Living as Transfiguration People
(Sermon begins at 4:00)
Announcements
Bethany: Well, good morning, everybody. So it is a pleasure to be here today on this cool summer day. My name is Bethany. I have the pleasure of sharing things with you that are upcoming in our community. So first, new at the table is happening after church next week on July 19th, whether you've been coming for a few weeks or checking things out for a while. This is a great opportunity to learn more about the table's story and just explain more ways that you can get involved. Child care will be provided if you need it, but please RSVP online just so that we know you're coming and can plan ahead.
On July 26th, we have New Member Welcome Sunday. So if you've been here for a while and you're looking to go further deeper into community and make coming to church feel more like coming at home, this is the great next step. So scan that QR code and fill out the form to sign up.
Next, men at the table is on Thursday, July 23rd at 7 p.m. You guys have the privilege and fun of going to a Saints game, wish I could go, but fill out this form using the QR code to reserve a ticket. We will get a ticket for you.
So if you would like to be reminded of all of the things that I said happening at the table and just other upcoming things, please sign up. There's a QR code to sign up for text messages. Maggie tries really hard and she tries not to spam anyone. And I do have them and I think she actually does a pretty good job about it.
And then finally, as a community, we strive to practice generosity. And one of the ways we do that is through financial giving. If you would like to give today, there is a box in the back. If you do prefer cash or check, otherwise you can go online and sign up there to do either one time or recurring giving just online. So you can scan that QR code as well to learn more or sign up. And then now I would like to invite up Rebecca to share a little bit more about our partnership with Park Place and ways that we can be a part of what they're doing.
Rebecca: Thanks, Bethany. Like she said, I'm Rebecca Rasp. I'm one of your board members. So I've got a quick update on Park Place. As you know, there are a litany after school program that lives out of this building as well. And we've been partnering closely with them in many different ways. In this season, we've got a couple of opportunities to help chaperone some of their trips. So if you can follow to that, QR code, very QR code heavy today. They have a trip on July 24th. They're going to the Minnesota Zoo. So if you haven't gone recently and want to chaperone three to four kids, just exploring God's creation, that would be a great way.
And then also August 7th, they're going to a sunflower field, which I'm also like, that sounds amazing. So if you're interested in that, feel free to find me after the service. Or I think on the website, there's my email as well. You can email me and we'll get you hooked up. We do want to go through some paperwork that we do the same for our kids volunteering, just to make sure that we've got everything documented.
So there's going to be more opportunities. The parks place will hopefully continue pray for them coming back to the building this fall for school. They were obviously kind of pushed out and had to stay home during the ICE push. So we're very excited for that. And then also we've done backpacks with them in the past. That's going to be coming up sooner than we think. So we'll have more details on that soon too. All right, thank you. Here's Debbie for the message.
Sermon
Debbie: Wow, good morning everybody. On this a little bit warm Sunday morning, if you feel faint at all, it is fully air conditioned in there. So I will not take offense if you walk out during my message to cool off a little bit. I'm Debbie Manning. I'm one of the pastors here at the table. And we are diving into a series that Maggie kicked us off on last Sunday. We were at Beard's Plaisance. It's a pavilion outside. It was the day after the fourth. And she kicked us off in our awe and wonder series. We're going to be doing that for the month of July. And Maggie took us to Psalm eight. And I've been thinking about that Psalm ever since.
It begins with Lord, oh Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. And then it lifts our eyes to the heavens, and to the moon, and to the stars, and then into all creation. And then takes us back to humanity. That's all of us. And then just as it began, it ends with Lord, oh Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.
And Maggie reminded us that there was something really beautiful about that structure. We begin in God and we end in God. Before we ever accomplish anything, before we make our plans or carry our worries, or we succeed or fail, we are already held within the majesty of God. And as everything else fades away, God is still there.
Our lives begin and they end in the presence of the Creator. And I don't know about you all, but I need that reminder, because I'll tell you when my brain wakes me up in the morning, or if it's an alarm, right away I go to. Well, these days it's been looking at my weather app, how hot is it gonna be? But okay, check my email, check my calendar for the day, check my news feed, people I need to see, places I need to go, I'm doing what is in front of me. And sometimes I forget. I get so consumed by what I need to do that I forget. The bigger picture, the larger story that is always surrounding me, that's always surrounding all of us.
