“…I wonder if that isn’t what we should be looking for when we read about the Transfiguration.  Maybe Jesus’ transformation (which is all that “transfiguration” means) is less about a display of superior divinity overwhelming inferior humanity and more about a revelation of another level—a more extensive way—of being human.”

I’ve spent my entire life in the Church.  I was born on a Tuesday, and I wouldn’t be surprised if my mom and dad had already carried me to a service the following weekend.  By the age of three or four, I was in Sunday School each week learning about the Bible.  I never spent any time in public schools.  Instead, I attended Christian schools throughout my entire education: kindergarten, elementary school, high school, college, and even my first round of grad school—not to mention my last three years in seminary.

Although Jesus talks about heaven a lot, the most concrete description he gives is “the throne of God.”  He also says it’s somewhere “neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.”  He compares it to quite a few different things—or people—in his parables.  And although Jesus does occasionally reference it as something future, strangely enough, he seems to talk about the kingdom of heaven most often as if it exists in the present.

Growing up, I really wanted to be like Jesus.  I knew all the stories about him: how he turned water into wine, healed people, and even raised the dead.  I listened to them week in and week out, and somehow they never got old.  Jesus was like a modern superhero, overcoming the bad guys and rescuing the weak.

Today we find ourselves a little over halfway through Advent.  The big day is only a week-and-a-half away.  The lights are up.  The trees are decorated.  And various cards and packages are working their way across the country toward our relatives and friends.  (Unless, like me, you don’t plan ahead so well.)  Even if we aren’t completely ready for the holiday this moment, the end is in sight: Christmas is coming.  Soon we’ll take down our stockings, open our gifts, and then…what?  What happens when all the excitement is over?  What are we waiting for?

"It’s easy for us to look at the Bible as if it were some sort of live-tweet compilation of events, to assume Jesus was significant enough in his own day to have reporters running around recording everything he said and did verbatim.  But we know that isn’t true.  It’s simply an illusion left by the passing of time.”

…our imaginations, even as Christians, have been unduly influenced by materialism and the American dream.  Western culture, and especially our individually-focused  interpretation of it in the United States, is eager for excess: we hunger for more, bigger, newer, and better, whether it’s in regard to our income, possessions, or relationships.  We’ve all been trained to consume, and our ravenous obsession with resources at home and around the world reveal that nothing can possibly satisfy us.  We’re far from empty, but we cannot ever be filled.  Our view of life—much less the afterlife—is disordered.

I need to make a confession this morning: I’m not very good at praying.  I know how to pray, but consistency has never been my strong point.  I want to be good at praying.  I ought to be good at praying.  I mean, good grief: I’m a priest—it’s kind of my job!  But a lot of the time, and maybe it’s the same for you, prayer just seems pointless.

“Increase our faith.”  I suppose that’s something all of us want, really.  In an increasingly confusing world where it feels like you can’t trust your neighbors, much less the government, to do what’s right, we as humans want something to hold on to, something stable, something that will never let you down.  In times of turmoil, people turn to their traditions, their own ability to reason, or to their conception of God in order to mark a path forward.  What motivates them, what gives them any sense of hope for the future, is their faith—faith in others, faith in themselves, or faith in the supernatural.  And frankly, that faith too often wears dangerously thin.

Some days Jesus’ parables just don’t make sense.  This is one of those days.

Those of you who’ve been around this summer know my penchant for exploring words.  I love to look at the breadth of their meanings and see how alternate translations can help us uproot our mental barriers, expanding our knowledge and practice of the Christian faith.  Word studies like that are an important tool for pastors and preachers.  You’ve also probably noticed my preference to allow difficult texts to remain difficult.

It’s easy to look at the leader of the synagogue as some sort of legalist or party pooper.  He’s a prime target to vilify, and historically, Christians have used passages like this to “other” Jewish people and to stereotype the Jewish religion as inferior to Christianity, of being “works-based” instead of “faith-based.”  But that’s a misinterpretation of what’s going on (in both religions, to be honest).

