L. Gregory Jones - "The Face of God" (March 5, 2000)
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
Susan | Our third reading | 0:04 |
is from The Gospel According to Mark, the ninth chapter: | 0:05 | |
"Six days later Jesus took with him Peter and James | 0:10 | |
and John and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves | 0:14 | |
and he was transfigured before them, | 0:20 | |
and his clothes became dazzling white, | 0:23 | |
such as no one on earth could bleach them, | 0:26 | |
and there appeared to them Elijah with Moses | 0:30 | |
who were talking with Jesus. | 0:33 | |
Then Peter said to Jesus, | 0:36 | |
'Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. | 0:38 | |
Let us make three dwellings, one for you, | 0:42 | |
one for Moses, and one for Elijah.' | 0:44 | |
He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. | 0:48 | |
Then a cloud overshadowed them | 0:53 | |
and from the cloud there came a voice: | 0:55 | |
'This is my son the Beloved. Listen to him.' | 0:59 | |
Suddenly, when they looked around, | 1:06 | |
they saw no one with them anymore but only Jesus. | 1:07 | |
As they were coming down the mountain | 1:13 | |
he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen | 1:15 | |
until after the son of man had risen from the dead." | 1:19 | |
This is the word of the Lord. | 1:24 | |
(congregation murmurs) | 1:27 | |
It is an honor and a privilege | 1:39 | |
to be here with you this morning | 1:41 | |
and, especially, to be designated | 1:44 | |
the W. Kenneth Goodson preacher. | 1:45 | |
He was a good friend, a bishop for the Methodist Church | 1:49 | |
and someone who loved this University and this chapel. | 1:54 | |
And it is an honor to be able to honor his memory this day. | 1:57 | |
Let us pray. | 2:03 | |
Gracious God, may the words of my mouth | 2:07 | |
and the meditations of all of our hearts | 2:09 | |
be acceptable in thy sight. | 2:11 | |
Oh Lord, our strength and our redeemer Amen. | 2:14 | |
I have long been weary and even resentful | 2:22 | |
at anti religious bigots. | 2:27 | |
The type of people who think that it is impossible | 2:30 | |
to both, have a mind and to be a believer. | 2:33 | |
I've also been weary of non-religious cynics | 2:39 | |
who think it's a waste of time to gather together | 2:44 | |
to pray, to worship God. | 2:47 | |
They're not so much hostile as indifferent and cynical. | 2:50 | |
More recently, I have become weary | 2:57 | |
of a phenomenon within the household of faith, | 3:01 | |
what I call Christian winners. | 3:04 | |
The people who are believers | 3:08 | |
and want to have it all on the world's terms, | 3:12 | |
who want to be able to have all the glory of this world | 3:16 | |
while also claiming to be a believer. | 3:21 | |
They're the kind of people who know all of the answers | 3:26 | |
even before the question is asked. | 3:30 | |
You may know the story of the preacher | 3:35 | |
who had called together the children around him | 3:36 | |
for children's time on Sunday morning and he said, | 3:40 | |
"What I'm thinking of children is brown, | 3:42 | |
has a bushy tail and gathers acorns to himself every fall, | 3:44 | |
what am I thinking of?" | 3:48 | |
and a little child in the back raised his hand and he said, | 3:51 | |
"I'm sure the right answer is Jesus | 3:56 | |
but it sure sounds like a squirrel to me." | 3:57 | |
(Congregation laughs) | 4:00 | |
We live in a world where we're far too certain | 4:06 | |
of the answers and unwilling to live with the questions. | 4:09 | |
Particularly, questions which may seem to be unanswerable | 4:15 | |
when we face the realities of sin | 4:21 | |
and evil and tragedy in this world. | 4:25 | |
You see, Christian winners think | 4:32 | |
that to talk about the glory of Christ | 4:34 | |
is to talk about unrelieved success, unmatched property, | 4:37 | |
the promise of a life free from troubles. | 4:42 | |
Living long and happy. | 4:46 | |
But I find it difficult to believe | 4:52 | |
in such a God | 4:57 | |
or such an account of glory. | 4:59 | |
I do not believe in God because of the promise | 5:03 | |
of success and material prosperity. | 5:09 | |
When such prosperity comes we give thanks to God | 5:14 | |
for the blessings of life and we're called | 5:17 | |
to use that as an opportunity for stewardship | 5:20 | |
