Across, Beyond, and Through: A Sermon for Transfiguration Sunday

Luke 9:28-43 Or better yet, read all of Luke 9

 I don’t know what it is, maybe it’s just an escape, or a coping mechanism, or distraction, but when the world is falling apart, as it is often wont to do, I just want to dig deeper into the scriptures, as if I might find some concrete answers there about the Russian Invasion in Ukraine or the recent upsurge in government sponsored aggression towards our transgendered children and their families. I don’t know. I just go deep into language. I go deep into story. In the hopes that we can be changed there. Maybe story is where the “trans” actually happens.

“Trans” is just a prefix. Remember learning about prefixes from third grade? It’s a part of a word that when attached to the beginning of another word, it changes the meaning of that word. One might even say that it transforms the meaning of the word. Transport. Transfix. Transcontinental railway. “Trans” is just a five letter prefix, but when it forms a bond with another word, everything changes, the word gets bigger, broader, it transitions, transmogrifies, and transcends its original meaning. Something new happens. Something different. And that’s what we focus on on Transfiguration Sunday. “Trans” means across, beyond, and through. Trans is what happens when we cross boundaries, when we go farther than we thought we could, when we come to a deeper, newer understanding. On Transfiguration Sunday, and hopefully, every Sunday, we are invited to go across dividing lines, beyond the limits of reason or logic, and through our own stories of struggle and suffering towards healing and wholeness.

Trans. Across. Beyond. Through.

The Transfiguration: when Jesus’s figure, his image, how he appears, crosses boundaries, goes beyond our expectations, and connects to us through our mutual humanity.

We’re trying to encourage independence in our two boys. Levi’s eight, Jonah’s twelve, and we need them to transition from being solely dependent upon their parents to relying on themselves to meet their needs. But when we’re all home, Jonah will shout down to the kitchen from his bedroom, “Mom, I want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich!” And I’ll shout back up to him, “come down and make it yourself!” And he’ll say, “No! I can't! You do it!” And I’ll say, “Nope. You’re completely capable.” And then he’ll give an exasperated “ugh!” and then keep playing Fortnite until he’s so hangry he can’t think straight and I end up giving up and making him the sandwich because it’s a battle of wills and I just can’t handle the freak outs of a 12 year old boy who hasn’t eaten in the last, oh, twenty minutes. But you know what’s coming, right? Dan and I go out to dinner one night, leave the boys at home to fend for themselves for just a little bit, and when we come home, we ask Jonah, “Hey, did you get something to eat?” And he’ll say, “Yeah, I just went down and made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”

In chapter nine of Luke’s gospel, Jesus has sent his disciples out to basically be him. Jesus gives them power and authority over all demons and to heal diseases and to proclaim the coming of the kingdom of God. He sends them out with nothing but the clothes on their backs and the dusty sandals on their feet and he says, “Go on, do what I do. Go be me, out into the world. You can make the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, too.” And they do! They go to the cities and towns and heal the sick and proclaim the good news. It worked! They could be little jesuses, spreading the love and the healing power of the gospel everywhere they went. And yet, the sort of hilarious thing is, they still don’t seem to trust that yet, because when they come back and they tell Jesus about all that they’ve done, and the crowds follow them and they all get hungry, they say to Jesus, “Hey, it’s dinnertime. Can you dismiss the crowds so that they can get something to eat?” And just like when Jesus told them to go out and do the things he does, to go out and heal and cast out demons and proclaim the good news, Jesus tells them, “Yeah. Well. You do it. You feed them. You know how, you’re perfectly capable of making these sandwiches yourself.” Jesus wants them to claim a new identity based upon their relationship with him, and with that new identity comes power to heal the sick and reduce suffering and spread love, and maybe not go hungry when their parents go out to dinner. And even though they’ve spent all this time wandering the countryside and experiencing that they do have this power for themselves, they still doubt, they still rely on Jesus to do it for them. And we know the rest of the story, right? They take what little they have, they bring it to Jesus, he starts the assembly line rolling, and voila, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for everyone, or, well, you know what I mean. 

But I think this is a really important context for us to have when we enter in to our story for today. Jesus has told them they can do it. They’ve had experiences doing it. And yet, they still don’t trust it. Maybe they’re just being lazy, distracted twelve year olds who would rather level up on their favorite video game, or maybe they have some sort of deeper self doubt, or maybe they just think that the power they received from Jesus was a one-off, but for some reason, they just can’t transition, transform, transfigure themselves into the people that Jesus already sees them into being. They’ve experienced what it’s like to move across the borders of the profane and unclean and suffering. They know, first hand, how to go beyond what they think they are capable of. And they know that it’s through this power of God that comes to them through Jesus that any of this is possible, and yet, here they are, still un-transed. Untransformed. Un-transcended. Un-transfigured. “Jesus! I want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich!”

Bruh. Seriously?

