Last Epiphany C

­Today, we celebrate the Transfiguration.  I’ve heard about and celebrated the Transfiguration for years, but not until this year, when I had to spend time praying and thinking about the readings, did I appreciate its placement in our calendar. 

This is the last Sunday of the season of Epiphany, which also makes this the last Sunday before Lent begins. This week, we begin our Lenten journey with Ash Wednesday.  We’ll spend 40 days in that penitential and prayerful season of Lent, preparing for Holy Week and Easter, for the death and resurrection of Christ.   It’s in the shadow  of that imminent journey we’ll make that we get these readings today, full of light. 

In the Old Testament reading, we hear about Moses going up to Mount Sinai, where he receives the Law, or the 10 commandments. The reading tells us he was talking with God.   Wow.  Talking with God sounds so . . other worldly, so incredible, so something inaccessible to me.    When he returns, it says the skin of his face was shining.  After sharing the Law with Aaron and the other leaders, Moses took that shiny illumined face, and covered it with a veil.  He’d remain veiled until he went back and talked with God, when he’d take the veil off, get lit up again, and then put the veil back on, covering up his face to return to his people. 

In the Gospel, we hear a seemingly similar story, except this time, the story is different.  Jesus goes up a mountain to pray, bringing with him Peter, John and James.  

In both cases, Moses and Jesus are up a mountain.   I love that feeling of looking out over a landscape from a higher place.   There really is something weightless and feeling a little closer to God, when I’m at a place to look out over and across a vista.  There’s something immense and Holy about such spaces.  I certainly experience that when elevated on a real mountain, but I also get that sense when looking out over a valley, even from Skinners Butte, or Mount Pisgah.   Anywhere the elevation gives you a higher perspective, there’s something that feels beautiful and calm.  

So Jesus goes up the mountain to pray, to that beautiful and calm place.  While he’s praying, his clothes became dazzling white, and the appearance of his face changed.  That sounds pretty similar.  Go up a mountain, and get illumined.  

But then, Jesus  companions see Moses and Elijah with Jesus.    What an amazing, and possibly terrifying series of events.  And yet, at that moment when I might be pretty scared,  Peter turns to Jesus and says, “Master, it is good for us to be here”.  He senses this is a good place.  

At this point in the story, Peter, John and James try to fit what they’ve seen into their human paradigm, into their world of what they understood.  They offered to make three dwellings, possibly three shrines for Jesus, Moses & Elijah.  Peter and James and John were trying honor, memorialize or retain this amazing truly mountain-top experience they were having.  Of course, Moses & Elijah didn’t need shrines to be honored, dwellings to be  housed, and  couldn’t be retained or contained in any case.  

God then overshadows them with a cloud.  This could be another possibly terrifying thing to occur at the mountain top, with dazzling Jesus, and the apparition of Moses & Elijah.  God tells them, “This is my Son, My Chosen, Listen to him”.  At that point in the story, Moses & Elijah disappear and Jesus is again alone with his friends.  They tell no one. 

To me, this year, the greatest difference in these stories is not the presence of other human witnesses, of Peter, James and John, to this transfigurative event.  It’s not the presence of other prophets, or even God’s commandment to those there that they were to “Listen to Him”.  To me, this year, the greatest difference in these two stories is not something present in Jesus story.  It’s something that was absent from Jesus’ story.   

Unlike Moses, Jesus didn’t veil himself.  He didn’t cover his illumined face.  That light remained visible for all to see.  

Origen, a priest and theologian from the third century, compares Christ and us, the Church,  to the Sun and the moon.  Even on a cloudy Oregon night, the light from the moon makes the night not totally dark.  And on a clear night with a full moon, the nighttime light from the moon is startling.  And yet, the light isn’t from the moon at all.  The moon, on its own has no light to offer.   The sun is so amazingly bright that it can illumine the moon, 93 million miles away.  The light is so bright it can reflect off the moon, and can cast shadows in the darkest night.  

In the readings today, the light from God illumined Jesus and Moses.  Where Moses veiled his face, Jesus let that illumination be seen and shared.  We too are illumined by God.   Like the moon, it’s not anything we do to be illumined.   God’s light is so great that it lights us up just like the sun lights up the moon.    The moon does not choose whether to be lit up or not – it just happens.  We cannot chose to be lit up or not.  It just happens.  

But like Moses and Jesus, we can choose what to do with that light.    

Like a cloudy Oregon night or Moses’ veil, sometimes things get in the way to obscure our gifted light.  Sometimes we put the veil on ourselves.  We cannot bear the love and light and forgiveness that is given and do not have the strength to reflect that love and light and forgiveness.  We put the veil on ourselves, so no one knows.  So no one sees.  So no one else is illumined.  No one can see our transformed transfigured self.  Sometimes not even ourselves.  

