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Epiphany 7

 22 February 2004

Exodus 34:29-35
I Corinthians 3:12 - 4:2
Psalm 99
Luke 9:28-43

TRANSFIGURATION 

Every Sunday (?) in your Church, the voice of prayer utters these words '... your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven ...'. The people recite the ancient and familiar prayer, perhaps too well known, so too easily forgotten, or overlooked, or dismissed. Yet hidden in these well-known words is an invitation to amazing freedom, and delightful playfulness, enough to put danger and release into our living.

We have probably discarded the concept of heaven being a geographical location on a cosmic map. Yet what could the metaphor of 'heaven' mean? Maybe the Transfiguration story is an attempt to introduce us to something that looks like heaven - an attempt to draw us beyond our rational, measured selves, to reveal another world where imagination may have a freer reign.

Here is an invitation to entertain another realm, another commonwealth - to explore a new and different world, unhampered by a distraught, fractured, old world. New promises, new configuration of how life might be and then to press those new configurations into service in the world as we experience it.

I believe Luke places these two stories end on where participants move and speak as in a dream on the mountain top, and then at the base of the mountain distraught participants are tormented by a recurring nightmare.

The stories are deliberately linked - see the signal phrases 'On the next day ...' '... when they had come down from the mountain ...'. Up the mountain has to do with down the mountain (Heaven has to do with earth). When we put the two stories together, new conversations take place, new freedoms are revealed, new energies are on the move. This is theologically crafted stuff, not sequential reportage; the wonder and amazement of the up top vision has to do with the terror and constraints of the downside realities.

The narrator gives us permission to enter the mountain top vision. It looks like a dream; - appearances suddenly change, and figures suddenly appear, as they do in a dream. The disciples are weighed down with sleep, and a misty cloud overshadows them. Jesus is transformed - dazzling white, and two other recognisable characters appear - Moses and Elijah.

Who is with and behind these two? Try probing the misty curtain cloud - push the curtain aside a little, and adjust the edges of the text. What might we see? Miriam, Moses' sister, and Moses' un-named mum, and these distraught women conspiring to save the child three months old, from certain death. We might see a grown Moses embroiled in delicate life and death negotiations to save another group of children - of Israel. We might see Miriam's finest hour when she led the women of Israel in song and dance - leading them into joyous freedom. We might see a courageous Moses, not afraid to mix it with God, and ready to form a new dynamic social grouping out of slaves whose only experience was to conform.

And through the mist, we might watch Elijah, a compassionate prophet, revive a young boy, son of a distraught widow - and the same prophet confronting a crooked king, a prophet dedicated to putting right, what was intolerably wrong.

We peer into the dream-like, heaven-shaped experience on the mountain top, seeing fresh interpretations that we can press into service at mountain base - in the world we live in. We see communities of people behind these figures, who lived by liberating promise, and struggled with the promise of abundant, healing life. Their historical truth was destructiveness and brutality, oppression and aggression, yet they lived above these forces; and they discovered a relentless hope which out-paced the flat, measured, managed, hope-less truth of the well organised empire. They knew the nurtured heartbeat of neighbour care, and neighbour love, of release from oppression and restoration of life.

Now to the mountain base, where we are confronted (daily) by the rawness of life looking like death. Up the mountain we were called to listen to God's son; down the mountain another father begs us to listen to his son (see vs.38). In the face of such human terror and sorrow the word of the mountain dream may now speak in the valley. The spirit of the mist now lingers among our earthly spirits. The will of heaven may now have grounding on earth.
 
Two words. We are not alone. We are held by the big names of the faith community who urge us to live on earth as if God's whole commonwealth was in attendance. Second word - love. Love strong and powerful, that holds a community including its saints. Love enough to notice the yearning to be noticed. Love enough to notice the loneliness of the human spirit, and will overcome shyness, superiority, crowded schedule, to give time to filling the empty void of a fellow human being. Love which will love where love is undeserved. Love in a community which actively and joyously demonstrates its love, sings its love - enough to subvert the power of the incessant demons among us. Then God's commonwealth may come, and God's will might be done on earth, as it is in heaven.

PRAYER

Transfigured Christ - Christ bathed in glory,
 you, still with feet on ground, come in to our midst we pray;
 we who are short on glory with limited perspective and only embryonic holiness,
 we need your presence in our lives.

For we tolerate a murder a week in Aotearoa,
 and the road toll maintains its steady reckoning, and our youth still suicide.
So families are devastated and communities are shocked - shattered,
 and our nation begins to accept such killings as normal.

God, come in to our communities and families, and nations we pray,
For our sense of community is diminishing, and our understanding of mutual care and  neighbour love is shrinking.
So we need you to intervene and save us,
 to act in our world of silent acceptance, and toleration of ignoring neighbour,
 and our practice of isolating the ones we don't like.

Our God, we pray for those in charge of our New Zealand mental health system
- those who administer the resources,
- those who know how it once was and long for a restoration,
- those who have new insight as to how it could work.
And we pray for those now who receive care, and those who receive neglect.

Our God, we bring to your attention and to ours, relations of race.
We pray for our fellow citizens who pay attention to ensuring good relationships
- those in government
- those in trade unions
- foremen and forewomen on factory floor
- the professional people who realize they are not the only ones in their profession,
  and their way is not the only way.

Our God, open our eyes to the richness of our diversity,
 and nurture us through to appreciating the life of the other.

In the name of the Christ who could, AMEN.