I recently returned from a 10-day vacation with my mother, just the
two of us. We went to France to visit the host family I lived with
as an exchange student almost forty years ago. At our advanced ages,
my wise mother reminds me, we shouldn’t put off doing the things
that are most precious to us. As a self-confessed workaholic, I am
grateful to her for that prodding, and grateful to the church for
the time away.
Travel,
however, as many of you well know, is both wonderful and terribly
disorienting. Especially when you cross several time zones, two continents
and a big ocean, and land in a place where the language, the money,
the food, the customs, the climate are all different. I’m not
complaining about the food, mind you, but sometimes it’s the
little things that can trip you up. Like forgetting that to the French,
when you’re purchasing something, it’s rude to take out
your money and put it right in their hand, as we would do. It’s
uncouth! No, you put your money on the counter, and then the shopkeeper
takes it from there. All the effort to pay attention, to speak the
language, to find your way around is tiring. It’s disorienting.
You wake up at night in a strange bed and you don’t know what
day it is or what time it is or where you are until your brain starts
to catch up and put pieces together in a new way. Travel is disorienting.
But
that’s part of the point, isn’t it? To get off the couch,
out of our comfort zone, into the unfamiliar in order to experience
the world and ourselves in a different way. As Marcel Proust wrote:
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes
but in having new eyes.” Travel disorients us, in order to re-orient
us and open our eyes to God’s amazing, wondrous world.
And
when you come back, you’re not quite the same person you were
when you left. You see things differently, for better and for worse.
I’ll confess to you that on my first day back, the wet weather
here made the world look much like it had looked in France. I was
jet-lagged. My brain hadn’t quite caught up with my body. So
when I passed a gentleman on the sidewalk who looked just like all
the people I’d been seeing across the ocean, short, dark-haired,
clutching his umbrella under his arm, I said “Bonjour.”
He looked at me very oddly and kept walking.
Crazy
as it sounds, that’s part of the point of travel, too, isn’t
it? Whether it’s a fancy trip, or camping, or a bike ride along
the coast, or a mission trip, or a Sunday drive, or a visit to an
art museum that takes you to another place or culture or vista, travel
brings that profound reminder that there really is just one big world
that we’re all part of. God’s world, God’s creation,
God’s people.
In
17c. England, a boy was born to a shoemaker. He was fortunate to receive
a good education and in 1660 was ordained an Anglican priest. He was
a poet as well as a parish pastor. Thomas Traherne wrote these beautiful
words on what this journey of opening to the world is about for the
Christian:
“You
never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself floweth in your
veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the
stars; and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world,
and more than so, because [people] are in it who are every one sole
heirs as well as you. Till you can sing and rejoice and delight in
God, as misers do in gold, and Kings in scepters, you never enjoy
the world. Till your spirit filleth the whole world, and all the stars
are your jewels; till you are as familiar with the ways of God in
all Ages as with your walk and table; till you are intimately acquainted
with that shady nothing out of which the world was made: till you
love [people] so as to desire their happiness, with a thirst equal
to the zeal of your own; till you delight in God for being good to
all; you never enjoy the world. Till you more feel it than your private
estate, and are more present in the hemisphere, considering the glories
and the beauties there, than in your own house; till you remember
how lately you were made, and how wonderful it was when you came into
it;…”
When
we left off last Sunday in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus was teaching
on the plain, down on the level ground. Now, it’s eight days
later, the Scripture says. “Eight days” is a kind of code
language in the Bible to indicate that a whole new chapter is about
to begin. Jesus takes three of his closest disciples on a trip. They
leave the plain and the familiar people and the work they’d
been doing and climb up with him to the top of the mountain to pray.
Jesus had something very special to show them that day. And he knew
that in order for them to be able to see it, to get it, to understand,
he needed to get them out of their comfort zone. Get them disoriented
a bit, so that they could be re-oriented to a life they had only begun
to imagine. He knew that without an experience like this, they would,
in the words of the prophet Isaiah, “keep listening but not
comprehend; keep looking but not understand.” (6:9)
And
now we hear the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus, as always on
the last Sunday before the season of Lent begins. Peter and John and
James go with Jesus up the mountain. It may not have been far, distance-wise,
but the top of that mountain was light years away from any place they’d
ever been. They were jet-lagged by the time they got to the top, weighed
down with sleep, Luke says, but they made themselves stay awake. And
because they did, they saw an amazing sight. There was the Jesus they
knew, but now his face was radiant and his clothing was glowing with
light. They saw his glory, Luke says. And they saw Moses and Elijah,
the great law-giver and the prophet, the key figures of faith as they
had known it, now together with Jesus, talking to him. And a cloud
came over them and from it they heard the voice of God speaking, just
as at Jesus’ baptism: “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen
to him!”
