Transformed by Love

 2-27-22, Transfiguration Sunday

Grace to you and peace from God our Creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen.

 

Today is a very special day - we will be welcoming many of our young people to the Lord’s table. It’s a bright spot of celebration in what definitely felt like a dark week - especially how we’ve been hearing how children in other parts of this country and world are suffering - through the anti-trans legislation and rhetoric happening in both Texas and Florida, and the children hiding in the subways of Kyiv or boarding buses out of town with only one parent while the other parent stays behind. So much has changed in the last weeks and months.

 

Both inside the church year and outside in our lives, Transfiguration Sunday feels like a transition point, a time of transformation like a chrysalis. We are no longer what we were - in Epiphany the season of light, but we are not quite at the season of Lent yet. Our young people are transitioning through a milestone in their faith. We’ve reached another threshold in the pandemic and we (yet again) don’t know what the figure will hold. Our world has also crossed a threshold of violence that we have not seen for nearly a century. It would be so nice if we could just stay at brunch eating burritos after worship forever, and not have to face whatever Monday brings.

 

I think Peter may have felt something similar up on that mountain with Jesus, when he suggested setting up shop up on that mountain. After all, what a LITERAL mountain top experience! It’s not every day you get to see Jesus transform, hanging out with some of your biggest heroes, and hearing God’s voice!

 

However, Peter may have forgotten that the rest of the disciples were waiting for them down the mountain, and had no idea any of this was going on. They were back in the valley, down in the trenches of ministry, struggling and failing to help this suffering boy and his worried father. 

 

Contrary to Peter’s wishes, Jesus DID come down the mountain, and just in time too. As Jesus approached, the illness cast the poor kid down to the ground yet again. But Jesus got closer, and so his pristine, dazzling white clothes became covered in the dust that got kicked up. And, both still covered in that dust, Jesus healed the child and gave him back to his father, who I’m sure was too overjoyed to notice all the dirt.

 

I’m sure that father was glad Jesus came down the mountain, even though Peter had clearly resisted the idea. Perhaps Peter was afraid that Jesus’s shiny special-ness might wear off if he went down the mountain and hung out with all the “common people” again. But what Peter didn’t know yet is that Jesus is not just for special occasions and for special people, Jesus is for everyday use.  He didn’t know yet that Jesus was serious about getting involved with the messiness of being human, and that meant getting a little dusty, tear stained, even bloodstained. But this is how we know that the love of God is real. Real love will stop and nothing will transform us into who we truly are - beloved children of God. Even if it means getting dirty and used up in the process. 

 

You know the story of the Velveteen rabbit? That stuffed rabbit toy got all threadbare from how much he was loved by the little boy, especially as a comfort during a time this boy was very ill. 

 

But when the boy was better, all his “contaminated” things were packed up to be thrown away, including the rabbit. As the rabbit sat out with the rest of the garbage that night, The Nursery-Magic fairy came to visit him. The rabbit’s scruffy and shabby appearance proved that the boy had loved him very much. The rabbit did not yet realize that Love had already made him real, so the fairy simply completed the process by transforming him into a living, breathing rabbit.

 

Earlier in this story, his friend the Skin Horse says to the velveteen rabbit: “Real isn't how you are made… It's a thing that happens to you…You become.” And that rocking horse is right. Being real is being a little rough around the edges, a little dusty and ordinary. Because that is where we live MOST of the moments of our lives – not up the mountaintops, but down in the valley where we are transformed by our experiences and transformed by God’s love more and more into who we have been created to be. And that can be a very messy process, and takes a lot of time. 

 

A wise friend once said to me, “Jesus is not birthday cake… Jesus is our daily bread.” Jesus is not special and doesn’t have to be put away up on a mountain to be kept safe, only to be used on special occasions. Jesus chooses very “ordinary” things for his work and transforms them: Water and a promise become the way we are called beloved Children of God in our baptisms. Ordinary bread and wine become the way we are welcomed and strengthened by Jesus’s presence. 

 

Jesus is with us every moment, in the breaking of bread, in the dust and in our tears, in our sweat as we work for justice. And when we follow Jesus’ example, WE are likely going to be transformed: becoming dusty, smudged, faded, or even broken, but no less beloved. We won’t have all the answers, and we won’t always know if we’re getting it right. But we will always have Jesus. 

 

We are about to embark on the season of Lent, which begins on Wednesday with a smudge of ash on our foreheads and a reminder that we are dust, and to dust we shall return. Next week he’ll be spending 40 days in the dust of a barren wilderness. For now, though, Jesus is both up on the mountain, shiny and savoring the glory of his identity of the Beloved of his Father, before descending into the dust that makes up our daily realities. He is down here where real love gets a bit messy while being revealed in ordinary things, hidden in plain sight - in water, wine, and bread. So whether this is the first time you are experiencing Holy Communion… the fiftieth time… or the five-hundredth time… you are welcome to receive strength for your week in these ordinary things. There is a place for you here, at the Lord’s table. 

 

When you receive, whether you are accompanied by your own immediate family, or you come alone, know that you are NEVER alone … you are surrounded by your family here, and beyond these walls. After we have received this gift – for the first, fiftieth, or five-thousandth time – we are sent back down the mountain, down into the ordinary, where we find Jesus there yet again. And we are forever transformed by the experience. Thanks be to God, amen.