Date
Sunday, March 04, 2018
Sermon Audio
Full Service Audio
It was just over two weeks ago that I got off the plane at Heathrow Airport and moved quickly to take a train to Paddington Station. As I got to the train, the doors opened and I put my case on a rack, and no sooner had I turned to take a seat than I realized that there was a gentleman seated in one of the seats, but he wasn’t an ordinary gentleman, he was wearing a clerical shirt. I recognized him. He was in deep reading mode, and I didn’t know if I should disturb him. I thought about it for a second and decided I would disturb him. I went over to him and I said, “Excuse me, I know you are busy reading and I am sure your time is precious, but I would like to introduce myself.”
He said, “Tell me who you are.” So I did.
Then, he tapped the seat next to him and said, “Come, sit next to me.”
I said, “Thank you, Archbishop. I must admit I have known about you for many years, but I didn’t think I would have the opportunity to talk to the Archbishop of Canterbury on a train.”
We sat and talked for half an hour.
We talked about everything under the sun including the state of the Church in the United Kingdom. He had just come from presenting a paper in Geneva at The World Council of Churches, and we talked about that. We talked about the state of the Church in Canada. He was interested in Timothy Eaton Memorial Church and our history. We talked about the state of the Church in South Africa and the political changes taking place there, which were important to both of us. We talked about the state of world Christianity, and for half an hour I got to know and appreciate and understand this wonderful man. Near the end, I said, “You do know Archbishop that I preach, and when I preach I like to drop names, and my congregation doesn’t believe I’ve met half the people I say I have, so would you mind if I took a selfie of the two of us?”
He said, “By all means!”
So we stood up and just before I was about to take a selfie, a gentleman sitting adjacent to us said, “Gentlemen, would you like me to take the photograph for you? You see, I am afraid I have been listening in on you for the last half hour. I am a Lutheran from Germany on my way from Frankfurt, and I must admit I have been enthralled with your conversation, and I do apologize. Of course I knew who one of you was.”
And I said, “Well, thank you for recognizing me!”
He looked perplexed and the Archbishop laughed, and said, “I will take your photograph on one condition that I get to take it on my camera as well as on yours.”
We agreed.
We got off the train, and the Archbishop and I continued our conversation along the platform. We stopped at a coffee bar. It was nine-thirty at night in Paddington Station and we hadn’t finished our conversation. We embraced with a sense of a true spiritual fellowship. It was memorable! So much so, that no sooner had I got in the taxi, I didn’t phone my wife to tell her that I had arrived safely. Instead, I sent everyone I knew the photograph of me and the Archbishop of Canterbury, and said, “Now you will believe me when I tell you that I have met X, Y and Z!” There was a sense I had known the Archbishop for years. It was as if the soul of the man was revealed in our conversation. What had hitherto been knowledge from media and books was now an intimate personal knowledge, and not one that I will soon forget, for he struck me as a deeply devout Christian man above all else.
I think the disciples felt the same way two thousand years before when they went up a mountain with Jesus. There is debate as to which mountain it was. Was it Mount Tabor, as history has suggested, or was it Mount Hermon, closer to Caesarea Philippi, 9,400 feet above the river Jordan? It is hard to know and it doesn’t really matter. When you read Matthew’s Gospel, the events that led up to this great moment must have been stressful. Jesus had been attacked by Sadducees for not fulfilling the law and for associating with outcasts. Jesus had fed the 5,000, but had to flee because his celebrity was getting out of hand. Peter had made the great declaration, “Thou art the Son of God.” Peter knew that by saying that he had really cast his own lot. So they are probably tired. Jesus went up a mountain to get away, as was his custom. He wanted to pray; he wanted quiet.
Yet, what happened was a turning point in his ministry and in his life. What transpired on that mountain is very hard for us to know and understand. Clearly, something mysterious and magical took place. Jesus, we are told, was transfigured, transformed before their eyes. There was light, and things were shining from him; a voice came from heaven. This was a moment of great revelation, and the disciples and Jesus must have been shaken by it, so much so that it was the preparation for the events that followed. They might have been exhausted, but what was going to happen a week or two later, which was Holy Week and the events of the Cross and the Resurrection, would be absolutely transforming for us as well as for them. It was the turning point in Jesus’ ministry. The Transfiguration was like a fulcrum on which his ministry tilted. I was also a moment of profound prayer and reflection. It was a moment that would forever change those who were on the mountain. How do we understand this? The great retired professor of New Testament at Acadia Divinity College, Allison Trites said, “This is like a letter. It is like God’s letter to us to tell us about what God is like.”
