2021.02.14 | Then, God Enters
Then, God Enters
Rev. Pepper Swanson
Mark 9:2-13
I love hearing stories of other people’s mountain-top experiences.
Over the last ten years, my favorite accounts of personal epiphanies have been those that involved a moment of clarity striking at a very mundane moment, like the farmer in Maine who suddenly realized he needed to go to seminary — while sitting on his tractor, plowing a field. Or the computer programmer that heard the call to ministry while staring at a screen of code. Or the lawyer who felt his faith restored while looking at a flickering candle.
My own epiphanies always seem, in comparison, more like long, drawn-out realizations where I either figure out what I should be doing, spiritually-speaking, with my brain or I just gravitated toward what I enjoy doing and manage to silence the inner voice of doubt just long enough to keep doing that enjoyable thing. Writing a sermon is in that latter category — you can’t imagine how many sayings and quotes I have plastered on my computer monitor, all with the purpose of re-assuring me that it’s really okay to spend hours writing a sermon.
My favorite of these epiphanies centers around two books, one by a bona fide Christian historian and one by a writer of vampire novels.
Sometime in the fall of my second year of seminary, taking my first Christian history course and my second course on the Gospels, I picked up this popular book called Chrisitianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCulloch, a British historian from Oxford, England.
In a chapter entitled “A Crucified Messiah,” MacCulloch described how Jesus defined the kingdom of God in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, including his frequent references to judgment and punishment. One sentence, inserted to put a sharper point on an already sharp point, said, “There is much punishing fire flickering around the preacher’s words.” I closed the book and cried. It was just like that sinking feeling you get when you realize the person you just got back together with hasn’t changed at all. I really, really didn’t want Jesus to be harsh, judgmental, or punishing, but here it was in black and white.
Now at the time, I had very few Christian friends outside of seminary, but I did have one friend who read a lot of books and who happened to read a lot of books about religion. When I told her what happened and how I was feeling about Jesus, she said, “You need to read Anne Rice.”
“The vampire lady?” The only Anne Rice I knew had written a bajillion books on vampires.
She laughed and said, “Well, yes — but she also wrote these novels about Jesus that are really, really good.”
My first reaction was that any non-academic, let alone wholly fictional, account of the life of Jesus would be highly unlikely to cut it at my very heady seminary. Despite that, I found a copy of Christ the Lord by Anne Rice at the public library and more or less got swept away in the story, delighted to find it well-researched. I promptly went on to her second novel, The Road to Cana.
I can’t quote a specific sentence in either novel that reassured me who Jesus was.
I can only say that the two books combined convinced me that underneath those passages of the fiery preacher talking about weeping and gnashing of teeth and the burning of people like chaff, there was a kind and infinitely patient man who had profound respect for God as well as compassion for the weakness and shortcoming of his fellow humans.
A man with the wisdom to discern human error from human evil and the strength to check evil and to demand that others do likewise. I found that my inner image of Christ had rearranged itself in a manner that allowed me to return to my studies, more confident that I knew who Christ was, even in the face of others casting him as someone unrecognizable to me.
Today’s Bible passage reminds me that I have sometimes been too harsh on poor Peter, who was only trying to understand who Christ was as he was unfolding before his eyes, not two thousand years later like me.
If we go back only half a chapter in Mark from today’s reading, Jesus asks his disciples who people say he is. While the others nominate John the Baptist, Elijah, or other prophets, Peter answers that Jesus is the Christ, the long-awaited Messiah.
Acknowledging his answer but telling him not to tell anyone, Jesus then reveals that he will suffer, be rejected by their religious leadership, then killed, but will rise again in three days. Peter takes him aside and rebukes him, which earns Peter a sharp rebuke of his own and the crowd a long admonishment to deny themselves in favor of Christ and the gospel.
In today’s passage, six days have passed and Peter, along with James and John, hike with Jesus to the top of a mountain where they see Jesus in dazzling white talking with Elijah and Moses, two of Israel’s ancient prophets.
Although the three disciples are frightened, Peter manages to suggest that they build three shelters, one for each of the great men. At this point, something miraculous happens: a cloud envelops all of them and God’s voice announces: “This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!”
I call this an epiphany, the epiphany to end the season of Epiphany. It’s a clarifying, even comforting moment. It is the reassurance that both Peter and we need to keep going on this strange journey of following a man named Jesus.
It’s clarifying and reassuring in the sense that since we celebrated his birth at Christmas, we have heard his opening mission statements, we’ve watched him heal and we’ve heard him preach. We thought we had a measure of this man and we liked what we saw.
But now, Lent is on the horizon. Lent, that slow and arduous walk with Jesus to the cross, is here and like Peter, we are sensing, if not fear and confusion, then a disconnection with the hero and his story. It’s like the moment you realize the violence in a movie is only going to get worse before it ends. Your finger gravitates to the channel button and you’re about to change...then, God enters and says: “This is my Son. Just listen. Just listen to his words.”
Two of our Lenten practices at Eden are always Bible study and prayer. The first opens our minds, the second opens our hearts — both help us listen to what Jesus says. Rather than rely on what others tell us, we can open the Gospels and read and re-read his words and make our own decision about who Christ is to us.
Often what we find is that Christ is multi-faceted like a diamond: he is kind and patient, loving and accepting; he is also righteously angry about injustice.
Accepting one aspect of his person or his divinity does not require rejecting another nor does it give us license to promote his anger toward some over his love for all. We only have license, at this point, to listen.
While searching for a specific sentence or paragraph in Anne Rice’s second novel to share with you, I stumbled on “A Note from the Author” that I hadn’t noticed before. It closes with this: “These novels, whatever their faults, have been written for Him. They have been written for Him and for any and all who seek Him, and seek to meditate on the mystery of the Incarnation. And if these books do not bring you closer to Him, then you are urged, please, to put them aside.”
My friends, as the season of Epiphany closes and the season of Lent begins, I hope that you find your own unique way of listening to Jesus and to God. And I pray that what you hear gives you both the challenge and the comfort you need to follow Christ to Easter and beyond. Amen.