Lent 5 Passion

Next Sunday is Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week. The Palm Sunday service has two gospel readings, one for the blessing of the palms and the other the reading of the Passion. We will read the full passion from St. Mark 14 and 15. It is long, and the custom is a dramatic reading – narrator, Jesus, Peter, Judas, Servant-girl, Pilate, Centurion. high priests, disciples, bystanders and crowd.

We can read the Bible for spiritual growth as we imagine ourselves being part of the story, as we imagine the reactions and feelings of people in the story. Over the years the church has found that the dramatic reading of the Passion can help us grow in our spiritual life. It is not easy. Our natural tendency is first denial. We are rightfully uncomfortable as we begin to put ourselves spiritually into the events of Jesus’ death and resurrection. 

One spiritual effect of this personal participation in the Passion of Our Lord is that us recognize our own guilt, our own participation in the sin that brought Jesus to his painful death on the cross. When we hear Jesus say to the disciples at the Last Supper,, “Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me,” we begin with the disciples “to be distressed and” we want “to say to him . . .,   “Surely, not I?”  But Jesus says to us, “It is . . .  one who is dipping bread . . .  with me” 

In our time and in our country we are blessed. We are not in the situation of the Syrian Christians in our own time facing decapitation from ISIS or the 17^th century Japanese forced to stamp on a crucifix or Jan Hus burned at Constance, or Martin Luther in protective custody at Wartburg, or Bishops Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley burned at Oxford. Our denials tend to be  little ones, mostly sins of omission, failing to give an account of the faith that in in us, keeping silent when we should speak up in witness.   

Next Sunday we ask the congregation to read three parts: the parts of the priests and of the disciples, and of the crowd, who cried, “Crucify him, crucify him!”  In Jesus’ time the responsibility for maintaining stable political and economic structures was assigned to the priests. We are all in some way or another implicated in maintaining the injustice and sin of the political and economic structures of our time, so we get to share in the priests’ response to Jesus.  And we call ourselves disciples, spiritual descendants of the 12 whom Jesus called to follow and serve him, so we get to share the disciples’ response to Jesus. And finally we are all spiritual descendants of the bystanders and the crowd that called for Jesus’ crucifixion and jeered at him on the cross. We don’t escape our participation in the sin of the world that brought Jesus to the cross because we share in the joy of his salvation.

Sin is both individual and collective. We have each fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23) in some way, and the society of which we are a part has also fallen short of the glory of God. As Article II of the Augsburg Confession teaches, “all men who are born according to the course of nature are conceived and born in sin. That is, all men are full of evil lust and inclinations from their mothers’ wombs and are unable by nature to have true fear of God and true faith in God.”  The Prayer Book Catechism tells us, “Sin is the seeking of our own will instead of the will of God, thus distorting our relationship with God, with others, and with all creation.” 

So as we read the Passion we are spiritually convicted of our sin and convinced of our need for the redemption Jesus Christ secured for us and for all the world by his death on the cross.  We live in thanksgiving for Jesus’ redemption.

Today’s reading from Jeremiah immediately follows his prophecy (31:29-30), “²⁹ In those days they shall no longer say: ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’ ³⁰ But every one shall die for his own sin; each man who eats sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge.” Jeremiah prophesies a new covenant, written not on tablets of stone like the Sinai covenant but on our hearts, not an external law we obey out of fear, but an internal law of love, a law of gratitude.  We are so grateful for God’s covenant of love and continuing presence that we seek to love and serve him in our lives,.

And when we sin, as we will (it is our nature) by God’s grace we are able to repent and return again and again to our Lord Jesus who receives us with open arms, as he did in Galilee, and on the cross, and in the resurrection, and as he receives us forgiven sinners at his table today.

Lent 4 Manna

Lent 4B 18 Manna

Numbers tells how the people of Israel came from Sinai up the east side of the Dead Sea to cross the Jordan at Jericho. Numbers includes the Aaronic blessing “The Lord bless you” 6:22-26 said in the Lutheran service. It also has lot of complaining and rebellion.

Six weeks after the Exodus the people started to complain (Exodus 16), “In Egypt we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.” That is one of the signs of the spiritual continuity between Israel and the church. The Lord provided manna. Manna tasted like a honey cake, but even honey cakes can get old in time; 35 years of manna every day is enough for people to “detest this miserable food.” 

