A New Vision for A New Year
Matthew 17:1-9
This week Minnesotans in four of the five major parties will caucus to select a presidential candidate. The Greens won’t have their caucus until March. In scanning all the campaign speeches and weighing our options for the next leader of our nation, I know that most of us have been listening intently to get an idea of the vision of each candidate – where do they see us going? What do they want to accomplish? What are the important issues for them? How well they can articulate their vision carries a great deal of weight in the American psyche. I am particularly excited because this is going to be my first caucus experience. I’ve only lived in primary states until now so I am anxious to see how the process works. Plus since most of the caucuses (or is it cauqui?) meet on my birthday, I’m taking this as a sign the whole state is coming out to celebrate the next half-century of my life.
A well-articulated vision is important. It is one thing to imagine great possibilities. It is quite another to be able to describe those possibilities with clarity and passion. That seemed to be the problem the three disciples were having as they accompanied Jesus up the mountain that day.
Our text is one of the most well-known theophanies – God being revealed to humans. In the Bible, these happen most often on mountains. When a biblical story begins with someone going up a mountain, it is a clue that something spiritually important is happening. Mountains were considered to be holy places. So much about our story today would have reminded the original hearers of other stories from their history – Moses on Sinai, Elijah on Mt. Horeb, the cloud that led the Hebrews through the wilderness, the use of the term “beloved” that was attributed to Isaac and David.
This story appears in all three of the synoptic gospels. Matthew and Luke appear to base their accounts on Mark’s version. However, Matthew’s version differs from Mark’s in some important ways. Mark centers more on noting how the disciples, and in particular Peter, didn’t know what to say or do because they were so scared. In some ways, the Marcan story is much easier to process for us. We understand the disciples’ confusion at seeing a “radioactive” Jesus, Moses and Elijah. We can relate to their sense of experiencing something holy and spectacular and not being sure what to do with it. I mean, how would you put such a spiritual experience into descriptive words? How do you put into words the reality of God’s presence in your own life? We either sound like we’re in need of deep psychoanalysis or we’re making up a fantasy world. That is often the reaction people of faith receive from others when we try to talk about things of the Spirit.
Matthew takes us to a bit different place. For Matthew, this story comes to its apex in the word, “Listen!” In his story, we are asked to expand our minds to a deeper truth, a wider vision, a more profound understanding. We are asked to consider something that we can’t quite put into words or even into our limited mental concepts.
During this season of Carnival that began with Epiphany and takes us up to Ash Wednesday we have looked at the new things God is calling us to, the new song we are called to sing and now a new vision of where we are going. The power of a vision is that it paints a picture so compelling – so wonderful – that you garner all the resources you can to make the vision reality.
That, I believe, is the power of the vision we have cast for ourselves as a church. Our vision as a church is this:
All God’s Children MCC is called by Christ to be:
A radically inclusive community of faith
Healed by God’s unrelenting grace
Sent in love to share our gifts with the world
What does all of that mean? What does this vision look like?
A radically inclusive community of faith
Here at All God’s Children we haven’t been satisfied with token inclusion or partial affirmation of our personhood. Many congregations are on a journey to full inclusion of GLBTQ people and we welcome them and pray for them, but for us here we knew we needed something now – a church where orientation, gender, age, ability, or educational opportunity weren’t the deciding factors to determine who is acceptable and who is not. We have experienced the radically inclusive grace of God that welcomed us into God’s presence. Therefore we knew a hallmark of our faith community would be a radically inclusive one. It is not always easy to live out. We all discover at times those buried prejudices or unconscious reactions hidden in forgotten memories that rise up and bite us. We are committed to honestly facing those moments, naming them and removing any power they might exert over our hearts and decisions. Over and over again God’s grace heals our wounds and reminds us of deeper purposes.
Healed by God’s unrelenting grace
Some people have expressed surprise at some of the words we chose for our vision statement – “radically” in our description of inclusion and “unrelenting” in our experience of God’s grace. Those words were chosen carefully to clarify the power of the vision we have before us. Grace is not just some tickle that occasionally occurs in our mind’s recesses. God is constantly tugging on our hearts, consistently pulling us back from the edge of the abyss, repeatedly reminding us of the power of unconditional love when our brains start rehearsing the old lies from the past. We say this unrelenting grace has healed us. What an audacious claim! It is not “one-time shot, get out of here, you’re done!” It is a continuous process, peeling the layers of our brokenness, revealing new insights, taking us deeper in our walk with God.
When you recognize that you’ve been touched by grace, you know that your vision will be expanded. All things are possible.
Sent in love to share our gifts with the world
We are blessed. This wonderful experience is not just for our own personal enjoyment. We are blessed so that we might bless our world.
Our lives, our love, our experiences are gifts that our world needs to know about. Our willingness to share who we are means that the world becomes a little bit safer place for someone else to share who he or she is.
We have known unconditional love and it is that love that compels us to share the joy and truth of our lives so that the world becomes a better place for all of God’s children.
“Listen!” the voice of God told the disciples during that mountain-top theophany. Listen and see a new vision – have a deeper grasp of truth.
“Listen!” the voice of God says to us today, “this is your moment on the mountain. Let the mists of doubt evaporate from your minds. Allow the smoke of fear to dissipate. Speak the vision of your heart. Live the vision for the entire world to see. Be the vision of what can be possible when God is part of it.
Sources:
www.homileticsonline.com The Divine Hero, February 2008.