A Sermon
for the Last Sunday after the Epiphany (RCL B) 2-19-2012
Offered by
Nathan Ferrell for Trinity Episcopal Shared Ministry
Texts: 2
Kings 2:1-12; Psalm 50:1-6; 2 Corinthians 4:3-6; Mark 9:2-9
Themes: transfiguration
on the mountain, light shining in darkness, new visionTitle: Not Insects, but Buffalo!
In the 1950’s, an African Pygmy named
Kenge took his first trip out of the dense tropical rainforest that was his
home. He was taken out onto the broad savannah plains of Tanzania. Far in the
distance across the savannah was a herd of Cape buffalo. They appeared as small
black specks against the bright sky. The pygmy man stared at the buffalo in the
distance, then turned to the anthropologist accompanying him, and asked, “What
kind of insects are those?”
When the anthropologist replied that
those were not insects, but rather were buffalo, Kenge roared in laughter and
told the anthropologist that he should not tell such stupid lies.
(Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on
Happiness, 2006.)
This western anthropologist was not
stupid and he was not lying.
You see, before this moment, this pygmy
man Kenge had spent his entire life on the floor of the thick rainforest, where
he had never been able to see more than just a few feet in front of him, let
alone all the way to the horizon.
His brain had never processed an image
of something that was miles away, and so he had no way of perceiving the
reality that something as large as a buffalo – an animal 10 feet long and averaging
1600 lbs of muscle - could appear so small due to the diminishing effect of
distance.
My dear friends: you and I are African
pygmies! No, no, not in the make-up of our bodies. But we are like the African
pygmies at least when it comes to our spiritual vision!
But if it makes you feel any better, so
were all of the apostles. So were Peter, James and John!
Like those peasant fishermen, we live our
entire lives within the thick jungle of experiences which constitute a normal
human life. Dishes and bills and house repairs and dirty diapers and work and
school and illnesses and sore feet and headaches.
Our brains have never processed an image
of reality from God’s point of view. We don’t even know to see divine things.
It’s like Peter up there on the mountain: “OK, Lord, I guess you and Moses and
Elijah will need someplace to stay.” And what kind of insects are those?
Peter had no way to process what he was
seeing. It was beyond anything that he had ever glimpsed.
This is why, I think, the Lord took his
closest friends up on the mountain with him. Until this point, his time with
them had been very, very busy. Sailing across the lake, catching fish, feeding
thousands of people, being surrounded by huge crowds who all wanted something
from Jesus.
It felt a lot like their ordinarily very
busy lives. It was different, of course, living with the Messiah, but they were
still walking with him through the thick rainforest jungle.
But here they are taken out onto the
savannah for the first time in their lives.
Above and beyond and around the crowded
busyness of their lives, there was a luminous divine reality that Peter and
James and John had never yet glimpsed. They believed in the reality of God’s
kingdom, but they had no way to imagine in their minds what the reality of
God’s kingdom actually looked like. Until this trip up to the mountain top.
This Gospel reading appointed for today begins
with a mistake.
For some reason, those who decide such
matters chose to start with verse 2 and to leave out verse one, which is the
actual opening of this scene. Verse one says this:
Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you,
there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the
kingdom of God has come with power.”
And then the text goes on to say that six
days after this announcement is when the Lord takes Peter and James and John up
the mountain and allows them to see the hidden, powerful reality of the kingdom
of God.
What they are allowed to see there upon
the mountain is not some isolated, dramatic experience, but it is rather a
vision of what the life of Jesus is truly like and of what their lives could be
like when they are lived in connection with him.
All of this has to do with sanctifying
our imagination. The gospel allows us to see a different future – one that is
different from our current reality. When we can see this possibility, we have
hope. But what is more astounding is the truth that this good future is already
growing even now in our midst!
Countless scientific studies have shown
that we human beings are most likely to imagine the future based upon what we
are experiencing in the present. Think about how people felt about real estate
values back in 2006 and remember what advice you were hearing then from various
financial advisors. Do you think they ever imagined such huge drops in home
values in such a short time?
Now consider this: Alexander Graham
Bell, the man who invented the first practical working telephone in 1876, once
spoke these words to a reporter who was interviewing him: "It may sound
cocky of me, Sir, but I foresee the day when there will be a telephone in every
town in America!" Do you
think he could have ever imagined a time when there was a phone on every person in America?
It is a fact that our imaginations most
typically are entirely bound by our past memories and by our present
experiences. But God desires us to see, and to imagine, much, much more.
We’ve seen the limits of our ability to
perceive what is beyond our normal experience. Now consider this example of a
sanctified imagination.
There’s a story that was told by the
southern slaves of former years. In this story, a young slave woman is standing
in the hot field, working, harvesting the crop. The overseer is brutally whipping
another slave nearby. Already in this woman’s short life, she has seen too much
pain.
She breaks down right then. She drops
down and cries out, “I can’t take it any more. I can’t take it any more. I
wanna die!”
But old man nearby hears her cry out and
calls to her and says, “Don’t die, baby. Don’t die. Get dressed up and come
with me.”
“So I got dressed up,” she reported,
“and I went with him. You shoulda seen me, dressed up in the finest dress! We
walked together and we walked right over into hell, and right there I spit on
the devil! And then we walked straight into heaven, right before the throne of
God! Everyone was there and we was having a grand time, dancing and singing and
laughing.”
“But then, all a’sudden, the whip hit my
back – CRACK – and I looked up, and there was the master standing over me,
ready to whip me some more.”
“But I laughed with secret laughter,
because he had the whip, but I had all the advantage!”
But I think that this blindness can
afflict all of us, when we see things only as they appear to our eyes, and not
with our faith-inspired imaginations.
Look at what we do today in the sacrament of
baptism. You can look and see only a baby and some water and oil and a candle,
and you can see a pleasant little opportunity for a family to get together and
take some nice pictures and have a good memory (something to fill up pages in
Luke’s baby book).
Or you can look with the eyes of faith
and see something powerful and majestic and eternal – the light of the risen
Lord touching the young soul of this baby boy. You can hear vows that are made
before the very throne of God. And you can imagine all of the saints and the
angels of God – all those beings of radiant goodness – rejoicing that the door
of new and abundant life has been opened now for Luke.
What about in your life? Have you been
able to glimpse the kingdom of God at work beyond and above and around all of
the activities of your daily life? May it always be so that the eyes of your
heart are able to see the light of the glory of God as it is revealed in the
face of Jesus Christ. Amen.
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