I must admit, I am a closeted fan of Stevie Wonder. I only come out of this closet once in a while and let the odd person know, because Stevie Wonder is Stevie Wonder, and I love Stevie Wonder. He wrote some great songs. One of those songs was, Signed, Sealed, Delivered. Signed, Sealed, Delivered is his statement of love, really, and disappointment in himself in a relationship. But what Allison Trites was saying is that the letter of the Transfiguration to the Church – and that is what it really is – is signed, sealed, and delivered. It is a message about who Christ is. It is a message for the Church for time immemorial. It is signed because what happens at the Transfiguration is the affirmation of who Jesus is. A voice comes from heaven, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” It is like the signature, the signing off that Jesus is who he really is. In some ways, Jesus needed this. After all, the events that were going to follow and the terrible suffering he was going to endure really required confirmation in his own mind that he was the Son of God and following God’s will and purpose. For the disciples, they needed it because they were going to go through one heck of a time, both before the events of the Crucifixion and after, following the Resurrection.
The Church needs to see the signature of God in all of this. Signatures are important in any document. The signature in the validation; the ultimate statement that this is the truth, this is the person revealed. I learned that lesson just last week in an Oxford restaurant. It was one of those restaurants that hasn’t yet got digital machines, rather you have to sign the chit once your credit card has been approved. So, I get this bill and I am there with a student from Toronto who had agreed to meet up with me. He is at St. Cross College, and we had lunch and talked about Canada in Oxford. We had this very good lunch and the bill is very small. I like it! I am about to sign it and hand over my credit card when the waiter comes running over, stopping me just before I am about to sign it. He said, “Sir, I have given you the wrong bill. I am afraid this bill is much smaller than the one that you have coming to you. You don’t mind, do you, but I will take it back.”
I said, “Yes, I mind! I like the smaller bill!”
He looked at my card and it said “Reverend Andrew Stirling” on it, and he said, “Really Reverend, so you want to do an incorrect thing, do you?”
I thought twice about it, and then I said, “Well, I would still like the smaller bill, but okay, go ahead if you have to.”
They gave me the other bill. The only problem was that the other bill had other person’s card number. So I would be signing for a card that wasn’t my own. I said, “If I sign it, is it legal?”
He said, “No, not really.”
I said, “How are we going to resolve this?”
He said, “We have to start all over again.”
So we did. In all honesty, I paid the right bill, with the right card, with the right signature, so everything was fine.
The signature was the important thing. It was a statement that this is my imprimatur on the transaction that had taken place. What happened at the Transfiguration, as Allison tried to point out, is this was God’s signature. This was God’s affirmation. This was God’s statement, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” This is not just a Galilean prophet; this is not just a wise teacher; this is not just a man; this is not just a brave prophet: “This is my beloved Son”. It was also confirmed by having witnesses, just as when you sign a legal document to validate its truth. There on the mountain, with Jesus and the disciples was none other than Elijah and Moses. Wow! Bring in the big guns! Moses, the one who received the law; Elijah, the greatest of the prophets. Moses himself had gone up on a mountain in Sinai and had been transformed in some way with this incredible light and the presence of the law. Elijah had gone up Mount Horeb and had taken on the prophets of Ba’al, and received a voice, a still small voice of God. Elijah and Moses, the disciples and Jesus on a mountaintop. It is incredible! It is like Heaven and Earth had come together; like the past and the present intersecting; like the eternal had met with the temporal. Something amazing happened. There is more to this event than simply a mystical experience. This was a profound sealing of the relationship and there were witnesses.
