1.
Many of us have spent
a good chunk of the weekend with Dr. Robin Meyers, an outspoken progressive and
author, and a pastor of one of our own UCC churches in Oklahoma City. It’s been a lively weekend, and a good
conversation. And if you see that look
in our eye, well, the wheels are spinning this morning.
At Friday night’s
keynote lecture, Robin reminded us that, in the early days of the Jesus
Movement, candidates for baptism might spend as long as two years preparing for
initiation and baptism—into what Robin likes to call “the underground
church.” Two years of study and storytelling. Two years of conversation and prayer. And, most importantly, two years of practice. Feeding the hungry and mediating conflict and
learning to pray. Praying for
enemies. Two years preparing for
baptism.
Now Robin’s point, in
sharing this with us, had little to do with another fun fact. Instead, he wanted to impress upon us how
seriously the Movement took itself, and its vocation in the Roman Empire. They called themselves “Followers of the
Way”—“Followers of the Way.” And this following
required something of them: something real, something difficult, something
costly. Those first generations weren’t
looking to pad their membership statistics; they didn’t give a hoot how many
belonged. What they were really after
was commitment, discipline, passion: something like—the passion of their
Teacher. So they’d insist that a seeker,
a novice if you will, spend something like two years learning the Way—watching
others feed the hungry and house the homeless and welcome the stranger. Watching and learning new ways of meditation
and service, soulfulness and joy. Two
years learning the Way.
Now Robin was quick to
remind us that these “Followers of the Way” were not in the least concerned
with doctrine, orthodoxy and creeds. The
virgin birth, the resurrection of the body, original sin. Forget it.
They were, instead, committed to a radically loving practice, that Way
pioneered by a dirt-poor rabbi from the boondocks in Galilee. It’s that Way they spent two years learning,
practicing, digesting—before their baptism, their initiation, their coming out
party as Christians. Because the
Movement took itself seriously, and knew there was a lot at stake in the Roman
Empire.
Love wasn’t a Hallmark
card—or whatever the equivalent of a Hallmark card might have been in the
ancient world—love was a practice, an orientation of the spirit, a Way in the
world. So they took it seriously. They learned from the Teacher. From his stories. And they passed the Way along like a
precious, holy, sacred jewel. Two years.
The thrust of Robin’s
work is that this early church was an “underground” church—something like the
old underground railroad in this country.
They gathered in hidden homes, marked slyly by the sign of the
fish. They told stories there, and ate
joyously in remembrance of Jesus. And
they perpetuated, passed along his subversive message and subversive
practice. The Roman Empire was of course
colossal and mean and violent—and not the least bit interested in sharing moral
power with a band of Jewish peaceniks and homeless footwashers. So the church kept things “underground” and
practiced this kind of subversive faith there.
2.
Now these six weeks of
Epiphany—today’s the sixth and last—these six began in early January with our
remembering of Jesus’ own baptism in the Jordan. Remember how the heavens open up, and John
pulls Jesus out of the river, and there’s this voice: “You are my Beloved, my
Son! And I am so delighted in you.” In a sense, the whole season of Epiphany is
one extended meditation on what that means: first that Jesus is Beloved of God,
God’s delight, God’s pleasure; and second, that so are you. God’s beloved, God’s delight, God’s
pleasure. The entire project of the
gospel—the subversive project of the gospel—begins in our experience of God’s
delight. Knowing that the earth is hallowed
ground. Entertaining friends, neighbors,
strangers, even enemies as angels unawares.
Hearing that Voice that speaks a thousand different languages say: “I am
so delighted in you.”
It’s the Delighted
People of God that change and heal the world, right? Not the Angry People of God, or the
Better-Than-Everybody-Else People of God.
It’s the Delighted People of God who show up to cook big feasts for the
hungry and lay out the mattresses for the folks who need a place to sleep. It’s the Delighted People of God who march
and march and march for marriage equality—and keep marching until the Supreme
Court finally does the right thing. And
it’s the Delighted People of God who work the late shift, the forgotten shift,
at the hospital—binding up the wounds of the kids shot late at night, or the
addicts nobody wants to see.
So that’s what
Epiphany aims to be in the church: an long, extended meditation on Jesus the
Delight of God and what it means for us to be his people.
And so, for all my
silliness in slipping this little anointing ritual in during Epiphany, I want
us to take baptism, to take delight, to take Jesus’ Way every bit as seriously
as those first followers did. I want us
to walk out of here on Sunday mornings with some of that subversive pleasure on
our skin and in our heart. I want us not
to just know who Jesus was back then—but to feel who Jesus is for us now. And I want us to be an “underground” church,
the delight of God, beloved of God, in all the places where we go, when we go
from here. So we’ve been doing this
little anointing ritual, remembering our own baptism just a bit, recalling
God’s delight, God’s pleasure. Every
week.
3.
And that leads us back
to Peter and James and John. And Jesus
transfigured—whatever that means—up on the mountain.
You know, it strikes
me that all this Love, all this Delight, all this Service—it can be
overwhelming at times. It can wear you
out. And that seems to be happening here
with Peter and James and John. Jesus is
a sweet friend to have. And Jesus is a
powerful presence for the good. And
Jesus teaches this radically inclusive, delightfully generous practice. But sometimes it just wears you out.