So. Ok. Back to square one. Maybe if they come to a better understanding of who Jesus is, then they’ll have a better understanding of who they are. So he takes them aside, and in perfect socratic method, he asks them a question in the hopes that they will come upon the right answer themselves. He asks, “Who do the crowds say that I am?” And they answer, “Oh, you know, just like these other guys who came before.” And, in the hopes of building upon that, Jesus says, “Ok. Then. Who do you say that I am?” And somehow Peter stumbles on the answer: “You’re the Christ. The Messiah of God. The one who crosses the division between the spiritual and the physical, the one who goes beyond the works of any of the prophets before you, the one through whom we will all receive salvation.” 

Jesus is Trans. Across. Beyond. And through. 

Jesus goes across, beyond, and through.

Jesus is across, beyond, and through.

Now Jesus doesn’t want them to rush past that “through” part. So he reminds them that the through he’s gotta go through is through suffering and betrayal and heartbreak. And if they want to be his followers, then they, too, have to cross the boundaries of who they are by denying themselves, they have to go beyond where they think they can go by taking up their own cross, and they have to go through the suffering, just like he will. They’ve got to lose themselves to find themselves. They’ve got to go across, beyond, and through. They’ve got to do what Jesus does. 

Ok. So maybe they’ve got it now, right? About a week later, Jesus goes up a mountain to pray and takes his three best buds with him. And while he’s praying, he’s transfigured, right in front of them. His face changes. His clothes get oxy-cleaned. Moses and Elijah join him for a pep talk about what he’s going to have to go through when he gets to Jerusalem. Peter, not knowing what in the world to do, relies on his past yeshiva education: We need to build some booths, we need to make some houses, we need to keep you all here. Just like this. Right. Here. And then a cloud covers them all, they hear the voice of God saying, “This is my son. Listen to him!” And Jesus ends up alone and they go back down the mountain and they don’t say a thing.

But the transfiguration story doesn’t end here. Not yet. First we have to get a story about a desperate father and his suffering son, and how the disciples can’t seem to do anything about it. And it’s with this story that all of what has come before gets transformed and transfigured and transmogrified for us. 

There are some parallels between what happens at the top of that mountain, and then what happens at the bottom. 

Jesus is changed. They talk about his departure - his crossing of boundaries - when he gets to Jerusalem. The disciples are astounded. The disciples trip up. God, the Father, says, “This is my Son. Listen to him.” 

They come back down the mountain. A father calls out from the crowd. Echoing God’s words about Jesus he says, “This is my son! Look at him!” Like Jesus will be, very soon, this boy is suffering - he's in his own Jerusalem. The disciples, once again, trip up, not quite understanding the transformative power that lies in their hands. Jesus joins the boy, right where he is - he looks at him, even while he's convulsing in the dirt. Jesus goes across, beyond, and through. And so, like Jesus, the boy is changed right in front of them. And all are astounded.

What happens to Jesus on a grand scale, happens to this boy right in front of them.

The disciples have acted now how they’ve acted before. Even though they’ve lived it in themselves, even though they’ve seen it with their eyes and heard it with their ears, they still can’t complete the transaction. Even though they’ve come across the countryside, they’ve gone beyond where they ever thought they’d be capable of going, they still can’t quite get through. 

Jesus gives them great power. Jesus says, “Now, do what I do. Be who I am.” And then he says, “Then go through what I go through.” 

And they can’t quite get there. 

Like a mom who is frustrated that her totally capable son refuses to make his own gosh darn peanut butter and jelly sandwich, Jesus loses it a little. He’s taught them how to come across. He’s shown them how to go beyond. He's modeled for them what it looks like to go through. And they still aren’t transfigured themselves. They still aren’t completely transformed. They still need some handholding in this whole becoming-like-Christ venture. They can’t quite live in to the transformation that has happened in themselves, even though they’ve seen it and felt it and heard it and breathed it through Jesus’s transfiguration right in front of them. They want to take this transfigured vision and hog tie it back into their old fixed traditions. Let’s give him a house where he can stay, a place where he can be with some borders and some fixed lines and some clear definitions. They want to keep it, but they don't quite want to be changed by it. They don’t yet realize that it is Jesus who has transposed himself upon their very selves. They don’t yet understand that they, too, are called to go across, and beyond, and through, just like Jesus. But this father experiences it. This boy gets an awareness of it. Because just like Jesus, this boy is taken across and beyond and through and he finds healing there. This healing story is paired right up against this transfiguration story to tell us that it’s not just Jesus who gets transfigured, it’s all of us. It’s our society and institutions and religious dogmas and buildings and relationships. We all get to be trans. Just like Jesus. We have been and are being transformed into the Body of Christ. We are Christ’s hands and Christ’s feet and are called to do what Christ’s hands do and go where Christ’s feet go. And his hands do across and beyond and through. And his feet go across and beyond and through. 

Jesus steps across borders to be with us.

Jesus steps beyond boundaries to be with us.

Jesus steps through and fully into our humanity to be with us.

What borders are we called to step across?

What boundaries are we called to step beyond?

What experiences of Jesus are we called to go through?

And when we step across and beyond and go through, how then, might we be changed? How then, might we be transfigured?

Trans is just a prefix, but it drastically changes the meaning of our lives.
Jesus goes across, and beyond, and through himself to come to us. 