and for service to other, to give to others. | 5:22 | |
But it should never be the basis of a belief in God. | 5:28 | |
For as Mary's Magnificat | 5:34 | |
at the beginning of Luke's gospel so eloquently tells us | 5:37 | |
and it shines through all of scripture; | 5:40 | |
God has a special favor for the poor. | 5:43 | |
Those students who are going on mission teams | 5:47 | |
over spring break will encounter people | 5:51 | |
undoubtedly, who are economically impoverished | 5:54 | |
and yet filled with faith in God in ways | 5:57 | |
that sometimes make our faith seem so small. | 6:01 | |
I've been in places where and egg is a delicacy | 6:10 | |
that costs a week or more's wages | 6:14 | |
and yet the people's faith has shamed my own. | 6:18 | |
It's not material prosperity or even success | 6:25 | |
that ought to shape our faith and our life. | 6:32 | |
For in good times as well as bad, | 6:37 | |
we are called to bless the Lord | 6:40 | |
and to worship God. | 6:45 | |
I do not believe in God because of the promise | 6:48 | |
of a life free from troubles. | 6:53 | |
Sometimes the Christian winners make it sound like | 6:59 | |
ever since the day of their conversion | 7:01 | |
it's just been one endless success after another. | 7:03 | |
They're so filled with smiles | 7:07 | |
that makes our inner turmoil even worse. | 7:10 | |
Christians no less than anyone else, | 7:20 | |
face troubles throughout life. | 7:23 | |
There are good times and there are bad. | 7:28 | |
There are joys that come our way | 7:33 | |
but, also, griefs that fill our hearts with sadness. | 7:35 | |
In Wallace Stegner's novel, Crossing to Safety, | 7:42 | |
two couples have gone to Italy | 7:47 | |
and they're looking at various pieces of works of art | 7:50 | |
and when they come to Pierre De La Francesca's | 7:56 | |
powerful and haunting painting | 8:00 | |
of Christ starting up from the tomb, | 8:02 | |
two women see it in very contrasting ways. | 8:07 | |
The image is not of a triumphant Christ who has no pain. | 8:13 | |
The image in the painting is of a Christ | 8:19 | |
barely rising from the dead still bearing the wounds, | 8:22 | |
the agony of the cross. | 8:26 | |
One of the women whom the narrator tells us, | 8:31 | |
was developing a sun dial theory of art | 8:34 | |
that would count no hours but the sunny ones, | 8:37 | |
was unimpressed. | 8:41 | |
But the other woman, | 8:45 | |
who had suffered physical ailment, | 8:48 | |
whose health was debilitating, | 8:53 | |
who was barely able to stand | 8:57 | |
even to see the painting | 8:59 | |
because the chronic illness had caused | 9:01 | |
so much physical and emotional, and mental pain, | 9:03 | |
stayed fixated on that painting | 9:07 | |
and the narrator tells us, | 9:13 | |
"She stood watching | 9:17 | |
as if those who have died | 9:21 | |
can see things that those who only lived | 9:24 | |
can never see." | 9:29 | |
Charity, the woman with the sun dial theory of art, | 9:33 | |
is a Christian winner | 9:37 | |
taking no account of any hours but the sunny ones. | 9:39 | |
But Sally had a sense of what it means to die | 9:44 | |
and so, also, a deeper sense of what it means to live. | 9:51 | |
No, I don't believe in God | 9:57 | |
because of the promise of a life free from troubles. | 10:00 | |
Nor do I believe in God | 10:06 | |
because of the promise of a long life. | 10:07 | |
When we are granted a life of many years | 10:12 | |
of three score and 10 and beyond, | 10:14 | |
we give thanks for the blessings of such a life, | 10:16 | |
for the opportunities to worship God, | 10:21 | |
to be with family and friends, | 10:23 | |
it is a gift for which we give thanks. | 10:25 | |
But it is not a promise given to all the faithful. | 10:31 | |
As we launched a new institute of care | 10:36 | |
at the end of life this past week, | 10:39 | |
we were reminded and reminded ourselves | 10:43 | |
that this isn't only about old age, | 10:45 | |
for end of life comes all across the spectrum | 10:49 | |
of the lifespan. | 10:52 | |
And I've been with too many parents as they struggle | 10:55 | |
with the illness or the death of a child. | 10:59 | |
Too many spouses who grieve | 11:04 | |
the untimely death of their loved one. | 11:08 | |
To believe that there's a promise | 11:14 | |
