Sermon

A Little Perspective

by The Rev. Canon Susan Sommer

I can't tell you the last time I went to a movie theatre, but I can tell about the first time I did. I went with my brother and my best friend to see Mary Poppins. It was shown at the old Michigan Theatre in Jackson, MI, and I remember that the line of kids waiting to get in stretched down the street and around the corner. Tom, Nina and I were lucky to get in. Sort of. That is to say, by the time we finally handed over our tickets, the only seats left were in the very front row of this huge old fashioned theatre like they don't make any more. What I saw was a blur of color. My neck still hurt the next day from being craned so long. I saw the movie, and yet I didn't see it because I was simply too close to it. What I needed was some perspective. I needed to be further up that mountainous row of seats in order to comprehend the fullness of the experience.

I think providing perspective may have been what Jesus had in mind when he took Peter, James, and John up the mountain. Depending on geography and meteorological conditions, being atop a mountain often enables you to see things that you could never see from down below. Sometimes distance helps. That's true literally, and it's often true metaphorically as well. Sometimes we cannot see something clearly simply because we are too close to it.

Of course, even distance doesn't always help. Conditions were excellent for the three guys in today's gospel to get a broader perspective on their teacher. Mountaintops in Scripture invariably are places where the human and the divine intersect. If they knew their own sacred Scripture – and there's no reason to think that as good Jewish men they didn't –  they should have been primed for an epiphany to end all epiphanies. And it happened. Jesus is transfigured before their very eyes. They see their two great national heroes – Moses and Elijah – talking with their master. They hear the voice of God counseling them to listen to God's beloved Son. Did it expand their vision? Not so much, at least not right then. They wanted to draw close and to stay close to the experience. They wanted to capture it by building booths so that this marvelous experience would continue to be immediate, available to them.

Perspective was what they needed. The journey to Jerusalem would begin when they descended from that mountain. The going was going to get tougher, and Jesus needed his closest followers to have that breadth of experience and vision. The cross awaited them in Jerusalem and Jesus knew that the disciples were going to need all the perspective they could get.

We're not that different. We are on the cusp of Lent – a season of the church's life in which we especially contemplate the cross itself. The cross is our defining symbol as Christians, and yet it is always in danger of being domesticated by the very people who hold it most dear. It's easy to lose perspective on something so very familiar.  I mean, think about the two axes of the cross, vertical and horizontal. If we think in traditional terms of divine being "up" and earthly being "down," we can begin to think of the vertical axis of the cross as a reminder of how God continually moves toward us, and of the inborn desire within each of us to reach out to God. Meanwhile, the horizontal axis reminds us of the ways in which we are called to reach out to one another, to seek the bonds of community with our fellow creatures.

We revere the cross because it is a reminder to us of Christ's ultimate redemptive sacrifice, but if we can get a perspective, we also see that the cross embodies Christ himself. God reached "down" to humankind in the flesh of his Son Jesus Christ. Christ's response was to draw all the world to himself. His life was cruciform. He was a living cross before he was hung upon one.

When we make the sign of the cross, as many of us do during our worship, we are acting out the two imperatives of our faith – the seeking and being sought by God, and the reaching out to one another in the bonds of community. And let me tell you, as Christians marked with the invisible, yet indelible mark of the cross, these two aspects of our faith are necessary. If we concentrate on our relationship with God to the exclusion of our connection to one another, we are engaging in piety, but not Christian faith. If we reach out to one another, but fail to commend the love of God that enlivens our love for one another, then we're being  good, ethical people, but we are not exercising our Christian faith.

We are privileged today to overhear, so to speak, the words God spoke about his Son Jesus to Peter, James, and John. "This is my beloved Son. Listen to him."  It was a much needed bit of perspective for them. This was more than a wonder-working rabbi they were following. Just as their hero Moses never got to enter the Promised Land, and just as their hero Elijah was hounded by his enemies into the wilderness, the days ahead for their master would be difficult. The journey down the mountain will ultimately lead Jesus to the cross, and that's the perspective that all of Jesus’s disciples need – past, present, and still to come. God reached "down" to humankind in the flesh of his Son Jesus Christ. Christ's response was to draw all the world to himself. His life from beginning to end was cruciform.

Ours must be as well.

© Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral