Sermon - Are You Listening?

Mark 9:2-9

Are You Listening?

James Sledge                   Transfiguration Sunday - February 19, 2012

I recently saw an article in USA Today entitled “Churches Go Less Formal to Make People Comfortable.”   Nothing really earth shattering in that concept.  Our early service is called “informal,” and it doesn’t have much liturgy and most folks don’t dress up.  But the USA Today article was talking about taking this to another level.  It mentioned one Baptist congregation in Florida named “Church at the GYM” which, as the name implies, meets in a gym.  The pastor wears jeans and lots of folks wear shorts.  There’s no organ or stained glass, nothing that looks much like “church.”

Another less formal church is an interdenominational congregation called “The Bridge.”  This one meets in a strip mall, and like Church at the GYM, it seeks to connect with the under 40 crowd that is underrepresented in typical church congregations.  The Bridge sounds quite edgy.  Along with using video clips to illustrate the Sunday message, it recently opened its own tattoo parlor.

Now I feel confident that this doesn’t appeal to a lot of you, but that doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with it.  Some of us grew up with the idea that “real” worship had to have a pipe organ, but of course such instruments were unknown to the church for centuries.  Church pipe organs have only been around a little over 500 years. 

The fact is that Christian churches have been adapting to the culture around them from the beginning.  Early Christian worship was virtually indistinguishable from Jewish worship, but that began to change as more and more Gentiles came on board.  Martin Luther is said to have used popular music of his day, perhaps even borrowing from tavern drinking songs in order to make the hymns he wrote accessible. 

African American spirituals are another example of worship and music that developed for a particular cultural setting.  And the contemporary worship songs of our day are but one more attempt to make worship accessible to the prevailing culture.  Church at the GYM and The Bridge may be somewhat more extreme examples, but they exist within a long history of interpreting the faith into new settings and contexts.

But in all attempts to connect faith to the world we live in, both those with tattoo parlors and those with pipe organs, there is almost always a temptation to domesticate God, to make God user-friendly, if you will.

  I’m not sure that any religious group or institution exists, or has ever existed, that does not, on some level, seek to get God on our side, insure that God supports our activities, make sure that God is favorably disposed toward us.

Even religious rituals originally designed for no purpose other than to open people to God’s presence eventually get twisted into tools for managing God.  And I think that is why anytime God actually shows up, it scares the bejeebers out of people, no matter how religious they are.  They hit the dirt, they cower in fear, they shout, “Woe is me.”

You can see that in today’s reading.  The disciples have been hanging out with Jesus for a while, and though he has done some things that frightened them before, when Jesus is “transfigured” before three of them on the mountaintop, they are terrified.  Moses and Elijah, Jesus’ clothes whiter than earthly possible… This was God’s doing, and when God actually shows up, it’s not manageable or user-friendly.

Peter doesn’t know what to say or do, but it seems that his religious sensibilities kick in.  Let’s build some shrines, some memorials.  Let’s turn this into Transfiguration Day and celebrate it.  But Peter’s babbling is cut off by a cloud and a heavenly voice.  “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”  And then it’s all over.  No religious mumbo jumbo, no new religious rituals or celebrations; just a simple command.  “Listen to him!”

Then it’s down from the mountaintop, back to the run of the mill, the day to day, the mundane.  “Listen to him!” still echoes as the disciples head back down to the regular world,  but it won’t take long for the disciples, or for us, to put the emphasis elsewhere.  We’ll focus on believing the right things, on doing baptism or the Lord’s Supper correctly, or argue endlessly about who can be ordained, and we’ll push “Listen to him!” off to the side.

I don’t mean to pick on church or religion.  Unlike some people, I don’t think it’s really possible to be “spiritual but not religious.”  Any faith or spirituality that is going to impact your life in a meaningful way is going to require some practices, some method of doing things, some ways of interpreting it to others, some expectations of those who want to be a part of it.  When I complain about religion it is not because I would like to be rid of it.  I do not want that, nor do I think it possible. 

It’s perhaps worth remembering that Jesus was a faithful practitioner of his Jewish religion.  He kept the Sabbath, went to the synagogue, was well versed in the Jewish Scriptures, and quoted them frequently.  I don’t think Jesus had any plans to abolish his religion or to start a new one.  But he saw clearly how religious structures and habits get twisted so that they don’t help us as they should.  Religion easily get focused on the packaging rather than the core.  It easily substitutes reverence or attendance or rituals for faith and obedience.  It often gets perverted into ways of managing God for our purposes, and so it needs reforming on a regular basis.  It needs what happens in our gospel today, an awesome encounter with the unmanageable, not user-friendly God.  And it needs to hear, “Listen to him!”

I’m going to guess that most of us heard the command to listen when we were growing up.  Parents or teachers or coaches said to us, “Listen to me when I’m talking!” or asked us, “Are you listening to me?!”  And we learned that there was a difference between hearing and listening.  We knew that when listening was invoked, we were supposed to pay attention.  We were supposed to do what was said.  We understood that listen meant serious business.

“This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” 

I’ve shared with you before a quote from Mohandas Gandhi who said, “I like your Christ.  I do not like your Christians.  They are so unlike your Christ.”  I suppose that, to varying degrees, Gandhi’s critique fits most of us. And this problem exists not because we don’t believe in Jesus, aren’t devout, or don’t come to church enough.   No, the problem is that we don’t do the one thing God explicitly commands followers of Jesus to do, “Listen to Him!”

We each have our own reasons, but a lot of us are afraid of what he might say, afraid of what he might ask of us.  And so we do the same thing I did as a kid when my parents called, we hear but we don’t listen.  We hear Jesus speaking, but we remain oblivious; an “in one ear and out the other” sort of thing. 

I suppose on some level, this is faith and belief issue.  We’re not sure we can trust what Jesus tells us, not sure the call to follow him leads us where we want to go.  So we don’t listen.  We want to keep Jesus close, but ignore what he says.  We’re a lot like Peter, wanting to build shrines and have rituals.  But then comes that heavenly voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” 

I imagine that most of you have heard the phrase leap of faith, as in, “Sometimes you just have to take a leap of faith.”  It sounds like a religious phrase, but I don’t often hear it used with regards to Christian faith, and least not the believe-in-Jesus kind.  It’s usually reserved for something that seems a bit more risky, for when you take a chance that things will end well if you, get married, quit your job and go back to school, or start a non-profit ministry of some sort.  There’s a chance for a big payoff, for a fuller and more rewarding life, but it does require taking that chance, that risk, that leap into the unknown.

“This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”  Can we do that?  Are we listening?

All praise and glory to the God who comes to us in Jesus, who speaks to us and calls us to follow him.  Thanks be to God!