2023.02.19 | Discerning Truth

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Bulletin for Feb 19, 2022

“Discerning Truth”

Rev. Dr. Arlene K. Nehring

Eden United Church of Christ

Hayward, California

Transfiguration Sunday

Feb 19, 2023

 Matthew 17:1-9 (NRSV)

Today’s text describes a mountaintop experience known as “the Transfiguration.” This was the occasion when Jesus and his closest disciples slipped away from the City of Jerusalem for a short retreat. They needed a break. But make no mistake, this was no cushy weekend get-away. Opposition to Jesus’ ministry was growing. Things were getting a lot harder for Jesus and his people. 

Imagine the scene: a high mountain outside of Jerusalem, where three Hebrew prophets (Moses, Elijah, and Jesus) appear together. Peter, one of the disciples, was awed by the experience and offered to make three booths: one for Jesus, one for Moses, and another for Elijah. 

Peter made this proposal because booth making was a way that good Jews celebrated a special blessing that they had received, and thanked God for it. 

As they were talking, Matthew explained, a cloud overshadowed the group, and a voice said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” 

When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. But Jesus touched them and said, “Don’t be afraid. Get up.” When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus. The other prophets were gone. 

Jesus and the disciples gathered their things and headed back down the mountain. On their way, Jesus ordered the disciples to keep their experience of the Transfiguration to themselves until after the Son of Man had been raised from the dead. After that experience, they realized that nothing would ever be the same again. The stakes were higher. The conflict was growing. They would need to dig deeper to find the courage to persevere. 

II

The Transfiguration story is a bit unique compared with other stories in the gospels, because of the ethereal setting, and the appearance of “rock-star” type personalities who had lived 2000 and 1200 years earlier, respectively. 

Those who bring their brains to Bible study may be relieved to know that most biblical scholars do not consider the Transfiguration to have been an historical event. Instead, they see it as a literary and theological device used by Matthew (and Mark and Luke) to signal that Jesus was a Major Hebrew Prophet, and, moreover, that he was Messiah, the one for whom Israel had been waiting.

While I agree that the Transfiguration is a literary and theological device, I also see it as an attempt to describe a spiritual experience that the disciples had, which literary theory and scientific methods cannot fully capture. 

The Transfiguration, in my view, also describes an occasion when the fog literally and figuratively lifted for Jesus and his disciples, so that they could gain clarity about their mission and purpose, even though the exact way ahead was clouded with uncertainty and fraught with danger. 

III

I wonder: Have you ever been in a similar spot? Have you ever faced uncertainty or adversity? Have you ever been fogged in, unclear of how to proceed, or stressed out by life’s challenges? I sure have. I’ll start with a literal example. 

As most of you know, I was born and raised in the flat lands of Iowa. Literal mountain top experiences were rare in my youth, but they did exist. I remember, for example, the summer before our pastor loaded up our high school youth group in his new Ford EconoLine van and drove us to New England to learn a few lessons about US and Congregational history.

 One of the most memorable parts of the trip for me involved our ascent up Cadillac Mountain on Mount Desert island in Acadia National Park.  When we started the trip, the sun was shining and the skies were blue. The road up the mountain, though curvy and narrow, was passable. But the higher we climbed, the cloudier and foggier the conditions became, and the curvier the switchbacks.  

 As the driving conditions deteriorated, no one had to tell us kids to be quiet and help watch the road. There were no shoulders on either side of the road, so there was nowhere to pull off the road until conditions got better. Stopping in our tracks wasn’t an option either, because we could have easily been rear-ended by another driver.

So our pastor and I (who rode “shotgun”) cracked our windows, listened for the sound of approaching vehicles, and kept an eye on the edge of the road. And, eventually, through a team effort, a slow but steady pace, and the good driving skills of our pastor, we made it safely to the top and then to the base of Cadillac Mountain again, and out of the fog.

No doubt you have had similar harrowing experiences driving in bad weather. Perhaps you can think of metaphorical experiences that were equally harrowing.  

A few examples from my life are: 1) the days and weeks following my father’s death; 2) times when a loved one was diagnosed with cancer; 3) years when my job and vocation were in jeopardy on account of homophobia running rampant in the church; and, 4) the time, in a former parish, when a member sent a death threat against me to the Church Council.

I won’t go into all the gory details about these events, but instead ask you to search your soul and your personal history and identify times when you were confronted with a particular challenge and pressed to summon your courage and discern how to proceed. 

How did you cope? How did you get your bearings? How did you proceed? Did you have a plan, or did you just barely get a plan as you creeped and crawled, like our pastor and my youth group in a Ford van?

IV

Sometimes, feeling our way in the dark is the best we can do. At other times, we actually have a chance, like Jesus did in today’s gospel reading, to go on retreat, ground ourselves, consult wise people and put a strategy together for navigating the unknown. We may not come away with every step mapped out, but we will likely have clarity about our priorities, values, or goals.

If we get that opportunity to retreat, I suggest that we take a lesson from the Transfiguration story. I suggest that we gather up our inner circle, ground ourselves in the wisdom of ancient and modern prophets, emulate the values and practices of these trusted wise ones, and pursue the visions that they have instilled in us.

