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Focused On the Vision                        Mark 9: 2-9                   February 22, 2009

I joined a church," Barbara Brown Taylor writes in her new book, An Altar in the World, "to find out who God was and what God wanted from me. And I was asked to choose between God and the world."

"I learned in church to fear the world," she continues, "or at least to suspect it. All I had to do was trust the God of the church more than I trusted the gods of the world, living the kind of in-but-not-of-the-world life that announced where my true allegiance lay."

Sound familiar? Boy, does it ever sound familiar to me. My own experience, as a teenager, when I first joined the church, was exactly like that. Being a Christian meant dividing everything into two categories: the things of the world - the evil stuff, and the things of God - the good stuff.

Taylor contends, in her book, that the world can be holy too. That people encounter God in all sorts of places in the world and that God shows up in starry skies, burning bushes and in perfect strangers.

She reminds her readers that when people wanted to know more about God, the Son of God, in his parables, told them to pay attention to the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, to women kneading bread and workers lining up for their daily pay.

Which suggests that people can learn a lot about the ways of God from paying attention to the world. As much, perhaps, as they can from paying attention to what we traditionally think of as "holier" things.

The house of God, then, is the universe itself. We are all guests here.

And our job, as children of God, is to invite our brothers and sisters to join us as we try to make sense of it all. As we try to be open to the vision of God revealed to us in Jesus Christ.

Today, Transfiguration Sunday is a day to focus on that vision. It is a Sunday when our text for the day is always the same - the story of the miraculous Transfiguration of our Lord.

You've heard the story before. It starts out in relatively ordinary fashion.

Jesus and his three closest friends - Peter, James, and John - go up on a high mountain. There is nothing particularly unusual about that. Jesus went off from the crowds to pray and rest pretty regularly.

But from there on, the story is anything but ordinary. No sooner do they arrive on the mountaintop than Jesus is suddenly "transfigured." As Mark conveys it, "his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them."

And if that is not out-of-the ordinary enough, two of the faith's most honored heroes suddenly appear by Jesus' side. Moses, the great law-giver, and Elijah, the prophet of old - both arrive and begin talking to Jesus.

Peter, James, and John are terrified at the sight. You would think they would be speechless under these circumstances, but Peter, being Peter, breaks the silence and, for lack of any other ideas, suggests that they erect three tabernacles to commemorate the event.

It's a strange reaction on Peter's part, but before Jesus has a chance to react to his idea, a cloud overshadows the mountain.

If you've ever been on a mountain when the fog rolls in, you can picture it: the damp air closes in and the entire world slips away into a kind of grayness.

And then finally, out of the fog, the voice of God echoes around them saying, "This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!"

After seeing the vision they had seen, Peter, James and John knew that they would never be the same. They had been there, and those moments on that mountain would forever mark their lives and change the way they looked at everything. They never again lost sight of the vision.

There are dozens of accounts of visions in the Bible. The Transfiguration story is one of them. Moses saw a burning bush, Elijah saw chariots of fire, and Jacob saw a ladder reaching up to the heavens.

All of these visions seem to happen when they are least expected. They happen while people are doing ordinary things - tending sheep, walking along the road, sleeping or praying. And all of them happen in the world. Almost never in holy places, but in ordinary places that become holy places because of the presence of God.

When Peter, James and John climbed that mountain along with Jesus, that day, they would never have guessed what was in store for them. Not only did they not prepare for or anticipate the experience they were about to have, they did nothing to make it happen. All they did was climb the mountain. God took care of the rest.

Such is the case with most of our experiences of the divine. More often than not, they happen to us in spite of our selves. Our part is to decide how we will respond.

We can pretend that the experience never happened; we can remind ourselves that visions aren't really true, in the same way that other events we experience every day are true; we can shake off the feeling of awe and return to the busy-ness of our lives - to everything we need to get done.

Or, we can stop what we are doing long enough to see where we are and who we are with.

I believe that you and I are at a point now, in the life of this congregation, where we need to do the latter. We need to intentionally stop what we are doing and focus on our vision.

We are about to take a bold step. As you know, we have made plans for a long-awaited addition to Hahle Hall, and we are in the middle of a campaign to raise funds for that addition.

In fact, when you think about it, the addition is nothing extraordinary, or particularly holy. It will be wood and shingles and cement block and windows and doors and plumbing and mechanical things that move an elevator up and down.

Even the use we will make of the space is ordinary. We do physical, worldly things in Hahle hall, more often than we do spiritual things. We eat and meet and interact with one another. We do the business of the church and teach the children of the church. We serve breakfast to needy people from the community and, someday, we may even provide a place for homeless people to come in where it's warm when their other alternative is to sleep out in the cold.

But, as is so often the case, it is because of those everyday, worldly things that the addition to Hahle Hall is also a holy undertaking. The addition we construct will make it a more open, welcoming, accessible place. And more importantly, the addition will also make us a more open, welcoming and accessible church.

That is already a part of the DNA of this congregation, by the way, but the building project we are about to undertake will provide physical, tangible evidence that openness and accessibility is what we are all about.

Make no mistake, we still face an uncertain future. I would love to stand here this morning and promise that our congregation will experience nothing but smooth sailing as soon as the addition to Hahle Hall is built and paid for, but if were I to do that I would not be telling the truth.

On the contrary: if there is anything that I can promise you, it is that this community of faith will face further challenges down the road, regardless of the success of our project and the success of the capital campaign to fund it.

When Peter and John and James reached the summit of the mountain, that day, they were privileged to behold the transfigured Christ. They were awe-struck with a powerful vision of Christ's ultimate destiny; and awe-struck, as well, because it was also a powerful vision of their own destiny.

It's not that they knew exactly what their future would hold or what challenges they would face; what they knew was that the future was in God's hands and that they would be a part of it.

Here's what I believe. I believe that we, the members and friends of First Moravian Church, if we are to move boldly into the future, need to stop doing whatever it is that we are doing long enough to see where we are and whom we are with. We need to become even more conscious of, and more focused on, the mission that drives us, and the vision that draws us into the future.

Our vision is a vision of a warm, welcoming, and inclusive community of faith. A vision of a congregation of loving acceptance, a congregation that tries to be faithful to its mission, by providing opportunities for people to deepen their experience of God, to be equipped for discipleship and Christian leadership, to be prepared to take risks in faith; it is a vision of a congregation that reaches out to serve the needs of Riverside and Delran and Delanco and beyond.

That, my friends, is the vision that stands behind our Hahle Hall project, and it is a powerful vision indeed. If we choose to truly place that vision continually before us, and continue to seek God's strength and blessing, it can sustain this congregation for many years to come, the way the vision of the Transfigured Christ sustained James and Peter and John throughout their long and difficult ministries.

And in the midst of our uncertain world, that is very good news.

"In biblical terms," our friend Barbara Brown Taylor writes, "it is wisdom we need to live together. And wisdom is not gained by knowing what is right. Wisdom is gained by practicing what is right, and noticing what happens when that practice succeeds and when it fails."

The way I see it, you and I have an opportunity, over the next months and years, to practice what is right. It is a tangible opportunity. A physical opportunity.

May the God who appeared to Moses and Elijah and Peter and James and John appear to us as well, as we seize this opportunity, together.

                                                                             AMEN

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