"Listen to Him!" -- Keeping Silence (Transfiguration)

Sermon, 2/14/10. Descending from our mountaintops of imperial designs and personal entitlement, each of us encounters the cloud of our unknowing. And beneath this cloud we discover the valley of the shadow of our feckless ways. A spirit that seizes us and convulses us: not with the ecstasy of triumph, but with the epilepsy of truth ...

‘C’  /  Transfiguration: of the Lord, of Ourselves  /  2-14-10  /  Celebration of Worship

Scriptures     Exodus 34:29-35              Luke 9:28-43a

“Listen to Him!” – Keeping Silence

On this Transfiguration Sunday, gracious God, as we gather again in this upper room with the surge of African-American hymns pulsing in our ears, let us be quick to claim, per the words of an old Australian hymn:

             "How good, Lord, to be here!

          Yet, we may not remain;

          But, since you bid us leave the mount,

          Come with us to the plain.”¹             

Be with us now, as the clouds part, and your light shines, and we are enabled by your grace to listen – simply listen – to Jesus. Amen.

There’s a much-used word in our workaday dictionary I feel needs to be reexamined due to its all-too-easy cultural utility.

That word is “proactive.”

Proactive. The word active on steroids. A kissing cousin of the word preemptive: to act before or in advance of something else that could happen – that possibly would then be outside of one’s control. A general attitude of accomplishment and achievement and meritocracy and upwardly-mobile – always upwardly-mobile. Like a good attorney in a courtroom, knowing what’s going to happen before it happens. Proactive. No surprises. To be surprised means to fail.

A general attitude, captured well by a widely-reported comment JFK’s Attorney General brother Robert Kennedy made toward the end of his abbreviated life. Reflecting on the Kennedy White House – a swirl of activity always acting and reacting ahead of curves imagined or otherwise – Bobby Kennedy mused, “We all felt we were succeeding by how hard we were working.”

Nothing wrong with hard work, of course. Nothing wrong with being active – on the job – moving onward, and forward. And nothing wrong with being proactive in certain contexts – especially when not to be would lead to needless suffering; perhaps, even abuse. But “pro-active” as a way of life? As a life judged by how hard we work? Always acting in anticipation? Investigating how someone might respond before saying or doing something – lest I lose control? Never letting go?

“Pro … active.” I sometimes wonder about the utility – the value – the virtue of that word.

Proactive living is not a spiritual way encouraged by the season of Lent we enter in three short days. And it certainly is not encouraged by the laconic voice rolling from the cloudy hangover after the disciples’ mountaintop experience today: “This is my Son, my Chosen: listen to him!”

As for Peter, who is perhaps the most human of the twelve – well, he’s been out being proactive. He’s not interested in being engaging God … in listening. He’s interested in entitling himself … in acting.

Let us at least sympathize with the incredible high this poor Jewish fisherman must be feeling, having just glimpsed his teacher kibitizing with the two greatest prophets of their faith tradition. The heck with those knuckle-cracking Pharisees and all that pesky duck-nibbling back down in the valley – let’s stay right here!

Let’s stay right here, and let’s proactively enshrine our entitlement as three humble disciples basking in the glory of three great prophets. We’re entitled to act now. It will be our noblesse oblige. We will live like kings!

As a colorful friend of mine once responded upon entering an empty sanctuary where the organist was rehearsing: “Finally! The recognition I’ve

so richly deserved!”

Let’s build three booths, Peter exclaims: A beautiful sanctuary! Then: a fellowship hall! Then: an elaborate Christian education building! (Have I stopped preachin’ and gone to meddlin’ yet?)

Yet, our friend Peter discovers, this is not a moment for the mania of triumph. This is a moment of muteness in self-surrender. This is a moment for listening … for the downward path – the via negativa – the way of the cross – which is the only road to Easter, and which is the road at hand.

Descending from this mountaintop moment of imperial designs and personal entitlement, we – each of us – encounter the cloud of our unknowing. And beneath and within this cloud we discover – as the disciples do today with the great crowd awaiting Jesus – the valley of the shadow of our feckless ways. A spirit that seizes us, and convulses us – not with the ecstasy of triumph, but with the epilepsy of truth. The truth of a grieving father who complains to our Lord, “I begged your disciples to cast (the demon) out … but they could not!”

Well, of course not: After all, how can we heal epilepsy when we also are suffering from it? We, the disciples. The ones Jesus calls today, “You faithless … and perverse” – and he might as well have said proactive –“generation. How much longer must I be with you and bear you?

Bring your son here …” And the boy was healed of his thrashing.