Manna has been variously identified as tamarisk resin, lichen, plant lice secretions, and mushrooms. The rabbis said manna was a unique and special food, part of God’s provision for his faithful people.

But as the Celebrate notes tell us, not all the people are faithful; many “whine and grumble.” Numbers says God sent poisonous snakes to bite people who complain. Many of us have known at least a few venomous people. We know about the bad consequences of bad behavior. And we have learned the healing power of repentance and confession.

I don’t understand how the snake-bit children of Israel were cured by looking at a bronze serpent lifted up on a pole, but that was the remembered experience of the people. St John says Jesus used the experience in the desert teaching to tell Nicodemus that so “must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

The bronze serpent on the pole was sacramental. It was an outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual grace, the grace of forgiveness which heals the poison of venom in the soul.

Another sacramental is the wedding ring – the unbroken ring a sign of eternal love. And the great sacraments use ordinary things as signs of God’s eternal love and grace. Water washes away dirt – and sin. A small piece of bread and a sip of wine are our spiritual food, our manna in our wilderness of sin.   

Jesus continued with the familiar verse, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”  That is the core of the new covenant. All the covenants – Noah, Abraham, Moses, Numbers, Jeremiah – all are assurances of God’s continued love and presence in this life.  The new covenant is the new assurance of eternal life, life that continues through death into the fullness of God’s presence.

Jesus continued, “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”

These verses frequently raise questions like, “What about those who do not believe, Jews, Muslims, our friends and neighbors who don’t go to church? Does God condemn them?”  The short answer is, No. God does not condemn. “God so loved the world . . . “

So take a step back. Remember the airplane rule. “Put the oxygen mask on your own face first, then on others.” That seems contrary to the Christian ethic of concern for others. But truly, we are to work out our own salvation. The first question is, “Have I claimed for myself the new life Jesus offers? Do I know my own sins are forgiven? Am I a new creature? Have I put the mask on myself? We need to start with what we can deal with, and that is ourselves.  

As I look back on them I recognize my own doubts and fears were not theological, but moral. I was in college, strongly influenced by my hormones. I had not yet internalized the truth that the God who made me loves me. God wants what is best for me. And so I’d best seek to know and do his will. Once I made the commitment of obedience the theology fell into place.

The condemnation is human condemnation, not God’s. We live in lots of human judgment and condemnation. Talk politics; get people of one party talking about the moral failures of the leaders of the other party. Condemnation is human, not divine.  God is righteous and just; he calls us to share divine righteousness and justice. But condemnation is for our own sin, the sin for which Jesus died on the cross.  

“Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. . . . God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

Lent 3 Moses

Lent 3 B 18 Moses

This morning’s sermon has two parts: First two points of explanation to help us understand today’s Gospel reading about the cleansing of the Temple and second a reflection on the covenant of Sinai and the 10 Commandments. So (1) about the people selling cattle and (2) the money changers. (1) selling cattle:

How many of us have been to Jerusalem? On the east edge of the Old City is the Temple Mount – 37 acres (roughly as big as 30 football fields, 5 down and 6 across). Toward the center in Jesus’ time was a relatively small but tall building for the empty room of the Holy of Holies. It was surrounded by the Court of the Priests where animal sacrifices were made, then the Court of the Israelites reserved for ritually clean male Jews, then the Court of the Women for all Jews, and finally the much larger Court of the Gentiles. For the convenience of those who came to make the sacrifices a supply of ritually approved animals was provided in the otherwise empty Court of the Gentiles - the highest and best use of otherwise unused property.

 (2) According to Exodus 30:12, all Jews paid a tax for the support of the Temple – half a shekel, about 14 grams of silver, about $7.50 in our money. It had to be paid in pure silver and the best available was in coins originally minted in the Lebanese port of Tyre and later by the Temple authorities. So you changed your Roman money into Temple money – at an exchange rate set by the Temple authorities. 

You can see how both of these might become a racket. And God is a God of truth. He despises dishonesty and rackets.

And Jesus says the true temple of God is not a building in Jerusalem, but the person, created by God, in whom God dwells by his Holy Spirit. Jesus is the true temple of God, and by his spirit we also are God’s temple.