And
then it was over. The cloud, the voice, the others, the light, all
gone. Just Jesus, alone. But they had seen his glory. They had heard
God’s voice. They were gifted to see that that we “find
God in Jesus Christ, God’s Word incarnate, as witnessed in the
Scriptures.” And they came down from that mountain with a kind
of knowledge, a kind of insight, that would allow, in the poet’s
words, their spirit to fill the whole world, and all the stars become
their jewels. They were becoming as familiar with the ways of God
in all Ages as with their own walk and table. They were becoming intimately
acquainted with that shady nothing out of which the world was made
that they might love [people] so as to desire their happiness, with
a thirst equal to the zeal of their own, delighting in God for being
good to all.
In other words, they were becoming disciples of Jesus Christ, Light
of the World, Promised of Ages, Help of the helpless, the Way, the
Truth and the Life, whose nature and whose name is Love.
This
last week, many of us were privileged to meet John Hayes, founder
of the InnerCHANGE Ministry of which our own Paul Smith is a part.
From Paul and through Alternative Christmas over the years, I know
that you’ve come to know the work of InnerCHANGE, as its members
live among and minister with the poor in some of the toughest places
of eight cities around the world. In the introduction to his book,
John told how he himself had been transformed and transfigured into
a true disciple. Princeton history major, insurance underwriter in
Manhattan, consultant to firms in Japan, he went to India in 1980,
not really knowing why or what he would find. As he writes: “I
didn’t expect God to strip me to the core to get me ready for
a new world-view.”
On
the streets of Calcutta, John Hayes was profoundly disoriented and
re-oriented. Disoriented by the poverty, the beggars, the 120-degree
daytime heat and sleepless nights, one day he came upon a crowd jeering
a beggar who was being beaten by the police. It was clearly something
he was not supposed to see, and the police warned him off. But back
in his room, he said, he threw himself on his bed and cried. “It
was as if the image I had so carefully crafted of my life, the identity
assembled brick by brick, all the awards and successes, the trophy
experiences I had crowded to the front, shattered in that moment of
need.”
He
was haunted by the image of the man, by his inability to envision
a faithful response and his shame for failing to act. He writes: “The
worldview through which I operated was too small and perhaps too misleading
to gain an authentic sense of God’s working in the world…
I set out to see poverty in India and came face-to-face with poor
people instead. Despite my good intentions…I was at best a ministry
tourist. I had not taken the time to learn the language, culture and
history….I had not acquired this knowledge from the poor themselves.
I had not submerged myself as Jesus had submerged himself in our world
through his incarnation… in 1982 God used my India experience
to direct me to join a Christian nonprofit organization in Los Angeles
that was seeking to empower the poor. I wanted to learn; I wanted
another chance to be more than a sympathetic bystander. I wanted to
be an agent of change.”
John
learned the truth of what G.K. Chesterton once said: “The tourist
sees what he has come to see. The traveler sees what he sees.”
That day in Calcutta, John Hayes’ eyes were opened to see past
what he had gone there to see, and instead to see what God in Christ
would have him see and it changed his life forever, his spirit filling
the whole world, loving people so as to desire their happiness with
a thirst equal to the zeal of his own.
For,
as Robert MacAfee Brown once said, “where we stand determines
what we see.” Driving home one late afternoon last week, I looked
up towards the Santa Monica mountains and was in the right place at
the right time to see, in the gorgeous beauty of clouds and sky, just
a snippet of a rainbow, low and close to the ground, painting the
dark cloud beyond with the full palette of God’s light and love
for us.
Because
of what we see in Jesus Christ and all that he revealed on the mountaintop
that day, we Christians trust the rainbow beyond the storm, even when
we see but a little bit of it, so that we may face into all the crosses
of this world, all the suffering and sorrow, all the brokenness and
need, for in him we are re-oriented Easter people full of light and
hope.
And
so as we prepare to begin our annual journey with Christ through Lent,
let us pledge to travel a bit, spiritually, during this 40-day seasonal
trip. Let’s ask God to open our eyes to see what God would have
us see of our world. To assist you, we’ll provide prayer and
worship, art, films and music, classes and service opportunities for
your Lenten travel package. Let’s see if Jesus can’t disorient
us in ways that re-orient us to new possibilities of discipleship
and faith.
So
that just as Peter and James and John were changed that day with Jesus
on the mountaintop, so we will be changed, little by little, as our
eyes are opened and we see the world as it is and see the light of
Christ shining through it all. And in that light, we will see ourselves
empowered in our own sphere of influence, to make it more beautiful,
more just and more whole.
AMEN.
Notes:
Traherne quote
in Ward and Wild, Resources for Preaching and Worship Year C: Quotations,
Poetry, and Prayers. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003.
John B. Hayes. Sub-merge:
Living Deep in a Shallow World. Ventura: Regal Press, 2007.
Quote from Miroslav Volf,
Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace.
Zondervan, 2005.
©Patricia
Farris, 2007. Permission is given for brief quotation with attribution.
All other rights reserved.
First
United Methodist Church
1008 Eleventh Street
Santa Monica, CA 90403
www.santamonicaumc.org
(310) 393-8258
All
There Is to See