Down to Earth

Text: Mark 9:2-9

On the cover of the bulletin you’ll see Raphael’s interpretation of the Transfiguration, the formal name for the story we just heard in the Gospel reading. This image was painted around the same time that Martin Luther was stirring up the Reformation. In real life the painting is about thirteen feet high by nine feet wide. I would guess it is a little more impressive at that size than the image on today’s bulletin.

Like many paintings of this story, this one depicts two worlds. At the top is the heavenly world, the mountain top of the story. There Jesus meets with the greatest prophets Moses and Elijah. They are all kind of floating in the air, and the disciples are just below them, terrified (in Mark’s version of the story) or asleep (in Luke’s version). Below them, in the dark, are the people of the earthly world, evidently in sin, sickness, and suffering. The split between the divine and the mundane is clear, and it is clear in whose realm Jesus belongs and is comfortable. That is one way to see this story.

The story of the Transfiguration sits in the church year between Epiphany and Lent. It is on the cusp of the two seasons. From the mountain top we look back on the stories of the ministry of Jesus. What he did, what he said, and especially the people he healed. His worldly work. And also we look forward to the story of the passion. The trial and crucifixion of Jesus and his resurrection at Easter. His heavenly work.

The story itself sits almost exactly in the middle of Mark. Right before it, Peter declares that Jesus is the Messiah, and Jesus tells Peter that he, Jesus, will be executed. So in Mark, too, it sits on the cusp, with the ministry of Jesus on one side and the passion of Christ on the other.

In the story, Jesus invites a few disciples, Peter, James, and John, to come up with him on a high mountain. James and John are silent throughout the whole episode. Peter, as usual, has plenty to say. What he says is this: Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. It is good for us to be here. How is it good? Is it good for Peter and his buddies, or is it good for Jesus, or is it good for the world? Is it a good that benefits one of those groups? Or is the fact itself that we, the disciples and Jesus, are here that is good? I have an idea about this, which we’ll talk about in a minute.

The Transfiguration is a big deal. It is one of the church’s feast days. But it was not always so, and it did not become so until just before Luther’s time, in the 15th century. The events of the Transfiguration don’t really change our picture of Jesus.

Some say that the point of the feast is that it establishes a boundary. But if so, that boundary exists already in the events of the life of Jesus. And besides, I’m not so sure that we can turn the person of Jesus into two different characters, one pre-Transfiguration and one post-.

And if the point of the feast is that Jesus is revealed to be at least closely connected—if not coincident—with God, then we already know that. Peter has just declared a few verses previously that Jesus is the Messiah. And if it is that now we know that Jesus is going to his death, we already know that, too. Jesus just told us so.

The story is powerfully dramatic. But though it seems to be about Jesus, it doesn’t add much to the disciples understanding of Jesus, nor to ours. So what is it doing here, and why does the church think this is important? Important enough to get its own day.

When you read this story, you think, at least I do: why did Jesus invite his disciples? Especially John and James, who just hang around and don’t say two words between them. But even why Peter? Jesus doesn’t need the disciples to be there. He does not teach them anything. He doesn’t even talk to them until the end, when he orders them to keep their mouths shut about all this. Which of course, they do not.

The story seems to be about Jesus, but I think it is more about the disciples, and especially about Peter. I think that Jesus brings these three important church leaders up to the mountain with him for their sake. Silent James and John and excited talkative Peter are not there just to observe and report. They are there to be changed. It is their metamorphosis that becomes the long-term result of the events on the mountain top.

Peter says, Lord it is good for us to be here. When he says “good,” he means a lot more than that things are just fine, or fortunate. He means, in the word he uses, that it is beautiful, excellent, precious, and fitting. That it fits into the scheme of creation and the universe. That it is good in the same way that God in Genesis saw things to be good when the world was created. Peter is saying something really important and crucial. World changing.

For Peter, this event with the prophets and the voice of God establishes his vocation—his calling—in a way that was, if not casual, then unconfirmed. He sees in a way that he did not see before that Jesus is from the people of Moses and Elijah, but even more: that he is like them. That he, Jesus will change the world. And that he, Peter, will be an important instrument of that change. It finally clicks. There is a conversion here in this story, and the person who is converted is Peter.