Jesus takes us across and beyond and through any tiny, limiting, isolating, un-trans box we make for ourselves - especially if that box is war, or oppression, or discrimination.

Oh, may it be so.

Thanks be to God.

Finding Your You

 

This one's a toughy - some might even say "problematic" - Luke 6:27-38

Who are you?

I mean, what defines who you are, at your very core, in the center of your being?

Like all the kids in Sunday school who answer the same way to every question, I’m sure most of us want to shout out that the answer is “Jesus!” And we leave it at that. And that would be a good answer for us, I think. But I’m wondering if we can go even deeper. Who are we really? How do we know who we are? How are our identities shaped, personalities formed, sense of selves defined?

It’s a really important question. And we answer it differently depending upon our developmental stage. As infants, we are merely an extension of our parents who provide for our needs. If they’re responsive and attentive in providing for us, then we build trust in them, in ourselves and in our world, and that helps us to explore and take risks with others, with ourselves and with our worlds. As we grow, the hope is, at least, that we become more independent, we learn and grow and discover who we are through a lot of trial and error, exciting advances and disappointing reversals. We test out what keeps us in and what kicks us out of the good graces of our communities. And this development doesn’t just stop when we’re 18, or when we graduate from college, or when we get married or if we have kids of our own. We are, even through adulthood, always in a state of becoming. We’re always evolving, our brains are elastic, and we can change and grow in our perceptions, understandings, and identities long after the grey matter has physically stopped multiplying. You’re not done. You’re not finished, no matter how old you are. But, most of us, about 75% of us, according to psychologists and theorists Kegan and Lehay, most of us get sort of stuck in one developmental stage. Most of us function out of and find our identities in what they call a “socialized” mind. That means, basically, that all of our decisions, all of our thoughts, and the authority upon where our identities rest comes from outside of ourselves. We believe what we believe because our culture believes it. We use the language that we use because that’s the language all around us. We trust in what we trust because that’s what we were taught. We function out of a world where living in community matters, fitting in matters, considering the ideas and thoughts and perspectives of others matter. And this is all really good stuff. It’s how we can live in community, it’s how we can live with mutuality. Relationships matter. We want to please. We want to belong. We love those who love us. We do good for those who do good to us. We lend to those who will return the favor. We function out of that part of the golden rule that emphasizes pleasing others so that they’ll please us. Doing for others so that they’ll do for us. We don’t have to think much about it. There’s a “right” and a “wrong” way to react, and most everyone in the community has agreed on these ways. And this works really well for most of us, most of the time. But it’s those occasions when we’ve really been slapped, those times when someone takes something precious away from us, that we can lose our way. There’s no blame there; it’s just what happens. It hurts. The socialized mind works really great until we’re faced with a crisis where simple reciprocation of “I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine” falls apart. Suddenly, instead of returning positive for positive, we want to return negative for negative. When someone hurts us, we sort of lose our sense of self and all we want to do is retaliate. Do unto others what they have already done unto you. We lose ourselves thinking about how to make the other person suffer just as much as they’ve caused us to suffer. We don’t want to focus on our own hurt, so instead, we focus on how we can hurt someone else. Instead of “Do to others as you would have them do to you,” we “Do to others as they have already done to us.” Our responses to pain become prescriptive. We become reactive. We are the cornered dog ready to fight or flight, instead of the full human with agency and choices about how to respond. Hate responds to hate, and then we’re all just spiraling.

There’s a little bit of erasing the self that has to happen in order to truly hate someone. Because then we don’t have to deal with the truth of the whole situation. Then we can compartmentalize, draw clear distinctions, define an “us” and a “them.” We don’t have to confront our own failures when we’re hating someone; we get to use up all our energy making lists of the ways that that person has hurt us. The situation becomes black and white, either/or - I’m right and they’re wrong - and it’s easier to occupy this space rather than enter in to the true messiness of the situation. It’s easier just to react without thinking than to take a minute and remember who we are.

And we do this as victims, too. When we’ve been hurt we lose sight of this messiness. We list the ways we’ve been wronged, and we lose sight of ourselves in the process. Either we start to believe that we deserved this horrible treatment, or we start to think that the perpetrator deserves worse. We begin to hate the other, or we begin to hate ourselves. We forget about our true selves in both situations. We lose a sense of ourselves, and the only way we exist is in response to what that other person did to us. It’s one of the negatives of having a socialized mind. We define ourselves according to the outside culture and community and relationships, and if that culture and community and relationships have hurt us, have really slapped us across the face, we lose that culture, that community, those relationships, and thus, we lose ourselves. If all I do is worry about how to “do to others as they have done to me,” then I can forget about myself altogether. I can ignore how I’ve been hurt. I can be blinded by revenge. And I can simply be reactive to everything in my life. 

