Sermons

February 6/05
Transfiguration or a Makeover?
Reverend Dr Cheri DiNovo

We continue along speaking about the path of a Christian, non-violence and non-cooperation with evil. You know it all boils down to a few acts, acts I hope we all engage in during this incredible time called Lent that begins next week. The first is to think the unthinkable. The second is to speak the unspeakable. The third is to do the undoable. And the fourth isn’t up to us at all, it’s - let Heaven explode around us.

It’s a beautiful story, the transfiguration. Of course it’s a repeat of an earlier story, the story of Moses. We notice in the story some rare and wonderful aspects. First of all we notice there’s mountain, earth, fire and air. All the elements come together, all of nature comes together and all of nature bows down at this moment and elevates this one. The one we call Christ. The one they called Moses. It comes together to make this moment for the ones witnessing it, a moment of radical transfiguration and transformation. Part of this is historical of course, the early Jews and later the Christians were trying to impress upon their animist neighbours, the Gods of fire and the elements actually bowed down to an even greater God, this God of the Israelites. Part of this is also just the truth about our lives because after all, elements of nature are always part of the transformation and transfiguration. They are awe-full elements and we do fall to our knees.We do collapse at such moments.

We were talking about this in Godtalk, about why people fall on their knees when they come face to face with God and for one thing, of course, we think it’s the last thing we’re ever going to see and we’re scared. The other thing is that all of our life becomes transparent when our faith becomes real. That God then sees us as well as we see God. That God actually sees us, every thing that we’ve ever done, every one that we’ve ever been. God sees us when we think the unthinkable, speak the unspeakable, do the undoable, let Heaven explode around us.

We live in a culture of makeover shows. I love them, I don’t know about you, but I love them! I like seeing the ‘Reveal’ a new term in our language. You know I’ve even been known to watch ‘The Swan’ that show where they transform women who’ve had horrible lives and terrible issues into Casino hostesses after three months. We’ve all seen them and we all get it. We get that we’re somehow fascinated with the ‘makeover’. I think really what they speak to in all of us is something far deeper. It is our desire, our spiritual hunger for transfiguration and transformation. You know that’s what it ‘sells’ to. If we change our bodies or if we change our interior decoration or if we change our exercise routine that somehow we will be at peace and we will find ourselves standing before God and God will see us as if for the first time and we will be totally transformed and transfigured. Of course we know it doesn’t work like that.

I was thinking about our own transformation in the Fellowship Room where the Decorating Challenge came in and transformed our room and we went over and transformed a room in an Anglican Church. That’s when we knew that the show’s a fake. It costs a whole lot more than they say it costs. It takes a whole lot more time than they say it takes and not only that but many months later (yes we’re very grateful, it’s wonderful to have the room painted and the floor finished and the couches covered) but you know we feed 50-150 people in that room and they covered the couches in white! I suspect that all of the recipients of all of the makeovers have similar stories a few months or years down the pike.

What we really hunger for, what we really yearn for, what we really want as people of faith, is transfiguration, transformation of our very cores. That’s what we yearn for and let’s take a wonderful journey on the way to achieving just that.

Traditionally Christians have given up for Lent. You know, you give up chocolate or you fast or you give up something that you are used to doing. Now the idea is not to beat your self up and it’s not to lose ten pounds. The idea is to create space in a crazy, busy life so that God can see us, so that we can see God. To get rid of the rubble so that our sightlines are clear and that takes some giving up of ‘stuff’ whatever the stuff is of our lives and importantly it calls us to do something very positive, which is not the negative of giving something up, but to do some positive steps. Think the unthinkable, speak the unspeakable and do the undoable and let Heaven explode around you for 40 days and 40 nights.

Last week and all these weeks we’ve been speaking about the Christian path of non-violence and non-cooperation with evil. It began way back with Darryl Anderson, the war resistor who came up and spoke to us about why he left Iraq. We all witnessed Iraqi elections this last week and we all witnessed the media spin on those elections. I thought I’d read you a little bit of history. This is part of thinking the unthinkable, calling the emperor as naked. I’m reading from the Toronto Star from Antonia Zerbisias, the ‘Red Star’ as some would call it.

