True Colors (Matthew 17:1-9)

  I know a young man who, when he was growing up, was a friendly, well-liked individual, who often wore a smile on his face; but as the years went by, he became more and more distant. I didn’t see him as often, and when I did see him, he didn’t seem to be himself. He didn’t laugh as often, and he didn’t engage in conversation the way he used to. He was present, but a part of him was missing, or at least, was kept hidden from those around him.

It was like he was living in a cocoon.

But then, gradually, he emerged from that cocoon. He experienced a transformation. To everyone else, it looked like he became a new person, but actually, what happened was that, finally, the person he’d always been on the inside revealed itself on the outside.The world could now see what had always been there. 

And because who he was on the inside now matched who he was on the outside, his face shone. His face literally lit up in a way that it hadn’t for a very long time.

This isn’t a story about one particular individual, but about many young men - and women - who I’ve known over the years. Some are relatives, some are friends, some are people in the churches I’ve been a part of. Some of them you know. Some of them are friends and family members of yours.

For some, their transformation happened when they came out as gay or lesbian or transgender. For others, it was finally casting off an identity that had been forced on them— by parents, by society, by the church—and finally being who they felt God was calling them to be. 

And even though I said this was a story about a young man, a few of these individuals didn’t discover their true selves until old age, at retirement, or following the death of their spouse.

But in each case, a part of the person’s identity that had been kept hidden away was finally revealed. And because they were able to live as their authentic selves, their faces shone because of it.

A long time ago, before I became a minister, I applied for a job. When it came time for the interview, I answered the questions as honestly as I could. I was later told I didn’t get the job because I lacked integrity.

Well, something like that sticks with you, doesn’t it? It makes you doubt yourself. And ever since, anytime I encountered that word integrity, I paid attention. And I’ve asked myself over and over: What does it mean to have integrity?

Eventually, I came to the conclusion that integrity means being true to who you are. Being true to who God created you and calls you to be.

And I know now that I did answer that interviewer’s questions with integrity, I was true to what I believed, and I was true to what I felt was right. I did not hide who I was or what I believed. I acted with integrity.

When Jesus took Peter, James, and John up on the mountain with him, he acted with integrity. He presented himself in a way that was consistent with who he knew he was. He allowed Peter, James, and John to see him in that moment when his outer nature reflected his inner truth, his true identity as God’s son.

These three disciples had thus far seen Jesus and had got to know him, bit by bit, day by day. They believed he was the messiah, the one anointed by God to restore God’s kingdom - but like us, they were a little confused about what that all meant. Would it be a king on a throne, like David, commanding armies in battle against their enemies? 

Well, Jesus was like David, but he was also different from David. And God dwelt in him in a way that God had never before dwelt with any human. 

And this is what was revealed on that mountain. And what they saw in Jesus, in that moment, and every moment to come, was one whose identity and purpose was fully, completely, 100%, aligned with God.

God dwells in each of us. And each of us have an identity and a purpose given to us by God. But even in the best of us, the alignment doesn’t quite reach 100%. There is a gap between how we act—how we present ourselves to the world—and how God calls us to act. 

Paul writes to the Corinthians that we are jars of clay. The light of God shines within us, but we are jars of clay - earthen vessels - with imperfections and cracks. God’s desire is for us to be whole, but we are fragmented. We are torn apart. We’re all at least a little broken.

That integrity I talked about isn’t with me 100% of the time. And it isn’t with you 100% of the time. There are times when we fail to live out our true identity - times when we fail to be true to who we know we are; times when we fail to be true to the person God created us to be.

Maybe that’s why I’m so inspired by people like those I talked about at the beginning of my sermon. They faced great pressure to be and act a certain way, and they did act that certain way, even though it went against who they knew themselves to be; but then they got really brave, and said, “No more! From now on I’m going to be true to who I am. I’m going to be true to the person God created me to be.”

My mom was one of those people. Because of when she grew up and where she grew up and the community in which she grew up, she learned to hide a big, significant part of who she was, and present herself as something other than who she knew she was.

And the light started to fade from her life. It started to fade from those around here.

Then, gradually (because these things rarely happen all at once, but, like Abraham’s journey, take place in stages)... gradually, she came out. She said to a few close friends, “this is who I am.” She said to a few close family members, “this is who I am.” 

And let me tell you, it wasn’t easy. Some of us found the light to be a little too bright, at least at first, when we weren’t used to it.

And, like Peter, we may have said some foolish things. “Here, let me make three dwellings…” What is that about? In Mark’s gospel, it says that Peter said this because he didn’t know what to say. 