And I think that's why this sermon series matters. It's asking us to slow down, to Sabbath, to take in all that's around us. I think that awe is one of those experiences that interrupts us. It happens when we encounter something that is beyond ourselves. And in that moment, might be just a moment, we forget about ourselves, and we get engaged in something that's bigger. Those moments that sort of leave you speechless, that remind us that we're part of something, and they remind us that God is vast, mysterious, beautiful.
And if awe lifts our eyes to God, to the greatness of God, teaches us to pay attention to God's nearness. Wonder reminds us that holiness doesn't just happen on mountaintops, but it happens in the ordinary. It happens on an ordinary Tuesday. It surprises us in the everyday moments when we suddenly realize, oh yeah, God's been here all along. Awe tells us that God is greater than we could ever imagine, and wonder tells us that God is nearer than we could ever imagine.
I'd love to just pause for a moment and think about some of those awe and wonder moments in your own life, whether they're big ones or everyday ones. Unexpected. I think about nature. I hear that all the time, the experience of God in nature. The sun rises and the sun sets. The outdoors, the change of season, the fall, the winter, the hellos, and those hard and holy goodbyes, and a new life. That's what I love about awe and wonder. It's not just when good things happen, because life is not perfect.
But it's in all those beautiful moments when we get to experience awe and wonder. And the beauty of awe and wonder is it changes the way we see the world and it changes the way that we live our life. And that brings us to today's gospel. We're talking today about the story of the transfiguration, and it's one of those stories many are familiar with. It sometimes feels so extraordinary that it doesn't fit into our ordinary lives, but I think that's not true. In this story, it's a big moment, right?
It's recorded in three of the gospel texts, and we're gonna look at it in the book of Mark today. And we're in Mark 9:2-8. Starts out like this: Six days later, I'm gonna pause right away. Six days later after what? Well, Jesus and his disciples are heading around the countryside, and Jesus asks his disciples, "Who do you think I am?" And Peter confesses that Jesus is the Christ. And then we hear Jesus' first prediction of his own death, of his own passion. That's where we are.
So six days after that, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves, and he was transfigured before them. And his clothes became dazzling bright, such as no one on earth could brighten them, and there appeared to them Elijah and Moses who were talking with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus, "Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us set up three tents, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah."
He didn't know what to say, for they were terrified. Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, "This is my son, the beloved, listen to him." And suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them anymore, but only Jesus. Jesus, he takes Peter and James and Paul, the mountain, his clothes become as dazzling white, Moses and Elijah appear, and that cloud settles over them. This is my beloved, listen to him.
It's not just a dramatic story, there's a lot of mystery in that. It certainly is a story that you'd imagine would take your breath away, if you had been a witness to that. Now Peter does what Peter often does, and you gotta love Peter because if you're human, you relate to him, especially when it comes to maybe not thinking before you speak. But Mark even tells us that he was afraid. He didn't know what to say, so he blurts out, "Let's build tents." And I'm wondering, could it be that part of that for Peter was wanting to stay on that mountaintop to preserve that moment? You know that feeling of wanting to hold onto something that just so amazing? You don't wanna let it go, because I think that's our first instinct. It usually keeps that moment from ending. We wanna do that.
Because I thought more and more about this story this week, I wondered if there is more to the story than we actually understand it to be, because most of us have heard this story as Jesus being transformed before the disciples' eyes. But what if the greater transformation are the disciples? What if Jesus didn't simply become radiant that day? Just for a minute, consider this. What if Peter, James, and John? What if they were giving eyes to see what had always been true? What had always been right in front of them? What if transfiguration wasn't actually so much about Jesus changing, but was about the disciples' ability to see? Was about their own vision changing?
I thought about that all week, because I wonder if that's exactly what awe and wonder do for us. Because awe and wonder don't necessarily change the world around us, right? But often awe and wonder changes the way we see the world. And one aspect of this story is maybe offering us a different way of seeing and a different way of living.
Albert Einstein once said, and I gotta put a caveat on it, because whenever you study this stuff, it's like, oh my goodness. Some people, he didn't actually say that, yes he did. But most people think Albert Einstein said this, "There are only two ways to live your life. "One is though nothing is a miracle, and the other is though everything is a miracle." I think he's talking about our vision, how we see determines what we see. And if we expect life to be ordinary and mundane and empty, then that's probably what we're gonna notice in life.