First Corinthians 3:16-17 and 6:19-20 remind us: “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? . . .God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.” And “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.”

Our question today is how much of the temple of our lives is dedicated to God and how much is taken up with cattle and money changers – with the rackets and ordinary dishonesty of life?  That is an individual question and one that we can reflect on this week and this Lent? Jesus cleansed the physical temple in Jerusalem; Jesus can cleanse the temple of our lives, and he will if we invite him to. That’s the first half of today’s sermon.

The second part of today’s sermon is about the covenant of Sinai and the 10 Commandments. For a long time the recitation of the Ten Commandments has been an examination of conscience and a reminded of our need for salvation by God’s grace in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ which we receive by faith alone and not by works. That is a true and Godly use of the Commandments.

But there is another use of the Commandments and that is as a sign of God’s covenanted love and a guide to a Godly life in thanksgiving for our salvation by God’s grace in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ received by faith alone and not by works. Our Godly life, our good works, do not cause our salvation. Our salvation is God’s free gift received by faith. The commandments show us what a Godly life looks like. 

The commandments are in the negative: “Thou shalt not”  – have, make take, murder, adultery, steal, false witness covet. Turn these around. Imagine how life would be if God alone were central in our lives. Imagine us free from worship of the idols of money, property, prestige. Imagine what our world would be like when children honor parents, parents honor children, husbands honor wives and wives honor husbands (Ephesians), when public servants seek to honor and serve the people, first and always. Imagine a society in which people are safe and secure in their lives, in their intimate relationships, in their property, in their reputations and honor. Imagine a world free from the corrosive sin of envy, a world in which everyone is able to meet all their needs without depriving another.  In short imagine a world where truly God’s “will is done, on earth as it is in heaven.” 

That’s the world God promises in his covenant with the people of Israel, the covenant we Gentiles are grafted into, the true and eternal covenant on Mount Sinai, the true and eternal covenant made sure on the Mount of Olives and on Golgotha hill, the true and eternal covenant we enjoy in the High Country, and everywhere Jesus Christ is proclaimed as Lord.     

Holy God, through your Son you have called us to live faithfully and act courageously. Keep us steadfast in your covenant of grace, teach us the wisdom that comes only through Jesus Christ, and give us the power of  your Holy Spirit to love and serve you in that covenant, through Jesus Christ our Savior and Lord.  Amen.

Father Abraham

Lent 2 B February 25, 2018

Do you remember the Bible camp song, “Father Abraham?”  Father Abraham had many sons. Many sons had Father Abraham. I am one of them and so are you, So let's all praise the Lord.  Sing it 6 times. After each one. right arm, then left arm, right foot, left foot, chin up, turn around - sit down!

When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said to him, “I am God Almighty; . . . I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous.” Then Abram fell on his face.

Billy Graham was 99 years old. November 7 he would have been his 100^th birthday. Friday’s paper compared him to St. Paul as an evangelist. In the 58 years between1947 and 2005 Graham conducted 417 crusades in 185 countries on six continents. He was heard by more than 210 million people - face to face and on television. The longest crusade was in 1957, 16 weeks in New York City. In 1973 in South Korea he preached to over 1,100,000 people at once. I never heard him in person but I watched him on television. Graham is remembered for his friendship with Presidents and other world leaders, remembered for desegregating his crusades in 1953, remembered for posting bail for Martin Luther King in 1963, but chiefly Billy Graham is remembered as a preaching witness to the good news of God’s love in the life, death, ns resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Billy Graham was 99. Abraham was 99. I can’t imagine beginning a family at 99. I hope we all continue to be like Billy Graham and like Abraham, trusting in the love of God as long as we have breath.  St. Paul tells us that Abraham’s faith “was reckoned to him as righteousness.” God offered, and Abraham received by faith, a covenant of eternal life. We are spiritual descendants of Abraham and God offers us in Jesus Christ the same covenant of eternal life.

Abraham stands at the margin of legend and history. Noah is oral tradition and legend. We have physical evidence of an ice age, and global warming, and many cultures have a tradition of flood, destruction, and new life repopulating the world.  Genesis tells us of God’s covenant with Noah and with all humanity, a covenant of respect for life with the sign of the rainbow.

