The Signpost Up Ahead

You don't have to go to any Twilight Zone to find a world where things are not the way they should be...

Lent 5b 2015 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Now is the judgment of this world, now is the ruler of this world to be driven out; and I, when I am lifted from the earth, will draw all people to myself.+

There is a 1960s TV show that has remained in reruns ever since. It’s not I Love Lucy, though I’m sure you would instantly recognize it from the music of the opening credits just as easily. Perhaps you know the opening text that the host recites as well as the music. “There is a land between mystery and imagination...” Do you remember? It ends, “There’s the signpost up ahead...” as the title comes shimmering into view, “The Twilight Zone.”

Strange things happen in the Twilight Zone; things in the Twilight Zone are not as they should be. But what I want to say to you today is that right here in this world things are not as they should be, either.

Things are not as they should be when people with mental illness wander the streets because hospitals have been shut down, and the small apartments they could afford to live in have been converted into condos for the one percent. Things are not as they should be where people have to live in cardboard boxes over sidewalk grates to get warm. Things are not as they should be where children go without food — not just in famine-stricken deserts or countries in the midst of war — but right here in this city, one of the wealthiest in the world. Things are not as they should be where the government cuts support for food for the poor because some think they might make a habit of eating. Things are not as they should be where corporations are treated like people, and people like commodities; where politicians of both parties sell their favors to the highest bidder, and are more interested in the next election than in doing the job they were elected for in the first place. Things are not as they should be where people are killed by those who are meant to protect their lives. Things are not as they should be where people are beheaded and burned alive, and raped and murdered and all in the name of religion.

No, my brothers and sisters, things are not as they should be right here amongst the swift and varied chances of this world of ours. You don’t have to go to any Twilight Zone to find a world where things are not as they should be. Things are not as they should be right here and now, and many of us are looking for a signpost up ahead to lead us to a better place.

Sometimes people will look backwards, back to that they like to think of as the “good old days.” But when we look to the past with a careful eye, we will find there’s nothing new in any of the problems we suffer today. Homelessness, hunger, violence, crime and crooked politicians, have been a part of human life almost from the beginning. This world of ours never has been what it should be — except maybe during that first afternoon, in those few precious hours in before Adam and Eve decided on an apple for dinner. Ever since God strolled by in the cool of that first human evening, and asked a terrible question, “Where are you?” — ever since, humanity has been a stranger in a strange land, where things are no longer as they should be. So there is nothing new in homelessness: Adam and Eve were the first homeless to walk the earth, when God kicked them out of Eden.

There is nothing new in hunger. When God led the people out of Egypt’s land, and through the Red Sea, were they grateful? No, they grumbled about the pickles they’d left behind, the delicacies of the Egyptian fleshpots. They complained, when God gave them bread from heaven, they grumbled and asked him, “Where’s the beef?” And so instead of leading them into a promised land, God kept that generation of ungrateful people marching in circles for forty years, until all the grumblers were dead.

There is nothing new in political deceit. Prophets tried and tried again through the history of those naughty sisters Israel and Judah, tried to warn the idolatrous rulers of the error of their ways. But did they listen? One or two, maybe, but the rest just tried to shut the prophets up — burning Jeremiah’s scroll and even tossing him down a well. There is nothing new in political corruption and cover ups — why, one ancient politician just tried to wash his hands of the whole sorry business; and you can find a picture from the photo op right over there in the First Station of the Cross: Pilate washing his hands: “It’s not about me!”

And, Lord knows, there is nothing new in violence. Jesus himself came into the world amidst violence and he left it amidst violence. After his birth, the boys of Bethlehem were massacred, as Herod tried to wipe out the rival child king, in one of the great crimes against humanity. And some thirty years later, we need look no further than to the cross itself to see the horror of human violence done upon another human being.

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But do that: look a week and a half ahead for a moment; look to Good Friday in your mind’s eye, look to the cross where the Savior hangs dying. Could it be that this is — after all — the signpost we’ve been looking for? I mentioned last week that the byway sign on the highway of our Lenten journey — on our “lighten up” Sunday in mid-Lent — pointed us towards Good Friday. The sign at the middle is the same as the sign at the end. The Good Friday cross stands as it has ever has, since that gloomy afternoon of pain and sorrow. Could it be that this is the signpost up ahead that shows us the way to the world where things are the way they should be? Could it be that this is the signpost up ahead that shows us the One who takes this world that God made, this world that started well but fell, and by the power of God begins to make it right? Could that be it?

It is at the heart of our faith to affirm, Yes, it is! The cross is the signpost where the world turns around and the new creation begins, as the world begins to become what it is meant to be. This is no easy transformation. It took the sacrifice of Christ once offered for the sake of the whole world. For that world to be set right, for that world to turn the corner and become what it should have been all along, the world itself would have to perish. Just as a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies and is reborn in the fruit it bears, so this earth would have to suffer judgment. We are still living in the last days of that judgment, the birth pangs of the new world as the old world dies and is reborn. And let me tell you, it doesn’t want to die; it’s a hard death before rebirth comes — as hard as the death of the cross. Jesus told us, “Now is the judgment of this world, now the ruler of this world will be cast out; and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”

He, the homeless one with no place to lay his head, is the signpost up ahead that points the way from homelessness. He leads us to an eternal home with many mansions; but he also teaches us to open our doors to welcome the stranger and the refugee. He challenges us to work and pray and give so that all of God’s children may have decent homes in which to live, in God’s world where things are the way they should be.

Jesus, who fasted in the wilderness, who thirsted on the cross, is the signpost up ahead that leads away from hunger. Not only does he give us his Body and Blood, as spiritual food and drink, but he gives us every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God to nourish us as can no earthly food. And he challenges us to share our abundance — for abundant it is even when we think it isn’t, even when all we’ve got is five loaves and two fish — he challenges us to share our rations with those who have less, or nothing at all, so that all may be filled, in God’s world where things are the way they should be.

Jesus, whom the rulers of this world connived to defeat, to find guilty before a crooked court, this Jesus is the signpost up ahead that points the way to justice. He engraves the new covenant on our hearts, the new covenant that asks that we do justice, love righteousness, and walk humbly with our God, following in the way of the cross into God’s world where things are the way they should be.

Jesus, the one born amidst violence and dying amidst violence — he is the signpost up ahead that transforms violence into peace, by taking the very instrument of violence, the cross, and fooling everyone — including our ancient enemy Satan — as he turns that instrument of death into the instrument of peace and life. This was the reason he came to us, this was the hour for which he was born, this was the judgment of the world, the casting out and the casting down of the ruler of this world; this was the hour when Jesus was glorified, lifted up, to draw the whole world to himself, so that it might become at last God’s world of peace where things are the way they should be.