But if we move through life believing that God is still at work, if we move through life, seeing the image of God in every person that we meet, if we move through life believing that grace continues to break into this world, then we begin to see things that we've never noticed before, that maybe we've never seen before.
The Greek word for transfigured is metamorphu, and it's the word that we get metamorphosis from. It's also the word that the Apostle Paul uses when he talks about our own transformation. And the beauty and the mystery of all that is that we are being changed, we are being transformed. It's not just Jesus being revealed, it's us being able to see Jesus amongst us.
I really do think the life of faith is as we go on beginning to see bigger, to see more deeply, to live more like God, I think created us to live. And to see through God's eyes, that's a game changer. And I think it's the deepest invitation we have as followers of Christ, because if nothing is transfigured, then what you see is what you get. Life becomes flat and mundane and just the same, there's nothing new to see. People become labels and problems become permanent, and ultimately the world becomes something to manage instead of something to marvel at.
But if everything's transfigured, if we live with the sense of awe and wonder and gratitude, everything is alive and it's in motion, and everything attracts our own attention and our curiosity, we open ourselves up to not just discoveries, but to other people, to other cultures, to other worlds. We live life with expectancy, knowing that there's always more to be seen.
This is not at all in my notes, but it reminds me, and I've shared this before, but I have a pastor, our senior pastor at the church I used to work at, and I talk about this from time to time because he was really talented. He led a huge big church, he was on the board of World Vision, he spoke all over the world. And I'll never forget when he was in his 60s, being at a small group meeting in Minneapolis of what's next for the church, and was all young pastors, middle-aged pastors at the time. And someone, when we went around to introduce ourselves, and asked why are you here, he said, because what I know is I still have so much more to learn, I have so much more to see, and that's what we're called to in the life of faith.
So, if we live as transfigured people, then everything suddenly becomes holy, every encounter, holy ground, every conversation carries possibility. Every person we see bears the image of God. And it doesn't mean that things are easier. It just means that life is fuller, that life is deep. One of my favorite pictures ever of my sister and me is this one right here.
On this past Monday, we celebrated life, she'd been gone nine years. You might look at that picture and think, oh, there's a picture of two sisters looking out at Lake Superior. This picture holds so much more than that. The moment is transfigured. It holds everything. We knew in that moment we were part of something so much bigger than us. My sister died three months after this, we knew she was dying, and we stood on that deck on this girls' weekend with 24 nieces and aunties, and we stepped outside, and we were under this, I don't even know how to describe it, like veil of holiness, because even though we knew she was dying, we were filled with awe of how big God is. And so that picture is not all I see. I see so much more. I see love and grief and gratitude, a moment, memories that no camera could ever capture. Because the photograph is more than an image, it's a window that reminds us that there's always more happening, more than we can actually see. Have you had moments like that?
Maybe a photograph that suddenly means something different, or maybe a song that carries someone you love. Maybe a place that feels sacred because of an experience you've had there. There are moments, these moments, are the moments when our vision changes, when we can see more deeply. And it's the scene beyond the surface. That makes us aware that there is something so much bigger than any one of us. And that's awe and wonder.
I think that's what happened on the mountain. I think that's what Jesus is inviting us into every single day. One of the ways I think about it is the difference between looking at a window and looking through a window. Because when you look at a window, what do you see? Well, I know at my house, even though my kids are all grown up, but I got a whole heck of a lot of grandkids, so there's a lot of little fingerprints and no smudges, and we love that. It shows all the life, but it's so much bigger than that. When you look through that window, the world opens up, and you see so many things.
We get to find an entire life and world that we don't always think about. And it reminds us to ask ourselves the question, how do we look at people? Are we looking at people through their politics or their appearance or their opinions or maybe their mistakes?
We had, every year, we do the Pride Booth. Thank you, Sara and Hannah Woo, the Pride Booth. We're down at the Pride Festival, and this is our fifth year, I think. And this year, like a few other years, our Pride Booth was across the little walkway from the Satanic Cult Booth, and we've been there before with them and gotten along just fine. But this year, I walked over right away in the morning, young guy running the booth, and I was just kind of curious. Tell me more about who you guys are and what you're about. And we had a great conversation. Actually, I picked up one of their little cards, and some of their values were the same values that we held. It was creating safe space, creating belonging and community, social justice. Now, I am not promoting the Satanic Cult in any way, but I will say there was common ground. There was a place that every one of us created an image of God that we could connect, that we could see one another. And so I went back to the booth, and I don't know, six hours later, toward the end of the day, the young man I had talked to, he was off his shift, and he walked over, and he said, "Hey, I just wanted to tell you "that I've been watching your booth all day, "and our booth is just welcoming people "and loving people and blessing people "and trying to be the church." And he walked over, and he looked at me and he said, "I just wanted to tell you as I watched you guys," and he made a little heart sign with his hand, and he went, "I love what you're doing." And it was a beautiful reminder that sometimes we need to see beyond the surface, to find the places that we can connect.