But after days of
meeting the brokenhearted face to face, after weeks of feeding the hungry and
healing the wounded and facing down bigotry over and over and over again—Jesus
wakes these three friends early in the morning, and says it’s time for a
hike. We’re climbing a mountain
today. Are you kidding, Jesus? Can’t we just sleep in, just once?
So they drag
themselves out of bed, roll their bags and tie them on their backs. And they follow Jesus up the mountain. Because that’s what you do. Jesus wakes you up, says it’s time to go, you
go.
And then, there on the
mountain, there’s all this business about Jesus praying, and his appearance,
his face changing. There’s this bit
about Moses and Elijah showing up in glory and chatting Jesus up, talking about
his departure and weird stuff like that.
And the story says, the gospel says: “Now Peter and his companions were
weighed down with sleep...”
And as it is in so many
parts of the gospel, sleepiness seems to be as much a spiritual condition as
anything else. Peter and James and John
are spiritually tired; they’re not sure they can keep up with Jesus any longer. They’re worn out, wrung dry by his subversive
ways and his compassionate ministry and his morning hikes to pray in the
hills. And it would be so much easier,
so much simpler to pull the covers up in the morning, pull down the shades and
just forget it.
And then, in their
fatigue, in their weariness, the voice comes again. The voice out of the heavens, the voice from
some deep, deep place. And it’s a lot
like the voice we heard way back at the beginning of Epiphany, the voice at the
River: “This is my Son, my Chosen, my Delight; listen to him!”
Now I think there are
two things happening here, two narrative keys for us in making a little sense
of the transfiguration. First, it
reminds us of Jesus’ baptism. And we
need to be reminded. God delights in
Jesus. God’s pleasure goes where Jesus
goes—as he loves and cares and breaks the broken rules and welcomes everybody
in. And you and I? We are God’s delighted people. We are God’s beloved children too. Like Peter, like James, like John, we get
tired. And it can all be a little
overwhelming. We’re weighed down with
sleep. But then you see a whale
breaching in the bay. Or you watch your
daughter dancing across a stage (as I did last night). Or you hear a great symphony done right. And that voice cries out again: “You are my
Beloved. You are my Chosen. You are my Delight. And you are up to the task.”
But there’s a second
thing, too. Peter’s sleepiness is a
foreshadowing in the gospel. Even as the
voice sends us back to the early days, Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan, Peter’s fatigue
foreshadows his weariness in the garden, those last hours of Jesus’ life. Peter sleeping when Jesus begs him to stay
awake, when Jesus needs him most.
Here’s what I’m taking
from all this: the looking back to the Jordan and the looking ahead to
Gethsemane. I’m seeing an important,
affirming reminder that all that we are and all that we do is wrapped in God’s
grace. From beginning to end. From the glories of baptism to the hard, sad
moments of betrayal. From our first
commitments to a new way of life to our very last moments of suffering and loss.
Jesus doesn’t promise
Peter a bed of roses, or an easy way of it.
And—truth be told—he doesn’t promise this to us either. What he does promise is this: that God’s
blessing, God’s love, God’s passion will go with us wherever we go. Into the beautiful waters of baptism and
celebration. Up onto the high mountains
of exploration and mediation and prayer.
And then into the darkening gardens where we suffer and let go at last
of all we’ve loved.
You see how different
this is from the version of Christianity that says: If you believe in Jesus,
everything will turn out right for you.
You’ll be successful and beautiful and saved when others aren’t. Instead, this Gospel—Jesus’ Gospel—invites us
from Epiphany into Lent, into the real world of suffering and hurt, into the
realities of aging and frailty. And
Jesus promises us that we will meet God there.
Precisely there. In what is real
and human and us.
4.
As you may know, I’m a
huge fan of poetry. And recently I was given this little volume called “Women
in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women.” 43 centuries!
I’m loving this book of poems and discovering some new mystics along the
way. So often the mystics of other
religious traditions shed new light on the deepest truths of my own. And a new favorite of mine is Lal Ded, a 14th
century disciple of the Shiva tradition, born in Kashmir.
I’ve learned that Lal
Ded was married at the age of 12, neglected by her husband and treated horribly
by her mother-in-law. After 12 years,
she left her home to become a Shiva disciple, living and celebrating a mystical
oneness between God and everything she touched and saw.
I want to finish up
with just one short poem by Lal Ded, one that speaks to the awakening we’re
talking about this morning, the awakening we know in baptism and continue
learning on the Way with Jesus.
Here’s the poem:
To learn the scriptures is easy,
To live them, hard.
To learn the scriptures is easy,
To live them, hard.
The search for the
Real
Is no simple matter.
Deep in my looking,
The last words
vanished.
Joyous and silent,
The waking that met me
there.
As we turn from
Epiphany to Ash Wednesday, from Epiphany to Lent, that’s my hope for all of us
on the Way with Jesus: that deep in our looking, even the words might vanish;
and that joyous and silent, waking will meet us there. Amen.
