice, welcome, equity and honor among people, a caring and compassion for even the weakest and most powerless, a realization of our human tendency to go our own way, and a seeking of God’s Spirit to guide us.  In fact, I’d go so far as to say the message of Jesus is the only way our world is going to survive - be saved, in other words.  Humanity and creation.   

We humans now have the capability to destroy the world; and even if we don’t ever use our  nuclear capabilities, we can also ruin it by our actions; we can trash it and destroy its ability to sustain life.  Our storytellers and movie makers have told vivid tales of terrible ends, when inhumanity and evil prevail, when domination and terrorism have reduced the world to a virtually unlivable state.  We know what it looks like to have tyrants and dictators trying to tell us which people are okay and  which are undesirable, with holocausts and genocides almost wiping out scapegoated populations.  We know how to take advantage of people, take away their power and almost their humanity.  We know how to do evil.  We know the ways that lead to death.

The good news, or gospel, of God’s kingdom, is that there is a way that leads to life; there is a way that is good; there is a way of abundance; there is a way for people to flourish; there is a way for the world to be saved.  That WAY is what Jesus proclaimed - the way of spirit and flesh to be one, the way for humanity to live in peace with itself and the planet.  Jesus is that way.  Following Christ is that way.  This is a cosmic vision of LIFE that we are to proclaim - not just a get out of jail free card, not just a nice invitation to my church…  it is a vital and saving message that all people need to hear - there is a way of life, there is a way of salvation, there is a way that follows God’s intent.  It’s not militaristic victory, or a thing of winners and  losers -- it’s the whole world winning together in a whole new way. 

And that, my friends, is the gospel, the good news - that God’s way is a way of LIFE, and the only way that can indeed save the world.  The glory ofGod will be seen when all flesh can see it together- when the Beloved Community of humankind is walking according to the WAY of Christ.  

It’s our call, as the church, to be telling about this and living this out - those other Great Ends  of the Church about promoting social righteousness and exhibiting the kingdom of heaven to the world.  We’re supposed to be about picturing this radical peace-making community, this welcoming and inviting community, this community where relationships are righteous altogether.  It’s not easy without the help and guidance of God’s Spirit in us, because the temptation to fall back into our old “normal” is hard to resist, and tricky in getting its way.  That's why we need each other to make this community a place of shelter, nurture and spiritual fellowship, as the final Great Ends declare. 

It’s not an easy thing to step into a different picture of what LIFE is, while around us other and lesser understandings of life abound.  It’s not easy to live according to a philosophy and worldview that is often at odds with that we see in commercials and TV shows and movies, and which is espoused by politicians and other leaders.  Yet people do witness to this LIFE, people who we admire for their kindness, their compassion, their insight into human suffering, their concern for our planet home, their willingness to fight for human rights for all people. We can do it, too.  It’s hard for us to keep this perspective of Jesus unless we have a strong community around us.  We need one another - together we lift each other higher than we can go on our own, and support each other.  AMEN.