Our lives are full of moments of change. We are often on the cusp of something that was and something that is about to be. But it is rare that we see that until it is too late, so to speak. Turning points are hard to see until we realize that we’ve made the turn. It seems like all we are doing is making small decisions here or there. To confirm the path we are on for a while or to deny it. To stay the course or make a new one. And often as not, as with Peter, the path we take depends as much or more on what someone else does as on decisions we ourselves make. But occasionally, as with Peter, we do see that we are on the cusp, that it is an important moment, that something is happening right this minute in our lives, that the future is going to be amazing.

No matter which version of the Transfiguration you read, in each the followers of Jesus are surprised. That’s the way it is to follow Jesus. You go up the mountain with Jesus. Something happens. You come down the mountain. Everything is different.

The church—Christianity—celebrates this feast because it is an event in the life of the church more than it is an event in the life of Jesus. Down comes Jesus from the mountain. Down come John and James. Down comes Peter.

Down they come to the world of sin, sickness, and suffering. The world in the lower half of the painting. The place of Jesus is not after all to be in the clouds, floating above the sorry disciples. It is to be with the sorry disciples. It is clear in whose realm Jesus belongs. The ministry of Jesus does not shut down with the Transfiguration. It is conveyed to John and James and Peter, and it has been conveyed through the church to us here in this place and in this time. Where it is good for us to be.

Healing into a New Story

Text: Mark 1:40-45
Other texts: 2 Kings 5:1-14

No one emerges from an illness the same way he or she went in. Even when cured by a miracle of the spirit or by a miracle of medicine, illness changes us.

Naaman, commander of the army, had leprosy. A vaguely defined and incurable skin disease. After much drama, hurt pride, fortunate intervention, and God’s work through the prophet Elisha, Naaman was healed. He emerged from the river Jordan with skin as smooth and pure as a preadolescent’s. No sores, no scars. He was better than new. But that does not mean the experience of being ill had been undone. Could he escape the memory of the time he had leprosy? Could he forget the looks of disgust that people must have given him? Or perhaps the looks of admiration that he had become an army commander and friend of the king despite his illness. The events of his disease would remain a part of the story of his life.

What does it mean to be healed? It is tempting to think that healing means restoring things to the way they were before. Before we were injured, or before we got sick, or before we were hurt emotionally, or before we endured a major loss. In those times, we long for suffering to just go away, as if it were a bug that might fly off, leaving us unbothered and unchanged. But we are never unchanged by illness and loss.

First, we are creatures and can never be put together exactly the same way after we are broken. Second, we are creatures who move forward in time—we age—so that even if we could be reassembled, we can never return exactly to the person we once were. And third, we are creatures who remember things as we move forward in time, so that even if it were possible to undo an illness, we could not undo our experience of it. Naaman remembers himself having leprosy and having to humble himself. The beggar remembers himself being unclean, sick, and outcast, no matter what happens to him after his encounter with Jesus.

Nor does healing mean to be made perfect. As if that were possible, as if that had any meaning to creatures who are organic and complex. None of us were ever perfect. What would that mean? What would be the standard? Are we imperfect because we cannot fly? Are we imperfect because we are soft? Are we imperfect if one leg is a little shorter than the other? Are we imperfect if we are near-sighted? If we are not as smart as the next person? If we can’t run very fast? Beside all that, we are biological beings living in a biological environment. We will always be ill, more or less. Most of the time mostly less, thank God. But there is something wrong with every one of us. Partly, it doesn’t matter very much. And partly, we are used to it.

Nor does healing mean to be resigned to one’s fate. Illness and loss make us angry, disappointed, sometimes ashamed. There is not much we can do about our condition. But it is not helpful to simply suck it up, to live with anger, disappointment, and shame. Those are not good things to live with. Not good things to carry around in our heads and hearts and bodies. The beggar approaches Jesus because the beggar sees and hopes and expects that Jesus will change him.

There was once a young man named Matthew who was in a car accident when he was thirteen years old. In the accident his spine was broken. He lost control and feeling of everything below his diaphragm, including his legs. He later wrote about his experience. He said that most of the people looking after him—his mother, the doctors—wanted him to become a person with no legs. That is, they told him that he would never use his legs again and that he had to develop really strong arms and that it would be best if he somehow disassociated himself from his legs. They would be attached, of course, but not really part of his existence. He felt they wanted him to be a new person, newly born in a way, a person without working legs.

