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Last Sunday in
Epiphany
February 6, 2005
Sermon by Rev. Aron Kramer, Associate Rector
The opposite of Faith is not
doubt, it is not uncertainty, it is not questioning, the opposite of
faith is fear. That is made clear as a bell in today’s Gospel, when the
cloud suddenly appears, not just any old cloud, but a bright cloud that
overshadowed the disciples with Jesus. With the booming voice, cascading
out of the cloud the disciples are gripped with fear and they fall to
the ground. Fear is debilitating, fear causes inaction, immobility. Fear
keeps us from doing God’s work in the world. Fear is the opposite of
faith because it causes us to lose our faith. Fear causes us to lose our
faith in God, lose our faith in the world, lose our faith in each other
and this faith community and worst of all, fear causes us to lose our
faith in ourselves. If only our fears could be replaced totally and
utterly by doubt and questions.
Doubt, questioning minds, all those places of uncertainty cause us to
deepen and explore our faith and our beliefs much more fully. Our
doubts, says The Rev. Jay Johnson, one of my Theology professors, are
the thresholds of our faith, our doubts are where we enter into our
faith discovering how God is in our lives, changing, transforming and
transfiguring our hearts. I have to wonder about all those people in the
Exodus reading. Imagine if you were Moses, suddenly God speaks to you
and tells you to go climb a mountain. Then as you approach the
predetermined location a huge cloud covers the mountain. It has already
been made clear that the regular people, the people of Israel had to
remain behind, even the elders and priests and important people had to
stay behind. Imagine Moses standing in front of that cloud for six days.
Imagine the anticipation, the anxiety, the worry that must have crept in
and out of his mind as he stood there waiting to be called into that
cloud. We are talking about God here, and Moses did not have an air
traffic controller radioing him to warn him when God might blindside him
while he was in the cloud. Moses was alone, about to come face to face
with God, there is nothing in the world I can think of that has the
potential to be as scary as that could be.
Likewise, the disciples, in the Gospel were filled with fear and made
immobile, made to have a lack of faith. There were so overcome with fear
that they fell to the ground. Yet, Moses and Elijah, two long dead men
were not the ones that caused this fear; it was the voice of God, coming
from a cloud, just as in the Exodus reading. It must have been a
glorious sight for these three disciples of Jesus to see Moses, Elijah
and Jesus standing together on that mountain. They felt calm; they felt
joy they wanted to live into that moment forever. They wanted to keep
that moment so badly that Peter said he alone would build three dwelling
places to remember this holy and sacred moment forever. As Peter said
that, made that seemingly kind gesture to Jesus the voice booms, “This
is my Son, the Beloved; with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.”
With that the disciples to a man fall down to the ground, immobile, full
of fear. And what is the next thing that Jesus says to each of them?
What is it that brings them out of their fear? Jesus simply says, as if
he is healing a paralytic, Get up and do not be afraid. Get up and do
not be afraid Jesus says and with that they descend the mountain to join
the others, waiting to tell this amazing story until after Jesus is
raised from the dead.
So what does this all mean for us, how are the scriptures speaking to us
today? Do we, as a faith community, relate better with the people in the
Old Testament waiting for Moses to emerge from the mist, the cloud that
is covering the entire mountain? Are we more like Moses, waiting for God
to call us into the cloud, scared and anticipatory, but willing to do
what God asks of us? Or maybe we are the disciples, seized by fear,
feeling as if we have lost our faith, waiting for Jesus to touch us and
tell us not to be afraid. Probably it is more likely that we are like
the disciple’s pre bright cloud and booming voice. We are like the
disciples trying to capture precious moments, holy moments in our past
and in our present so that they will not ever be forgotten. But that
seems too simple on some levels, it seems as if that is too easy, and
yet it is our fear of change, our fear of the future that causes us to
not consider what our actions mean for all the people that are in our
lives and in the community we live in.
I have enjoyed looking at these readings for the last several days
because they have offered me great hope, they have offered me joy. This
Gospel reading and even the Old Testament is about Transformation and
Transfiguration. They remind me that those who look upon God cannot
remain unchanged. As a community we are doing something very exciting
and very good. We are asking God to reveal Godself to each of us and to
this community so that we may be reminded of what it is that God is
calling us to do. We are more like Moses, spending forty days and forty
nights in the cloud on Mount Sinai. We are looking upon God’s work in
our past and in our present, still bright and fresh, in order to be
transformed into something new, something different, something we have
never experienced as a faith community before. Our faces are shining
bright; our clothes will be changed to the brightest of colors as we
journey in this process to seek a new rector. It is funny though, the
more I think about it, the less I believe that this process is about
finding a new rector so much as it is about finding out who we are and
how God is present in our lives.
That is what this is all about is it not, it is about looking at our
past and exploring our present so that we can discover where our gifts
lie, where it is this community fits into the city of Duluth and the
Kingdom of God the best. In this process we will discover a new how we
transformed the neighborhood and how we will and can continue to do that
. We will also discover that we have to begin to reach out to all the
people that walk through these doors, embracing everyone no matter who
they are, reenergizing and reigniting our radical hospitality. We will
discover that we may have a need and desire to get more students in our
neighborhood and our universities and colleges, through these doors. We
will discover anew, how we are called to worship God. This process is so
much better for us as a faith community than anything else we could be
doing. We have arrived at a crossroads, we have elected a group of
people to walk with us in our Transition Team, and we are ready to
discover who it is we are as God’s beloved children.
But there is one thing that could cause us to falter, there is one thing
that could cause to not listen to each other and keep us from exploring
deeply what God is calling to do in the world and how God is calling us
to be transfigured. But I am not going to mention that one thing,
because we area a hope filled people. I see it in your eyes and in your
faces; I see it in your embraces and in your work. We are a hope filled
people striving to move forward striving to hear the call of God in
Christ Jesus, as Paul wrote to the Philippians. We are a hope filled
people, that is the core of who we are do not forget that, do not forget
that above all else, above everything we own and everything we do, we
must bring great hope into this world. Because with great hope comes
great love and in a world saturated with hopelessness and a sense of
futility, our job as a faith community is to bring the hope of the
Gospel, the Good News of Jesus to all those people in our lives and in
our community. Dive deep into those doubt and questions you have about
where we will end up, but by God be sure never to give up hope, for it
is our hope that will transform the world and transfigure each of us,
after all, we are beloved Children of God and God has great hope and
love for each of us.