DEGREES OF DAZZLE (Mark
9:2-9)
SIX DAYS LATER, 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 WHITE, SUCH
AS NO ONE ON EARTH COULD BLEACH THEM. AND THERE APPEARED
TO THEM ELIJAH WITH MOSES; WHO WERE TALKING WITH JESUS.
THEN PETER SAID TO JESUS, 'RABBI, IT IS GOOD FOR US TO BE
HERE; LET US MAKE THREE HUTS FOR US TO BE HERE; LET US
MAKE THREE DWELLINGS, ONE FORYOU, ONE FOR MOSES, AND ONE
FOR ELIJAH.' THEY DID NOT 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!' SUDDENLY WHEN THEY LOOKED AROUND, THEY
SAW NO ONE WITH THEM ANY MORE, BUT ONLY JESUS. AS THEY
WERE COMING DOWN THE MOUNTAIN, HE ORDERED THEM TO TELL NO
ONE ABOUT WHAT THEY HAD SEEN, UNTIL AFTER THE SON OF MAN
HAD RISEN FROM THE DEAD.
When were you last
dazzled?
For me it was on my just
concluded trip which included a visit to Luang Prabang in
northern Laos. There I was dazzled at the temple of Wat
Zieng Thong which is located in the heart of the city on
a slight hill where the Mekong and Khan rivers. This wat,
which was built in l560, honors Buddha and there are many
beautiful, golden statues of the Buddha within it. But
what dazzled me were the glass mosaics which decorate the
interior of the main temple and the outer walls of two
smaller adjoining buildings.
I have seen similar artistic
decoration only in some palaces in India where they were
always interior and thus experienced only in the gloom of
darkened space. But at Luang Prabang the dazzle is
extreme because the glass mosaics outdoors reflect the
sunlight and the brilliance is magnified so much that the
glitter of light on glass hurt my eyes.
When is the last time you were
so dazzled that your eyes hurt and you had to avert your
gaze, looking away from that which dazzled
you?
The experience of being dazzled
to this extent occurs now and then in the bible and there
is a special word for it: theophany, meaning the light
which breaks upon us when we are in the presence of the
divine. Today's Old Testament and Gospel lessons present
two of the great theophanies of the bible - the departure
of Elijah from this life upon a chariot of fire drawn by
horses of fire utterly dazzled his disciple, Elisha; and
Jesus transfigured in a whiteness beyond human
comprehension. These are WOW experiences. They are
dazzling. They are analogous to the experience, not
recommended, of looking at the sun with the naked
eye.
And, understandably, the
onlooker can't take it for long! Elijah's disciple Elisha
was moved to grasp his own clothes and tear them from
himself. When is the last time you were so dazzled that
you tore your clothes from your body?
And we are informed told the
disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration were terrified.
When is the last time you were so dazzled that you were
terrified?
*****
Well, are seldom dazzled to any
extreme degree. We often say we are have been dazzled,
but in truth we are simply being taken in by worldly
glitter. Glitter abounds everywhere in mundane culture.
The fashion runway is often described as dazzling when it
really is merely glitter on parade. A film star receives
the highest accolade when called dazzling but he or she
is really only made up and made over to look glamorous.
Pop culture glows with glitter.
Today I don't want us to dwell
on glitter and glamour. Let's talk degrees of divine
dazzle. What we experience when we get a glance at
God.
This raises in my mind these
issues:
First, do we really want to be
dazzled by God? I would suggest most of our religious
experience leads us into quieter channels and away from
dazzle. When I returned Friday, Drake Pike had forwarded
to my e-mail an article from the WSJ of February l8 in
which our church is mentioned and Colin Tan, and Anson
Wang, and myself are quoted on religious practice in Hong
Kong? How many of you saw the article? It's posted in the
elevator.
According to Joanne Lee-Young,
who wrote this feature article, international
congregations like our own are growing in Hong Kong
because folks are seeking "words of wisdom (ranging) from
business magnates to discussions about the role of
technology in our lives" and "something more creative,
more 2lst century, something that would make worship
enjoyable" and "a place to achieve some balance and
perspective" where the pace of work "alarmingly fast" and
"disorienting."
I agree that all of these are
real and authentic motives for getting involved with
religion but I don't find any hint of dazzle among the
reasons given for more involvement in faith. Perhaps
there's just a hint that we might be seeking some degree
of spiritual dazzle in the closing quotation which comes
from me: "People are looking to experience religion not
just by hearing it, but through the other five senses
too."
I admit that I had neither this
sermon nor the concept of divine dazzle in mind when I
gave that quote, but in hindsight I can now interpret it
to mean that most of us are looking to be shaken up a bit
in our spirituality, though I still doubt that we want
genuine dazzle.
The reason is because divine
dazzle involves this contradiction: the experience of God
involves some degree of suffering and suffering is far
removed from the effects of glamour and feeling good that
we normally associate with brilliant personalities and
experiences. Just before today's reading which opens
chapter 9 of Mark's Gospel we have at the end of chapter
8 Jesus telling the leading disciples that he will
suffer, be betrayed and die on a cross. He includes a
promise that he will be raised 3 days later, but I
believe that addendum was lost on them because the
disciples immediately argue with Jesus. Suffer! How can
the Messiah suffer? God's chosen be excluded! What are
you talking about, Jesus!