But I think Jesus wants us to remember ourselves. I think that is what Jesus is encouraging to all of us that listen. Jesus wants us to stretch ourselves past this socialized mind so that we can discover our true selves, we can become, what Kegan calls, “self-authoring.” Because if we know who we are independent of that culture and that community and those relationships, then we can go back to those places after they have hurt us and respond not out of our anger or our need for revenge or our base reactiveness, but we can go back to those places and function out of our true selves, our original goodness, out of who we really are, out of our identities as children of the Most High. When we come back to ourselves, we come to realize that getting slapped says far more about the guy who slapped us than it does about us. So it doesn’t really matter - to the heart of who we are - if we get slapped again. I mean, of course it matters. It hurts. We shouldn’t walk around getting slapped all the time. But Jesus says that there’s something in us that cannot be reached by that slap.

 If the thief needs the coat so badly, give him your shirt as well, because it’s just a coat and just a shirt, and not you at all. You don’t have to be tangled up in the emotions of the other person. You don’t have to define yourself according to your need to participate in this social community of quid pro quo, exchange of goods, tit for tat, expectations.

We can give the guy on the corner five bucks, and it won’t matter to us at all how he spends it, because we know who we are - we’ve made a choice out of who we are - we are a people who give to those who ask because we are made like God, because we are made to be merciful just as our Father is merciful.

Your you-ness comes, not from your relationship to society, but from your relationship with God. Your you-ness comes, not from your need to perform a prescribed role or with some knee-jerk reaction, but from your identity in Christ. 

It can be easy to forget your “you” because even in our passage today the you is implied. It’s a list of imperative statements where the “you” - the subject of the sentence - is “understood,” but not named. These are commands for things we should do, and as such, the English language doesn’t require that we explicitly state the “you.” What’s really being said here is, “[You] love your enemies,” “[You] do good to those who hate you,” “[You] bless those who curse you,” and “[You] turn the other cheek.” “[You] give them your coat.” “[You] give to everyone who asks.” But you can’t do any of those things, if you don’t have a you.

Sometimes I think I’ve been doing the Golden Rule all wrong. Sometimes my “you” gets lost. Instead of [you] do unto others as you would have them do unto you, I’ve erased myself from the equation altogether. Instead, I’ve lived the Golden Rule by saying “treat others as they would like to be treated,” taking myself and my needs out of the situation completely. It’s a way to give everybody what they want, rather than assert myself and my needs. Sure you can cut me off in traffic, sure you can go ahead of me in line, sure we can go to your favorite restaurant again and again, sure I’ll smile and nod and acquiesce because my job is to give you what you want. It’s the golden rule, right? I’ve neglected myself so much that I’ve been erased, all because I thought that this is what Jesus told me to do. But Jesus wants us to return to our you. You can’t do unto others as you would have them do unto you if you don’t have a you.

But this isn’t quite what Jesus is saying. He’s actually doing something much more radical. He’s telling a rag tag group of slaves and women and children and elderly and sick and mentally unstable to return to their “yous”. Remember who you are, and don’t just accept a role that society has created for you. You don’t have to function out of your illness, or abuse, or poverty. You can function out of your goodness, your you-ness, your inherent worth as a child of God - so much so that you don’t lose much, if anything, of yourself when you get hit again or you’re coatless in the winter. 

Now this is important: Jesus isn’t saying, “go run down to everyone you meet and invite them to hit you.” He’s not saying, “if you’re in an abusive relationship, just stay there and keep getting beat up.” He’s not even saying “don’t even get mad about it.” He’s not saying, “don’t be hurt.” When you turn the other cheek, it’s gonna hurt.  He is simply saying, “Remember your you.” “Make choices out of your you. Not out of your anger, or your immediate emotion, or out of the expectations of society.” 

If we don’t remember our “you,” it gets really, really easy to forget their “them.” It becomes really easy to forget that others have a you, too. If we don’t know that we are children of the Most High, we will judge, we will condemn, and we’ll forget about the humanity of all of those around us. If we remember our you, suddenly you’ll see the “you-ness” and the child-of-God-ness in everyone else. Once you start authoring yourself into being, you can give room for others to author themselves. And when we all can author ourselves, suddenly the slapping stops, everybody has a coat, and a good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into all of our laps.

I always used to interpreted this passage to mean that we’ve got to suffer. Almost enjoy it, even. Look for it. Ask for it. I sort of let the “As You would want to be treated” part of the instructions drop off into the ether, get sucked up into a black hole of nothingness and sacrifice.

But this passage is about Jesus telling us to find the you - to put ourselves back into the story. You belong here. You have your own humanity and you can make choices out of that humanity. You don’t have to react the way everyone else reacts. You don’t have to do what has always been done. We don’t have to retaliate violence for violence. You have other options. We are children of God, that’s our you. Jesus is telling us to remember our you and make choices and respond from our you-ness, not from expectations, or societal pressure, or knee-jerk reactiveness.