But Matthew was having no part of this. Over time, he learned that though he could not feel his legs or move them, they were clearly part of him. When he sat up, they were a counterbalance to his torso. They affected his movement, his grace and awkwardness. Not just like they did before his accident, but in a new way. His body was one body. The different parts working together, the same as everybody’s. Not the same way as everybody’s. How they worked together was different. That they worked together was the same. He wrote that when he realized this, which took years, he felt he was healed. He was healed not by becoming a new person. He was the same person as before. But he was the same person with a new story.

Illness and loss seem to be our enemies. They are outside of us, attacking our being, distorting our existence. But healing does not eradicate them. Healing brings them into our story. Healing changes the trauma into an event in our lives. Something that happened. Healing takes away the power of illness and injury. They no longer define us and control us. They are things that have happened, or are happening, to us, just like all the other more ordinary things. Healing makes them part of our story. The story we tell about ourselves. When I was thirteen, Matthew said in his story, I was in a car accident. When I got sick, we might say. When I and my spouse separated. When I lost my job. When my grandmother died. How I became weaker, slower, befuddled. We are not made into new people by such events. We are the same people. But we do have new stories.

The healing stories we’ve been hearing in Mark are stories of power. Who has the power over us. The beggar comes to Jesus. If you chose, you can make me clean, he says. You have the power, he says, to change my life.

Healing means we are freed from the power that our wounds have over us. We cannot eliminate them, ignore them, or resign ourselves to them. We can though deprive them of their power. They don’t have to be define us or be the boss of us.

The connection that Jesus makes so often between forgiveness and healing is a natural one. Sins against us control us until we forgive them. Sins we cannot forgive make us angry and resentful and do stupid things. When we forgive someone who sins against us, we don’t eliminate the sin, or forget about it, but we do weaken its power over us.

In the same way, when Jesus promises us eternal life, it frees us from the power of death. It does not eliminate death, but it weakens its power. When Jesus tells us not to be afraid but to trust in God, it does not eliminate fear, but it weakens its power.

We can place our illness, our loss, our shame at the center of our lives. We can think of ourselves as the person who is ill, the person that something bad happened to, or is happening to, the person who has been wounded. Or we can seek out another center. We can search, as Naaman did, for God’s prophet. We can call, as the beggar did, for Jesus. We can discover a new story for ourselves.

Jesus, if you choose, you can make me free.

To Be Right or To Be Good

Text: 1 Corinthians 8:1-13

Is it better to be right or to be good?

It is the question that Paul asks, in a round-about way, of the people of Corinth. And therefore asks us.

Perhaps you will say that to be right is to be good. When we act, we should act on what we know. (The Corinthians would agree). When we do, you might say, then it is likely that the outcome is best. To act in ignorance and to act against reasoned thinking is risky and foolish. Like the people of Corinth, we value knowledge. We as a culture spend a lot of energy getting, organizing, and preserving knowledge. We have knowledge workers. We weigh things one against the other and pick the best outcome, we hope, limited only by our knowledge. Practicality, expediency, and effectiveness are the children of knowledge. We judge behaviors and outcomes by them.

By this reasoning, it is OK to be good, but that is not the main point. Or to be more kind, goodness is a desirable outcome, but not always relevant. Goodness is a consideration. The CEO is a practical manager. The chief ethics officer is an annoyance.

What makes the words of Jesus, who was a visionary, and Paul, who was a lawyer, so amazing is that for both of them goodness is exactly the main point. Jesus is always getting into trouble because he breaks the law in favor of the immediate needs of people. The right thing to do is to obey the law. But when Jesus sees someone in trouble, he does the good thing whether or not it is the right thing. The sabbath is for people, not people for sabbath, he said, which pretty much sums it up. He heals people at the wrong time. He hangs around with the wrong people. He touches the wrong people. We do things, he seems to say, because they are good for people. Knowledge and all its children are a consideration. But they serve goodness. Even if when it is risky and foolish, it is better to be good than right.

