February 22, 2009
(Last Sunday after the Epiphany)
Following is Trusting
by
The Rev. Joe
Behen, Clergy Assistant
2 Kings 2:1-12 • Psalm 50:1-6 • 2
Corinthians 4:3-6 • Mark 9:2-9
(From The
Lectionary Page)
If you’ve ever received an e-mail from Andrew Johnson, you’ll notice the passage that rests at the bottom every time. It’s a quote from Annie Dillard that says quite simply, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” It’s a simple but profound thought, maybe an antidote to the distance that we so often allow between a given moment in our life and our deepest longing, that which gives us hope. These two need to meet in the present to produce following.
Today’s gospel shows God providing a mountain top experience for Peter, James, and John. It is significant that after the heavenly vision, God does some interpretation for them. He tells them that there is a purpose in their having seen this vision. Likewise there is a purpose to Jesus’ fantastic miracles and healings, as there is to his entire ministry. That purpose, we learn here, is simply that we might listen to Jesus. And that is what we are gathered here to do: to listen and to let our lives be affected by God’s word.
It’s also interesting that after the transfiguration, Jesus suggests that such a vision as they’ve seen can be dangerous when disconnected from this intended purpose. “As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen…” This truth about Jesus could, in a sense, take away from who he was rather than clearing anything up for anyone. In effect, what God tells the disciples is simply that they would find out who Jesus is from his day to day living, rather than from the mountain top experience. It is the daily living in which God’s work is done.
The mountain top experience is simply meant to validate for them that Jesus is not a guy like you and me who simply dreamed all this up. Jesus’ values are God’s values. In Jesus we see what faith looks like.
Like the disciples, we also want an obvious sign given to us that assures us of God’s presence; that validates our faith in God. But we are not given that obvious sign. This is not to say that there are not signs of God’s presence in our lives. But they tend to be of the nature that without the eyes of faith, they can be interpreted otherwise.
William Sloane Coffin once wrote that, “Faith is not believing without proof, but trusting without reservation.” [Coffin, William Sloane, Credo (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004) p. 8] So this evidence of God at work in our lives requires first and foremost, our trust. The disciples must have trusted Jesus on some level to drop everything and follow him. Trust, then, is the equivalent of following, maybe the precursor of trust. But in making this equation, we’ve moved now from the passive word “trust” to an action word.
We see this idea fleshed out in the reading from 2 Kings. Elisha’s trust in Elijah is evidenced in his following Elijah to the end. He is not confident that he can be what Elijah has been, but he trusts, he follows, and he finds not just evidence of God’s presence with him, but he sees God doing amazing things in the world through something so simple as one person’s trust in God – trust that becomes following.
To follow Jesus Christ is to watch him healing the sick, care for the poor, teach the lost, and feed the hungry; and from this to learn that God finds life to be worth dying for. It is to hear him teach that faith requires our setting aside of our purpose and taking up God’s purpose, and to trust that it will be good, even while all evidence is to the contrary. When it comes down to any given instance of showing this kind of trust, it is scary indeed. We imagine that it takes a greater person than ourselves to do it. And that’s true. It takes God to do it. But if we’re willing, God will do it with us.
The point I’m trying to make is simply this: our daily living reflects who we really are. What we do while we’re at work, what our free time looks like, the way we interact with family, friends, and strangers. These habits of time and relationship that we too often don’t really think about, say more about who we are than any statement of belief that we could come up with.
The writer of this gospel, in sharing something with us about Jesus’ actions, intends to show these actions to be in some way an incarnation, a living out of his teaching. Jesus is God’s son, the Beloved. What Jesus does pleases God, and what Jesus says is to be listened to. The word used for listening here means more than simply hearing. It means taking in, being affected by. It means hearing with a mind towards doing. It means for Jesus’ followers that we are to try to live his teaching, even in the smallest, seemingly most insignificant part of our lives. As Jesus tells Peter on the mountain, we can’t show his teaching in our lives if the small, everyday events of our lives are not changed by it.
So, as God effectively says to the disciples in today’s gospel passage, an understanding of Jesus that does not produce lives of following is no more than mis-understanding. And the world cannot be changed by this teaching if the small, everyday events of individual lives remain unchanged. To be people who promote God’s will, we have to be people who listen, who see what God is doing in Jesus Christ and become part of this miracle, every day, where we are. “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”
Amen.
