February 22,2009
Scripture Lesson: Mark 9:2-9
Text: Matthew 9:8
When Jesus led three friends to a place on “on a high mountain,” “he was transfigured before them” until they heard a voice instructing them to “Listen” to their teacher. “Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.” It can sound like a big let-down: after a moment of vision, after a great spiritual experience, there is only Jesus, the traveling preacher, teacher, healer from Nazareth. After all is said and done, for us also, there is only Jesus.
Dean Pompa asked me to talk about how world and local mission work has impacted me. Mission: responding to a call, to an invitation to move beyond your usual place, comfort zone, to serve and witness to Christ. Missions is the outcome of the Transfiguration story, the real importance of which is not so much on what happened to, or in Jesus, but in the response to it. One way is illustrated in the first response of those disciples: because “they were terrified,” they wanted to memorialize it; build a worship center; protect what they had built up; and so on. The second way is illustrated in Julia Ward Howe’s famous hymn: “Mine eyes have seen . . . a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me?” Are you allowing that glory to transfigure you, and your life, and this church, and the corporate life of this church? Are you allowing it to free you from your fears? Missions, involvement in and commitment to missions, is the key. Because it is through mission that you will either find that transfiguration experience, or that you can appropriately respond to it.
Let me tell you a mission story. In the mid 90’s I organized a group of people from several churches in the suburbs just north of Chicago for a mission trip to Haiti both to be part of international security for a national election at a time when elections there were marked by violence and murder, and to work at a children’s hospital. Haiti is one of the poorest places in the world. You can see that as soon as you fly over it: the country has been denuded of trees for fuel, so the topsoil has all washed into the ocean inlets where it becomes a mucky mix with sewage and garbage. Other than the fortified complexes where the rich and powerful hide, there is almost no sanitation, no utilities, no medical care. During the day you see children searching through the huge piles of garbage and human waste in the main intersections that gets doused with gasoline and burned at night.
At the church I where I was the pastor, [there] was a man named Dan: an active churchman, but a guy who never related to the missions, not even to our men’s group service at a soup kitchen in Chicago. Somehow the Lord put it upon my heart to invite him to Haiti. One day when I was getting ready to go to the hardware store to get some supplies, Dan showed up at my office, and I asked him to go along. It is kind of a guy thing, hardware stores. There surrounded by the tools, I asked him to join us on the mission to Haiti, and he astonished me by saying yes. He just needed to hear a call, personally, in the right context at the right time. Later I was astonished by the transformation that occurred in Dan as during that mission experience. It might have happened the time that we went up to a small mountain village. I hiked with others, but Dan isn’t the hiking sort, and I have a picture of this overweight American on a small donkey traveling up a mountain path surrounded by smiling children. It might have happened the night before the election when I convinced him to ignore the Marines warnings and walk around Pour-au-Prince [sic], during which we saw hundreds of children sitting around the only gas station is the area doing homework because there are no lights in homes. Maybe it was when we delivered our suitcases full of medications to the joyful nun who runs the most primitive clinic I have ever seen in the poorest slum. Maybe it happened when we were on the roof of the children’s hospital pounding nails. I just know that the experience transformed him. And in almost every Christmas letter he mentions his most recent mission trip to Haiti.
For others mission is the way to respond to having glimpsed the glory. At New Bethany Ministries missionaries from this congregation and a hundred others do birthday parties for our resident homeless children, help homeless moms with school work or driving lessons, become pen pals with our mentally disabled residents, do filing in our financial case management program for the mentally disabled, help me raise the money to pay for our good work, or cook and serve meals to the hungry. For example, three days a month mission teams from this church cook and serve meals, which you could occasionally join for a hands-on mission experience. And thousands of people like you participate by sacrificially donating so support our local mission work. Occasionally I bring a television crew into New Bethany for action shots and interviews for my weekly television show. Recently, I walked up with the camera man and asked the missionaries from St. Ann’s Roman Catholic Church why they seemed so happy. One woman looked right into the camera and said, “we are always happy when we are here.” Another looked up from the salad preparation counter and said, “it’s because when we are here we are doing exactly what Jesus wants us to do.”
Don’t you want to be happy? Then allow the frequency and degree of intensity of times when you are doing exactly what Jesus wants you to do to increase. Those three disciples not only had a vision, they also heard a voice explaining the meaning: “This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him!” That is when “they looked around, [and] … saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.”
I am quite aware of the fact that many criticize people of a liberal theological bent of being more focused on the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth which so center on being a good neighbor, on serving and giving for others, than on the significance of salvation through Christ Jesus Our Lord. This gospel lesson, however, clearly reveals that you can’t have one without the other: Christ who saves us, is Jesus to whom we are to listen, and whose way of being in the world we are to follow.
Many of you have had a mountain top moment in which you glimpsed the dazzling beauty of the transfigured Christ, an experience that convicted you of the truth of the doctrine of the Incarnation: perhaps during a sermon, or a sacramental occasion, or while pray-fully pondering scripture. If not, participating in missions can be your path toward that experience. But as a mountain hiker, who always feels compelled to get to the top of the highest mountain within reach, I can tell you that you cannot stay long at the peak: you have to come back down to where the air is thicker, the elements less serve, water is available, and … where the poor and those who serve them can be found. But that is ok with me, because every day down here in the valley there is only Jesus.
Listen to him, and through the eyes of faith you will see only Jesus in the hungry, the homeless, the poor, not because of their virtue, or behavior, but because that is what he taught. Listen to him, and through eyes of faith, you will see only Jesus in happy people who sell some of what they have to give to the poor, even during frightening economic times. Listen to him, and through eyes of faith you will see only Jesus in those good Samaritans who happily work together to serve needy and poor neighbors. And, if as a congregation you listen to him, and make, above and beyond ordinary denominational requirements, missions and the participation of every member in missions through some appropriate way, your top priority, this church, like others that make that commitment will thrive in faith, in hope, in joy, in active participation, and others will see in your life together, only Jesus.
So, Brother Tony: the impact of missions in the lives of individuals like me and congregations like Nativity who respond to the call: a fuller, more meaningful, more holy, happier life of hope and faith. Plus the possibility of singing: “Mine eyes have seen . . . a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me!”
Missions is the route toward transfiguration. Missions is the way to respond to transfiguration, because, in the end, there is only Jesus. Listen to him.