I can relate. Sometimes I, too, say the wrong thing, because I don’t know what to say.

It wasn’t easy for us when Mom came out, and it wasn’t easy for Mom. She was terrified of letting more and more people see her true colors. And, in other ways, Mom remained somewhat guarded and emotionally distant for the rest of her life.

But her family members who saw her true colors - and Mom grew up in a big family - learned to embrace those colors, and embrace who she was.

And that made it possible—or, at least, easier—for others in my rather large extended family to reveal their own true colors. Relatives who are gay and pansexual and transgender know that, in our family, they can let their true colors show, and that they will be loved and affirmed for who they are—who God created them to be.

And our whole family now shines just a little brighter because of that… 

The religious know-it-alls brought to Jesus folks they regarded as sinners. They said to Jesus, “What should we do with these sinners?”

They called them sinners, because they hadn’t learned to see their true colors. They tried to shame them, which made it even harder for those they shamed to let their true colors show.

But Jesus brought out their true colors. 

Jesus said to those who were brought to him: “These labels that they throw at you—that’s not who you truly are. I know who you are.” And Jesus showered them with love and compassion. His love for them overflowed, just like the perfume that one of them poured out onto his feet, and wiped with her tears and her hair. He embraced them, and their brokenness was made whole. 

And you just know that, as they walked away, and heard Jesus say, “Your faith has made you well,” that their faces shone a little brighter than they had before. They held their heads a little higher, and everyone could see the difference. They had been transformed. They began to see themselves as they truly were: beloved children of God, made in God’s own image—a person that was not perfect; a human who was a little broken—but one who was still very good, and whose true colors were beautiful in God’s eyes.

"Wait for It" (Exodus 24, Matthew 17)

1. Tree Time

Recently I learned that trees, like animals, have a central nervous system. Trees even have a brain! (Sort of.) And just like in animals, messages are sent via electrical impulses that travel along a tree’s nervous system. So if the leaves need to send a message to the roots, that message is sent via these electrical impulses.

In animals - including humans - those impulses travel with amazing speed. When your brain sends a message to your foot to take a step, your foot responds almost instantly. Then, if you stub your toe, the impulses that tell your brain that, “hey, that hurts!” travel back just as quickly.

In trees, however, those impulses move about one-third of an inch per minute. For a large, mature tree, it could take several hours for that impulse to travel the length of a fully grown tree!

Clearly, trees view time differently than animals do. 

It reminds me of the Ents in the Lord of the Rings books. Ents are tree-like creatures; and for them, time indeed moves at a different pace. 

At one point, the hobbits are waiting for the Ents to decide whether or not they are going to help them. The Ents discuss the matter, and the hobbits wait. For hours. 

Finally, Pippin says, “They must have decided something by now.”

But Treebeard - leader of the Ents - replies: “Decided? No, we have just finished saying ‘Good Morning.’”

The hobbits are astounded. “But it’s night time already! You can’t take forever!”

But Treebeard just says, “Now, don’t be hasty…”

There are trees on earth which have lived for thousands of years. I’ve walked among trees in the San Gabriel Mountains just north of here that are 2,000 years old. I haven’t been to the Bristlecone pine forest in the White Mountains, but some of those trees are estimated to be 5,000 years old. 

Meanwhile, in Utah, there is a forest of quaking aspen trees which are all connected by a vast root system. Since they are connected and are all genetically identical, the 40,000 trees in this forest are technically all one living organism. And even though individual trees have come and gone, this organism as a whole is estimated to be 80,000 years old.

2. Moses Waits

I’m thinking about this, because in our first scripture reading, it says that God called Moses up to the mountain. And once there, Moses waited six days while a cloud covered the mountain; and on the seventh day, the Lord spoke to Moses.

And then, the scripture says, Moses stayed on the mountain for forty days and forty nights, before descending.

Well, who has that kind of time? 

God does, obviously, but what human?

How can any of us be expected to wait that long for God?

When compared to trees that are 2,000, 5,000, or 80,000 years old, our lives are short. And when compared to God, who is infinite - well, it’s incredible that God even pays any attention to us.

But God does pay attention. And any time we experience sorrow, or injustice, or oppression, or struggle, God pays particular attention.

It was because God paid attention to the Hebrews, and their cries of suffering, that God called Moses, to deliver the people from their bondage and suffering. 

God noticed. God heard their cries. And God was with them.

But why did Moses have to wait so long?

Seven days of waiting on the mountain, followed by 40 more days and nights… all in the midst of forty years of wandering in the wilderness…

3. Kairos

One thing about time in the Bible… It is indeed measured in different ways. 