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Good Friday is just a little over a week away. Keep your eyes on the old rugged cross. It is the signpost that leads the way to life everlasting in the kingdom of God, but also to more abundant life here and now, as each of us disciples of Christ takes up our own cross, day by day, to share what seems to be small and weak and little, but which the grace of God can magnify. Keep your eyes on that cross in the midst of homelessness and hunger and injustice and violence — but also, put our hands to work, right here, right now, to help to make it right. Keep your eyes on that cross and God will give you strength to endure and to do your part in turning those wrongs around, to do your part in the redemption of this world. Keep your eyes on that cross, the instrument of death that is become for us the means of life; keep your eyes on the signpost up ahead, glad to suffer shame and loss, if shamed we must be, but willing to lose all for the one thing of worth: the inestimable love of God; revealed to us in and through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

God's Transforming Call

God calls us... do we follow?

SJF • Epiphany 3b 2015 • Tobias S Haller BSG
Jesus said, Follow me, and I will make you fish for people

Our scripture readings today present us with variations on a theme, and the theme is “Transformation.” The transformation takes three different forms, but all three forms have God as their author. And these three forms of transformation have the advantage of being a version of the “three R’s” — in this case Repentance, Renunciation, and Renewal.

We hear the middle movement of the “Jonah Symphony” this morning. You recall the first movement: Jonah rejected God’s transforming call — to him! He ran away from God and ended up repenting in the belly of a fish. In today’s passage we see him finally doing as God instructed him, and preaching the message of repentance — one which he himself has learned so well, up close and personal, and under water. The great and the small, the folk of Nineveh, respond to the call of God, and repent, turning, each of them, from their evil ways. But notice this: God calls through Jonah, himself called, and himself knowing in himself the need for repentance; and perhaps that is what makes his preaching so persuasive: and the people respond and repent.

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Saint Paul delivers a different form of God’s call to the people of Corinth. He wants people to detach from the normal courses of life because all of life is about to be transformed — the present form of this world, he says, is passing away. So Paul commends a kind of transforming renunciation — acting in a way that takes no mind of the situation in which one finds oneself, whether married, or mourning, or rejoicing, engaging in commerce or worldly matters: because the world itself is about to be transformed, and radically so!

What I’d like to note is that this too reflects some of the backstory about Paul, just as Jonah’s preaching had some relation with his own earlier life. He also had himself gone through a tremendous transformation when God called him out — literally knocked him down and senseless. His old world passed away on that road to Damascus, when God made him realize that all the things he was so sure of, all of the things he believed with all his heart, all his reputation and even all of his religion, were to be regarded as so much rubbish. Next to the call from God, nothing else in this world mattered. He no longer needed to lay claim to being a Jew born of Jews, a Pharisee among Pharisees, a star pupil of a great Rabbi — for the greatest Rabbi of all, Jesus himself, had taught him a lesson, had turned his whole world upside down, leading him in the end to renounce all that was past and to reach out to what was promised.

And so Paul too passes on what had been delivered to him: the transforming power of God to renounce all worldly expectations and values that could stand in the way of proclaiming the Gospel and leading a Gospel life.

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Finally, we come to the gospel itself, which portrays the calling of the first disciples. Jesus passes along the Sea of Galilee and finds four fishermen — he tells them literally to drop everything and follow him. He calls on them to change their livelihoods and their lives — to leave behind the boats and the nets and even their family in order to follow him. And in this call, they will be transformed by being renewed. What was there in them will somehow remain, but be transformed and renewed. Their catch may change but not their way of life: now they are going to catch people instead of fish.

Their catch may change, but not their way of life: and in doing so they will still be sailing out — metaphorically — into dangerous waters, risking their lives and taking a chance. Their fishermen’s skills will be called upon and put to use, but in new ways. They will still need the keen eye that can read the signs of sunset and sunrise, and the sharp nose that can smell a change in the wind. They will rely on the sense of balance that can feel from the movement of the boat where the next big wave is coming from. And above all they will need the patience to wait wait wait in quiet, and then the strength to pull pull pull to haul in the catch. Jesus is calling to these fishermen to go with him in search of the greatest catch the world had ever seen — they are going to cast their nets abroad and catch the whole world itself with the message of the gospel.

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It is the call, my friends, that is important; the call and our response to it, whether it is a call to repent, renounce or renew: God’s transforming call. When we hear God’s call, does it lift our hearts and move us forward to do the work that God assigns? Does it empower us to change our direction if we are heading the wrong way, or to free ourselves from the world’s distractions, and renew our energies? Does God’s voice sounding in our heart, his call and command echoing in our ears, fill us with inspiration and move us to leave behind the safe and the familiar and to follow him, bringing with us nothing but the skills that God has given us in the first place? Or do we allow the complacency and comfort of our condition, or the cares of this world, to limit the scope of our response to God’s call?

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Roland Meredith tells of an experience he once had one night early in the spring out in the country when he was young: In the midst of the quiet night, suddenly he heard the sound of wild geese in their seasonal flight back home. He ran up onto the porch to call everyone out to see them, because the sight of wild geese flying in the moonlight, is one of the great beauties of nature, singing their peculiar song as they fly the night sky. As he was enjoying this beautiful, wonderful sight, he noticed the tame mallard ducks that lived on the family pond. They too had heard the wild call, the honking of the geese, and it stirred up something in their little breasts. Their wings fluttered a bit in a feeble response. The urge to fly, to take up their place in the sky for which God had made them, with the wings God had given them to do so, was filling their little breasts — but they never rose from the water. They had made a choice, you see, long ago; the corn from the barnyard was too secure and satisfying — and fattening — to risk a flight to who knows where. The security and safety of that little pond kept them from fulfilling the call of the wild to that wild and exciting life for which they had been made.

My friends, God is calling us to a wild and exciting life — the mission of his church to the ends of the world. He is calling on us repent our sins, renounce our worldly attachments, and renew our lives; to spread our wings — the wings he gave us; to leave behind whatever might hold us back, and yet to bring with us all the gifts and skills with which he has equipped us all along — the steady hand and the patient heart, the ready will and joy in the spirit; and above all the good news itself which we have received and are called upon to share. This is his rule in all the churches. It doesn’t matter if we are wage-earners or executives, working or retired, single or married, buyers or sellers, rich or poor — whatever our condition God can make use of it through his call.

So will you join me on this quest? God is sending us out from this place to fish for people — to spread the word and to bring in the catch of friends and family, of coworkers and associates, of strangers we meet on the street and the companions of our breakfast table, here, here to the banquet, where we feast upon the word of God in Scripture and in broken bread. It is a high calling my friends — high as the sky and as broad as God’s good, green earth. But God has called us, and his call is transforming, as we repent, renounce, and are renewed: so let each of us resolve to lead the life that the Lord has transformed and fitted us for, and to which we have been called. The one who has called us will not take No for an answer.+

Heavenly Architecture

We are still on the Way, not quite ready for the Truth and the Life, until polished and dressed as living stones for the heavenly dwelling.

