Cash for Anxieties, February 14, 2010

Exodus 34
Luke 9
Following the Exodus from Slavery, from Egypt, from Pharaoh, across the Red Sea, God spoke to the people from Mount Sinai with Lightning and Thunder, Clouds and Smoke, and they were filled with fear. Moses went up the mountain and was gone for too long a time, the people became anxious, filled with anxiety and fears. So Aaron directed the people to take off all their gold and jewels and he would melt it down, making for them a calf of gold, and they could put all their fears and doubts and worries on this thing as an offering. For a very short time, it appeared to work, as they had bound their anxiety to the price of this thing, giving their gold of great value and their worries to someone else. For all of us, when we are anxious, when we are lonely or afraid, we have a tendency to buy stuff, in hopes of being full, in expectation that this jewelry, this painting, this car, this house will quench and satisfy our emptiness. But only for a very short time. Our anxiety and fears and doubts and life are still with us.

Due to the economy, the recession, the wars, due to cancers and earthquakes that strike without warning and hundreds of thousands are killed, we are a people filled with fears, with anxieties. We worry about our success and doubt our future, we worry about our survival, the future of our children and grandchildren and what life will be like for them. So it is that companies have again been created, that guarantee if you take all your anxieties and old, worn out, useless gold and jewelry and place it in this bag, placing the bag in this envelope and the envelope in the US Mail, sending it away to this address, you will in return receive a check of MONEY, money for your worthless gold and anxieties, money that you can use for whatever you desire.

But recently, people have questioned, that when melted down the ring loses the artist's craftsmanship. If a painting were valued at the cost of materials: paint and canvas, a wooden frame, it would have far less value than a Cessane, or Rembrandt or Picasso. If a valentine is only pieces of paper glued together, we lose the value of the five year old's affection. If a ring is only a ring, the engagement and marriage are just stuff. The atrocities of Auschwitz and Hiroshimo and the Soviet gulag's were possible because humanity lost our humanity, as a people of God we lost faith in the divine. Human life became cheap, human subjects to be experimented upon and used, rather than seeing in one another a glimpse of the glory of God. Medical Ethics was fostered out of the Neuremberg trials, that there are limits to what can and should be done in the name of Science and research. Among these limits are that the persons involved be fully informed and consent to what is going to take place, but even more that we preserve the God given humanity of all persons. Regardless of race, or poverty, or sex, or intellectual capacity, whether orphan or lame, all people, all life is sacred.

After the people had sent their gold and fears to Aaron to make the Golden Calf, Moses came down the mountain with the Tablets of the 10 Commandments, witnessing that the people had already worshipped other gods, had made idols to worship, had profaned the name of God, and profaned the Sabbath, Moses broke the tablets of stone as well as the Calf of gold calling the people to repent. Moses spent time with the people holding them accountable for what they had done. Then Moses went back up the mountain to be one with God, Moses witnessed where God had been and what God had done. GOD FORGAVE THE PEOPLE AS AN ACT OF GRACE. God made for Moses new tablets of the commandments to take to the people, and Moses came down the mountain. Having witnessed the glory of God, having been present with God, receiving God's grace for the people, Moses' face glowed with the glory of God, glowed so much that people were distracted by the glow rather than the power of their relationship with God.

The Reformation was an essential corrective event. The Church had become identified with numerous practices that denied people faith in God. The Reformation was a pivotal event in affirming that all people, royal and common, rich and poor need access to education, to be able to read the Bible for themselves. But in the Reformation a great divide was formed, between the Protestant Churches which placed greater emphasis on the Sermon, on understanding and applying the Word of God; versus the Orthodox Churches that placed greater emphasis on the Mystery of experiencing Life as a gift of God. There are often times, when as a preacher, I am afraid people hear and better remember what I said in the Sermon, than what the Scriptures themselves revealed. There are times in which we recall the pairing of lessons, like Moses' face shone coming down the mountain and on top of the mountain with Peter, James and John, Jesus was transfigured his raiment glowing whiter than any fuller's soap, and we recall the pairing of shiny faces better than the individual stories or their meaning.

The context of this mountaintop experience of Jesus' Transfiguration, is that Jesus had called his disciples, they had fed 5000, he had healed people who were blind and deaf and lame. They had been walking together, when Jesus asked who the disciples thought he was. Some said Moses, some Elijah, some John the Baptist raised from the dead, and Simon Peter named for the first time: “You are the Christ, the Messiah, God with us”. And Jesus had responded, “And being God with us means, I must be sacrificed by God, and suffer and die, for the redemption of the world.” And according to the text, Eight Days later they went up the mountain.

The Baptism of Jesus we remember, in part because we are all baptized. In his being Washed clean of Sin, we are; in his receiving of the Holy Spirit as a Dove, we do.
The Last Supper of Jesus with the Disciples we remember, because we gather at the Table and claim our brokenness as well as our hope of forgiveness.
The TRANSFIGURATION is hard for us, because it requires that we identify with the Glory of God. Jesus went up the Mountain, and was seen to be talking with Moses and Elijah about that which is holy his being used by God as a sacrifice for us, his suffering and dying, at which point he is God among us.

How odd, that in recent decades, there has been great effort at trying to identify the Historical Jesus, whether as a common man, the son of a Jewish Carpenter of Galilee who was one among the hundreds of thousands executed by crucifixion by the Empire of Rome, he could have actually been. Research as to which among all that is written in the Gospels and Church records are the historic words of Jesus. Rather than trying to experience that glory, the holiness of knowing you have come for a purpose, and that Divine purpose is to redeem and forgive.

The point of TRANSFIGURATION is not the afterglow, that Moses' Face shone, or Jesus was Transfigured, but that on the Mountaintop Moses became so close with God as to have that glory, that Jesus identifying with having come to give his life for all the world would embody that glory. Surely, there would have been temptation for Moses NEVER to come down, to remain on that Mountain with God, but doing so, the people of God would never have known we are forgiven, would never have received the 10 Commandments. Simon Peter immediately in the stupor of sleep suggests, we should build three resting places here, to stay up on top of the mountain. But if they had, no one would have ever known the glory of God in Christ who did come to forgive us.

The way we cope with our anxiety and fears, is NOT to put them in a bag, inside and envelope and sell them for money... because rightly, everything in life would lose value and be reduced to stuff. But the Valentine from a five year old does have meaning, because of the child's affection. The painting is far more valuable than the paint and canvas. The ring is priceless, not because it is made with precious metals, but because it is encrusted with all our hopes and dreams, the love and commitment of one for another.