Osler's Razor

This is the first weekend of activities for me here at Holy Comforter Episcopal Church in Richmond. You can see the full schedule here. Today, I am gave the sermon (and IPLawGuy came to hear it!).

Here is the text of the sermon I gave this morning-- the Gospel lesson was the Transfiguration of Christ:

Transfiguration at the Mountaintop and the Kitchen Table

I’ll be honest—the story of the transfiguration is not the kind of Gospel story I usually relish. I favor those still, small, human moments where God speaks quietly. When the risen Christ appears, gives the Apostles some fishing tips, and then they cook breakfast on the shore—that I understand.

But this story of the Transfiguration… this is challenging. I’m not a theologian or a minister. I am one of you in the pews, who reads this and wonders what it means.

My first question when I read this story is “which character am I?” Like everyone else, when I hear a story, I am egotistical enough to put myself in it. Our temptation, as always, is to put ourselves in the place of Christ, but that isn’t right. I am not God, I am not Christ, I am part of the mob. Who I am, most likely, is Peter, saying the ham-handed thing… “Wow! It’s Elijah and Moses! I’ll build some tents!” Clearly, he was missing the point, the majesty of what was going on before him, and God himself cuts him off mid-sentence to announce that he is well-pleased with his True Son, Christ.

So, as Peter, humbled and watching this unfold, what am I to learn?

As I said, I am not a theologian, but I know some people who are. One of them is Randall O’Brien, who is now the President of Carson-Newman College in Tennessee. He transfigured something for me, re-ordered it, and it relates exactly to how I view this story.

He taught me that there is a beautiful symmetry to the Bible. Time and again, what we are taught unfolds at two levels. First, it teaches us how we are to think of God. Second, it shows us how to treat one another. This symmetry is reflected in the Ten Commandments, which deal with both. Even more elegant is the Two Great Commandments, one of which tells us to love the Lord our God with all our heart and soul and might, and the other of which teaches us to love one another as ourselves.

What Randall transfigured for me was the cross. I have never been comfortable with the cross as the symbol of our faith—it is a method of execution, of pain and torture, soaked in blood. But it is more than that in its gorgeous simplicity. One axis goes up and down, representing God and his people. The other axis goes side to side, showing our relationship to one another, a conduit of love. These two lines come together to be nothing less than the Kingdom of God, the plainest of truths, and the wholeness of life.

So, if we view the transfiguration in those two ways, what does it teach us?

The first axis, our relationship with God, is plain. Jesus is our link to God, our revelation. More than that, I leave to the theologians.

It is the second axis that is more complex to me. What does the transfiguration say about how we treat one another?

Jesus said to see him when we look at others—that when we feed the hungry or visit those in prison, we are feeding or visiting him. And perhaps when we show the grace to see those around us as transformed, we are doing the same. Maybe what we are to see in this story is that sometimes we must allow those around us to change, even dramatically, as they are revealed as their true selves, whatever that may be.

I have seen two dramatic transfigurations of those around me, and I fear that I reacted as Peter did, rather than with grace or love.

The first time was several years ago. I was teaching at Baylor in Texas, and taught a very unusual course. Together with two Baptist preachers, I started a class in oral advocacy in which we taught law students to give strong closing arguments by using the techniques of great preachers.

My co-teachers were Randall O’Brien and Hulitt Gloer, who is the preaching professor at Truett Seminary. It was extraordinary to share a room with those two men, who taught me more than nearly anyone else.

Our class was held in the Spring Quarter. One November, Hulitt had a devastating stroke and nearly died. He was hospitalized for weeks and lost the ability to move and to speak. Only through painstaking physical therapy did he gain even rudimentary control of his body.

The time came to begin our class. Randall and I assumed that Hulitt would not be able to do it, but on that first day he arrived in my office, slowly, using a walker, his speech quiet and slurred. Randall and I exchanged a glance, but neither of us would stand in his way. We walked silently, glacially, down to the classroom. I held the door open. Hulitt turned to me and said “I’ll go first.”

In that bare raw moment before he began, we faced the quietest, stillest classroom in America. We all looked up at him. And that is when he was transfigured.

Once he began to speak, it was thrilling. His words were strong, his conviction manifest, his spare sentences roped together with sinew and wit. It was, to this day, the best classroom lecture I have ever heard.

On the way out Hulitt gathered the walker and waited a moment in the hall as students offered their congratulations and thanks. Like Peter, I asked the stupid question: “How did you do that?”

“Did you see her in the first row?” he asked. He was referring to Allison Dickson, a quadraplegic with muscular dystrophy who weighed maybe 60 pounds, yet eventually finished first in her class (and was quite a fine preacher herself). “I saw her, and I thought ‘God never lets me feel sorry for myself.”

He was transfigured. I have never seen him since as anything less than he was on that day.

It happened again a few months ago, in Chicago. I went to a conference on abolishing the death penalty, and something remarkable happened—during the conference, the Illinois legislature actually voted to abolish the death penalty. It’s pretty rare for the purpose of a conference to actually be accomplished during the week of the conference itself! There was an air of true joy.

After our talk, there was a party for a group of people who have lost a family member to murder. It was a wonderful time, way up high in the Hancock building in a beautiful apartment. My parents and sister were there to share it with me. Then, in a glimmer, there was a transfiguration. Jeanne Bishop gave a little talk about the organization, and then mentioned what the legislature had done. Then she said something remarkable and true—that those who had died were there celebrating, too, that the Holy Ghost had enabled her sister and all the parents and children and siblings who had been killed to be there in that room to celebrate life and love for their killers. There was that stillness again, of realization. It was jolting, as jolting as seeing Elijah and Moses before us, and hearing the very voice of God.

It means something, too, that Elijah and Moses were there on that mountaintop. In the transfigurations before our own eyes, God calls on people to be there to enable it, to announce it, and we must listen. God uses Craig Anderson (in my own life), uses Randall O’Brien, uses Hulitt Gloer, uses Jeanne Bishop, uses the person who is sitting next to you now. Turn to them—look at that person. That is Elijah, that is Moses, and we must see and acknowledge those personifications of transfiguration to one another; for God commands no less compassion, no less love, and no less of a miracle in the lives we live, and suffer, and celebrate, this day and every day.

Amen.

Labels: Musings