To begin, let’s ask ourselves, who were these ancient prophets: Moses, Elijah, and Jesus?  Moses led an economic and political revolution by leading the Hebrew people out of slavery in Egypt. Elijah challenged the Hebrew people to give up their worship of fake gods (Baal), and return to the worship of the one true God, Yahweh. And, Jesus challenged his followers to care for the least, the last, and the lost (Mt. 25).  

As we encounter challenges in our personal and collective lives, we as people of faith are fortunate to be able to refer to the life and teachings of these prophets to help us discern how to proceed in foggy times. We can, for example, ask ourselves WWJD, what would Jesus do in this circumstance? 

V

Alternatively, we could ask ourselves, what a modern day prophet would do in our circumstances. I have saved myself a tremendous amount of time and frustration by asking similar questions: what would Grandma do? How would Dad have handled this situation? What would Professor Ulrich have to say about this? 

Hopefully each of us has had individuals in our lives who have been bellwethers of common sense and ethical integrity, whose examples and instruction we can call upon to help us determine what is the best course of action for us to take in our time. Who are those people for you?

Organizations also benefit from having role models and modern day prophets for whom they/we can look to for guidance. The late Eleanor Sekerak has been one of those people for Eden Church. The OGs in the congregation know that Eleanor and her husband, Emil, served as co-moderators of the church four times. Emil died before I arrived at Eden, but Eleanor survived him and lived to be 88 years old. She died on the fourth of July 2005.  

I think about Eleanor a lot and often wonder what she’d have to say about various situations at Eden. When she was still alive, I sometimes called her or went over to visit her at Baywood when I needed a listening ear and a discerning heart to help me sort out how to proceed on various occasions. She was always deeply empathetic, witty, and wise.  

I’m thinking about Eleanor, in particular, today because this is the 81st anniversary of FDR’s signing of Executive Order 9066 that authorized the internment of 110,000  U.S. citizens of Japanese descent into POW camps on account of them supposedly being a threat to national security. Eleanor served as a teacher at one of those internment camps in Topaz, Utah.  

A few years before she died, I asked Eleanor to share a bit about her spiritual journey during a Lenten class. She gladly accepted and she was rewarded with a large and very interested audience. About 40 youth, including our confirmation class, and adults packed into the Norberg Room as we all leaned in to hear what Eleanor had to say.  

She began by describing her growing up years in Oakland, where she participated in an Episcopal church, and attended a magnet school where she became friends with students of Japanese descent. 

Eleanor related that these friendships with Japanese-American students provided her with a strong background to answer the call that she later received from the Dean of UC Berkeley to consider taking a position at a Japanese internment camp in Utah in the summer of 1942. The Dean did not dress up the invitation. He explained that if Eleanor accepted the assignment she would be serving in a concentration camp. The conditions would be abysmal, and the pay would be below the California minimum for first-year public school teachers. 

Nevertheless, Eleanor accepted the position without hesitation. On the first day of school, she announced to her students that the internment program was deplorable, but that they were all going to make the best of the debacle by committing themselves to their studies and maximizing their opportunities to learn. 

During her first weekend at the camp, Eleanor remembered a breakfast conversation with her colleagues about their weekend plans. When Eleanor was asked what she was looking forward to, she said that she planned to attend worship the next day.

Her answer surprised one of her colleagues, who went on to explain that there was only one service held at Topaz, and that it was led and attended by the “inmates.” “Surely,” he asked, “you’re not thinking of worshiping with the ‘Japs?’”

Eleanor did not hesitate with her reply. She said that she had heard the preacher speak in the East Bay, that he was quite good, and that she was looking forward to worshiping with the so-called inmates. Eleanor’s polite, but rather bold statement shocked everyone at the table except a man named Emil Sekerak. When Emil heard Eleanor’s comments, he piped up and said, “I’m going, too.” 

Emil and Eleanor eventually married, moved back to Hayward where they took jobs in our public schools, and raised their children. But that’s not all.   

Eleanor and Emil knew that many of the interned people’s businesses and homes were being ruined as a result of their absences, and that the only way these families could survive economically (after the War) would be if their children could enroll in higher education, and get decent jobs. 

So Eleanor  and Emil dedicated more than two years of their lives after the war helping each of their students by writing letters of reference for college and scholarship applications. (For more information about Eleanor and Emil, and life in Topaz, see  http://topazcamp.org/)

Though Eleanor is among the most admired members in the history of Eden Church, she never considered her actions to be particularly prophetic. I remember, for example, one of the first times we discussed her service in Topaz, she said, “Arlene, I don’t know what was the matter with us. We should have never accepted the internment camps. We should have been marching in the streets! We should have never let it happen!”

I simply said, “I hear you, Eleanor. Confession is good for the soul of a person, and the soul of a nation. Hopefully, our country has learned from this sin. Hopefully, now we know better, and we will do better in the future.” Then, we just sat in silence for a bit pondering both our nation's collective sins of omission and commission, and praying that we truly know better and do better in the future.

I’m going to stop there. I imagine that each of us has a harrowing story or two about significant challenges that we have faced. I imagine that each of us has a favorite prophet or two--ancient and modern--to whom we look for guidance. I imagine that as we reflect on these challenges, identify these prophets, and hold the plumb line of their values and witness against our own challenges we are transfigured by grace, the fog lifts, we find our way, and God is glorified. Amen.