Paul is unhappy with the Corinthians. He starts by telling them that they are in the right. You have knowledge, he admits. You have knowledge of Jesus and his teachings. You know what is right, what are the true facts about God and the world. But that knowledge is not causing you to do good.

When Paul speaks in this passage about what I’m calling goodness, he uses the word that is translated love. But for Paul and his listeners, that word does not describe a feeling, a sentiment. Love is not about feeling either romantically or affectionately drawn to another person. It means to act. Love works, love does things. Love works to serve others. That is what love does. It is a consequence of love and a definition of love.

But that is not what the folks at Corinth are doing. They are not acting in love. They are not making things easier or better for other people. They are making things harder. Not because that’s a good thing to do, but simply because they can. They are right, and they act as if that gives them special powers.

In fact, Paul agrees they have special powers. Our Bible calls this power liberty, or you could call it freedom, but it is translated elsewhere as authority or power. They have the freedom, or liberty, or permission, that comes with knowing that God favors them because of what Jesus did. This knowledge has puffed them up, Paul says. They have inflated egos. They are thinking a lot about themselves and not much about others.

Paul’s argument, which probably seems a little weird at first, goes like this: You and I know, says Paul to his readers, that there are no such things as idols. Idols have no power. They aren’t real. They are just made up things. There is no reason to revere them. You could spit on an idol (Paul doesn’t say that) and it wouldn’t matter, because an idol is just a manufactured item, like a shovel or a trash barrel. Paul and Paul’s compatriots know this. So if someone makes a sacrament of meat to an idol, it means nothing. It is not holy or special. It is just plain old meat. A lamb chop. Sirloin steak. So there is no reason not to eat it. Anyone with knowledge of Jesus knows this. Or should.

But let’s say that someone has a little left-over worry that maybe idols have a little divinity in them. That they are kind of holy. “Not really, you know, but, well, maybe a little. I mean, maybe.” So they think, I cannot eat this meat because it has been part of a sacrifice to a pagan god. And if they do, they feel bad—Paul says they feel defiled.

Evidently the folks to whom Paul writes have been eating this meat. Sort of flaunting it in front of others. Like when someone does something taboo because he or she doesn’t believe in the taboo, and therefore it has no power for them. You can just see them approaching the others, teasing them: Go ahead, have some of this great meat. Yum! This sure is good.

When you do this, Paul says to the Corinthians, it shows that you do not understand what Jesus was all about. You are hurting these people, making them seem foolish or sinful. And making you superior, just because you are right. It is right, but it is not good. Through your knowledge, Paul says, you are destroying your brothers and sisters. You are sinning against them, and, he says, sinning against Christ.

When we sit upon a platform of what is right and do things that harm others, we sit with the Corinthians. When we begin our discussions with words like “I know” or “it says” or “Luther said,” we are enlisting the force of knowledge. And when through that we hurt others, we are not loving them.

What Paul asks for in his letter is not a kind of sentimental fluffy embrace of all things, people, or behaviors. And he does not dismiss the power of knowledge. He agrees that knowledge of Jesus Christ is liberating and powerful. Nor does he dismiss the need to exhort people to think clearly and humbly. Paul is always doing that. He was stubborn and vocal about it. (Martin Luther was the same way; no wonder he liked Paul.) Paul’s letters, like this one, are often lists of correctives and criticisms of people doing things the wrong way.

But Paul does not lean on doctrine. Or maybe better to say that Paul finds doctrine to have a tough flexibility to conform to things new and unforeseen. And that doctrine must be based on love, the kind of love we are talking about. It must be able to accommodate real people and their real situations. And because Christian doctrine is based on Jesus, it is able to.

Right and good are not inevitably opposed. They are not the opposite end of some scale. Often they are coincident. But when there is a conflict between structure, doctrine, law, or process and love, what do we do? How do we decide? Which pulls us most strongly? Which do we trust the most?

It looks like it will continue to be stressful times for the world, the nation, the church, and individuals. In these days especially, fear tempts us to trust knowledge as our guide and not trust love.

In these days, it is helpful to remind ourselves of Paul’s answer to the people of Corinth. Knowledge puffs up, love builds up, says Paul. Love is better than knowledge; good is better than right.