"This week an old New York Times story was making the left-lib Internet rounds. Dated Sept.4,1967, it’s headed, "U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote: Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Viet-cong Terror." It reads, "United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of the turnout in South Vietnam’s presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting. According to reports from Saigon, 83% of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong. A successful election has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson’s policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam…the purpose of the voting was to give legitimacy to the Saigon Government…" We want the ‘look’ of democracy not the reality. We don’t want the transformation and transfiguration of real democracy. We want just the look of it. Interesting what didn’t make the news, every single party shared one platform in common and that was to get the troops and the U.S. out of their country. You didn’t hear about that.

To really think the unthinkable, to go against the grain, to really reason things out and to look at the world with new eyes, to hear new and alternative forms of information and sources. You have to. It’s an ‘active’ thing to do. You have to look for it because otherwise you’ll just hear what everybody else hears and think what everybody else thinks. Think the unthinkable.
The other way of thinking the unthinkable is just about our own lives. About how things happen to us, like the people in our lives. What if we thought about them as angels, everyone in our lives, dark angels or light angels, angels of mercy or angels with something frightening to bring us? What if we thought about them as someone to wrestle with, very difficult, or as people we need to love and welcome? What if we saw everyone in our life as a messenger from God? How would that transform our day to day? How about if we saw things that happen to us as happening for a reason so that we’d be transformed and transfigured? What if we saw messages, even bad news as, oh yeah, a message from God? How is this going to transform and transfigure me, this action, this occurrence? What if we read our lives that way? Would fire and smoke and light break out around us? What if in Lent we are simply mindful of every blessing of every moment?

It’s African history month and I’ve been entertaining you with quotes and I’m not going to stop now. This is from Malawi, "It’s not the road ahead that wears you out. It’s the grain of sand in your shoe." Think the unthinkable.

Speak the unspeakable. And guess what, then people will think you’re crazy. Here’s another quote, Gilda Radner said it, " Why is it that when you speak to God it’s prayer but when God speaks back to you, it’s Schizophrenia?" We need to speak the unspeakable. We need to take the risk of sounding really flaky and really crazy. It works to get you a seat on the bus. People move away.
Another quote, this is anonymous but it’s great, "Love is grand and divorce is a hundred grand." That’s for Valentines. We need to speak the unspeakable. We need to say those things that are truths to us, that might just be truths for someone else but that we’re so frightened of saying. Why, because of what they might think of us. As Christians, we are called to be courageous, called to say those things, those things that are our truths. We’re called to say them loud.

One of my transforming moments, quite a number of years ago, while sitting in a Church in P.E.I. was when the minister there was preaching and one of the things that he said, this in a Church filled with about 200-300 people was in any term, racist. He started talking about our Muslim brothers and sisters as though they were ‘lesser than’ we are. And I sat there and I heard it and I knew what he was saying and I thought, "I should get up and say something. I should stand up. I should say something. I shouldn’t let him get away with saying that unchallenged." I didn’t. I was scared. You know those disciples, they fell down in fear and Jesus said, "Don’t be afraid." He was always saying that, "Don’t be afraid." I walked from that place and I carried that feeling with me, really into my ministry. It was one of the most transforming moments of my ministry. I vowed to myself (after having a bath) I will never do that again. I will never ever, do that again. I will never sit and listen to one of my brothers and sisters be denigrated again without standing up and saying something, even if it’s a 200-1 shot. Even if they’re all going to turn and look at me like I’m crazy.
This is the path of courage. It’s a noble path. It’s the path of a Christian. And I actually, in one of my better moments, did that, not too long ago. There was a group of people outside my office, not members of this Church, and they were all speaking about someone with mental illness. Mental illness and addiction are the last vestiges of ‘moral’ judgment and righteousness. We get to morally judge people who are mentally ill or addicted in a way that we would never think of judging someone who was, for example, disabled. So they were talking about someone with mental illness and addiction as though this person was lesser than. I heard it and I went out and I said, "You know, this can not be allowed in this holy place. This is a member of our congregation and you cannot speak about him in this way because this is something he suffers from It is not a moment to jest or to point fingers or a moment to judge. He is a suffering human being." You should have heard the silence. I went back and sat in my office, breathed very deeply. And I can only imagine what was happening outside. I’m sure the ‘B’ word came up. They probably thought, ‘Woman of a certain age, hot flashes, you know…’ That moment felt a whole lot better than that other moment, sitting in that Church.

