Sermon preached at Calvary Church, Stonington, CT
by the Rev. Gillian R. Barr on the
Last Sunday after the Epiphany, Year A
Matthew 17:1-9
February 23, 2020
Have you ever had a time when things suddenly were going very badly? Perhaps a time when you were laid off from a job, or perhaps a marriage or other close relationship suddenly was very difficult? Maybe an old friendship was fading or suddenly painful. How do you get through such times?
One thing that we can do is look back in our memories to touchstone moments when things were going really well—to really special moments, moments that were almost transcendent in character, when we knew we were where we were supposed to be, doing what we were supposed to do.
Maybe it was when you were first hired at that job, or when you got an award. Maybe it was when you graduated, or received some special honor. Maybe it was when you first fell in love with your partner, and you looked into their eyes and they looked into your eyes and you knew that you are loved and you are held and you are supported in that relationship.
Maybe it was your wedding day. When you made those sacred promises.
Maybe it was when you and your friend had some really good times together and laughed together, and had each other’s backs, and you look back at that relationship.
Those touchstone moments connect you with when you were at your best, your fullest. And when you were sure that you were doing what God would have you do.
When I first started out in ministry, in parish ministry, long before I was ordained, I worked as a lay associate in parishes, and someone gave me the advice,
“Keep a list of your ‘Atta girl!’ moments. When somebody thanks you for something, not just kind of an automatic thank you but a really special moment, when something went really well in ministry, write it down so that you can remember it, and look back at those moments when things are going not so well.”
So I had this big old 1950s-style wooden desk with all kinds of splinters and whatnot, but it had those side panels that you pull out to write on. So on one of them, I had a piece of paper taped, “Things they never trained me for in seminary”—and I would list things like “plumbing,” and “HVAC.”
And then on the other one I had my “Atta girl!” list. And when something went really right, when I just felt totally sure that I was doing what God called me to do, I would write that down. So, at the end of Vacation Bible School when the kids were together and they all knew the stories, and everything had worked, and everything felt wonderful, I would write that down. And the next year, while I was deep in the depths of recruiting for Vacation Bible School and it looked like it was never going to come together, I would look at that old item on the list.
When there were other kinds of success moments, I would write them down.
Brené Brown is an author I like very much. She’s an Episcopalian, a lay person, and she writes about how in our vulnerability and our woundedness we can find the courage to lead, and to have integrity, and be who we are called to be.
In some of her writing she talks about our “marble-jar friends.” She has a story about why she uses that term, but basically these are the people who have really stuck by you, have been with you in the hard times, who understand the meaning of what you’re doing, and who have the privilege of giving you criticism that you take seriously, because you know they’re coming from a good space and that they know what you’re really about. And also, those who give you praises.
And then when you’re in a hard spot, you turn to your marble-jar friends for a reality check.
“Did I really mess that up?” (Friends nod) “Oookay.”
But they are the same people who can say “Yes, you messed that up, but you are still amazing, and beloved, and you will get up and walk forward from this space.”
In today’s Gospel story, Jesus takes some of his “marble-jar friends,” Peter and James and John, and they go up the mountain top. And then Jesus is transfigured, and some more of his marble-jar friends (from outside of linear time and space) come, and are with him–Moses and Elijah. They talk with him, and he gets back in touch with how his ministry fulfills the Law and the Prophets.
Then God speaks and says, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him!”
Now, why does the Transfiguration happen when it does?–both in the story of Jesus’s ministry, and where it is in our liturgical year?
It happened when it did, and we remember it when we do, because it marks the turning point from Jesus’s ministry of teaching and preaching and healing to his more focused journey to the cross in Jerusalem. From here on out, it gets very real. And he is headed to pain and suffering and death, and his disciples are going to watch their charismatic leader who they follow lead them to the cross.
And they are going to doubt, and he is going to wonder, certainly, “Am I really doing what God called me to do? Is this what it’s really about?”
But he can look back at that mountaintop moment when God said, “You are my son, the beloved, you get it, you’re on the right track.” “Listen to him, he knows what he’s doing. This is the right track.”