In the Bible, there is chronos time, and there is kairos time. Chronos and kairos are two Greek words which both mean time, but different aspects of time.

Chronos refers to the hours, minutes, and seconds that pass by. In athletic contests like track or swimming, time is kept, and it is precise, down to the tenth or hundredth or thousandth of a second.

That’s chronos time.

But if a particularly significant event occurs, like the breaking of a new world record, people might speak about what a significant moment in sports history it is. And when they speak about it being a significant moment - that’s kairos time.

Generally speaking, the Bible is more concerned with kairos time than with chronos time. The Bible uses descriptions of time to mark the significance of the event - not to state specifically how many hours, minutes, or seconds have passed by.

So when the Bible describes creation as taking place in seven days, or Moses waiting for God for seven days, or Moses then spending forty days and nights on the mountain, or the Hebrews spending 40 years in the wilderness - we aren’t meant to interpret these things literally, as we would the minutes and seconds it takes for a runner to cross the finish line.

These are symbolic numbers that give meaning to kairos moments - significant moments in the story of God and God’s people.

And I could present other examples: the forty days and nights it rained while Noah and his family were on the ark; and the forty days and nights Jesus spent in the wilderness, which is actually the scripture that will be our focus next week…

So when it comes to time in the bible, the seconds, minutes, hours, and days, all start to blur. It’s a different way of measuring time. Kairos time has the ability to speed up, or slow down. It can even hit pause.

4. Transfiguration

The other scripture we read this morning is Jesus’ transfiguration. The story of Jesus’ transfiguration is deliberately presented in the gospels in a way that echoes Moses’ time on the mountain. In many ways, this story presents Jesus as a “new” Moses, a new deliverer, sent to rescue God’s people.

In contrast to Moses’s time on the mountain, the story of Jesus’ transfiguration seems to happen rather quickly. Matthew uses words like “suddenly,” and phrases like “while he was still speaking,” to imply that things happened in rapid succession. There’s a sense of urgency here, because Jesus’ mission was urgent, and time was running out. 

Yet I do wonder how long it all actually took. This is clearly a significant kairos moment, an event during which time both speeds up and slows down. Moses actually appears, and so does Elijah, and how can that happen in a chronos time frame?

It’s all so frustratingly wonderful.

The hobbits were frustrated with the Ents, and how they viewed time, and the disciples were often frustrated with Jesus, and the timeline of the kingdom of God. The disciples actually got impatient with waiting.

Flipping through the pages of scripture, we find other instances when humans were baffled by how God perceives time.

Most significantly, we have 2 Peter 3:8, which says that “with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day.” I feel like that is true when comparing humans to trees, but how much more true that is when comparing humans to God!

The lifespan of trees is one thing. The lifespan of stars in the universe, and the amount of time it would take to travel to them, is even more mind-boggling.

5. Your Time Is Now

Imagine you could travel to the stars in a rocket ship. It’s not too hard to imagine, because it happens all the time in movies.

But consider this: when we sent people to the moon, it took about 3 days for them to get there. But to travel to Mars, that same rocket ship would take about seven months. And what about traveling to other stars, other solar systems beyond our own?

To travel to Vega, one of the closest stars to earth, it would take 465,000 years. And to Deneb, a star much further away but still bright in our sky, it would take 37 million years of traveling by rocket ship to arrive there.

And we haven’t even left our own Milky Way galaxy yet. What about all the other countless billions of galaxies?

Clearly, travel to other stars is not feasible.

In the movies, the solution to this is to imagine that we can build ships that travel at the speed of light. Well, even traveling at the speed of light, it would take 2,000 years to reach Deneb. And to reach any one of the countless galaxies beyond our own Milky Way, it would still take millions of years, traveling at the speed of light.

The psalmist, in psalm 8, wrote the following: 

“When I look up at your skies, at what your fingers made—the moon and the stars that you set firmly in place—what are human beings that you think about them; what are human beings that you pay attention to them?”

Indeed.

And yet, God does pay attention to us. In this vast universe, God decided that creation wouldn’t be complete unless YOU were a part of it. All those stars and galaxies, all the trees that live for thousands and tens of thousands of years, weren’t enough. 

God wanted you.

These are big thoughts. And one might want to spend seven days or forty days on a mountaintop pondering them. It may take that long to "be still and know," as the psalmist says. 

...and it may take that long, or longer, to seek out how God might be calling YOU to help bring about the restoration of all things, to help bring wholeness to this fragmented world.

After all, this is your moment. This is your kairos moment. 