So turn the other cheek. Show the one who has hurt you that you can make choices, not out of what is expected or is culturally acceptable, or even out of raw emotions, but out of someplace else, out of your you-ness that comes from being a child of God. You can stop the cycle of violence that hatred can bring by putting yourself back into the equation. Find your “you” and show it to your abuser. Find your “you” and hold on to it, because that is how you will love your enemy, that is how you will heal from this brokenness. Once we find our “you,” we will be able to see ourselves in the one who has hurt us. And that is where true healing begins. Maybe our enemies will still be our enemies, maybe our anger will still be our anger. But we’ll be able to love them because we’ll be able to love ourselves. We won’t have to define ourselves by their definitions or by what has happened to us, but by our own definitions, and our own choices. We will self-author. We will make our own choices. Have you ever had a moment when you just knew who you were, deep down, and nothing was going to shake that? Have you ever had a moment when hurricanes could come crashing in, and fires destroy, and friends could hit you across the face, but there you would still be, standing, still you? A moment when you could give away everything you have and yet you’d still be whole? That’s resurrection. We will know who we are. Easier said than done, I know. This doesn’t take away your righteous anger, it doesn’t take away the pain, but it does return you to yourself.

Thanks be to God. 

Seeing into Being Seen

 

Here ya go. This one will (should?) kick your butt: Luke 6:12-26

Marni George* had us all wrapped around her beautifully manicured finger. Her mom let her get a perm. She wore bright white K-Swiss tennis shoes. She was the first to get a Hypercolor T-shirt and the first to double up her neon socks. She knew all the jumprope chants, even the ones with the naughty lines about judges and babies and k-i-s-s-i-n-g. She knew how to shave her legs and wear eye shadow. And every day at recess, she would decide who was allowed to follow her around, and who wasn’t. 

We fifth grade girls did all kinds of nasty things to get on her good side. We’d snitch that Beth told Megan that she didn’t like Carol’s hair, and then Carol would whisper to Katie that Beth still didn’t wear a bra, and then Katie would tell Marni that both Beth and Carol like sausage on their pizza and still watched Disney movies on their VCRs. 

And then, Marni would choose. 

“Tie my shoe!” She shouted to Beth, and if Beth accepted, if she bent down and tied Marni’s shoe, she’d get to follow her around the parking lot, cluster in a tight circle, and then menacingly giggle at all the girls who weren’t allowed to join Marni's group. 

If we got to tie her shoes long enough, if we could convince our parents to get us a caboodles, and if we could somehow keep from getting run over by the gossip truck, then maybe, just maybe, we’d get invited to Marni’s house to swim in her backyard. And her pool had a slide. 

If you were lucky enough to escape random and superficial critiques long enough, you just might get seen by Marni George. And being seen by Marni George meant everything. It meant you might get a note passed to you in Social Studies. It meant you’d have someone to sit with at lunch. It meant that your self-deprecating jokes were funny and not embarrassing. It meant that you were cool. It meant that you belonged. It meant that you were someone.

No matter that Marni could remove her blessing just as quickly as she bestowed it. This was the social structure that we accepted. This was the culture we chose. The contract we signed. This was the game we decided to play. But to choose otherwise meant being ostracized, social suicide, no slumber parties, no trips to hang out at the mall, a fate worse than death for any eleven year old girl. So we played her game. 

We did everything we could to attract the Marni George gaze. Even if that meant that we lost sight of ourselves. 

Everyone talks about how awful these preteen years are. Middle school just sucks, there’s no doubt about it. But, I wonder, as I grew older, as I stopped worrying about hiding my secret preference for mushrooms on my pizza, as I finally stopped stooping down to tie Marni’s shoes, did the culture ever really change? Are things really any different now than on that playground back in 1990? We were just living in to a culture that was already existing all around us. We were just acting out a contract that we’d seen our siblings and our parents and our grandparents sign. We were playing the game that everyone else was playing, and we still play it even now, even today. 

Maybe now I’m just a little bit better at disguising my need to belong. Maybe now I’m a little bit better at hiding my embarrassment when I don’t fit in. Maybe the only difference now is that, with a little practice, I’m better at playing the game.

Well, you’ve heard me preach long enough to not be surprised when I tell you that Jesus comes to disrupt the game.

And in Luke, it’s a real, concrete, high stakes game. Matthew’s "Sermon on the Mount" lifts us up into the ethereal a little bit. We can all find ways to be blessed and  to belong up here on the mountain where things get a little more spiritual, a little more qualified. 

I mean, we can all find ways that we are poor in spirit. We can all find ways that we are hungry for righteousness. In Matthew’s sermon, it only takes a little bending, a little twisting, in order for us to find ourselves among the blessed. But in Luke’s gospel, we’re on the plain, we’re down on the ground, we’ve descended from the mountaintops and here we are among the weak and fevered and coughing and desperate. Here, on the plain, we can’t hide our full bellies or our soft, white collar hands. Here, we can’t deny our two car households and our full refrigerators. Here, on the plain, we don’t want to admit that we’ve been able to staunch our weeping with therapy or golf or cable tv. Here on the plain, though, where Jesus is, the game doesn’t work. Here on the plain, Jesus doesn’t care if you’ve ever tied Marni’s shoes. 

Woe to you who’ve been invited to the slumber parties, you’ve had your taste of belonging. Woe to you who remember your last meal, hunger is coming. Woe to you who are laughing at Sara because she cut her knee shaving and still wears her hair in braids and believes in Santa. Your turn for shame and estrangement and unbelonging will come. 