That mountaintop moment would fortify Jesus and his disciples along the way as they go forward, as they confront his arrest, trial, false conviction crucifixion, death, and burial.
In our own faith lives, we have touchstone moments, mountaintop moments, that help us remember how much God loves us.
For me, one of them was a retreat I went on as an undergraduate. That was the first time that I really deeply understood, in my gut, the words I’d been saying all my life, about being a beloved child of God. A God who wanted to know me and walk with me as my friend. Personally, I can still remember what the retreat center looked like: the hideous 1970s avocado carpeting, I can still remember where I went out on the riverbank and journaled about my insights and and my new relationship with God.
It was a mountaintop moment, and that retreat program, that we ran every year, was in fact such a mountaintop moment for so many people, that one of the songs we sang was “We will say that we’ve been to the mountain, and caught a glimpse of all that we could be.”
We have other mountaintop moments–different for each of us. Perhaps for some of us, it’s a quiet experience we had in prayer. Maybe something we can’t even put into words.
For others, it was maybe when someone came to our door with a casserole or some other gift, at a time when we were bereft of the ability to tend for ourselves. Perhaps it is a favorite scripture that we turn to, to remind us of who God is, and God’s promises for us in hard times. Perhaps it is when we have asked for our friends to pray for us, and we’ve learned that not only are they praying for us–for their friends are praying for us, and we feel literally being surrounded and upheld by the prayer of those who love us.
I’m sure each of you has other touchstone moments. I invite you to think about: what are your mountaintop moments or touchstone moments that you go back to?
No matter what paths our journeys have taken, we each have at least two touchstone moments that we can talk about.
Perhaps the most foundational is our baptism. We may not remember, if we were baptized as a tiny baby, but we can remember, by having been at other people’s baptisms what it was like, we can remember the promises, because they are the same promises that we make when we baptize people today. We can remember that we were once held and told that we are a beloved child of God. We were immersed in water, and we were sealed with the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own forever. In an indissoluble bond that nothing can break. We can look back to our baptisms as one of those touchstone moments.
One of the workshops I went to this week in Louisville was about baptism, about how is the core of our Christian life. The speaker said how of course, in the early church, baptism was a matter of life or death. Because in the early church, if you were accused of being a Christian, you could be put to death. So choosing to be baptized had very great implications. And because of that, you were not just baptized on a whim. You went through up to three years of preparation for baptism, and at least 40 days of preparation in Lent, before you were baptized, at the Easter Vigil.
But the speaker in Kentucky [Dr. Lisa Kimball of Virginia Theological Seminary] said that our baptisms today are still a matter of life and death. Not because we will be taken to the lions if we are accused of being a Christian. Not because we have the same images of hellfire in the back of our minds. But because the promises that we make in baptism are what undergird our life and undergird our ethics, and how we live out our lives. And those actions have implications for other people’s lives and deaths.
We may not be actual murderers, or lifeguards who physically save people’s lives. But how we live in the world, what choices we make, how we spend our money, how we cast our votes, make a difference that can have life and death implications for others. What we say to people, the words of love and life and blessing, or the words of cursing, that we speak to others, can have a life or death impact. And so whether or not we live into, and up to, the promises of our baptism, is still a life or death matter. We can look back to our baptism and remember that we are chosen and claimed by God, as God’s beloved child.
Another touchstone moment that we can avail ourselves of every single week is the Eucharist. When we come forward to this altar rail, and receive the bread and the wine made Body and Blood, we take God into our selves, into our very cellular structures. God wants to be that close to us. God has given us His very self as a sign of His love, and draws us closer to him, and gradually draws us more and more into His likeness, through the Eucharist. And that too, can be a touchstone for those days when life is not going well, when we’re not sure who we are or if we are on the right path. We can come and lay all of our angst and our insecurities at the altar, and receive that promise and that sustenance anew.
And Christ, who is the Beloved of God, says to us: We “are the beloved of God.”
Listen to him!
If you’d rather listen to the sermon than read it:
Curation 