In a universe that is billions of years old - a universe that will exist for billions of years to come - your time is now...

That kind of wisdom, that deep realization, only comes if you wait for it… while sitting beneath an ancient tree...or under a star-filled sky...or overlooking ocean waves crashing onto shore...or in a quiet sanctuary where generations before you have prayed and worshiped. 

And with that wisdom comes a joy that is deeper and more profound than any joy you've ever known. 

Lifted Up to Wholeness (Matthew 17:1-9)

I read an article this week by Disciples preacher extraordinaire Fred Craddock in which he points out three times in Matthew’s gospel that Jesus comes to his disciples, appearing to be something more than human.  There are many times when people come to Jesus, reach out to him, and receive healing or forgiveness or some other manifestation of divine power.  But there are exactly three times when Jesus himself is doing the reaching out, three times when the divine power within him is made especially apparent.

The first is when the disciples were sailing across the Sea of Galilee in the wee hours of the night. When they started out, the stars were shining and the water was calm.  In a day before electricity, all was black except for the stars that shone above them as well as the stars that shone below them, in the reflection of the sea.

But then the wind picked up and the waves grew large, and the little boat carrying the twelve disciples – way out in the middle of the sea – was tossed and battered.  The disciples tried going to shore, but the wind was against them, and all night long they battled against it.

While it was still dark, before the sun started to brighten the eastern sky, Jesus came walking toward the disciples on the sea.  No mere human could do that, and the disciples were terrified.  They thought maybe it was a ghost.  They hadn’t noticed this side of Jesus before, and they cried out in fear.

But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, “Take heart.  It is I.  Do not be afraid.”

And then Peter said, “If it is you, command me to come walk on the water with you.”  And Peter got out of the boat and started walking on the waves.  But fear overcame him, and he began to sink, until Jesus reached out to him and took him by the hand.

The second appearance of Jesus’s divine glory comes in the scripture Ginger read for us.  Since we just heard it, I won’t repeat the story.  But I will point out that, after Jesus’s divine appearance on the mountaintop; after the disciples Peter, James, and John heard the voice booming from heaven, saying, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”;  after that, the disciples fell to the ground and were overcome by fear.

But Jesus came, reached out to them, and said, “Get up.  Do not be afraid.”

The third appearance of Jesus’s divine glory comes on the third day after he was killed.  The days following Jesus’s crucifixion were days of great fear for the disciples.  When Jesus appeared to them, they were overwhelmed, and they prostrated themselves in worship.  They had not done this before.  Yet even as they worshiped, some doubted.  Some  - perhaps all of them – were filled with fear.

There, Jesus gave them a commission.  He told them to carry on, to get up off the ground, they had work to do.  Death cannot stop a movement so powerful and so holy.  And Jesus assured them that he would be with them, to the end of the age.

In each of these three scenes, we see the divinity of Jesus.  Or, some would say, we see a Jesus that is more fully human, a fully awakened or enlightened being, a new type of human, a human that has reached the full potential of what humanity is capable of.

That’s what is meant by the phrase, “son of man.”  A new, fully developed, fully awakened human; a human that recognizes and understands the connection one has with the divine.  This one-ness with God is something that every human is capable of.  We were, after all, created in God’s very image.  That divine spark is in each of us. 

It is Jesus who realizes this.  It is Jesus who shows us this.  It is Jesus who, alone, fully lived out his identity as one-with-God. 

Buddhists recognize this in Buddha, who they believed also achieved oneness-with-God, although they would say oneness-with-all-that-is.  Buddha is the enlightened one, but every practitioner of Buddhism is also a “little Buddha.”  Every practitioner of Buddhism can also be enlightened, can also experience that oneness, that same level of awakening. 

For we who are followers of Christ, we see the oneness-with-God that Jesus exemplifies, and every day we learn that we, too, can strive to be one with God, that we can be “little-Christs,” which is, in fact, what the word “Christian” means.  To be a Christian is to be a “little Christ.”  It is to live in oneness – in unity – with God.

In each of these three stories, in which Jesus appears more fully human, manifesting a oneness with God, I notice something:  the reaction of those with Jesus.

Fear.

Jesus comes walking on the water, and those who saw it were terrified.

Jesus is transfigured on top of the mountain, and those who saw it were terrified.

Jesus appears, alive, three days after his crucifixion, and those who see him fall on the ground in awe, with confusion and – I’m sure – a great deal of fear.

For the disciples, it seems that seeing what is humanly possible for the one who gives himself completely to God is frightening.  It’s overwhelming.

Yet, each time, Jesus reaches out to them.