Jesus comes down from the mountain with his chosen group of disciples, the ones who’ve been told they belong, who’ve been handpicked to be part of Jesus’s in-crowd, who would bow down and tie his shoe if only he’d ask, and he rewrites the narrative, he tears up the social contract, and turns the values of a culture completely upside-down. 

What’s up is down now. What’s cursed is now blessed.

But he doesn’t just do this with his words. He doesn’t just do this with a lecture or some pithy slogans. He does this by completely rewiring the human gaze. 

Read closely. Look for where Jesus looks. And then listen for whom Jesus is speaking. It’s two different places. Jesus looks up to his disciples, but he speaks of the crowd all around him. Jesus is down with the crowd, but he’s speaking up to his chosen ones. Jesus is saying that this group of broken, desperate, lonely, hungry and weeping people are blessed, even as stands below with them, even as he knows that soon he will be one of them. He will be poor, and hungry and weeping and hated himself. By looking up at the disciples, but by naming the crowd below them as blessed, he gives the disciples new eyes to see, new ears to hear, new hearts to understand. Jesus looks at the disciples, really looks at them, and tells them to look, to really look, at who is blessed. 

We are peopled by our gaze. We listen each other into being,

How someone looks at us determines how we look at ourselves.

And how we look at ourselves determines how we look at others. 

We meet one another by looking at one another. Not just with our eyes of course, but with the deep or shallow looking of our hearts. It’s only in the seeing of each other that we exist for one another. And if we see each other as a pawn in the game, then that is who they will be for us. Buber calls these “I/It” relationships. They’re relationships of convenience, relationships where we possess one another, but where we don’t truly become alive for each other. In I/It relationships, one of us is the subject, the other the object. I only see you insofar as I can get something from you. You are a part of the game. One of us is the shoe-tie-er, the other is the one with the fancy shoes tied. One of us is blessed. Woe to the other. But no true seeing, no true hearing, is really happening in an I/It relationship. You can't really see someone, truly see them, when they're busy bent down tying your shoe.

In I/It relationships, we aren’t experiencing each other; instead, we’re sizing each other up and trying to figure out how to use each other so that we can get further in the game. And well, if you think you’re somehow exempt from the game, if you think you’ve somehow found a way to be innocent of treating others as an it, then I gotta ask you, who made the clothes you’re wearing, who changed your oil, who picked those tomatoes from the field that you’ll enjoy on your salad for lunch? We can’t help it. The game is rigged. We’re all doing the best we can with what we have. 

But Jesus calls us to a different way of seeing, and he does this by first seeing us. He looks up at us, wherever we stand, and he shows us the humanity of those whom he’s blessed - all those folks down there, hanging out with the Son of Man, "The Human One."

Jesus looks at the disciples, really looks at them, and sees them into being, and he does this by describing what he’s heard from the moaning, desperate, anxious, noxious crowd around him. He has listened the crowd into being, and as he looks up, he is gazing his disciples into a new way of being. He is, what Buber calls, enacting an I/Thou relationship. He is seeing himself as fully himself, and seeing the disciples as fully themselves. He’s telling them that they don’t have to play the I/It game anymore. They too, can see this crowd as a bunch of thous, full, human, blessed beloveds, just like he does. He humanizes the disciples by showing them the humanness of the crowd. 

Through relating to others, through really seeing them, not as an it, but as a real, live, full thou, in their fullest, completest, most whole, thou-ness, we can come to realize who we are, we can come to see ourselves, not as an it, but as a real, live, full thou. We don’t become fully human by possessing each other. We become fully human through experiencing one another. 

Woe to us still up on that mountain, still trying to play the game, still trying to find acceptance and belonging from what we can get from each other, not from who we truly are.

And if I've lost you in all that, maybe we should just remember: not much grows on the mountain. The plains are where we’re fed.

Fast forward thirty years from that little girl on the playground, and I’m visiting a very dear professor from college. To say he was my poetry professor is to both perfectly and inadequately describe who this man is for me. He has me questioning the value of words like “best” and “hope,” and finding life in words like “presence,” “still,” and “with.” Everything I strive to be as a pastor was first given to me by Jack. And I’m trembling a little as I knock on his door for a visit after so much time has passed, so much has happened. He invites me in, offers me a drink, even though it’s hardly noon. He is smiling. He’s lived too much life for pretense or posturing, so I really believe him when he says how good it is to see me. He invites me to sit in a rocking chair with afghans and pillows in a bright sunroom. 

He lets me warm up with some small talk, but he knows that’s not why I’m there. I’m there to tell him what has happened. I am the penitent. He is my confessor. I take a deep breath and I tell him the whole story, all of it. The despair and the impulsivity, the defiance and the professional misconduct. I tell him about the shame and the lack of resources, the terrible choices, the victims left behind, the heartbreak of it all. I’m crying by this time, of course, because this whole time, he’s sat there with me, he’s relived it, with me, he’s been present for it all. And then, I get to the very worst part. And I tell him what I’ve done. I can't even look at him. And he says, without hesitation, “Of course you did.” 