God offers Abraham a covenant for himself and for all his descendants physical and spiritual. God will bless Abraham’s descendants, and they will be rulers of nations.  Abraham received tis covenant in faith. “Then Abram fell on his face.” He prostrated himself in faith and obedience before the Lord.

In the Holy Land from November to February the rain clouds blow east from the Mediterranean Sea. On average 24 inches of rain fall each year. (Boone gets 52 inches.) Most of the rain falls west of the central ridge where Jerusalem sits. East is a steep escarpment down to the central valley of the Jordan and Dead Sea – 4,000 feet in 14 miles. Little rain falls there. But the rock formations bring some of the water that falls in the west through the limestone to springs and pools to the east. The Dead Sea has so much salt and minerals that swimmers can lie on their back, put chin up and all four hands and feet in the air. “Father Abraham had many sons . . . .”  Four yards from the edge of the Dead Sea is a fresh water swimming pool.  This is sheep and goat country, nomad country. Flocks move from spring to spring, well to well. Scholars think Abraham was a nomad chieftain, living in a big tent. The bible stories about Abraham fit into the Middle Bronze Age, about 1800 to 1500 years before Christ.

Abraham received God’s offer of blessing with faith and trust. St. Paul reminds us, “The promise that he would inherit the world” came to Abraham “through the righteousness of faith.”  It is not what Abraham did, but what God does. God offered the covenant to Abraham not based on what Abraham did, but what God does. God offered, “I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous. . . . You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations .” The covenant with Abraham and his descendants was God’s free gift of a relationship.

Abraham had a choice. He could have rejected God’s offer. But Abraham fell on his face in worship and acceptance. Sarah first doubted and then accepted God’s offer of a son.

God offers us in Jesus Christ the same covenant of relationship that he offered Abraham. We don’t have to be 99 years old; we don’t have to be childless; we don’t have to be a nomad herder of sheep and goats in the Holy Land. We are who we are; where we are, in the present time. We don’t have to fall prostrate.  We have simply to open our hands and our hearts to receive God’s love, and to allow that love to fill us, and cleanse us of sin, and give us the truth and power of the Holy Spirit to love and serve God, this day, and for the rest of our lives.

Father Abraham had many sons. Many sons had Father Abraham. I am one of them and so are you, So let's all praise the Lord.  Right arm, left arm, right foot, left foot, chin up, turn around – love and serve! Amen.

 

 

Noah

Lent 1 B February 18, 2018

 

God said to Noah and to his sons with him, “As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you . . . that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.”

Our Lenten readings from the Hebrew Bible tell us of God’s Covenant with his people. Today the covenant is with Noah and his descendants. Next Sunday God’s covenant with Abraham (Genesis 17), then the Covenant of Sinai and the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20), the healing in the wilderness (Numbers 21), and the new covenant on the heart prophesied by Jeremiah (31), fulfilled in the death and resurrection of Jesus our Lord.

About 15,000 years ago the ice age ended and over 7,000 years the sea level rose over 300 feet. Farm land in present Persian gulf area and similar areas all over the world was drowned. Many cultures have a flood story in which a few people survive, by divine providence, to repopulate the earth.

Genesis chapters 6-9 combines two stories. Today’s reading is from the earlier story.  The later one tells how when Noah came off the Ark he offered a sacrifice of thanksgiving and in response “the Lord said, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” We can rely on God’s promise.

In today’s reading, God offers a covenanted promise never again to destroy the earth by flood, and gives the rainbow as a covenant sign. Noah and his descendants are free to repopulate the earth – and to eat meat. Before the Flood all were vegetarians! Unchecked human violence was one of the causes of the flood. In the new creation one of the signs of the covenant was that human conflict was to be mediated by a recognition of the importance of human life, expressed as “of every man’s brother I will require the life of man.”

The rainbow is a sign of God’s offer of the covenant. God has promised not to destroy all life. But God gives us freedom to accept or reject the human side of the covenant, our human promise to recognize the importance of human life. God calls us to respect one another’s life, to recognize that every human life is s gift from God, and precious in God’s sight.  