I sometimes hear people say that unless they have experienced something directly they cannot identify with it. We hear that a lot these days. In other words, if you are not an indigenous person who has experienced the oppression of the indigenous people, you can’t understand the indigenous experience. Or, if you have not experienced slavery, you cannot understand and appreciate the importance of the problem of slavery. That is only partially true. You can understand and identify with, in a different way mind you, but you can understand. Think about a hot stove for a moment. I have never once, thank goodness, burnt any of my fingers on a hot stove. Yet, I have heard and been told ever since I was a little boy that if I touched that hot stove, I will burn. I have never experienced it, but I stay away from it. Why? Because someone has paid witness to it, and they know it to be true. A witness seals the truth, confirms the truth. The disciples were now witnesses of the truth they experienced on that mountain top. It was one that would change their lives forever, so much so that many years later Peter writes, “I remember being on that mountain and it changed me. When I saw Elijah and Moses and Jesus something powerful happened there.” And indeed it did!
I don’t how many of you were able to watch the funeral service for Billy Graham this week. I taped it and watched it late last night after what had been a rather difficult day in our family’s life. I watched it, and was impressed by its simplicity. It was simply in front of their own home under a canopy, and no matter how many Presidents, Vice Presidents, and powerful people in attendance, all the messages from the children and other ministers were simply of humble faith and a belief in Christ. It came across so clearly that the thing that mattered to Billy Graham more than anything else in his whole life was to spread the news of Jesus Christ. And on his tombstone in the library attached to the home it simply says: “Billy Graham, a preacher of Jesus Christ”. It is a powerful witness! No histrionics, no fancy lights and television shows. Whatever you think of Billy Graham, whatever you think of all the show and the pizzazz, my parents went to hear him in 1954 in Harringay, in England, and said that they felt within their own hearts that the presence of Christ was very real at that time. Simple, just bearing witness; no histrionics; just bearing witness. This is what the Church is, pure and simple.
This message, according to Stevie Wonder, has to be delivered. There is no point Jesus and the disciples having a great experience, if it is not delivered today. Lori has been right over the last two Sundays in her sermons: Lent is a time of preparation; Lent is a time for prayer and fasting; it is a time to prepare ourselves for the events that take place in Holy Week and the death and the Resurrection of Jesus. Those very things have to lead us somewhere. They have to lead us to an encounter with Christ, to a deeper sense of that encounter of God’s love in our lives. When that occurs, it is delivered. The disciples, we are told, got on their knees and were terrified when this all happened. But they were given very clear words, and the message was twofold: listen to Him and do not fear.
Last week, I had a renewed encounter with someone I met two years ago. He had arrived in Regent’s Park College when I had my sabbatical there, and we began on the same day, but his was a five year fellowship. The two of us could not be more different in world experience. He had grown up in Burkina Faso, was a jurist, and was training to be on the Supreme Court of Burkina Faso, and had been sent to do a PhD in legal studies at North Carolina University. When he was there, he had an encounter with a Dominican friar who changed his life, so much so that this man, Minlib, decided he was being called to become a Dominican friar himself. He gave up a great career in law, went into the monastery, studied to become a Dominican, went on and did graduate studies in Aramaic and in Arabic, and had taught at universities all over the United States. Now, he had been appointed as a Fellow at Regent Park College, Oxford, for the sole purpose of studying love. Love! This great intellectual studying love in mysticism; studying love and how it can in fact draw us closer to people of other faiths; love as to how it can heal the world; love as to how it can transform the world. All of this rooted for him in the love of Jesus Christ.
We talked, and it was as if we were brothers, who had been reunited with a hug. We talked of Burkina Faso that this very week is experiencing terrible slaughter in the capital city. For us in Oxford, very separated from the violence and corruption of the world, we were talking about Burkina Faso, and about the fear that the people must be living under. Then he said to me, “You know, Andrew, I am going back in the next couple of weeks. I am feeling Christ calling me back just for a while. This is what I believe: that the one thing that drives out fear is perfect love. If I don’t go back and bear witness to the power of Christ’s love in my country, what is the point of me being in a fellowship lecturing on love in a cloistered, academic environment?” So this week, Minlib will be on his way into danger, but believing that love casts out all fear. Where would he get that from? He gets that from the witness of those who were on a mountain with Jesus, and he believes that very power that confirmed “This is my beloved Son, listen to Him” is a powerful truth. May we believe the same! Amen.