“Of course you did.” 

Which didn’t mean absolution. 

It didn’t mean easy forgiveness or a sweeping under the rug.

It simply meant, “oh yes, I see you. Here you are. You. Fully you. With all your brokenness and failures and mistakes and flawed attempts to play the game. I am looking at you. I have listened you into being.” 

It meant, “Woe to you. And how blessed.”

Thanks be to God.

Who has seen you into being? Tell me your story.

*not her real name. bonus points if you guess where the name inspiration came from...

The Gospel According to the Deep Sea Anglerfish

 

Luke 5:1-11

According to my unskilled and unscientific eye, the deep sea anglerfish has got to be the creepiest looking fish in existence. Most of them don’t get very big, but a closer look at them reveals this giant head, made mostly of a huge, gaping mouth filled with fangs. They have these almost iridescent fins that wave back and forth to make it look like it’s just hovering in the water, and they have a stomach that can distend itself so large that this fish can consume prey over two times the size of their bodies. But the weirdest thing about these fish is how they get their name: they have these poles or rods coming out of their foreheads, and at the very tip of these rods is a bioluminescent bulb that glows in the dark. 

It’s an important adaptation, because these particular anglerfish, the deep sea anglerfish, live up to a mile below sea level, way down deep, where there is only darkness, current, and well, not much else. They need these luminescent “esca” - Latin for “bait” - to lure and attract their prey. They carry their own light, and that light is used to bring in other fish, to attract a mate, essentially, to maintain their own survival. These fish are odd, strange, a little terrifying and almost otherworldly. And they’re ancient. Fossils of these fish have been discovered from  as long ago as the beginning of the Eocene period - more than 55 million years ago. They call these the “fishing fish” - fish whose entire evolution has evolved around the catching of fish. 

These are the kinds of Wikipedia and National Geographic rabbit holes your pastor gets lost in when she encounters the Gospel stories. I like to think that there’s more mystery and awe and wonder and strangeness to our stories than I think we let ourselves really encounter. 

According to my unskilled and unscientific eye, we Christians have found a pretty convenient way to dull down the Gospel, make it taste of microwaved chicken nuggets and canned corn. We want palatable. Inoffensive. Or. Worse, we want to serve the Gospel on a plate of either/ors, rigid definitions, and inflexible and unyielding propositions that we either accept or reject, and then face the consequences. But guys, we simply can't just phone it in anymore. Just listen to Nadia: coffee mug faith just won't cut it anymore. We are missing the terrifying, awe-inspiring, light-bearing Gospel of the deep sea anglerfish. 

Instead, we keep serving up the same bland meal, thinking that this time will be different, this time we will defy the definition of insanity by doing the same thing and actually getting different results. Maybe this time the kids will eat the chicken nuggets and the GMO corn and get excited, will find life there, will want to join in our "feast." Just keep serving up the same thing and maybe our church will be filled again, and our endowment replenished, and we’ll have enough resources to keep serving those nuggets for generations to come. 

But wait. Isn’t this what Jesus is asking Peter to do in our story today? 

Jesus tells Peter that he needs to try again, he needs to do again what he has been doing all night long with no success. 

Peter, the professional fisherman, the guy who owns his own boat and provides for his family and makes a living as an expert catching fish, is directed by Jesus to keep doing what hasn’t been working. Peter knows it’s not a good time to fish. He’s given up for the day. He’s putting his tools away, cleaning his nets, and looking forward to a nice midmorning nap before he has to go back out and try it all over again later tonight. Jesus wants Peter to do it again, to double down, to do what hasn’t worked so far, keep digging his heels in and keep banging his head against the wall until something different happens. Jesus tells Peter to do what seems insane. And Peter responds with common sense - “Uh, Jesus, we’ve been doing that all night long, and it hasn’t worked. But, ya know, if you say so, I guess I’ll entertain your request. 

But, I mean, what do you know about fishing anyway? Wasn’t your dad a carpenter?”

Jesus tells him to try again, but this time, go further. Go deeper. 

Ok. Whatever. We’ll entertain the requests of this strange guy and his strange light. We will appease his request just for the opportunity to tell him “see. I told you so.” We will try again. I mean, you can hear Peter’s sigh audibly through the pages of Luke’s gospel. 

So Peter goes out further. He goes out deeper. He bangs his head against the wall one more time, he reenacts insanity again, and he throws his nets over the side of the boat. 

And maybe he is going insane, because he starts to feel the tug of the nets, he starts to feel the weight and resistance of something in those nets, and he draws them up, heaving and ho-ing, until the nets are about to break. He’s so insane that he has to call out to his buddies for help. He’s so nuts that he starts worrying about the buoyancy of his boat because of all the flopping, flipping, writhing fish collected on deck. He’s so crazy that this encounter with abundance forces him to see what is lacking in himself. He falls down on his knees in front of Jesus, with all those fish flipping and flopping all around him and says, “Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man!” It’s kind of a humorous, wild, weird, scene, really. 