of a long life on which we should base a faith in God. | 11:16 | |
My divinity school roommate my first year | 11:23 | |
here at Duke, was a good friend. | 11:26 | |
Susan and I were in his wedding and he was in ours. | 11:29 | |
We had just gone off to serve congregations, | 11:36 | |
we in Baltimore and he in Indiana. | 11:40 | |
But one day in the middle of August the phone rang | 11:43 | |
and he was on the phone to tell me | 11:51 | |
that his wife had died | 11:54 | |
the previous day in a hiking accident. | 11:56 | |
He asked if we would come to help celebrate | 12:01 | |
the memorial service | 12:04 | |
for a wonderful 26 year old woman. | 12:07 | |
And we did. | 12:12 | |
And as we gathered, as a broken broken body, | 12:16 | |
to mourn her loss, to grieve the sense of someone | 12:21 | |
who had died, who not yet even reached | 12:26 | |
the prime of her life. | 12:29 | |
I didn't know how I could even get up | 12:32 | |
to help lead the worship service. | 12:35 | |
And then my friend got up to bear testimony. | 12:40 | |
He told first, of how she had died in his arms | 12:46 | |
after she had fallen off a cliff | 12:49 | |
and how when the ambulance driver finally got there, | 12:54 | |
they were loading her lifeless body into the ambulance | 12:58 | |
and the driver turned to him and said, | 13:04 | |
"What do you do?" And he said, "I'm a preacher." | 13:06 | |
"Oh," said the ambulance driver, | 13:12 | |
"then you of all people would know, | 13:14 | |
God has a purpose for everything." | 13:15 | |
and my friend, ever alert, said, | 13:20 | |
"Well, if that's true, this purpose stinks." | 13:23 | |
Life is filled with questions | 13:30 | |
that we live into even as we cannot answer. | 13:32 | |
When God speaks out of the whirlwind to Job, | 13:37 | |
it isn't with definitive answers | 13:40 | |
but a call to trust in a God | 13:42 | |
whom we can know but not know fully. | 13:48 | |
When we gathered we mourned | 13:55 | |
the loss of someone who had died young | 13:59 | |
and yet we praised God in a way | 14:03 | |
that offered a profound opportunity for healing. | 14:05 | |
No, I don't believe in God | 14:08 | |
because of the promise of a long life. | 14:09 | |
Why, then, do I believe in God? | 14:15 | |
Because I have beheld in the glory | 14:20 | |
of the transfigured Christ, | 14:24 | |
the very face of God that offers truth | 14:28 | |
and life and light. | 14:34 | |
The story of the transfiguration in Mark's gospel | 14:39 | |
is a story of the definitive revelation of God. | 14:44 | |
His transfigured face and the voice coming down from God, | 14:51 | |
"This is my beloved son, listen to him." | 14:56 | |
It is as we behold Christ, | 15:04 | |
that we begin to understand who God is, | 15:08 | |
and God's grace and God's love for us. | 15:13 | |
But it's not just any glory we behold. | 15:21 | |
You see, Peter has just had the kind of problem | 15:27 | |
of wanting to create an image of we want from God, | 15:30 | |
not what God provides. | 15:35 | |
When Jesus tells him that he is going to suffer | 15:38 | |
and die and on the third day be raised from the dead, | 15:43 | |
Peter shrinks back. | 15:46 | |
He doesn't want that kind of God. | 15:46 | |
None of us in some sense want that. | 15:51 | |
We'd like prosperity, a life free from troubles, | 15:55 | |
a long life and assurance that if we just make | 15:59 | |
that right bargain with God, | 16:01 | |
everything will turn out alright. | 16:02 | |
But immediately following Jesus's encounter with Peter, | 16:08 | |
and the injunction that Jesus says, | 16:14 | |
"To get behind me Satan," to Peter, | 16:15 | |
we have the story of the transfiguration. | 16:21 | |
That the glory of Christ, | 16:25 | |
what it means to behold the face of God | 16:27 | |
is a glory that is found | 16:31 | |
in suffering death and resurrection. | 16:34 | |
The way in which we behold the face of God | 16:39 | |
is by patterning our lives in Christ, | 16:42 | |
by following, and living with the questions | 16:46 | |
that recur as we follow, gaining clarity, deeper wisdom, | 16:49 | |
deeper understanding but never having all of them resolved. | 16:53 | |
As Saint Paul says, "Now we see through a glass darkly, | 16:59 | |
then we shall see face to face." | 17:02 | |
I have beheld in the glory of the transfigured Christ. | 17:08 | |
