Sermon: Listen to Him

 Mark 9:2-9
Listen to Him
James Sledge                                     Transfiguration Sunday, February 11, 2024 

When we first began discussing whether to bring back an 8:30 worship service, the question of what sort of service it would be naturally arose. Prior to the pandemic, it was mostly a carbon copy of the 11:00 service. The choir didn’t sing, but paid section leaders did.

Many of you likely recall the online survey we did to gauge interest in an 8:30 service, and one of the findings was that only twenty-five or so people who attended the old 8:30 service planned to come to any new one. That was not enough people to make the service viable, so we needed to make the service attractive to additional people.

We also wanted any 8:30 service to have potential for growth, and the old 8:30 service had declining attendance prior to the pandemic. To me, all of this argued for doing a different sort of service, one that offered more than simply an earlier time slot. Perhaps we could come up with something that would attract people who weren’t enamored by the traditional, liturgical nature of our 11:00 service.

Once we began thinking in that direction, the subject of a contemporary service came up. This often features a band with words projected on a screen, but that seemed too big of a stretch for us. Where would we put a band or screens in the Meeting House, and was our congregation ready for something truly contemporary? So we ended up doing what we call “informal,” featuring less traditional liturgy and music from the hymnal that feels more like songs than hymns. The new service has been fairly well received, but it still remains to be seen whether this different service will be able to find its audience and begin to grow.

There’s nothing really edgy about this new service, but it shares things in common with contemporary worship. It tries to create a slightly different worship experience, one that may be more accessible for people who don’t really resonate with pipe organs, ancient liturgies, and three-hundred-year-old hymns.

Perhaps what we did was too tame. Maybe we should have gone a little more “out there.” I once read about a non-denominational church that meets in a strip mall, plays video clips to illustrate the sermon, and has its own tattoo parlor. Riverside Presbyterian in Sterling has co-pastors, one a Spanish speaker, and features contemporary worship with pastors in untucked shirts. They also have a large coffee shop on site that generates a great deal of traffic into the church building, a former office space.

We at the Meeting House could never duplicate that. Our physical space precludes a coffee shop or tattoo parlor, but that doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with electric guitars or strip mall churches. 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. Pipe organs have only been around a little over 500 of the Churches nearly 2000 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 to make the hymns he wrote more accessible. 

African American spirituals are another example of worship and music that developed for a particular cultural setting. And the contemporary worship songs and coffee shop churches of our day are but one more attempt to make worship accessible to the prevailing culture.

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 make the divine more manageable.

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 this morning’s scripture. The disciples have been hanging out with Jesus for a while and seen him do some incredible, miraculous things. But when Jesus is “transfigured” before 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, argue about who can be ordained, and we’ll push “Listen to him!” off to the side.

I don’t mean to pick on churches or religion. Unlike some people, I don’t think it’s really possible to be “spiritual but not religious.” Any spirituality or faith 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 gets focused on the packaging rather than the core. It easily substitutes reverence or attendance or rituals for faith and obedience, and so it needs reforming on a regular basis. It needs what happens in our gospel today, an awesome encounter with the unmanageable, non user-friendly God. And it needs to hear, “Listen to him!”

I’m going to guess that many 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!” 

You’ve likely heard the quote, erroneously attributed to Gandhi, that says, “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ.” I suppose that to varying degrees, this critique fits most of us. And this problem exists not because people don’t believe in Jesus or don’t come to church enough. No, the problem is 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 I suspect 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 a 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!” 

We’re about to enter another Lent, and some of us will want to come up with Lenten practices or activities we hope will draw us closer to God. We’ll get ashes on our foreheads and give up chocolate or even do a little fasting. But what if our Lenten practice was to listen, to listen to Jesus? I wonder what wonderful things might happen to us, might happen here at the Meeting House, if we really did what God commands.

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