We are horrified by last Wednesday’s school shooting in Parkland, Florida. I heard a parent say, “We send our children to school and we expect them to come home.” Once again someone rejected God’s covenant of life and chose to kill. The news media reported that he had been expelled from that high school, that his adoptive parents had died, that he was living with a friend’s parents. We can imagine, and  appreciate, that he may have had feelings of exclusion and isolation, of loss and anger at loss. We have all shared feelings like these. But we have not taken up a rifle and shot up a school. We have dealt with our feelings. We know ourselves as part of a community. We know we live under God’s covenant with Noah and his descendants. We see the rainbow; we are free to eat meat if we want; we are here because our parents took seriously their freedom to be fruitful and multiply. We recognize that every human life is s gift from God, and precious in God’s sight.  

Noah made a sacrifice to God. Jesus offered on the cross the supreme sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, from Adam through Noah and Abraham and Moses, the prophets, the kings, the chief priests, Pontius Pilate, and even the horrible murders of Nikolas Cruz last Wednesday. Nicholas is the name of a saint, a bishop in Turkey. Cruz is Spanish for cross. On the cross Jesus offered the supreme sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, his and ours.

God knows in Noah “the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth.”  We are all sinners, saved by God’s grace received in faith, saved by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

The Parkland reports tell of a teacher who stood between the murderer and a student, who saved a student’s life as he sacrificed his own life. That teacher’s life sacrifice joins with Jesus’ supreme sacrifice, joins with our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving this morning, to witness to God’s love for his creation and for the sacredness of human life.  So let us give thanks for God’s sure promise, “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” And let us show in our lives God’s eternal love in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

 

Last Epiphany Grace

Last Epiphany B February 11, 2018

Some summers we go back to the coast of Maine where my wife Lucy spent many summers at camp. A while go a camp friend from New York in book publishing brought us a new book about an English schoolboy named Harry Potter. Potter’s story was a good fairy tale. Mysterious birth, living with distant relatives who feared and mistreated him, rescued and sent to a school where he learned magic. By magic ordinary things could appear to be extraordinary. A magic gate and track in the midst of an ordinary train station, an invisible school with talking portraits and a water balloon-throwing poltergeist, a lacrosse / soccer game played in the air - at which Harry excelled. A best friend who is a boy and a good friend who is a girl, Harry lives in a dorm, complains about school food, and has homework and teachers - some exciting and some really boring. Harry is really special and marked for great things and growing into his greatness. Harry is a good and moral person, kind and generous, without being stuffy about it, and he is magic. Harry confronts evil with good, and good triumphs. No wonder the Harry Potter books were popular.

          We like the idea of magic; we like the idea that ordinary things can not only appear to be extraordinary, but are extraordinary. We like the idea that people are really special, and marked for great things, and can be good and moral, kind and generous, but not stuffy.  These ideas may be childish, but we give them up slowly and reluctantly. No matter how old we are, we want to confront evil with good, and see good triumph.

          When I was Chaplain at Rosewood State Hospital in Maryland, following my father who also served as Chaplain, we used to teach the children this verse, drawn generally from St. Augustine, “I am a child of God. He wants me to be good. I can be good if I want to be, and by his grace I will.”

          “By his grace I will.” We all know from experience that we can’t be good just because we want to be good. Wanting is a beginning to having, but not the whole thing. Whatever we accomplish, we accomplish by God’s grace, by God’s power working in us. Magic is the attempt to make God do our will for our benefit. Grace is God working in us and through us to accomplish God’s purposes. Magic is in fairy tales; God’s grace is the reality of our lives.

          The Transfiguration of Jesus, like Elijah ascending into heaven in a whirlwind, is God’s gift of grace, the grace of the brightness of God’s presence.

          St. Paul’s Epistle tells us of the light that shone “out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. We see something of that light in a bride coming down the aisle on her wedding day, in the joy of a mother with her infant. The grace of God is his gift to us, his gift that we may be fully and completely who God means us to be.

          We are called to be holy people, grace-filled people, good people, godly people. Being godly, and good, and grace-filled takes practice; it takes work. It requires us to be part of a community of people, as regular in prayer and worship as we are in everything worthwhile we do. Elijah and Elisha came together in God’s love and service. Our psalm tells us “Out of Zion, perfect in its beauty, God reveals himself in glory.” Peter, James, and John witnessed Jesus’ transfiguration. They saw Jesus as he really is, as we experience him today. We are with him as they were, though not on a mountain, but in his church, and with his church. Jesus is present to us in spiritual ‘clothes . . . dazzling white” as we receive the Holy Communion. In gratitude for his love for us, and in the power of his grace poured out on us, let us be as we really are, his holy people.

