SERMON Being There

February 14, 2010 (Transfiguration C)

Rev. Ben Dueholm

Wicker Park Lutheran Church

Sisters and brothers, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

"You just had to be there" is a phrase I strongly identify with the city of New Orleans. It was on my lips when I returned from a visit to the French Quarter in high school. I heard it from people who braved Jazz Fest or Mardi Gras in the years that followed. And I heard it from people who saw the devastation in the wake of the hurricane in 2005.

These days I expect we're hearing "you just had to be there" from anyone lucky enough to have been in New Orleans last Sunday. Every Super Bowl needs a story: Will the Super Bowl Shuffle be prophetic or merely goofy arrogance? Will the Lombardi Trophy come home to Green Bay? Will Elway finally win his ring? Can second-stringer Tom Brady measure up to the dominating Rams? But this Super Bowl had one ready-made. A great American city still on its heels from a disaster and a fitful national response; a team with an astonishing record of futility making its first Super Bowl appearance; a nation irritated by Payton Manning's unflappable excellence and professionalism. Maybe that last thing was just me. Anyway, I think it's fair to say that the large majority of football fans were rooting for the Saints. People were not rooting for one band of freakishly athletic millionaires over another, they were rooting for a city, for a fan base, for something good to happen where it really seemed to be needed.

It's hard to imagine, then, how important this game was to actual New Orleanians. You really did have to be there--not just to visit, but to live and work and absorb the losses and disappointments. One big game and one very big party carried a lot of significance for that city. Harry Shearer, voice actor for The Simpsons and guitarist for the mock rock group Spinal Tap, tweeted that the election of a new mayor and the Saints winning the Super Bowl meant that New Orleans "has now ended the post-Katrina era."

Maybe we humans are drawn to great moments, to turning points, to those times of excitement and enlightenment and endless possibility. When we tell people "you just had to be there," we are saying something about the importance of these peak experiences. It is an importance that does not come from the information we gain from them. It comes from a shock or an impression left on us even after the moment passes.

Today's Gospel recounts one such experience--the Transfiguration of Our Lord. It happened in a small group, apart from the rest of the disciples. It happened on a mountain and in prayer. In a moment, Jesus changes. His well-worn clothes become brilliantly white. His dusty and tired face shines gloriously. This eccentric, wandering holy man takes his place with Moses and Elijah, the great prophets of Israel. The cloud--an ancient sign of God's presence--envelops the small group and the voice of God declares, "this is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!"

Finally, finally, finally all that struggle to believe has been vindicated for these lucky disciples. Here Christ is revealed--not in a mystery; not in an enigmatic miracle; not in preaching the Word of Truth; not in the testimony of John; not in a great catch of fish, but in his own glory, glory as of the Father's only-begotten Son, hailed by the Father's own voice. For this one moment, terrifying as it is, faith has become sight.

It is no wonder that Peter wanted to build dwellings and stay on the mountain. No more anguish, no more waiting, no more wondering. Here there is constant intensity. Here there is glory and majesty and God's own voice. Here the ancient heroes walk among us. Here we are enlightened and excited and filled with a sense of possibility. The Jesus Movement has finally ended the post-John the Baptist era.

And then the moment passes. The voice falls silent. Moses and Elijah sink back into time's river. Jesus is wearing the same shabby clothes and they all feel the same encroaching exhaustion. When they come down from the mountain there are children to heal and people to teach. The road to Jerusalem and its terrible conclusion still await Jesus and his disciples.

The three disciples who have seen this astonishing vision tell no one, in those days, what they saw. And what would they have said? Probably something like "You just had to be there." Time passes. The experience dulls a little at the edges. We were really tired, after all. The food in Capernaum makes people sick, everyone knows that. The great moment gives way to the ups and downs of everyday life. The turning point doesn't turn as much as we thought it would. The endless possibility takes the shape of a cross. Sight turns back into faith, from which it came.

Maybe you have had a powerful experience of this sort, even a mystical one. I know I have. Maybe you have had a moment of complete spiritual assurance. Maybe you have had a moment of enlightenment. And if you have, you know that it is almost impossible to convey to another soul. "You just had to be there." And you know that the awesome moment always passes. You can write it off as a fluke, an excess of caffeine on an early morning and a trick of the sun over Lake Michigan. You can become a spiritual thrill-seeker, trying to leap from one "mountaintop experience" to another. We've discovered a whole lot of ways to do this nowadays. If you’re old-school, you can fast and pray to an extreme, hoping to regain that vision of God. You can climb mountains or hang-glide or find the most beautiful places in the world to watch a sunset. Bikram yoga, tantric sex, radical detox spa treatments--there are so many ways to acquire that spiritual high. Ultimately, living from one peak to another is like trying to fix your city by winning every single Super Bowl. The Super Bowl doesn't happen often enough and no team is ever that good.

That is the hard truth of the Transfiguration. It was a moment that existed for the sake of the whole journey. Right before today's Gospel, Jesus tells the disciples that they must be prepared to take up their crosses to follow him. Right after, they will encounter a boy suffering from violent seizures. Moses and Elijah are nowhere to be found then, when things get hard.

New Orleans had a magic moment on Sunday. But it woke up this week to the same problems it had before. Same crime rate, same troubled schools, same uneven resettlement. And no sports commentators on hand to help. Nothing is ever fixed by a magic moment. Whatever joy or optimism or good will this event unleashed needs to be turned to the daily struggle of fixing a city. It will prove harder than it felt on Sunday night, no matter how well things go, and people will look back with nostalgia on a moment when anything seemed possible.

That's what's so sad in saying to someone, "You just had to be there." It's a way of saying not just "I wish you had been there," but also "I wish I were still there." I wish I were still in that moment when God was real and as present to me as any of you are now. I wish I could have that feeling right now. Peter surely felt that way as the years went on, struggling to build a new church in a hostile world. Anyone who has had a mystical experience, a vision, or an hour on the mountaintop has probably felt the same way. Where is my God now? Where is the light of God's glory when I need it most?

The answer is that it never goes away. The glory of Christ’s transfiguration does not evaporate; it just blends back into the world. Christ is the Wisdom and Power of God, the glory of the Father through the whole world, whether we are seeing him or not. Because the mystical experience, the vision, is not the point. Right here, right now is the point. The only place you just have to be is exactly where you are. The only mountain you have to climb is the one in front of you at this moment. The only transfiguration you have to worry about is the one that is going on slowly, sometimes imperceptibly, within you even now. This is the transfiguration from one degree of glory to another, as Paul says. It doesn't happen on mountaintops, it happens on the road, on the way, day by day. It happens not in Moses' house or Elijah's, but in the humble dwelling of our trembling hearts. In daily prayer and repentance. In daily grace. In each day's new dawn of glory. Amen.