But this response comes from a place of amazement, of awe, of wonder, maybe even a place of strangeness, oddity; it’s certainly something that Peter, in all of his days of fishing, in his whole life of showing up to the sea of Galilee, day in and day out, doing the same thing over and over and over again until it has the excitement of a plate of microwaved chicken nuggets, has never, ever seen before. And this encounter with the unknown, even in the context of the mundane, gives him a partial vision of who he is. Partial. But still true. The abundance of God reveals in him the lack in himself, and he is completely undone. 

But see, here’s the thing, here’s the kicker: It’s not really about the fish at all. Jesus tells him to calm down, chill out, now you’re gonna fish for people! As if upping the ante, as if intensifying the previous experience by telling him that now he’s going experience what has happened with these fish but with real, live, important people, is somehow going to comfort him. "Hey, don’t be afraid, Peter! You think this is a big deal, just wait until you start fishing for people!" 

Oh. Phew. Thanks Jesus. I needed something to help bring me back down to reality. Fishing for fish has me totally undone, but fishing for people is going to be a piece of cake! I’m going to stop banging my head against the wall in order to catch fish, and I’m going to start banging my head against the wall for people instead!

But something happens. Something changes. Because Peter gets up off his knees, joins the rest in bringing their boats to shore, and then he leaves everything to follow Jesus. And the other guys do, too. They leave it all. Even the fish. Even the thing that reveals the abundance of God and the lack in Peter gets left behind. 

I like to think of this as a catch-and-release exercise. It was an encounter. An experience. It's not about the end result at all. 

This passage is all about the fish, and  also not about the fish. The fish get left behind. They, hopefully,  will get returned to the lake, or handed out to the crowds, or used for a downpayment for a bigger boat. Once Peter has this encounter, this encounter with God’s abundance and with his own lack, he doesn’t need the fish anymore. Even though it was the fish that brought him to this place in the first place.

So often this passage is used to point out our failures in evangelism. And maybe that's what it's about. But this passage isn’t about hog-tying people, roping them in to accepting the Gospel or coming to church, or joining a committee. It's about how when you go deep, you see weird things. It’s about the radical, awe-inspiring, wondrous encounter with this strange abundance, abundance that sometimes feels like it’s coming from a place of insanity, that encourages us into a cycle of going further, going deeper, encountering abundance, and then leaving it behind, so that we can go deeper and further still. It’s about people. About the radical, awe-inspiring wondrous encounter with these weird and creepy creatures called humans, that when we go deeper with each other, reveals a gospel to us more clearly than we’ve ever seen before. 

Eventually, our boat is going to wear out. Eventually, maybe soon, in our case, the church is going to close, and our nets are going to break, and we’re going to run out of resources to keep doing what we’ve been doing, keep serving what we’ve been serving. But until then, we’re going to go deeper. We’re going to go further. We’re going to listen for when Jesus is telling us to do something that seems a little crazy, and we’re going to take the risk and do it. Even if it means that we just keep on keeping on, stubbornly serving our brand of chicken nuggets in the hopes that Jesus comes and turns them in to something else. We are going to keep fishing. Because we know that it’s not about catching fish at all. It’s about the encounter. And in the encounter, some weird, but wonderful, shit is bound to happen.

It’s about how when we do what Jesus asks us to do, we experience a kind of abundance, we see a part of ourselves for who we truly are, and then we are sent out to go even further, even deeper, to experience even more encounters, and then, to even more leaving everything behind to go do it all over again. 

Following Jesus is catch and release, and release and release and release. It’s going into deep waters, having strange encounters, and being brought to your knees. But do not be afraid, from now on you will be catching people. You will fish for people. Not so that we can tie them to our pews or get them to agree with us or open their wallets, but so that we can have an encounter with something other, something strange, something wondrous, maybe even something a little bit weird. You'll have an encounter with their weird distended bellies or their odd luminescent bulbs. And then maybe, if you're lucky, you'll see your own.

And then we can let it go and search for more - not so we can control or manipulate, but so that we can be astonished by the encounter. We are the fishers. And we are also the fish. This is the way of Jesus. We are the people. And we are also the people-ers. We take the light of Christ and we share it to reveal our humanity to each other, and then we go deeper, we go further, until we all have been fully and completely peopled, drawn in to the body of Christ with the freedom to be and to know exactly who God has made us to be, fangs and all.

Oh. And back to those Anglerfish. They’re so creepy. But they’re also so cool. Remember those light-bulb things that hang from fishing poles from their foreheads? That glow comes from a symbiotic relationship with a special kind of bacteria. 

In some of these fish, the bacteria has evolved in such a way as to only glow, or provide light, if it is in relationship with that certain kind of fish. The glowing can’t happen until the chemicals in the bacteria mix with the chemicals in that creepy-looking fish’s forehead-fishing-pole. These deep sea anglerfish are the “fishing fish,” the fish who swim around fishing for other fish, but they can’t do it without the cooperation and interaction with that bacteria. They’ve gone down so far and they live so deep that they can’t do any of it without the light. These fish carry their own light, but maybe, deep down, they know that this light doesn’t come just from themselves. 

Thanks be to God.