What We Have Now

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Imagine for a moment that you are in a desert. Not just what we experience outside of this town we live in, but an emotional and spiritual desert in which you feel isolated from others. Where you feel that you are alone, with no one to talk to, and nothing that feeds your soul with freshness or joy. Imagine that you are in this place, and now think of what would be your biggest desire. 

For most of us, it would likely be that we would want to be anywhere else but that desolate space. We would believe that what we are experiencing now is not what we should be experiencing. That anyplace other than this desolate wilderness is better than where we are now.

While We Were Still Sinners

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It’s easy for us to look past our own sinfulness and blame those who were there at the time calling for his death, and to see ourselves as innocent.

It’s easy for us to look past our own sinfulness and focus on the resurrection and see only the benefits that Jesus’ death on the cross brings to us.

It’s easy to look past our own sinfulness and see this week of Jesus’ passion as merely an intellectual exercise in theology and the cycles of the church year.

Get Behind Me

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Several years ago, the editor in chief of Christianity Today recounted several conversations that he had had with pastors in his denomination. The pastors told him that when they preached from the Sermon on the Mount – you know, things like “Blessed are the meek,” “Blessed are the peacemakers,” “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” or especially, “Turn the other cheek.” When they preached from the Sermon on the Mount, people would come up to them afterwards and say, “Where did you get those liberal talking points?” But when the pastors would say, “I was literally just quoting the words of Jesus,” the people would not say, “Oh, sorry, I didn’t realize that.” Instead, they would say something to the effect of, “Okay, but that won’t work anymore. That’s weak.”

This is essentially what Peter did with Jesus in today’s Gospel. Peter, and most other people of his time hated the Roman oppressors in their land, and they were expecting a messiah that would come in with a mighty fist and power unseen before, and wipe out the enemies of Israel.

What’s my motivation?

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And as long as they don’t get caught, then, as the Gospel says, “they have received their reward.” If it is the accolades and praise of people they want, then as long as they are able to keep up the front, they will have received what they were looking for. If what they are trying to do is to “look good,” and if they have managed it, then by all means, let them rejoice in “looking good.”

Points of View

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This is the epiphany, the nature and mission of Christ is revealed to those three disciples in this transfiguration on the mountaintop. And it is revealed to those of us hearing the story after the fact. Jesus is the messiah, the chosen one of Israel, the salvation of all humanity. 

But what does the identity of Jesus of Nazareth as the messiah reveal to us about ourselves? We most definitely are not the messiah, so we are unlikely to be joined by Moses and Elijah and be transfigured on the top of a mountain.  

As with many of the stories we encounter in the Gospels, Peter’s responses tend to be the example that so many of us can relate to.

Un(ash)amed

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What motivates us to enter into these self-congratulatory states of inflated valuations of our own self-worth? We may indeed be better than some – by our own standards – but by our own standards we are also worse than others (Matt 7:1-2). Yet we still try and congratulate ourselves on our own righteousness, when standing before the God who reconciled us to Himself, no less.

Born From Above

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Lectionary Readings – (Second Sunday in Lent) [This sermon used a lot of props, so I’ve included photos of the props, and I’ve left in my “stage notes” to show when and where I used them.] When I read the scripture for today, and realized that the passage was John 3:16, I began to think…

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Sin Embargo

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Daily Office Readings – Gospel ( Mark 1:14-28 ) Today, in my Spanish class, one of the people used the phrase ‘sin embargo,’ which means ‘nevertheless.’ But every time I hear it, I say to myself that a ‘sin embargo’ is what is supposed to happen during Lent. Sin is something we are supposed to…

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