 Sometimes we don’t know the light is there.  Sometimes it doesn’t feel like the light is shining on us.  We feel like a new moon, with something like the Earth that is so big that it fully blocks the light.    I’ve had times when I’ve felt so down, or so bad, or so undeserving, that I feel like there’s a big thing between me and God’s transfigurative light.  Talking with women in prison, I’ve heard their stories about big, bad horrible things that they’ve done, that they believe permanently separates them from that love. 

But unlike the new moon, God’s love and light is always on us and in us. We are a transfigured people.   We cannot escape it, regardless of whether we want to, or believe it. 

So here we are, sitting at the beginning of Lent.  Lent, for many – including me, can be a time of self-inflicted distancing from God.  I’m not worthy.  God doesn’t love me.   That wrong I’ve committed is so big that God’s love cannot reach me, cannot illumine me.   If I’m not careful, I mistake the penitential somber season of Lent for a time to punish myself with guilt or remorse over what’s happened in the past.  Then that remorse or sense of unworthiness can grow to the size of the Earth, which can totally eclipse the moon, so the sun never reaches it.  

 If I’m not careful, I can grab for the veils. I cover my illumined face, so it cannot be seen by others – including me.    

With Lent upon us, we are not asked to veil our faces, or hide our light.   We are not asked to deny the light and illumination from God.  We are not asked to distance ourselves from God, to voluntarily put ourselves in the Earth’s shadow, with no light or love.

 We are no less loved, no less illumined, no less transfigured during Lent than any other time of the year. And throughout the year, throughout our lives, things happen that make us grab for our veil, or make us feel that God’s love can’t reach us.  

And while Lent is not a time to distance ourselves, Lent is a time we are to pray and think about all of those things in our lives that makes us feel veiled, or makes us grab for those veils ourself.  We are asked to think about our relationship with God, and with others.  

Yes, it’s a penitential season and we’re asked to do some soul searching.  But sitting at either end of our Lenten Journey every year are pretty uplifting and comforting events.  We start with celebrating the Transfiguration, and end with the Resurrection.  Every year.   Lent sits between these promises of illumination and new life.  As today’s collect says, “Grant that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance may be strengthened to bear our cross and be changed into his likeness”

People often want to give something up during Lent.  Another option would be to add something to your Lent.  During Lent, pray more.  Talk with God more.  That’s precisely what Moses was doing when he was transfigured.  Talking with God.  It’s not something unattainable, reserved for other better more holy people.  Talking with God is for us.  And when we pray, when we talk with God, we too are illumined and transfigured.   Take that transfigured illumined shiny self with you all day, all Lent, and reflect the light in the world to everyone.  And please,  leave your veil at home.

Amen.

 

Epiphany 2 C

Today is the second Sunday after the Epiphany.  And as you know, an epiphany is a sudden revealing or sudden new insight.  During our season of Epiphany, we celebrate not one event but three.  The first was the arrival of the 3 magi to the place of Jesus birth.   The second event we celebrate in the season of Epiphany was Jesus’ baptism.  Today, our readings mark the third event, the miracle at the Wedding in Cana.  Our tradition celebrates these three events now because of what they still have to teach us, as epiphanies or newly revealed insights, that were hiding in plain view. 

In today’s Gospel reading,  Jesus is at this wedding. In those days, weddings could last a full week.  And towards the end of the feasting, his mother discovers the hosts are almost out of wine.  Psst.  Jesus.  Do something.   They’re out of wine.   Although the circumstances are different, the same thing has happened to all of us.  Pst.  Mom.  Stop what you’re doing.  I need you to. . .  Hey Honey, can you. . ..   We’re in the middle of doing something.  It may be important. Often it is not.  But whatever it is, we are doing it.  Now.  In this moment.  It’s what we’d planned to be doing.  Right now.

 

Along comes this interloper or interrupter, who asks us to stop whatever it is we’re doing.  We’re asked to turn our attention away from wherever we’d set it, and instead turn it towards what they want. Just like that.   And often our initial response is similar to Jesus.   Not now.  In a minute.   Can we schedule a meeting to do that later?

  

I love my family, and I always have struggled with feeling that love when I’m interrupted.  What I’m doing isn’t that important, but for some reason, it seems that my displeasure with being interrupted is way out of proportion to the actual severity of the situation.  I think interruptions are hard because they prove, again and again, that I really cannot manage time.  In fact, time is not mine to control, and neither are the actions of all the folks who interrupt me.  

I don’t frequently refer back to Greek or Hebrew, but in this instance I will.  Unlike English, the Greek language has a couple different words for time, and I think we’d be well served if we started a movement to introduce these two words, or at least the concepts in our world. 

Managing time, spending time, taking time. These all refer to cronos, or the kind of time that we measure with a clock.  It’s linear.  It’s finite.  It’s what’s measured by a punch clock, or an elaborate time management system.  It’s how we have learned to perceive our presence.  And I think it’s that perception of, or living in cronos, that makes interruptions soo unbearable.  I’ve allotted this much time for whatever.  My illusion of time management is shattered when you interrupt me.  

At the same time we’re worrying, and managing cronos kind of time, there is another time, or chiros.  We are so unaccustomed to chiros time that it seems foreign, unintelligible, impossible.  Chiros is more like God’s time, not measured in a linear way, not measured at all.  Chiros is the right time.  And we’ve all experienced that time too. Something happens at exactly precisely the right time.  Maybe it’s a song that’s played on the radio, a call from a friend, or a shift in our perspectives.  It’s not something that’s planned or scheduled or managed.  Sometimes we ascribe the “right time” to coincidence or serendipity.  Chiros time isn’t measured in units but in value.  

You may be asking yourself where is this-in depth study of the concept of time going and what does it have to do with today’s scriptures? 

We really do experience these two different kinds of time.  And yet our language and our society really only talks about and seems to value one – the chronos metered measured managed time.  I think today’s Gospel can teach us something about Chiros and how to recognize it, and something about the trappings of living exclusively in a chronos world. 

We see Jesus, fully human struggling with chromos, struggling with interruptions. He’s at a wedding.  He’s been interrupted. His mother is prompting him to do something now, and very public.  His initial response is along the lines of mine when I’m interrupted.  Not now.

But Jesus turns that interruption or timing miscue into something amazing, something miraculous.  And actually, he doesn’t turn it, as much as he allows it.  He steps into chiros, into God’s time- not something that can be managed.  He turns this interruption in chronos, into a divine moment, letting his time be God’s time.  He let God into his day planner, he let God interrupt his chromos plans, and stepped into God’s chiros time, and miracles happened as a result. 

I’m not suggesting that all interruptions are signs from God. Or that all interruptions are invitations into chiros.  

But I do think we as a society have gotten extremely lopsided in our chiros chronos balance.  We are growing increasingly confident and skilled at our time management skills, and consequently, I believe we’re increasingly unreceptive and unaware of the chiros moments all around us.  

I have a friend who’s an author and chaplain in Seattle who has an interesting way of describing and visualizing the work of the Holy Spirit.  He claims that many people talk about the Holy Spirit as something that is conveyed from above, it’s primary direction and presence are between me and God (vertical movement).  Instead, He argues that the Holy Spirit is perhaps more frequently present between us, so it’s a horizontal thing, not a vertical thing.    Not exclusively, but more often than we acknowledge. 

And I find it interesting that in the Epistle reading today, we hear about all these gifts, services and activities that come from God.  And they’re all given “for the common good”.  For the good of the community, not for the good of the individual.  And common good indicates other people are involved.   Prophecy, healing, utterance of knowledge and wisdom, interpretation.  These are all things we are gifted, and are only useful when we’re with others.

I think it’s possible that interruptions are an invitation to engage with another person, to have an opportunity to use gifts for the common good, and to experience the holy spirit.  I think all of that can happen when we’re willing to step out of chronos and into chiros, and I think interruptions are an invitation to do that.  

Do not misunderstand me.  As an introvert, I truly value alone time or down time.  And I always need to  find or make time to spend time alone, intentionally, with God.  But even Jesus got interrupted when he was trying to spend time in prayer. He’d head off to pray, but when he was interrupted by the masses, he stopped what he was doing, joined them and fed the 5000.

  

Given our culture’s obsession with time management, I think we’re called to be increasingly aware of the Chiros we’re always in.  When we get too wrapped up in our scheduled chronos time, we lose sight of the divine moments, the divine right times all around us.  

When my son was in elementary school, when we’d get the school calendar schedule, it seemed that he had days off at the most inopportune times.  And it was always a struggle to find child care, since both John and I worked full time.  Not now, I’m busy.  But towards the end of that era, I realized those days were actually gifts and amazingly divine. I’d look forward to getting the calendar and I’d take the same days off he had.  Yes, I had loads of work to do, but this was one of the times I realized, I couldn’t actually manage my own chronos, and I certainly couldn’t manage his.  Instead,  I could live in the divine time given me.

 

By offering this example, I’m not suggesting that I’ve solved or mastered my obsession with chronos.    I’m still far more apt to say, Not now, I’m busy than I intend.  But it’s something I try to be aware of. 

We celebrate this divine chiros moment of Christ’s during the now not because it’s a miracle.    We don’t celebrate it because Jesus is kind to the party hosts.  Not because he listens to his mother’s urgings to fix this social faux pas.  We celebrate the water into wine event because it is Jesus first recorded public miracle.  It was his public unveiling.  It created an epiphany for the others, as they caught a glimpse of the miracle man in their midst.  Jesus did however have the benefit of an interruption to help him switch gears to see the chiros moment right there. 

We all get busy doing our own thing.  We’ve got our plans.    So did Jesus. 
We all get interrupted.  We have those people who push us to do things in an order or at a time that’s not what we’d planned.  So did Jesus.

And we all are invited to see those moments – all our moments, as chiros, as moments of God’s.  So was Jesus.  

And like Jesus, we have the opportunity to be the epiphany for others around us, to be the unsuspecting miracle.  We just have to let God, and the people God uses to interrupt and interact with us, into our chronos, and try to see and live in God’s time.