Isaiah has always been one of my favorite books of the Bible.  It has everything—mystery, intrigue, betrayal, supernatural events and foresight, condemnation, reconciliation, warfare, promises of deliverance—all packed into 66 chapters, most of which are some of the world’s greatest classical poetry.  Isaiah releases the romantic I keep buried deep inside me.  The writing sets my imagination free.

For the last few weeks we’ve had what appear to be pretty straightforward moral lessons from each of our Gospel readings: the Good Samaritan—be kind; Mary and Martha—don’t complain; the neighbor with the midnight guest—be persistent.  Along those lines, we could easily summarize the parable of the rich farmer as “don’t be greedy.”  But if those are all the things we really need to know from the Bible, I would have preferred it if God gave us a list of rules instead of all these stories—not to mention having to deal with the whole complexity of the inspiration of the Holy Spirit working through Scripture.  True, stories may help us remember lessons better than lists, but they take up a lot of time doing so and often leave way too much room for disagreement and misinterpretation.

I spent most of this week avoiding today’s Gospel passage.  After all, it’s familiar and looks pretty straightforward.  Amos and the Psalm, on the other hand, are much more intriguing, somehow speaking, despite their antiquity, directly to what is going on in our society right now.  It isn’t hard to recognize that what’s currently happening in our country is not in keeping with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and emphasizing practical living and social justice is one of the most important roles of a preacher in modern America, right?  That practically obligates me to speak on Amos!  Yet one of my undergrad film teacher’s mantras kept running through my head: “Trust your audience.”

Today, the story of the Good Samaritan has become something of a cliché.  Even in secular culture, we hear of Good Samaritan laws or of some Good Samaritan performing an unexpected act of kindness on the evening news.  With such a familiar story, it almost seems like a waste of time to talk about this parable.

Almost.

For Americans, “freedom” is a powerful word.  We talk about freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom in a variety of other forms.  Citizens of the United States know their personal rights, and we tend to be pretty vocal whenever we feel like someone else is impinging on them.  But with Independence Day coming this Thursday, even as we celebrate our country’s founding, we note that “freedom isn’t free.”  It has a cost.  It’s founded on something deeper and more expensive than itself, things like hard work, generosity, and sacrifice.

Thomas and I have had a rough couple of weeks getting to know each other.  He’s both bold and enigmatic.  Nearly as famous as the more vocal apostles like Peter, Andrew, James, and John, he doesn’t actually speak up all that often.  But when he does, like in today’s Gospel reading, he really takes center stage.  Which becomes a bit of a problem for me, because I think Jesus is still supposed to be the main character in the story.  However, with such a famous supporting cast member, it’s hard to focus a sermon on anything other than “Doubting Thomas.”

422 years ago, nearly half a millennium, twenty native Japanese and six foreigners walked up a hill in Nagasaki, ascending toward a grove of unusual trees.  It was no surprise that the branches were bare—only the waxy tsubaki and the thorny yuzu kept their leaves at this time of year.  Nor, despite being arranged like a small orchard, did any bear a hint of withered fruit drying in the bright winter sun.  Yet even from a distance, the trees remained strange.  Unless their eyes deceived, the trunks appeared too straight, the branches too regular, too perfectly spaced for a natural tree.  Trees like these were not to be found in Japan.  No, they were foreign, imported from an older time, from another far away empire.

Advent is a strange time of year.  It doesn’t really fit into the secular calendar at all anymore.  The church calendar isn’t a whole lot better about it—after all, we just celebrated the reign of Jesus on Christ the King Sunday four weeks ago.  Now we’re preparing for another coming?  Even the lectionary readings seem to be of a split mind about the season.  Today we heard a whole lot of “Rejoice!  Rejoice!  Rejoice!” followed immediately with a pretty harsh “Repent!  Repent!  Repent!”  That conflict seems to sum up the dueling faces of the season.