SJF • Easter 5a 2014 • Tobias S Haller BSG
Let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

It is difficult for us, living in a nominally Christian country, to imagine what it was like for the earliest believers in Christ. They were a tiny minority wherever they went in the Jewish or the Roman world. Among the Jews, themselves a minority in the Empire, the Christians were an even smaller sub-group, put upon and persecuted from the very first. In today’s passage from Acts we witness the end that befell one of them, Stephen, a young Christian whose death was partly the doing of another young man, Saul. This Saul, this persecutor of the church, would later undergo a powerful conversion, and change more than his name, becoming one of its greatest champions, but also a victim of the persecutions against it.

Christians in those early days got it from both sides: opposition from many of the Jewish leaders, but from the Gentile pagans as well. Compared with the Empire’s pagan religions — from worship of the Emperor to worship of the ancient deities of Rome and Greece and Egypt, to the emerging mystery religions — the Christians were a pitiful few and far between. To get a sense today of what it was like to be Christian in those days, you would have to go to someplace like Saudi Arabia or Iran or Northeast Nigeria, where Christians are not only a minority, but are restricted and in some cases persecuted or killed.

The other thing it is hard for us to understand is based on the fact that in our culture being a Christian is respectable. Politicians today can wear their religion on their sleeve — or on their lapel — without fear. I am old enough to remember when John F Kennedy had to make up excuses for his being a Roman Catholic; but the issue barely came up with John Kerry — remember him? And the Mormon religion only came up as a footnote with Mitt Romney — remember him?

People today can be public about their faith, but in the early days of the church it was clearly not so, as our readings from Acts and First Peter show. As far as the majority — pagan or Jewish — was concerned, the Christians were a dangerous minority, a cult with strange ideas that went against everything that society held in high esteem. Many of the Jews of the Greek and Roman cities were upstanding citizens, many of them were leaders of commerce, and the Greek and Roman leaders of the territories wanted above all to keep the peace, and the wheels of commerce turning. These Christians, their opponents would say, were turning the world upside down. “They say that the poor should be treated as well as the rich — even that it is blessèd to be poor. What an idea! They claim that God came among us in the person of a convicted felon, a trouble-maker — a man who was executed for treason against the Emperor; and what’s more, they claim that this disreputable traitor, this rebel against all that is decent and civil was raised from the dead! I mean, really! What will they be telling us next? that we should join them?!” And so these pious upright citizens hounded the apostles from town to town, stirring up opposition against them, those people, those weird, strange cult-like people who were turning their world upside down.

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It is to address exactly this situation that Peter writes his first letter, offering good advice for those who are being persecuted for their beliefs. He tells the Christian believers to turn to Jesus — and to do so with the innocence and purity and naturalness of a newborn child reaching for its mother’s breast, to be held, protected, rocked and nourished. Don’t worry about being rejected — those who reject you now rejected Jesus before: and look! He, the stone rejected by the builders, has become the cornerstone of a new spiritual house, into which you are being incorporated like living stones. Yes, it’s true you were once no people — you were nobodies — but now you are God’s own people, and that makes you somebody!

The simple truth of all of this is that God has indeed turned the world upside down — and inside out! As Jesus’ own mother had sung at the beginning, when she heard the word of his Incarnation, “God has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly and meek. ”

And what could be more upside down and inside out than the resurrection itself? God has brought his own beloved Son out of the darkness of death and into the marvelous light of new life, rolling away the stone and turning the tomb that held him inside out. So too each Christian, is blessed and baptized and forgiven and freed from the death of sin. And no matter how lowly your estate before, you have become a member of a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. No wonder the civic leaders of the status quo were worried about this new religion; no wonder the authorities wanted to clamp down on this new faith; the Gospel is nothing less than revolutionary!

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And the revolution continues for each Christian believer, if not at the scale of the worldly society, then at least for each and every one of us as we engage in our own struggles with the pressures each of us faces. For Christ turns each and every one of us, and our own personal worlds, upside down and inside out.

God, it seems, puts his people through a good bit of a tumble in this life. And we might well ask, Why? If Jesus loves us so much; if, as he says in today’s Gospel that he is going to prepare a place for us, and he will come and get us, why doesn’t he just do so and take us now? In a rapture — all of us, right now! Why the wait? Why do we go through this earthly life at all if what we are really meant for is heaven?

Well, Peter has already given us the answer. We are like newborns in the faith — our eyes closed and happily nursing on the spiritual milk of Mother Church, provided to us, and helping us to grow; but we are still in the process of growth into salvation, as Peter calls it. Only God knows when we will be ready for him to come to take us to our everlasting home. Sometimes indeed God seems to take people too soon, while there are others for whom, it seems, God holds back. But preparation is needed, and God is the preparer.

This is why Peter uses the image of a building: the stones for the building — which is to say, us — have to be cut and polished and fit into the places that God the heavenly Architect intends for them. And such preparation and such building takes time.

On the twenty-eighth will be the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the laying of the cornerstone for this church. This church didn’t just plop down fully made, unpacked out of a cardboard box and set up; it had to be built; a foundation had to be dug; stones had to be laid to hold up the rest of the building.

There’s a TV show on the Science Channel called “Strip the City” — I don’t know if any of you have seen it. But they make use of computer animation to peel away the outsides of buildings, and even of the streets — rolling them back like carpet to show the subways, and the plumbing, and the sewers and everything the lies underneath. It’s amazing: cities aren’t just from the ground up; they go down, down, down. And in fact it’s the stuff below that nourishes the city: that’s where the water comes from, that’s where the electricity comes from; that’s where people travel to and from their work. There’s a whole lot there, underneath — the foundation.

And for us something else is in that foundation. For us, that foundation is Jesus Christ; who was buried — remember — he was buried, he was put below, he descended into Hell, so that he could hold up a whole new world. Imagine the great building that this new world is: those who have gone before rest on that firm foundation of Jesus Christ, and other stones laid down rank by rank, like the Apostles. They rest on Christ, and then the next generation and the next, building and building this spiritual temple — into which we too will be added when our time comes, God’s time — not ours. He is the architect, we are the stones. God will take us when he knows that we have been tumbled enough through life to have our edges smoothed, our rough spots worn down, when we have been cut to shape and formed for the purpose God has for us.

But we are not quite ready yet. You may recall that famous line from a movie a few years back, when Jack Nicholson confronts Tom Cruise, who says he wants to know the truth. Nicholson snarls, “Truth! You can’t handle the truth!” Well, we face an even greater Truth; the one who is the Truth, and the Way, and the Life. And we know that that is true. But we are not yet quite ready to face the Living God in all his majesty and awe; we are still in our spiritual infancy, still incompletely formed and polished.

