Sunday, February 15, 2015

Transfiguration; February 15, 2015; The Rev'd. Dr. Richard Smith


Years ago, I talked to an elderly Irish woman who told me how she had survived the Great Depression. She had migrated to Portland, Oregon when she was twenty-something and single. She lived in a small damp room in the basement of an old house, and worked two jobs--one cleaning rooms in the local hospital, the other as a waitress on the evening shift at a local cafe. Long days on her feet doing menial work for little pay. A bleak time in her life.

Here’s how she survived. Each week she set aside a few cents from her paycheck for an annual matinee at the cinema. Sometimes she would go by herself, other times with a friend.

When she had finally saved enough, and the special day arrived, she would take her beautiful old long coat out of storage, let it hang out in the fresh air to get rid of the mothball smell. She would take her best shoes out of the box and polish them. She would iron her best dress. She would put on her makeup, take forever getting dressed. Then she would reach the top shelf of her closet and take down the large box that held her favorite hat. She would put the hat on, adjusting it just right with one of those long hat pins with a pearl knob on the end. Then she would put on her long white gloves and her long coat and head out the door and onto the trolley to the theater--one, I imagine, much like our beloved Castro Theater.

When she arrived and paid for her ticket, a handsome man in a long green coat opened the big brass door for her and she stepped into another world, onto the thick red carpet of the theater lobby. She stopped at the concession stand for a small popcorn with extra butter, then entered the magnificent auditorium with all its gold and  statues and paintings of ancient Greece. She found her way to her seat, upholstered in soft, rich velvet.

Soon a hush fell over the crowd and the Mighty Wurlitzer emerged, playing songs like “Begin the Beguine”, and ”Over the Rainbow’’ and “They Can’t Take That Away from Me”.

The lights would dim, the curtain would rise, and the movie would begin--perhaps a comedy or a romance, perhaps with Clark Gable or Mae West, Mickey Rooney or Joan Crawford. She would sometimes laugh, sometimes cry, sometimes be startled, raising her hand to her lips.

Then the lights would come back on and the curtain come down; the show was over. She’d get up from her seat and head home, put her long coat back into storage, her gloves back in the drawer, her hat back on the closet shelf, her best shoes back in the box. She would put on her waitress uniform, tie her apron around her waist, put on her jacket and head to the cafe for the evening shift.

Back to normal. But not really. Because, as she explained, for weeks after that day at the matinee, she saw the world differently. A truth that had escaped her in the humdrum of everyday life had once again become vivid--that the world is full of so much music, laughter, romance, and beauty. And she also saw some truths about herself, truths she had forgotten--that she was not simply a drab working girl from a poor family, but someone truly beautiful, elegant, classy.

It was a transformative experience. She and her world had been transfigured.

Welcome to Transfiguration Sunday which is about a matinee of a special kind, and so much more.

This gospel story was written when the early church was facing persecution from the Roman Empire under Nero. It was written to prepare the early disciples for a price they would likely have to pay as followers of Jesus.

Prior to this point in the story, the disciples have been getting the message that Jesus, far from being the glorious, victorious, rock star messiah they had expected, would be executed on a cross as a criminal, and that following him would mean taking up crosses of their own, losing their own lives to truly find them.

It was sounding pretty bleak. They were bummed.

Time for a Transfiguration moment. It’s a different kind of space the Teacher leads them into--not a theater, but a high mountaintop where Jesus enters a loving communion with God.

The imagery of this story is mystical and poetic and spectacular. It leaves the disciples dazzled and confused. Peter doesn’t even know what to say.

Jesus’ inner communion with God radiates a white light from his inner core outward, through his mind and body, and his clothes become dazzling white. The white light at his center transfigures his entire being.

And there are more spectacular things: Moses and Elijah appear, a cloud descends. The sense of mystery and transcendence deepens. They are as close as humans get to the divine and still live. A voice from the cloud reveals to them “This is my Son, my Beloved.”

This moment is about an overpowering love, a love at the very center of the universe. It reawakens them to what their own journey has been about. It gives them new eyes to see what otherwise might have seemed humdrum at best, bleak and hopeless at worst.

Did they know the power and beauty of the journey they had been on with Jesus? Do we?

For example, do we know the power and beauty of what we do here each week at this table? We call it Holy Communion, and this gift of Jesus on the night before he died has powerfully transformed and sustained our spiritual ancestors for millennia--from Mary Magdalene to Francis of Assisi to Martin Luther King, from Julian of Norwich to Desmond Tutu. Do we know what we have here in this meal?

This is our mountaintop, our moment of privileged Holy Communion with God.

We say that here bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of Christ, and that is powerful stuff. But even more powerful and miraculous is the transfiguration meant to take place inside each of our hearts.