A reporter once asked Mother Teresa what it felt like to be called a “living saint.” She responded, “I’m very happy if you can see Jesus in me, because I can see Jesus in you. Holiness is not just for a few people. It’s for everyone, including you, sir.  My prayer is with each of you – and I pray that each one of you will be holy, and so spread His love wherever you go. Let his light of truth be in every person’s life, so that God can continue loving the world through you and me.”

[From Love: A Fruit Always in Season, San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 1987, p. 233]

 It is not magic. It is grace. Thank God. Amen.

Last Epiphany Grace

Last Epiphany B February 11, 2018

Some summers we go back to the coast of Maine where my wife Lucy spent many summers at camp. A while go a camp friend from New York in book publishing brought us a new book about an English schoolboy named Harry Potter. Potter’s story was a good fairy tale. Mysterious birth, living with distant relatives who feared and mistreated him, rescued and sent to a school where he learned magic. By magic ordinary things could appear to be extraordinary. A magic gate and track in the midst of an ordinary train station, an invisible school with talking portraits and a water balloon-throwing poltergeist, a lacrosse / soccer game played in the air - at which Harry excelled. A best friend who is a boy and a good friend who is a girl, Harry lives in a dorm, complains about school food, and has homework and teachers - some exciting and some really boring. Harry is really special and marked for great things and growing into his greatness. Harry is a good and moral person, kind and generous, without being stuffy about it, and he is magic. Harry confronts evil with good, and good triumphs. No wonder the Harry Potter books were popular.

          We like the idea of magic; we like the idea that ordinary things can not only appear to be extraordinary, but are extraordinary. We like the idea that people are really special, and marked for great things, and can be good and moral, kind and generous, but not stuffy.  These ideas may be childish, but we give them up slowly and reluctantly. No matter how old we are, we want to confront evil with good, and see good triumph.

          When I was Chaplain at Rosewood State Hospital in Maryland, following my father who also served as Chaplain, we used to teach the children this verse, drawn generally from St. Augustine, “I am a child of God. He wants me to be good. I can be good if I want to be, and by his grace I will.”

          “By his grace I will.” We all know from experience that we can’t be good just because we want to be good. Wanting is a beginning to having, but not the whole thing. Whatever we accomplish, we accomplish by God’s grace, by God’s power working in us. Magic is the attempt to make God do our will for our benefit. Grace is God working in us and through us to accomplish God’s purposes. Magic is in fairy tales; God’s grace is the reality of our lives.

          The Transfiguration of Jesus, like Elijah ascending into heaven in a whirlwind, is God’s gift of grace, the grace of the brightness of God’s presence.

          St. Paul’s Epistle tells us of the light that shone “out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. We see something of that light in a bride coming down the aisle on her wedding day, in the joy of a mother with her infant. The grace of God is his gift to us, his gift that we may be fully and completely who God means us to be.

          We are called to be holy people, grace-filled people, good people, godly people. Being godly, and good, and grace-filled takes practice; it takes work. It requires us to be part of a community of people, as regular in prayer and worship as we are in everything worthwhile we do. Elijah and Elisha came together in God’s love and service. Our psalm tells us “Out of Zion, perfect in its beauty, God reveals himself in glory.” Peter, James, and John witnessed Jesus’ transfiguration. They saw Jesus as he really is, as we experience him today. We are with him as they were, though not on a mountain, but in his church, and with his church. Jesus is present to us in spiritual ‘clothes . . . dazzling white” as we receive the Holy Communion. In gratitude for his love for us, and in the power of his grace poured out on us, let us be as we really are, his holy people.

A reporter once asked Mother Teresa what it felt like to be called a “living saint.” She responded, “I’m very happy if you can see Jesus in me, because I can see Jesus in you. Holiness is not just for a few people. It’s for everyone, including you, sir.  My prayer is with each of you – and I pray that each one of you will be holy, and so spread His love wherever you go. Let his light of truth be in every person’s life, so that God can continue loving the world through you and me.”

[From Love: A Fruit Always in Season, San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 1987, p. 233]

It is not magic. It is grace. Thank God. Amen.