It is not that Jesus is not ready for us, but that we are not ready for him. We are still in the process of being shaped and formed for the proper fit in his temple on high. All our life is part of that preparation — a school of hard knocks sometimes, but also the school of God’s mercy. All our life is preparation. And when the time comes — God’s time, not ours — as that wonderful old hymn puts it, after “many a blow and biting sculpture” has “polished well those stones elect” we will find ourselves — one day — “in our places now compacted by the heavenly Architect.”

The time will come, beloved, when we close our eyes one last time on this earth, and Christ takes us by the hand to lead us to be with him where he is. The time will come when the pains and sorrows and challenges of being chiseled and battered and polished will be well worth it. When the heavenly Architect slips us into place in his temple in the heavenly city, we will see just why he has shaped us in the way he did, so that we could be all that he intends us to be: living stones for his spiritual temple — for ever. And in Jerusalem the golden, with milk and honey blest, we will bask forever in the radiancy of glory, and the bliss beyond compare.+

Formed-Conformed-Transformed

We are not called to vest ourselves in the camouflage of this world — a sermon for Proper 16a

SJF • Proper 16a 2011 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God-what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Who goes there? That is the challenge put by the sentry to anyone who comes to the border-crossing or gate. The sentry of course wants primarily to know if the one approaching is friend or foe, and will then react accordingly. Any of you who travel, especially internationally, know the importance of having a passport at the ready in order to show your identity, which in this case boils down to your birthplace, citizenship and reason for travel.

Who you are, it seems, depends a good bit on who is asking the question, and what it is about you that they are interested in, rather than in who and what you really are deep down at the depths of your being.

In many cultures the primary factor that identifies a person is ancestry. The first question you might be asked is, “What is your name?” Or “Who are your people?” The prophet Isaiah comes from such a tradition; that Jewish culture in which ancestry is extremely important — in case you ever wondered why the Old Testament has all those lists of who begat whom! Isaiah challenged his hearers to recall that ancestry — to remember that they are descendants of Abraham the righteous and Sarah the faithful. He wants them to recall that they are God’s chosen people, God’s nation, by virtue of their inheritance and family connection: as with grace itself, it is not something they have done, but solely due to God’s ancient choice of Abraham a thousand years and more before their time, that identifies them as who they are.

In many cultures it is your job or occupation that determines who or what you are in that society. In medieval Japan, many people didn’t even have personal names, but were simply known by the name of their occupation. And let's be fair: we don’t have to go quite so far as medieval Asia to find that in our own heritage — especially if your name is Sawyer or Smith, or Cook or Cooper, or Brewer or Baker — your name may well tell you something about one of your ancestors or even your family business in former times!

More importantly, people can form an opinion of you or make a judgment about you on the basis of the most casual and superficial things about you. They can judge you by how you dress — and be impressed if you are well-dressed or write you off if you are too casual, with no real account taken of the person under the fabric. “Clothes make the man” as the old saying goes, and it probably goes double for women. This is a serious matter, because how you appear in the eyes of others will be a major determining factor in what you are able to do in life — and to tie two of these identity factors together: how you dress for a job interview may be more important than what you put on your resumé or what work-skills you possess! How you dress may determine or limit what you end up doing for a living.

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The fact is, however, that what your passport says or who your ancestors were or what you do for a living or how you dress do not really say who you are deep down. But if the powers that be, whether the border guards, or the customs officials, or the job interviewers, give more weight to these external signs and symbols — which to be fair to them is all they have to go on — you may never get the opportunity to reveal more of your true self. You will have been formed by these aspects of your past or your outfit, identified not as who you are but as who you appear to be by those to whom you appear.

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In today’s gospel Jesus is entangled in much this same situation. Rather than proclaiming his own identity he asks the disciples what the word on the street is about him — who do people say that he is? The disciples report the usual list of prophets old and new — the word is out and about that Jesus is somehow either the reincarnation of, or is acting in the spirit of, one of the prophets of old, or even of John the Baptist. John, as we know from the Gospels, is only six months older than Jesus. He knew the value of how to dress the part — dressed in the costume of Elijah the prophet. But he had already fallen victim to Herod the Tetrarch and his dancing daughter-in-law. Yet even Herod himself saw something of John in Jesus.

But Jesus knows that he is none of these things — although he is acting in the prophetic spirit that John revived, Jesus is much, much more than a mere prophet — and he will not be formed by that opinion or conformed by the expectations of the crowd. He will not become what they want him to be. He will be who he is, which is, as the old Greek Fathers said, “He Who Is.” And so he presents the disciples with a second question, a more personal question for their opinion, the opinion of those who know him best — asking, But who do you say that I am? — to see if they are more perceptive than those crowds. And Peter proclaims that Jesus is the Messiah, the son of the living God.

Jesus accepts Peter’s proclamation as a divinely inspired revelation — and there is a sense of relief in his words: finally, it seems, someone has understood who he is, in all of his transforming, transfiguring power. The feast of the Transfiguration was on the calendar just a few weeks ago on the first Saturday in August, but to give due credit to Peter and his inspiration, that miraculous revelation of Christ in glory on the mountaintop comes later in Matthew’s gospel — shortly after the incident portrayed today — coming as if to confirm Peter’s perceptive proclamation of Jesus as the Messiah. That follow-up revelation is a kind of certification, a kind of setting the seal of the power of God present and active in the person of Jesus Christ, God in man made manifest: Not just someone dressed for the part of a prophet, but deep down through and through, true God and true Man, He Who Is.

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As Christians we are called to be transformed from our merely ancestral identities, our biological and familial heritage; we are called to transcend society’s expectations and limitations; we are challenged to resist the temptation to dress ourselves in the camouflage of this world, and instead to be clothed from above with the likeness of Christ and the armor of God — not conformed to this world, but transformed by the renewing of our minds so that we may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

This is how we will find our true identity. And there is in the long run a job description that goes with it. If we are to be known by the occupations of our lives — let them be the occupations that Paul describes as the signs of God’s presence and our true identity as God’s children: in prophecy in proportion to our faith, in ministry and teaching and exhortation, in generosity and leadership and diligence and compassion and cheerfulness. When the challenge comes, “Who goes there?” this is the kind of answer a Christian should be prepared to give. I don’t know about you, but if people are going to judge me on the basis of what I do, that’s how I would like to be known! Cheerful, truthful, generous, diligent, and compassionate. Sounds good to me. How about you?+

Another Mountain

SJF • Last Epiphany a 2011 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Six days after Peter had acknowledged Jesus as the Christ, the son of the living God, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain by themselves.+

Last week we ended a series of Gospel readings and sermons about the Sermon on the Mount. In one of those sermons, I pointed out that Jesus was acting as a new Moses in his teaching on the mountain. And today we hear in our first reading a reference to that original mountain: Mount Sinai, the place where God bent the heavens, came down in the appearance of a devouring fire on the top of the mountain, and a cloud covered the mountain and Moses went up into the cloud. There it was that God gave Moses the law upon which Jesus would later expand his teaching in his own sermon on that other mount.