“And all were astounded at the greatness of God.”

Friends, it’s time for us to be just that: It’s time for us to be astounded. Astounded, at the greatness of God.

Astounded, by the God who heals our thrashing. For we, the proactive, are really but epileptic.

Let us be astounded … so we can keep a Lenten silence. Keep silent. SHHHhhhh … So we can listen.

Listen, in our “fullness”, to our authentic sense of emptiness.

“I’m full!” a recent fast food ad crows – well, what a triumph! Or are we ever full? The beer commercials of old put our striving for booths of spiritual high most baldly:  “Head for the Mountains!” … “Go for the Gusto!” … “You Can Have It All!” … “It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This!” Guess that must be why alcohol is called spirits. Active alcoholics, like the one I used to be: We know! We really do!

We know about the “mores” – for we’re never really full. (Which is why I believe God gave recovering compulsives of many stripes Twelve Steps, and the rest of the world Ten Commandments. Because God knew that if we compulsives didn’t get more … we wouldn’t play!)

We know about the mores – for we’re never really full. More technology, more consumption, more pleasure. The disease of affluenza commands us – and demands us – a la Peter, “Stay here, atop this mountain of entitlement, and let us make new dwellings, in a housing market that demands new houses to be on average 40 percent larger than houses built in the 1950s! Stay here! It is good for us to be here.”²

“Faster, higher, stronger” express for us in our country, at least, more than the official Olympic slogan. They express, in our false sense of fullness – no, wait: our false striving for fullness – our authentic sense of emptiness.

Emptiness. It’s real, and it’s rich. Muteness in the face of our mountaintop rainstorms. Helplessness in the face of our epileptic ways. Being proactive … no more. Being authentically – and vulnerably – not downcast, but downward-casting. Being authentically – and vulnerably – human.

No more exploiting what’s-out-there, that we might escape what’s-in-here.

The season of Lent. Listening for our sense of emptiness covered up by our sense of fullness, that we might – just might – eventually be filled. Filled with God’s authentic intent for our lives in God’s world. Turning our ears away from the triumphal Taco Bell cry: “I’m full!” Turning them instead toward the truthful Jesus cry: “Can you drink the cup that I am to drink?”

Lent is also a time for listening to our legacies. Listening, not especially for what was – though there is that. But far more so for what is, to see what we still can be.

A time for listening to deeply unresolved legacies, such as the history of racism in our country. Esteemed African-American studies scholar Timothy Tyson – a white man – once declared, “There has never been a time when white Americans were not ready to declare the race problem solved.”

Tyson adds, “We ought to teach an honest history, and avoid the celebratory and triumphal impulses … not to wring our hands but to redeem a democratic promise … (for example), The mainstream white churches of the South would not abide ministers who supported the (civil rights) movement … (yet also) in the spring of 1963, the movement had the support of (only) 15 percent of the African-American ministers in Birmingham. The notion that the church (both white and black) stood up strong during the civil rights era reveals a dangerous moral amnesia.”³

“A dangerous moral amnesia.” “Rabbi Jesus, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Martin, and one for Malcolm.”

Ah, but the antidote! “This is my Son, the Chosen” – the Alpha and the Omega, the past, present, and future – “listen to him!” Listen, nation – listen, church – listen, for your true living legacy!

Listen – for it’s Lent! As the transfiguration – which is not just for Jesus, any more – sets the stage: It’s time, my friends, to listen.

Listen, for our authentic sense of emptiness – God, after all, is the only guide for human history.

Listen for that emptiness, covered up by our false sense of fullness – we’ve staked out the moral high ground, God’s kingdom is coming, and, dang it, we Americans and we progressive Christians and we Bethesda Presbyterian institution-keepers are going to make that kingdom come! No, no: Listen … just, LISTEN! SHHhhhh ….

No agendas. No expectations.

“This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”

As I end each message to you, friends in Christ, every Sunday:

Whoever has ears to hear … let them hear.

¹“How Good, Lord, to Be Here!” Hymn 390 in The Australian Hymnal, as quoted in Robert McAfee Brown, Unexpected News: Reading the Bible with Third World Eyes (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1984), p. 126.

²“Affluenza” with Scott Simon, Public Broadcasting System, 1996.

³Interview with Timothy Tyson, “Moral amnesia in America: Race still matters”, in Christian Century, February 21, 2006, pp. 30-31.

Benediction …

As the shortest of all biblical verses puts it so poignantly, “Jesus wept.”

Jesus weeps today – for God’s world entire.

Do we hear him cry?

It’s never too late.

Listen. Just … listen.

  SHHHHhhhhh …