Delivered by Rev. Ellen Brantley
Sunday, February 14, 2010
SERMON: God in a
Box
TEXT: Luke 9:28-36
“A place for everything and everything in its place.” That’s my motto. At least, it’s my wish. You wouldn’t know it to look at my desk, but
I’m one of those people that gets excited about those closet organizers where
there’s a rack for your sweaters, a rack for your shoes, a low bar for hanging
short things and a high bar for hanging long things. I get excited about file cabinets with
carefully labeled files for every imaginable scrap of paper that one might want
to save. I get excited about storage
boxes for toys, photographs, magazines, or whatever. I call this being organized. Others might call it “controlling.”
But what’s
wrong with that? If being organized
helps me to control my life – better yet, to control
the stress in my life – then I would say that’s a good thing. I feel much calmer about my home and my work
if I have “a place for everything and everything in its place.” That way, nothing gets lost. And when something happens – usually when
somebody else messes up, I can solve the problem quickly and easily. Say the phone company sends me a past due
notice. Sure, I get a little perturbed
that someone obviously isn’t as organized as I am. But I calm myself after a moment, and then I
just go to my files, find my record of the payment, and report to them the
check number, the date, and the amount paid.
Everything’s under control. No
problem. No surprises. And I can sleep at night.
I’d be
willing to bet that Peter was the same way.
Peter was comfortable when everything was under control. He slept easily and peacefully. In fact, he was pretty sleepy when he went up
on the mountain with Jesus and James and John.
They were supposed to be praying, but of course, Peter, feeling like
everything was right with the world, began to fall asleep. But when Jesus’ face changed and his garments
became dazzling white, Peter perked up.
Suddenly everything was not as it should be.
Do you ever
find yourself lying in bed at night, just about asleep, when all of a sudden, you remember something you were supposed to do
earlier in the day? Or maybe you haven’t
even come close to sleep because one of your kids is sick, or you’re worried about
a doctor’s appointment, or you haven’t even started the paper that’s due in two
days. Sleep doesn’t come easy to us when
things aren’t just right, when something is out of our control.
Well,
Peter’s sleep was certainly cut short when he saw the extraordinary events that
were taking place up on the mountain.
There was Jesus, shining bright as the sun, talking with Moses and
Elijah, citizens of heaven. And Peter,
the ultimate control freak, jumps to attention and begins to make the situation
manageable. “This is okay; everything’s
cool; it’s good that we’re here. In
fact, why don’t we all sit down? We can
make a booth for each of you gentlemen.
That way, we’ll be more comfortable.”
Peter
cracks me up. He needs so much to be
comfortable. He needs to have everything
under control. He’s not good with
surprises. He needs to be able to sleep
at night. Actually, he’s a lot like us.
I remember
reading the information form for a church that was looking for a new
pastor. One of the things they wrote
was, “We want a sermon that keeps us awake Sunday morning, and helps us to
sleep Sunday night.” Even in church –
perhaps especially in a church – we want to be comfortable.
Like this
story of the Transfiguration. It’s one
of those mysteries of God – how Moses and Elijah appeared, how Jesus became
radiant with a bright light. Now, when I
preach a sermon, I try to bring the scripture home to us, to something we can
relate to. I try to bring us to a
greater understanding of God, and I try to make the stories of the Bible
something we can use in our own lives.
But what do we do with this one? This
is unexplainable and out of control. Where’s
the practical application in the transfigured Jesus on the mountain?
We tend to
want GOD IN A BOX. We want to know everything
there is to know about God. We want all
our questions answered. And then we want
to put walls around it and a lid on the top so that God is nicely contained and
cannot do anything out of our control.
John Calvin and Karl Barth, both formidable theologians, wrote volumes –
thousands and thousands of pages – in trying to explain their understanding of
God. Now, I respect these men and all
that they wrote. But the trouble with
trying to understand God is that we can very easily become arrogant. The more we understand something, the greater
control we have over it. And what could
be more dangerous than thinking that we have control over God? We talk about doctors and others who play
God, deciding who will live and who will die.
But many of us are guilty in that we, too, begin to think that because
we know our Bible, we also know the mind of God, and can decide on behalf of
God who is to be saved and who is to be condemned to eternal damnation.
But we
don’t know everything there is to know, and we never will. Karl Barth’s unfinished Church Dogmatics begins with just two words: “God is.”
And John Calvin’s Institutes,
which focused on the knowledge of God, ends with three words, “God be
praised.” Sometimes that’s all we need
to know: God is, and God be praised.
It is
events like the transfiguration that remind us of the greatness of God and of
our smallness in comparison. The
transfiguration of Jesus tells us only that God is more powerful and more
mysterious than we could understand or imagine.
Up on the mountain, God showed his glory. Not only did God become visible through the
physical changes produced in Jesus, but God showed his glory, God showed his
power and his importance by enacting a miracle, by bringing heaven and earth
together, by demonstrating and announcing the divinity of Jesus.
Up on the
mountain is where we finally see that Jesus really is a divine being. Up until now he’s been pretty human, and we
like to keep him human, because that’s how we can understand him. If he’s like us, then we can know who he is,
we can keep him nicely contained in a box.
But the experience on the mountain changes all that. Suddenly he’s radiant, he’s changed, and he’s
speaking with the spirits of Moses and Elijah. And God’s voice comes out of a
cloud and announces, “This is my Son, my
Maybe
that’s what we mean when we talk about “fearing” God. I’m always a bit uncomfortable with that
idea; I think we only fear things that we believe might hurt us, and I don’t
see God that way. But maybe to fear God
means simply to respect the power of God.
To fear God is to realize that we don’t know everything about God. To fear God is to never know what to expect,
but to always expect a miracle. To fear
God is to be uncomfortable with the challenges God gives us. You know, I’m not sure I want my sermons to
help you sleep at night (much less during the day!). Because, perhaps, to fear God is to lie awake
at night, wondering where God might be leading.
Finally,
the unconditional love and mercy of God is equally hard to understand
sometimes. That we can continue sinning
and turning away from God, but God continues to forgive us and love us, is mind boggling.
And yet, we don’t know what we’d do or where we’d be without it. So may we celebrate the unreasonable love of
God; may we let God out of the box; and may we rejoice in all the wonderful
surprises that God has to offer. To
the glory of God! AMEN.