In today’s Gospel reading we come to yet another mountain: the mountain of transfiguration. Jesus takes that trusted trio, Peter, James (our own patron saint) and his brother John, up a high mountain. Once there the three disciples witness a dazzling spectacle, a transformation and a Transfiguration. Jesus’s face shines like the sun and his clothes become dazzling white. As if that’s not enough, two others join the spectacle: Moses himself and Elijah the prophet. Peter is so awestruck he thinks he’s died and gone to heaven — and in a sense he has, for what he sees is a vision of Christ in glory. All Peter can say is that it is good to be there; so good he’s willing to build three houses for Jesus and these honored visitors from Israel’s past, the giver of God’s law and the prophet of God’s truth.

But suddenly, before anything else can happen, the cloud enshrouds them and the voice of God rings out: This is my Son! This is, of course, by way of contrast. Though Jesus was to some extent a new Moses, and hailed by many as a great prophet, God wants no confusion: this is not just the giver of God’s law nor the prophet of God’s truth but God’s own Son, the Beloved, with whom God is well pleased. Moses showed God’s way, Elijah proclaimed God’s truth, but Jesus brings new life as well.

In is perhaps good to remember at this point the first, the Number One of the Ten Commandments that God delivered on that other mountain: “I am the Lord your God... you shall have no other gods before me... you shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or under the earth. You shall not bow down to them and worship them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God.” It is good to remember that and contrast it to what is happening on this other mountain. If we ever needed evidence that Jesus is the Son of God, here it is: for the jealous God, the One who wants no one to bow to anyone or anything but him, here tells the three disciples who Jesus is and what they are to do regarding him. This is God’s Son — Way, Truth and Life — and the commandment this time is that they — and we — are to listen to him. They have seen Christ in glory, and are to do as he says.

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The ancient Greeks had the idea that by beholding beauty and greatness people could be made better. Whether it was in the noble tragedies of their theater or in the beauty of architecture or sculpture, they had the idea that beauty could elevate one’s heart and soul.

In is an idea with some staying power. Christians had the same idea when they built the great cathedrals and composed the soaring music of the liturgy. Who could fail to have their hearts lifted as they raised their eyes to trace the vaulted ceilings of those great cathedrals, or allowed their ears to be filled with the sound of an echoing choir in one of those vast spaces, dappled with the sunlight from glorious stained glass windows.

The idea was still at work in the middle of the 19th century. The great Anglican priest Edward Bouverie Pusey anonymously funded the decoration and repair of a parish church in Leeds, in the heart of a region affected by the Industrial Revolution, in a city that even today seems to be drawn in coal-dust tones of charcoal and whitewash. Every art was lavished on the creation of this place of worship, so that those who worked among what William Blake called “these dark satanic mills” might at least, on the Lord’s Day, have a glimpse of the beauty that might lift their hearts and make them better men and women. Pusey believed that a vision of heaven here on earth could point people in the right direction. He wrote, of heaven itself: “Where shall there be an end of loving, where love is endless, infinite? or of gazing on Beauty Infinite, where that very Beauty by our longing and its Sight shall draw us more and more into Itself.”(Sermons 280-81)

In a more modern context, religion professor Jacob Needleman writes of witnessing the night launch of the Apollo 17 mission. Before the take-off, people were joking, drinking, crowded together on the lawn, jostling each other in the twilight, waiting for the giant rocket — 35 stories tall — to take off. He put it this way: “The first thing you see is this extraordinary orange light, which is just at the limit of what you can bear to look at. Everything is illuminated with this light. Then comes this thing slowly rising up in total silence because it takes a few seconds for the sound to come across. [When it does] you can practically hear jaws dropping. The sense of wonder fills everyone in the whole place as this thing goes up and up. The first stage ignites this beautiful blue flame. It becomes like a star, but you realize there are humans on it. And then there’s total silence. People just get up quietly, helping each other up. They’re kind. They open doors. They look at one another, speaking quietly and interestedly. These were suddenly moral people because the sense of wonder, the experience of wonder had made them moral.”

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Maybe, maybe. For even as I tell this story, I am keenly aware of the danger in being so uplifted by the beauty of a man-made thing, the work of our own hands: whether a Greek temple or a stained-glass window; or a noble tragedy or a rocket bearing the name of a pagan God — do we fall into the danger of idolatry, the very thing warned against in that first commandment from that other mountain? Is this impressive beauty and wonder truly making us better and raising our hearts to God, or just impressing us with the kind of awe that our ancient ancestors must have felt in viewing the starry heavens or the sun and the moon and thinking they were gods, rather than the work of God’s hands. When we see the glory of nature, when we look down from lofty mountain grandeur, or hear the brook and feel the gentle breeze... do we always remember that the beauty and inspiration are meant to lead our souls to sing to God, and to proclaim, How great thou art? There is all the difference in the world between the beauty of holiness and the holiness of beauty!

For there are mountains and there are mountains, and various sorts of mountaintop experiences. Do all of them make us better people? It depends on whether we are willing, after our hearts have been lifted, to bow in humble adoration, and to do as God said at the end of that mountaintop experience on that one particular mountain: to listen to his beloved Son to follow him on his Way, in his Truth, by his Life.

For after the spectacle, after the glory, Jesus left the mountain; he descended into the Valley — eventually not just of the shadow of death but of death itself — and he took his disciples with him. This is where we will follow him through the next six weeks on our Lenten journey. We will be with him through his temptations and the challenges he faced — on up through the greatest of those challenges: to sacrifice himself for us upon the cross. That is where he was lifted high, so that he might draw the whole world to himself.

On the mountain or on the cross, he is the one to whom we should listen, the one whom we should follow and adore, Jesus the Christ, the Son of the Living God, to whom we bow in humble adoration and say, How great thou art!+

Child's Play

SJF • Advent 2a • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.

Advent is the season of the church year in which we prepare our minds and hearts for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, not only the yearly commemoration of his coming as a newborn infant to the stable in Bethlehem, but in watchful preparation for the as yet to be realized coming in glory at the end of time, when he will judge the quick and the dead in perfect righteousness. So we find ourselves, in Advent, somewhat torn between two images: the sweet Christ Child in the manger, and the transfigured, majestic figure of the everlasting Judge and King, whose coming is foretold by the wild prophet John the Baptist.