The very face of God. | 17:13 | |
And not only that, but I have learned | 17:19 | |
that it is only as I stay close to Christ | 17:24 | |
but not cling to him, | 17:28 | |
that I can continue to follow. | 17:33 | |
Peter engages in that all too tempting strategy. | 17:36 | |
You see the transfigured Christ and you say, | 17:42 | |
"Oh, let's set up shop here. | 17:44 | |
This is wonderful, it's a mountaintop experience. | 17:47 | |
If only we can hold on." | 17:50 | |
But that's not an option. | 17:58 | |
They are to go down from the mountain | 18:01 | |
to follow in the midst | 18:04 | |
of the joys and griefs, | 18:08 | |
that hopes and fears, the agonies, the loves, | 18:09 | |
of life in this world. | 18:13 | |
And those of us who have beheld the glory of Christ | 18:16 | |
and seen the face of God are thereby called | 18:21 | |
to proclaim that message. | 18:25 | |
It's what Saint Paul describes in the second letter | 18:29 | |
to the Corinthians that Susan read | 18:31 | |
just a few moments ago. | 18:33 | |
That we have seen the light shining out of the darkness | 18:36 | |
of pain and suffering in this world. | 18:40 | |
And we are called to bear witness, | 18:44 | |
not to proclaim ourselves as Christian winners, | 18:47 | |
but to proclaim the glory of Jesus Christ as Lord. | 18:53 | |
I believe in God because I've seen men and women | 19:02 | |
who are like that, for whom the light of Christ | 19:05 | |
that they have beheld is now reflected | 19:10 | |
in the power of their lives. | 19:13 | |
In the life of Kenneth Goodson, | 19:17 | |
who was the Methodist Bishop in Alabama | 19:20 | |
during the Civil Rights struggles | 19:23 | |
and who 35 years ago, as black marchers | 19:26 | |
were in a standoff trying to cross a bridge, | 19:30 | |
in a standoff with Alabama troopers, | 19:33 | |
talked with one of his flock, George Wallace, | 19:39 | |
and told Governor Wallace to let the marchers pass. | 19:44 | |
I've seen those people who proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord | 19:50 | |
and the lives of Charles Putnam or Tom Langford, | 19:56 | |
who on this campus, over many years, | 20:01 | |
bore witness in their life | 20:05 | |
and work at Duke University. | 20:10 | |
In the lives of countless men and women | 20:12 | |
around the world, in South Africa | 20:15 | |
as people refuse to allow despair and suffering | 20:17 | |
and untimely death and oppression defeat them, | 20:21 | |
but have beheld the face of God | 20:26 | |
and a light shown in the darkness of reconciliation | 20:30 | |
and hope for a new future. | 20:34 | |
Of Elias Shakur in the Middle East, | 20:37 | |
refusing to allow the plight of Palestinians | 20:39 | |
to become an occasion for despair | 20:42 | |
but starts a school to bring people together | 20:44 | |
for education and reconciliation and hope. | 20:47 | |
The people who proclaim, not themselves | 20:53 | |
but Jesus Christ as Lord in word and deed, | 20:56 | |
in countless congregations, in families, | 21:00 | |
in friendships, in small ways over the years. | 21:03 | |
As the novelist George Elliot put it in the 19th century, | 21:08 | |
"that things are not so ill between thee and me | 21:11 | |
is half owing to those who lived faithful lives | 21:15 | |
and rest in unvisited tombs." | 21:20 | |
Those are the reasons I believe in God | 21:25 | |
because I beheld in the glory | 21:30 | |
of the transfigured Christ, the very face of God | 21:33 | |
and have seen that glory reflected | 21:36 | |
in saintly men and women. | 21:39 | |
It requires us to stay close to Christ | 21:44 | |
without clinging to him. | 21:49 | |
Staying close by following. | 21:52 | |
A following that begins a Lenten journey this week. | 21:56 | |
As we begin that Lenten journey, | 22:03 | |
let us stay close and follow, | 22:07 | |
not shrinking away as we move toward suffering | 22:13 | |
and the cross | 22:18 | |
but staying close so that on Easter | 22:22 | |
when we rise again with Christ | 22:27 | |
we will be able, like Sally, | 22:30 | |
to look at Christ rising from the tomb | 22:36 | |
with the clearness of vision that comes from those, | 22:40 | |
who not only have lived, but have suffered and died | 22:45 | |
and understand afresh what it means | 22:51 | |
to behold the living God. | 22:54 |