Because buried inside each of us lies a power and a beauty, a love, a deep faith given to us by the One who made us. And like the young Irish woman I mentioned, in the humdrum everyday-ness of our lives, we can lose touch with that power and beauty and love. But gathered with each other at this table, in this Holy Communion, we reconnect with it, and we remember who God made us to be.

And as with Jesus on that mountaintop, so also with us. Our own inner communion with God is meant to radiate outward, transforming our minds and bodies, radiating out into the world--into caring for our kids and our aging loved ones, working for justice, stopping the violence in our neighborhood and in our world, resisting the racism and the forces that crush peoples spirits and make them lose hope, creating beautiful music and art. This Holy Communion, when we reconnect with that power and beauty and love that God has placed inside us, is our moment of transfiguration.

The poet Annie Dillard chides us churchgoers. She writes, ”Why do we people in churches seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute?...Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches,” she continues, “are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning.”

If we knew what we are up to by telling the dangerous story of Jesus and gathering at this table for Holy Communion week after week, “...we should all,” as Dillard writes, “be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews.”

So, welcome once again to this table where you do what you have probably done so many times before, what Jesus’ followers have always done--gathering in all our rich complexity and wildness--with rich and poor; black, brown, yellow, red, and white; gay and straight; cisgender and trans; male and female; old and young--for Holy Communion, remembering the amazing creature you truly are, reconnecting with the powerful truth the Creator has placed at the very center of your heart, letting it shine into a sometimes dark and joyless world.

It is the moment of your very own Transfiguration. Welcome to this table.

Healing Church; Sunday, February 8, 2015; The Rev'd Robert Cromey



“He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up.”

Jesus was a healer.

To heal means to make whole. You know the expression, “I am trying to get myself together.” We want healing wholeness and a sense of being truly human.

What was it like to be sick in Jesus day?
No doctors, nurses, hospitals, drug stores, check ups, much less sanitation and even germ theory.

Casting Out Demons. People who were out of their so-called normal minds were on the streets in Jesus day, just like now. We see men and women all the time on our city streets who seem possessed. They yell, speak out harshly and with great anger.

I was sitting in a Starbucks on Irving St. with my friend Michael. We overheard an aggressive angry man sitting on the sidewalk. He threatened to stab people. We saw no knife. Michael was a nurse and he said, “We need to call the police.” They arrived within five minutes, were firm but clear that the man had to go to the hospital. They took him by the hand and lifted him into the ambulance. Ten minutes this man, possessed with a demon – alcohol, drugs, or insanity, was taken to the hospital.

Not only in Jesus day. The demented just walked the streets until they die. In poverty stricken Africa and in rural America, the demented walk the streets until they are killed or die.

Walking hand in hand with Jesus. Some people have that experience of being in the presence of Jesus. One woman was perplexed about many problems in her life. She went for a walk quietly in her heart and prayed for Jesus to guide her. As she walked she felt Jesus had taken her hand and was walking along with her. The old hymn came to my mind, “Oh he walked with me and he talked with me when I came to the garden alone.”

Another great spiritual is Blessed Lord, take my Hand.  Many people witness to feeling the presence of Jesus, of Jesus taking their hand and lifting them up.

In the movie Selma MLK, Jr., calls up Mahalia Jackson and has her sing Blessed Lord take My Hand, as he has to make hard decisions about moving forward in the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

I have never had such an experience of Jesus. Not everyone does or has to. We all relate to the presence of Jesus in different ways.

We want to take our friends and family by the hand and lift them up when we see they are sick. We want to give them a healing touch.

That’s what we do at our healing station here at St. John’s. Healing ministers anoint with oil those people who want a healing touch for themselves or others.  We lay hands, human hands and anoint with oil. People are invited each Sunday to the healing station with our physical and emotional concerns. We need to be taken by the hand and lifted up.

Healing hand to all that are sick. Not just here in church but politically too. Affordable Care Act is trying to be destroyed by many conservative political forces in our country. So many in our land need to be taken by a healing hand and lifted up. Simply by helping people have health insurance.

We heal the hungry.
 When we pass out food at The Julian Pantry on Saturday mornings.

Seek to heal by urging an end to all wars. Lend us a hand some Thursday at noon to stand and say NO WAR!

We seek to give a healing hand to our neighbors frightened that they will be deported.

We hold out our healing hands when we heal people in Nicaragua get clean water.

We give and receive a healing hand when we give each other the peace.

One of our parishioners told me that the only time anyone touches him is when he comes to church and people hug him or shake hands and say The Peace of the Lord. Take a moment and give a healing hand to our brothers and sisters in the church at The Peace.

We Christians are also interested in Political healing. Not just personal healing.

We Christians are healers when we support the San Francisco Organizing Project when they meet in our church this afternoon from 3-6 PM. We take the hands of the powerless and assist them in becoming strong through community organization.

Jesus comes and takes our hands when we take the holy bread, the icon of his body. He takes our hands and empowers us to heal and strengthen others. We are in communion with Jesus and God and with each other.