On this Sunday, however, the two images come together. We see this in the prophet Isaiah’s description of the peaceable kingdom, the vision of God’s just and righteous reign. At first the vision of the one who shall come forth from the root of Jesse sounds like the same mighty judge John the Baptist promises. Here is one upon whom the Spirit rests, who is full of wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and fear of the Lord. Here is one who shall judge with righteousness and equity, whose very voice strikes the earth like a rod, whose breath slays the wicked.

But then the imagery shifts. Suddenly all is peaceful: wild beasts of forest and field no longer prey on the domesticated animals of pasture and barnyard, but graze and nestle beside them. The two worlds, wild and domestic, come together in peace. And, wonder of wonders, all this harmony is orchestrated, brought about and led not by an army of lion-tamers with pistols and whips, or a crowd of Australian alligator wrestlers with cages and anesthetic darts, but by a little child. Even more surprising, infants young enough still to be nursing, and others just starting on solid food, can play with snakes in perfect safety, the symbol of human enmity with the natural world from our infancy in the Garden of Eden — the serpent — has lost it’s poison, and has become a plaything for the children of Adam and Eve. The peaceful lordship that turns the curse of Adam on its head, the peaceable kingdom established on God’s holy mountain is, simply put, child’s play.

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Now, this is not frivolous talk. Few things are more serious than child’s play. I really mean that. Have you ever watched children playing? Children take their play very seriously, and the more deeply involved in play they are, the more intense their concentration. Where else but in play do you see actual wrinkles form on the foreheads of children? Where else but in play do you see little tongues appear at the edges of tiny mouths, as tiny hands struggle to make a puzzle come out just right, a doll’s hair be styled in high fashion, or a plastic peg hammered down just so with a plastic hammer into a plastic hole? No, children at play are quite intent on their playing!

Children in a snowball fight are as focused on their battle as any general. And I dare not even mention the intensity of a child apparently glued to a Game Boy, or a Wii or a Nintendo or a PlayStation! And a five-year-old girl hosting a tea party for her dolls and teddy bears will — should you be honored with an invitation to such an event — enforce upon you a protocol as polished and rigorous as a state banquet in the White House. The Cabbage Patch twins must always be served first, in recognition of their youth, while Barbie, being a mature young lady, is expected to be patient, and Pooh Bear has to be watched lest he sneak a cookie before the proper time. As you balance the tiny saucer and minuscule teacup, savoring the invisible tea and make-believe cake, you are apt to marvel at the child’s knowledge of etiquette, and her stern resolve to enforce it.

Yes, the prophet was right in describing the kingdom of God in terms of child’s play, for child’s play is not frivolous. It is just that we tend to forget this as we grow older. As we grow older, out of the pure and clear world of childhood, we adults are apt to begin making compromises, to settle on less than we really want, to move from the clarity of the black and white into those shades of grey. And we tend to see this as maturity. We gain peace at the cost of principle. We become judicious; we weigh profit and loss ratios, and we deal and we compromise; and we settle. And how often do we end up with far less than justice and righteousness for the sake of an imaginary peace — a peace that turns out not to be peace at all.

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But the judge, the judge eternal described by Isaiah, comes to us with the ferocious intensity of a child, a single-minded child who can look straight through our adult compromises to the burning truth of our failures. He does not judge by what he sees or hears, this eternal judge whose coming we await. What? A judge who pays no attention to evidence? What kind of justice is that? Who wants a trial before a judge who passes sentence before he hears our excuses and our explanations and our rationalizations?

But my friends, this is the justice of a child, of the child. The child who knows what’s fair and what’s not, and from whose ringing sentence, “It isn’t fair!” there is no appeal. The child who knows when her parents have been arguing, however much they try to pretend it’s all O.K. for her sake. The child knows when he’s being lied to, however good our intentions, and his piercing eyes see through us as if we were so much cellophane. The child who knows the rules for snowball fights and tea-parties, and dispenses the firm justice, the laws of equity, of the playground. The child who knows how to tame animals more real than the ones of flesh and blood, the animals of the playroom, where Pooh Bear and Barney the Dinosaur take tea together, and the Lion King eats cookies from a plate. And all the while, the child hostess oversees this feast with serious attention, and a sense of what is fair and right that puts any adult tribunal to shame.

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This is what the Justice and Lordship of Jesus is like, the just, clear, and focused reign of the Son of God. Under the watchful eye of this child who comes forth from the root of Jesse, all our excuses and compromises and rationalizations are laid bare. All of our efforts to bend the rules are exposed. All of our lording it over one another, preying on each other like wolves and bears and lions, is shown up for what it is.

But the good news is that this Child of God who comes to judge us is merciful as well as just. Though he sees right through us, perhaps because he sees right through us, he will also save us, for though he sees how shallow we are he knows we are worth saving. And his loving justice can begin to transform us, and redeem our corrupted nature as surely as it undoes the curse of Adam. The old curse is done away with, transforming serpents into playthings, undoing the ancient enmity between the wild and the domestic. Under the miraculous rule of this divine child-king even our own rough nature is transformed, our rough coats of wolf-grey fur, soften and turn to plush. Our shaggy lions’ manes are trimmed and turn bright yellow, festive with bows and ribbons. Our leopard spots turn into polka-dots. Rough grizzly bears grow plump and soft and dip their blunted claws into a jar plainly labeled H-U-N-Y. And all of us together gather around the tea-table, colorful bows around our necks and ribbons in our hair, as the Child pours us our tea, and feeds us cakes, and we partake of the sacrament of peace — coming to God’s kingdom, at long last, precisely and exactly as he said we would have to come: as children.

May we then, dear sisters and brothers in Christ, be ready to enter the heavenly child’s-play of the this miracle child, the just and righteous rule of the Son of God, whose infant hands possess all might, majesty, power and dominion, henceforth and forever more.+

Dorothy's God

SJF • Proper 16c 2010 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Our God is a consuming fire…+

If we were to imagine our Scripture readings today as items on a supermarket shelf, and then to take a look at the list of ingredients, we would find: sheer terror, sweeping hail, sprinkled blood, consuming fire, strange deeds, alien works, weeping and gnashing of teeth. I don’t know about you, but when I read a label like that I place the box back on the shelf, and look for one with fewer calories and less fat.

Today’s readings confront us with a God who is completely unlike us— whether thundering like a volcano on Mount Sinai, or in a technicolor spectacle with a cast of thousands on Mount Zion. So we find ourselves, you and I and every human being since Adam and Eve, gently returning this God to the shelf, and going off in search of the diet section. This God is just too rich and heavy; we’d rather just have an apple.