The linking of suffering with
divine dazzle understandably confuses and disorients the
disciples. It is one of the paradoxes of the Christian
experience that the higher the degree of divine dazzle
experienced, the higher the degree of suffering to be
expected. Jesus is trying to wise up his followers in
their expectations when he preps them just before the
dazzle of the transfiguration with some basic talk about
his coming suffering.
The writer Mark continues: "six
days later" and we have today's story of the
transfiguration. The story continues and the same
disciples experience their Jesus in a moment of fantastic
glory. Which turns out to be much more than they can
handle at the time. The transfiguration dazzle terrified
them. This is far from giving them the balance and
perspective that the WSJ inform us we seek in religious
experience; rather, it throws them completely off balance
and they start to do some silly things like suggesting to
Jesus that they build three huts to commemorate their
dazzling experience of having seen him with Moses and
Elijah.
In our other theophany the
younger prophet Elijah gives us one of the classic
responses to a dazzling experience of God; it is under
statement through hyper-statement. Elisha cries out:
"Father, father! The chariots of Israel and its
horsemen!"
This cry is a wondrous
exclamation calling to mind the totality of the Hebrew
religious experience, and yet it hardly begins to express
what I believe was Elisha's experience. It's hard for
human articulation to express a theophany. Divine dazzle
usually leaves us speechless. Elisha properly places his
experience in the history of Hebrew spiritual experience:
"Father, father! The chariots of Israel and its
horsemen!"
But there is the suggestion also
of total disorientation and incomprehension of the divine
in the same cry: "Father, father! The chariots of Israel
and its horsemen!" In its ambiguity and intensity
Elisha's cry calls to mind another cry, that one from the
cross: "Father, father! Why have you left me!"
Do we truly want to be dazzled
by God when it must involve disorientation of who we are,
what we are after, what we want to hold onto? As Jesus'
own story shows, being touched by the divine must involve
some degree of suffering. And the more fully one is
touched by the glory of God, the more intense, as in the
case of Jesus, is the suffering.
*****
Another reason we may decide we
want to eschew all interest in divine dazzle and settle
for a religion which inclines toward the more quiet,
reflective, and normal range of spiritual experience is
because when God dazzles us he expect a commensurate
response: much more than averting our eyes; dazzle
demands obedience.
Moses is dazzled on Mount Sinai;
even Moses, the holiest of humans, can not stand to look
directly at the burning bush from which the divine
speaks, but subsequently Moses is given the commandments
and obedience is demanded. He is ordered down the
mountain to be the moral guide of his people.
Elisha tears his clothes because
he is overcome with the dazzling apparition of his mentor
disappearing in a chariot of fire, drawn by horses of
fire, but thereafter he is charged to be the moral
conscience to disobedient Israel.
Immediately after Jesus'
transfiguration, the divine voice orders the disciples to
"listen to him!" Obey Jesus is the expected response.
Dazzle leads to obedience which connection distinguishes
spiritual dazzle from worldly glitter whose end product
makes no personal demands upon us but rather puffs us up
with the conviction that we are better and blessed people
because we have bathed for a moment in the presence of a
glamorous and famous personality or participated in an
emotional and reassuring mass experience. Faith without
response, worship without obedience, are mild forms of
religious experience which is why they are very popular.
They are, however, not biblical and they may lead to
prostituted spirituality.
Do you really want to be called
to obedience?
*****
There is this final reflection
upon these theophanies: after all the dazzle which sets
us apart from the divine there is in Christian dazzle the
assurance of intimacy. On the occasion of another
dazzling event, Jesus' own ascension, he promised: "And,
look here, I am with you always, even until the end of
the earth."
After the transfiguration Jesus
leads the disciples down into the valleys and villages
where together they spend many weeks and months in
teaching, healing, living together. The one who dazzled
them on the mountain continued accessible to them in
daily relationship. Paul expresses beautifully this
aspect of Christian dazzle in today's reading: FOR IT IS
THE GOD WHO SAID, 'LET LIGHT SHINE OUT OF
DARKNESS,' WHO HAS SHONE IN OUR
HEARTS TO GIVE THE LIGHT OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE GLORY OF
GOD IN THE FACE OF JESUS CHRIST.
When we ourselves transcend
those rare moments of dazzling appearances and
reassurances of God with us, and really believe that
Jesus is the One of God, really the Son of God, the inner
light of faith switches on and we begin to experience in
a more relaxed and continuing way that Jesus is still
with us, available to us. The dazzle leads naturally to
reassurance. He may shine like the sun and he is inner
light friend who leads us daily. If we connect with the
divine voice telling us "He is my beloved Son, listen to
Him""we have a daily friend in Jesus.
Every communion is a little
theophany: not a brilliant and dazzling manifestation of
God with us like the disciples experienced at the
transfiguration but an accessible and readily available
fleshing out of Jesus' promise that he will always be
with his own.
In communion we have the post
transfiguration recognition of the disciples in Mark 9:7:
THEY SAW NO ONE WITH THEM ANYMORE BUT ONLY
JESUS.
It's only Jesus, friends, so
come to communion.
Pastor Gene
Preston
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