I know, we all laugh and talk about our friends. It’s human to do so. But you know those moments when you are called to act. You know those moments when you are called and you don’t. Now we have these 40 days to speak the unspeakable about your own life and the truth you see in the world.

Many, many, people, it’s one of the holy aspects of my job, come to speak to me about abuse. And I stand here to tell you that not every one who has been abused goes on to be an abuser. That people who are abused as children grow up to lead incredible lives. That they are the gift givers, the saints, in most communities and they are the one, more than anyone else, who need to speak the unspeakable. I have been gifted, the ricipient of the courage of those stories. Speak the unspeakable, whatever side of the abuse you are on. It is one of the holiest acts we can do. A Masai greeting, when they come up to someone for the first time, they don’t say, "Heh how are you?" They say, "How are the children?" That’s there greeting to each other. "How are the children?" The children are the bell weather in any community of how that community is doing.
Of course we speak with tact. A quote from the Cote D’Ivoire, "Do not tell the man that is carrying you that he stinks."

Do the undoable. Again, we’ve got 40 days to try this out. We take baby steps. Last week I spoke about how Christians were like two year olds following their mother. We wander off. We fall over. We go down a wrong path, We follow the wrong person sometimes. We’re always at a distance but we know who our mother is, we people of faith, we know which direction we should be walking. We take these hesitant steps. We’re only two years old and we know we’re going to fail but we take them. Here is a wonderful opportunity in these 40 days to take those hesitant steps toward the one that calls us, to walk those courageous steps. My theology professor said Christ guarantees one thing that nothing worse will happen to you than happened to him. The worse thing that happens is that you end up on a cross. Heh, you live, you die. There’s a choice here, you can live a life with meaning and you can die a death with meaning or you can just live and just die.

Here’s a chance to be courageous. Here’s a chance to get up in the morning, not like the makeover shows not with a thought I’m going to exercise, I’m going to eat right or I’m going to redecorate the living room. No, here’s the chance to wake up in the morning and say, "Today I’m going to bring our troops home from Iraq." To wake up in the morning and say, "Today I’m going to create a city that’s sustainable and that’s ecologically sound so that my child doesn’t have asthma like those other children." Or, "I’m going to wake up in the morning and today I’m going to stand up for civil rights in the Christian community which is pretty well on the side anti-civil rights these day. No, I’m going to stand up for civil rights today. That’s what I’m going to do." These are choices we can make during the 40 days of Lent and we can take that mindset into our work and into our faith community and into our homes and into the streets because if we don’t change the world, who will? If humans don’t change the world who does?

Imagine that! Imagine if we all transformed the world today. Think the un thinkable, speak the unspeakable, do the undoable, and let Heaven break out around us.

I got this joke over email. It sort of speaks to this.
A Minneapolis couple decided to go to Florida to thaw out during a particularly icy winter. They planned to stay at the same hotel where they spent their honeymoon 20 years earlier. Because of hectic schedules, it was difficult to coordinate their travel schedules. So, the husband left Minnesota and flew to Florida on Thursday, with his wife flying down the following day.
The husband checked into the hotel. There was a computer in his room, so he decided to send an email to his wife. However, he accidentally left out one letter in her email address, and without realizing his error, sent the email.

Meanwhile, somewhere in Houston, a widow had just returned home from her husband’s funeral. He was a minister (I love this detail) who was called home to glory following a heart attack. The widow decided to check her email expecting messages from relatives and friends. After reading the first message, she screamed and fainted.

The widow’s son rushed into the room, found his mother on the floor, and saw the computer screen which read:

To: My Loving Wife
Subject: I’ve arrived
Date: January 13,2005
I know you’re surprised to hear from me. They have computers here now and you are allowed to send emails to your loved ones. I’ve just arrived and have been checked in. I see that everything has been prepared for your arrival tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing you then! Hope your journey is as uneventful as mine was.

P.S.: Sure is freaking hot down here!