History ever since that apple in the garden is full of lo-cal religion, and the Letter to Hebrews cites another example. We’ll hear the full account itself in a few weeks, but I’m sure you remember it. The children of Israel, have been brought out of Egypt with mighty works, assembled by God in a holy place where they might be changed into a new people. They behold God’s majesty from afar, and God does them the great service of hand-carving his word in stone with letters of fire, entrusting it to Moses, who brings it to the people in a physical, visible form that can be seen and touched — for God deeply desires to be in Covenant with them. But Moses finds — what? — that the people have already lost their faith that God can deliver the goods. They turn from the living God to the works of their own hands, where they think they can take charge, in a faithless exercise of their own selfish self-determination. They want more control. They are happier with a manufactured god, a golden calf who won’t do much of anything for them— but who will ask nothing of them.

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Manufactured gods can take many forms. Politics has always played its part: from the time Isaiah refers too, when the rulers in Jerusalem vainly promised safety because they’d done a deal with death, through all the schemes that politicians have produced ever since: from the Divine Right of Kings to the Dictatorship of the Proletariat; big government or small government; Tory or Whig; Democrat or Republican; Tea-Party Independent or Party Loyalist.

The truth of the matter is, that behind all of these tin-plate gods, and all our more personal household gods, there lurks the fearsome knowledge, deep-down, that these substitutes can’t really replace the noisy, alien God on the mountaintop. Deep down we know that golden calves are powerless. But we put up with their powerlessness, and even in the long run try to whittle God down to size, to seek to treat God like one of these powerless Gods: to put God in a box. So we nurse the hope that as we approach the fearsome mountain we will discover that God will turn out, after all, to be a nice old man hiding behind a curtain off to the side. What we all want in the short run is a God like Dorothy’s Wizard of Oz.

We know that the special effects are our human substitutes for God, they are only special effects; they don’t really do anything; they don’t really change anything. But then, we don’t really want to be changed, do we? We just want what we want. We maybe don’t mind some external alterations, but we don’t want to be changed, transformed deep down where we need it most, right in our hearts. So we go for the superficial answers of artificial gods, of a carnival huckster turned “wizard.”

And the nice old wizard — the phoney religion — appears to deliver at first. Everyone seems to get what they want: a brain, a heart, courage, even a trip home. The short-run god appears to deliver.

But what happens in the long run? We know the disappointing answer. Artificial gods cannot save. The crash diet doesn’t work. The government, big or small, centralized or federalized, communist or capitalist, can’t solve the problems of the world, far less satisfy the inner needs of the human heart — where all of the world’s problems have their start. Artificial gods can’t provide us with what we need in the long run— just as artificial food can’t nourish us.

Artificial gods can only provide artificial blessings: love as mechanical as the Tin Man’s clockwork heart; courage as cheap as the Cowardly Lion’s plated medal; wisdom as thin as the Scarecrow’s diploma; and a home that there’s no place like, because there never was such a place.

The short-run solutions of artificial gods don’t last. What happened after Oz? Did the Tin Man go through a mid-life crisis and succumb to metal fatigue; did the Lion with his new-found courage perish in a fatal bungee-jumping mishap; perhaps the Scare-crow had a nervous breakdown? And Dorothy— or rather, let’s call her by her adopted name, Judy Garland; because even that wasn’t her real name, which was Frances Gumm — we know what happened to her: “home” for her became a sanitarium; and the false gods of drugs and alcohol got her in the end. The short-run, make-do, lo-cal, no-fat, man-made gods don’t work.

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So then, are we left with no other choice than the mighty fortress God, the One of Sinai and Zion? Yes, I’m afraid that’s it, my friends; for salvation lies on the mountain — for only there is the sure foundation that offers opportunity for change, the kind of change that means life: deep down change — right here — where change needs to begin. It is in God’s nature to shake things up— God is not safe, as C. S. Lewis said — God shakes us up, God shakes the world up, not to destroy it, but to set it, and us, right. God is like the cosmic Dad who fixes the TV by giving it a miraculous bang on the side. God is like the cosmic Mom who cleans the throw rug by briskly shaking it out the back window. God is the cosmic Lover who grabs hysterical humanity by the shoulders and gives it a shake — and brings it to its senses.

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But there is even more to this mystery. There is more than the fire and the flame, the lightning and the thunder. It turns out that God is behind the curtain after all. Not the deceptive and concealing curtain behind which the Wizard of Oz hid, but the curtain of the temple, torn open from top to bottom, revealing our God to be — not a carnival humbug with ready explanations and inadequate answers — but a naked, wounded, suffering figure nailed to a cross, forgiving those who nailed him to it: one who shakes us up in the depth of our being and changes us through and through, through the power of his loving, transforming, sacrificial forgiveness. What can be more upsetting than for someone whom you have hurt to say, “I forgive you”? That is what changes us, deep down.

Behind and within the earthshaking mystery, behind and within the utterly different, we discover someone who is utterly the same. We meet someone who ate at people’s tables, who taught in their streets — this same Jesus, of one being with the God who thundered on Sinai’s height, who was praised and will be praised on the hill of Zion, and who finally appeared in the scandalous and transforming power of his saving and forgiving death on that third hill, Calvary.

What is more, Jesus comes among us still — do you know that? — and deigns to be our guest. He eats at our tables— do we pay attention to his dinner conversation? He teaches in our streets — but are we too busy to take notice of what he says? His brothers and sisters are all around us, and as we do to them, we do to him. Do we reject the God who comes to us as one like us, as surely as those at the foot of Sinai rejected the God who revealed himself to them as something so unlike them? We do so at our peril. The Summary of the Law bids us love God and neighbor.

Our call is to remain rooted in God, safe in the mighty fortress amidst the storm, trusting that God will change us so that we can change the world, the world in which we meet God and neighbor. We are called to strive for the real well-being of every man, woman, and child whom we meet, in the knowledge that all of them are made in God’s image.

Our faith is not perfect, nor is our performance. We are still in the process of being changed, and we struggle and resist that change. We still try to keep God at arm’s length. The problem is, it’s very hard to pass through the narrow door to life with our arms held out in stubborn refusal to be led or carried. Our arms can be put to better use: to reach out to each other, to feed and clothe, to hold and if need be to carry each other. When we do so we are touching another child of God, and we change each other as God has changed us.

We have come this morning, after all, to something that can be touched. Not stone tablets hewn from a mountainside, but the responsive hands of our neighbors that clasp ours in peace.