Each time, Jesus calms their fears.

“Do not fear.  I am with you.”

Didn’t that also happen at the announcement of his birth?  It wasn’t Jesus’s appearance, then, but the appearance of angels and the glory of God to shepherds in the field that caused great fear.  But the word of the angels to those shepherds in the field was:  “do not fear.”

It seems to me that this message – “do not fear” – is a vitally important part of the gospel.

There is something else about these three appearances of Jesus-as-one-with-God, this divine Jesus, this fully-human Jesus.  Each time, when Jesus offers words of comfort and assurance, he also reaches out and lifts up those who were cowering, bent over, in fear.  He lifts them up.  He helps them stand.

He lifted Peter up out of the water in which Peter was sinking.

He reached out and touched the disciples who had fallen to the ground in fear after seeing him transfigured on the mountaintop, and said not only “do not fear,” but also, “get up.”

Get up.

And to those who prostrated themselves in worship upon seeing his resurrection appearance, he called upon them to get up and go to all the nations. 

Each time, when Jesus saw his disciples on the ground cowering in fear, he lifted them up.  He helped them stand. 

I have probably disappointed some people over the years, who expect their preacher to throw a little fire and brimstone around every now and again. 

I just can’t do that.

Preaching about fire and brimstone is preaching that pushes people down to the ground in fear.

To me, that seems so contrary to everything I know about Jesus.

Jesus doesn’t push people down to the ground.  Jesus doesn’t instill fear in people.

Jesus removes the fear.  Jesus lifts people up.

He lifts people up to wholeness.

To wholeness.

The word “wholeness” is one that I’ve been using a lot lately.

It started almost six years ago, when I attended a conference in Chicago for pastors of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).  There, our General Minister, Sharon Watkins, introduced to us a new identity statement for the denomination.

She was really excited to share it with us. She told us how, when she first heard it, it reminded her of a scene in the movie We Are Marshall, when everyone starts chanting:  “We are … Marshall!  We are… Marshall!”  The emotional punch of that scene is enough to give you chills.

Well, General Minister Watkins said she got chills when she first heard the identity statement that the committee came up with, and she thought of this movie scene when she heard, “We are… Disciples of Christ!”

Her enthusiasm was contagious, and I’ve been in love with the identity statement ever since.

Say it with me:

“We are Disciples of Christ, a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world.  As part of the one body of Christ, we welcome all to the Lord’s Table, as God has welcomed us.”

We are a movement for wholeness.

A movement for wholeness doesn’t push people down to the ground.  It lifts people up.

A movement for wholeness doesn’t instill fear in people.  It calms their fears.

A movement for wholeness doesn’t make people feel like they are less than human.  God knows there’s enough of that in the world as it is.  By contrast, a movement for wholeness makes people feel fully human.  More than human.  One with God.

I’ve shared with you before that the word “wholeness” comes from the Greek word sozo.  Sozo is a word that is used a lot in the New Testament.

It is sometimes translated as saved or salvation.

It is sometimes translated as healed.

It is sometimes translated as well or wellness.

And sometimes, it is translated as whole, or wholeness.

Whenever Jesus says “You have been healed, you have been saved, your faith has saved you, you have been made well…”  that’s sozo.

That’s wholeness.

And sozo is something that is available to you right now.  Healing, wholeness, salvation… right now.

Fire-and-brimstone preaching says that healing, wholeness, and salvation are available to you after you die… if you live in fear and trembling now, and do what the preacher tells you to do.

Yet Jesus restored people to wholeness now.  In the present.  He freed people from fear.  He freed them from sin.  He freed them from illness, oppression, bigotry, discrimination – whatever kept them from living life fully.

You are created whole.  Sozo is available to you, right now.  You may have arthritis or diabetes or bad eyesight.  You may have a disability or a disorder or two.  You may think you are too young, or too old.  You may have been bullied or discriminated against.

But God has made you whole.

God has made you complete.

God has made you fully capable of being fully human, of living to your fullest potential, of witnessing to the Spirit of God that dwells within you.

You don’t need to wait to upgrade your faith to version 2.0.

You don’t need to wait until you get your life in order. 

You don’t need to wait until you finish one more class, or get that next promotion, or find that perfect lover.

You are whole and complete now, just as you are.

Because you are one with God.

Over the next five weeks, my sermons will focus on wholeness.  Each week will focus on a different aspect of wholeness.  We’ll discover how we can find wholeness in our lives.  So keep coming to worship, and invite friends.  Remember: it’s not about pushing people to the ground.  It’s about lifting people up.  Lifting them up to wholeness.