And asking ourselves the question, are we learning to recognize that that person might carry wounds like ours, or hopes like we hold, that they too are beloved. And I think that's where the gospel today meets our mission here at the table, because every Sunday we remind ourselves, right, that we are a community, creating a space, practicing the ways of Jesus, by creating space for all to belong and all to be loved. And we create space for belonging because Jesus has first taught us to see.
Every person who walks through those doors is already beloved, and our calling is to learn to see what God already knows. I think the transfiguration teaches us something. Sometimes, I think the transfiguration sometimes teaches us that nothing has changed except for our own vision. And when our vision changes, everything changes. It impacts the way we listen, the way we forgive, the way we build community, the way we care for creation.
And the story, don't forget, doesn't end on the mountaintop, Jesus, doesn't end on the mountain top. Jesus leads them back down, because mountaintop moments aren't meant to be permanent residences. They're meant to be the new lenses that we see everything through, that we see everyday life through. And we come down the mountain because that's where all the people are. And that's where there's the need for justice and the need for healing. And it's where neighbors become friends and strangers become family and where the beloved community is built.
I don't know all your stories. I don't know the mountaintops you've been in or the valleys that you may be walking, but I do know this. The presence of God is always with you. Jesus is still being revealed, and the Holy Spirit continues to open all of our eyes.
And this part I love the most. Every day we get a new chance to start over. We get a new opportunity to practice seeing with softer eyes, with eyes of awe and eyes of wonder, and most of all, just eyes of love. My hope in prayer, not just for this community, but for our entire world is that God will continue to transform our vision until we can look at every person, every moment, even ourselves, and we can recognize what has been true from the beginning, what has been true all along, and that is God is great and God is present, and we are the beloved of God. Amen.
Words of Institution
Justin: The Transfiguration has always been one of those stories that really fascinates me because I always think, like what actually happened on that mountain? Like what did Peter, Jesus, and John actually experience and see? Jesus's face shining and then these visions of Moses and Elijah. It all feels like really spectacular. It all feels really divine.
And while we love those big moments where it's undeniable that we are experiencing something that is incomprehensible, a moment of awe and wonder, what strikes me this morning is that Jesus wasn't inviting those disciples to see something new, but like Debbie said, He was inviting them to see what already is reality. They were given a lens through which they could see the glory of God in everything, even in the mundane, the ordinary.
And when we approach this communion table, it's pretty mundane, it's pretty ordinary. It's just bread and it's just juice. Yet we're invited into the awe and the wonder of God's love and God's mercy at this table by eating the bread and drinking of the cup. The reality at this table is that love has won, grace goes before us and God is making all things new. And that is a reality that we can all experience, see the world through and live in ourselves. On the night that Jesus was betrayed, he took bread and he broke it. And he said, "This is my body given for you, "take and eat in remembrance of me." And in the same way after the supper, he took the cup and he said, "This is the blood of my new covenant, "poured out for you as often as you drink of it, "drink in remembrance of me."
So as we get ready to partake in communion, just a few reminders, you'll see in the aisles that there are orange tape lines. If you are seated in front of the orange tape line, you'll come down to the front station. And if you're seated behind the orange tape line, you'll go to the station in the back. You'll exit on this side and then you'll return to your seats on this side of the sanctuary.
We do practice intinction here at the table. So when you come forward, you'll take your gluten free bread, you'll dip it into the cup, consume it, and then return to your seat. We also practice open communion at the table, which means anyone and everyone is welcome to come forward.
And I will also be in the back corner. So after you take communion, if you are in need of prayer, whatever that may be, please stop by and see me. And I would love to pray with you and pray for you. So with that in mind, if you can stand with me in body or in spirit, and we'll pray together as Jesus taught us to pray:
Our God who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.