Our hands in just a few minutes will join around this banquet table, hand to hand with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and all the folk from north, south, east, and west, gathered with the spirits of the righteous made perfect. And so, let us give thanks, offering to God an acceptable worship — as we have been accepted — to the only God, living and true, who dwells in light inaccessible, but who deigns to dwell with us as one of us as well.+

The Sign of the Wine

SJF • Epiphany 2c 2010 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
The steward said, “You have kept the good wine until now.”+

Have you ever heard the expression, You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear? It’s one of those proverbial impossible tasks, like spinning straw into gold, herding cats, getting blood from a turnip, or sculpting with Jell-O. Today we come to the wedding feast at Cana, like uninvited guests looking on from the sidelines, and getting a glimpse of an interchange between Jesus, his mother, and what we’d now-a-days call the head waiter. In this little drama, we witness the first sign through which Jesus revealed his glory, changing water into wine.

Now, just as a sow’s ear is no place to start if you’re making a silk purse, or straw to make gold, or a turnip to get blood, or cats for a parade, or Jell-O for a sculpture, water is not what you start with if you want to make wine. What you need is the fruit of the vine: grapes. The only water that comes into it is the rain that waters the vineyard: it’s grapes that wine comes from, and all of the water from the Creation through the Flood would have done no good to Noah, when it came to making the first wine, if the ground after the flood had not brought forth grapes. Everybody knows that, and they knew it in Jesus’ day just as well as we do now. Perhaps even better: Because every town back then had its winepress, and wine was the everyday drink of just about everyone.

So they knew then as we know now, that water doesn’t change into wine. In fact, water doesn’t really change into anything, all by itself, does it? Left to itself, it evaporates! Even ice and steam have to be frozen solid or boiled up if they are to change into another of H2O’s three states: fluid, vapor, and solid. Let solid ice melt, or vaporous steam condense, and you’re back to plain old liquid water. (That’s our chemistry lesson for the day.) Fact is, you can try to change water all you want, but all you’ll get is wet.

Nor can you simply add things to water to change it into wine, at least not good wine. You may remember the story of the stone soup that I some years ago. Of course water can become soup if you add onions, barley, carrots, meat, and salt and spices. Even if you added “wine concentrate” to water — something to make any wine-lover cringe — you aren’t really making wine — any more than stirring a teaspoon of Tang into a glass of water “makes” it into orange juice! Remember Tang? Whatever you do, no human power can change water into wine all by itself.

So that’s why what Jesus did is a miracle, which isn’t just something to amaze, it isn’t some magic trick, but something to instruct: it is, as our Gospel calls it, not a miracle but a sign — a sign that points to some great truth about who it is Jesus is. It is a sign that doesn’t just amaze but also reveals something about Jesus; it reveals his glory and leads his disciples to greater faith in him. Only Jesus could take water and make it change its very being, its very substance, until it simply wasn’t water any more, but wine — and good wine at that!

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Of course, the sign that Jesus performed isn’t ultimately about wine, but about transformation, about the kind of transformed lives that Jesus calls us to live. The amazement may have been about the wine, but the sign is about the change — the change that begins in him, when he became one of us, and changed human nature.

Sometimes we think that transformation is modifying how we act in response to the world around us. But transformation isn’t about a change in external shape or state or form, like water changing to ice or steam in response to the changing temperature. All of us know, from how many years of new years’ resolutions that have dissolved themselves early in the year, that simply promising yourself that you’ll keep your cool under stress; or telling yourself to build up a head of steam to finish a project long overdue, or that you’ve postponed, just won’t work. The pressure (or lack of pressure) of a changing environment doesn’t really change us but instead reveals what we really are, just as changing temperature and pressure show what ice and steam really are: water.

We will lose our cool under stress, and get burned out when the heat and pressure of responsibility rises, and we do get lazy and unproductive when the pressure is off. So human transformation isn’t about changing how we act or react.

But then is transformation about adding something to ourselves? No, for as we saw with water, transformation isn’t about adding ingredients to make either soup or reconstituted wine, or the beverage of astronauts! That doesn’t change the water, it just flavors it.

Sometimes we think that if only we could add something to ourselves, if only we had more money, or a different job, or even different clothes, we’d become different people. But we all know that more money doesn’t really change a person or a personality. The winner of the lottery may turn out to be just as miserable as she was before, when she discovers all those “friends” she didn’t know she had. A new job may bring out hidden talents, or even perhaps help you develop new skills, but you will still be you. And in spite of the proverb, clothes do not make the man — and he can end up being all dressed up with no place to go! True transformation has to go deeper — right to the heart.

Some years ago, Adolph Coors IV, then heir to the huge Colorado brewing industry, was at a prayer service and believed he had undergone a conversion: so he swore he would give up the beer-brewing business and lead a new life. Shortly thereafter, however, he recalled how Jesus transformed water into wine, and decided it was OK to stay in the beer business after all! His conversion was short-lived and his transformation was superficial and temporary.

The long and the short of it is that on our own we can (for a time) change what we do but we can’t for good and all, and on our own, change who we be. If we aren’t transformed inour very nature, no outward addition or action, or subtraction or restraint of action for that matter, is going to make us something other than what we are.

That water at Cana of Galilee couldn’t do anything or have anything added to it to make it into wine. What it needed was a word spoken by Jesus, to be poured into jars, and to be ladled out and tasted and enjoyed. True transformation doesn’t happen apart from Jesus. Those jugs of water could have sat in Cana from the wedding day to the day of doom, and never would have changed to wine unless Jesus had chosen to do as his mother asked. And when he did, all it took was a word of command to the servants: fill up the jars with water, and then draw out the wine.

So too, we will not change — we can not change — unless we are open to Jesus and the word he speaks to us. Unless we hear his commandment to be filled with his love, and then to pour out that love to those around us, we will never be transformed. We cannot do it on our own. We will remain empty jars standing in the corner unless we are willing to let his love be poured into our hearts, where by means of his word he can transform it into the joyful wine of God’s Spirit, which we can then share in rejoicing and fellowship.

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All of us are keenly aware of the horrific tragedy that has struck the people of Haiti this past week. All of us are, I am sure, strongly hoping that this tragic situation can be transformed. And to some extent it can — as we too are inwardly transformed and empowered by God’s Holy Spirit, in a burst of generosity to send help as soon as we can to those suffering people. As you know, tomorrow is Martin Luther King Day, and we normally take up a collection to support the MLK Scholarship. I want to suggest to you today that we split what we would normally send to that scholarship fund in half, and send the other half to Episcopal Relief and Development for their coordinated push to help the people of Haiti. I think Dr. King would approve, and I hope you do, too. Do you? Through the transformation of our hearts, our offering too can be transformed into practical help — we can’t change water into wine, but we can change money into food, medical supplies, and feet on the ground — we can convert our dollars into life-saving help.

And so in our own small way, may we, who have died with Christ in the water of baptism, heard his word of command in the Gospel, and drunk the wine of his most precious blood, be inwardly transformed by him who died for us, and who lives in us, even Jesus Christ our Lord. +