Glimpses of Glory

Year B Transfiguration—Sermon—Armidale Uniting Church—090222
2 Kings 2:1-12; Mark 9: 2-9

Every year when Transfiguration comes around, my mind is drawn to 2 spectacular pieces of Christian heritage: the first is the speech entitled “I’ve been to the mountaintop” and delivered by Dr Martin Luther King Jr on 3 April 1968, the day before his assassination; and the second is that great old song, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”—you know, the one—
"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; he is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; he has loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword: his truth is marching on." (Together in Song 315; Julia Ward Howe 1819–1910 and others).

Somehow, those 2 things together have always spoken to me of the mountaintop experience depicted in the story of the transfiguration of Jesus. And that is especially the case when the story of Jesus’ transfiguration is coupled in the lectionary with the story of Elijah’s ascension into heaven. The speech and the song just seem to capture the glorious atmosphere that pervades these 2 stories.

And sometimes that worries me. It worries me that I seem to match the story of Jesus’ transfiguration and the story of Elijah’s ascension with such triumphalistic imagery, although of course that imagery is there in the stories themselves.
At his ascension, Elijah is envisaged as being accompanied by chariots and horses of fire. What an image of the enfolding of Elijah into the Lord of Hosts, God depicted as leader of mighty armies! What an image of Jesus having a tête-a-tête with the greats of his faith: Moses and Elijah! Surely, there are no more glorious and noble images of the greatness of these 2 figures (Elijah and Jesus) and of the God whom they proclaim than these.

And what a great, rousing song the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” is! And doesn’t it tap into that image of the God of Hosts leading an army to glorious victory? And what a speech delivered by Martin Luther King Jr: “Well, I don’t know what will happen now… But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind.”
But I wonder, I wonder about that triumphalistic imagery… I wonder.

Triumphalist Christianity has not served the world well. It has driven out and over colonialised people in the name of God. It has pursued military conflicts for profit and greed, rather than justice and peace. It has promised the earth to people who barely scratch out a daily living. And we have not always been good as Christian people at detecting our own tendencies towards triumphalism.

And yet, if triumphalism is all we see and hear and experience in these stories, in the speech, in the song, then perhaps we are baring our own souls far more than we are exposing the assumptions behind the texts. Perhaps we are displaying our own comfortable Christianity over against Christian faith wrought in difficult times during struggles over difficult issues.

For these texts in their contexts are not texts of triumph, but of hope. They are texts of inexhaustible, sometimes apparently unwarranted, unquenchable hope maintained in the face of very difficult times and almost impossible circumstances. And that means we need to be careful with them.

"'The Battle Hymn of the Republic' is an American abolitionist song, written by Julia Ward Howe in November 1861 and first published in The Atlantic Monthly on 1 February 1862, that became popular during the American Civil War." (Wikipedia) It inspired people who were concerned with justice and freedom for African American slaves to fight (and even to die) for that goal. Martin Luther King Jr’s speech was written at the end of a lifetime of struggle for the rights of the descendants of those slaves. Indeed the speech recounts something of the trials which civil rights activists endured. Elisha is just about to be handed the mantle of one of Israel’s greatest prophets, and don’t we know what people do to prophets? No wonder he wanted a double portion of Elijah’s spirit. The road ahead wasn’t going to be an easy one. And Jesus, well need I say anything more. If the transfiguration is a depiction of the triumphal glory in which Jesus will be covered, then the journey to the cross seems an odd way to travel a triumphalist road. The contexts of these texts bear much more the mark of “blood, sweat and tears” than of triumphalistic glory. And if this so, then these texts are not about triumphalistic glory at all, but about trying to show where real glory is to be found. And in doing that, they remind us that all that glitters is not gold, and sometimes we overlook the gold because it seems much less exciting than the dross.

So, where is the real glory in these texts?

In the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”, it is in a glimpse of a world where Christ’s justice reigns: a world for which real people did literally fight and die. One of the later verses, despite it’s unreal depiction of Jesus’ birth, upholds that vision: "In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, with a glory in his bosom which transfigures you and me: as he died to make men [people] holy, let us die to make men [people] free, while God is marching on." The second last line is later changed to the one we sing, “Let us live to make men [people] free”. The glory was in the vision and in the work for it, and that work wasn’t easy nor did it come with great accolades at the time.

In Martin Luther King Jr’s speech, it is in the struggles of the 1960s civil rights movement: of sit-ins and freedom rides; of water cannons and imprisonment; of pain-staking and enduring civil disobedience; of children being jeered at as they entered de-segregated schools; of beatings and assaults, murders and assassinations. The glory was in the dream and in the work for it, and that work wasn’t easy nor did it come with great accolades at the time.

Elisha, well Elisha is just at the beginning of his work for God and it’s not going to be easy either. It’s not easy to speak the truth to people of power. It’s not easy to proclaim God’s word when few will listen. Perhaps, it is that Elisha needed such a vision in order to trust God for that journey. The glory is in the promise and in the work for it, and you’d better be sure that that work wasn’t easy nor did it come with great accolades at the time.

And Jesus, well Jesus also has a long journey ahead. This is not the moment of triumph. That moment is a long way off and it isn’t found as the kind of triumph we might expect—exaltation and applause. It is found in humiliation and suffering and death. The glory is in the proclamation of God’s new world and in the work for it, and that work wasn’t easy nor did it come with great accolades at the time.

Yesterday, in the Workshop on Grace presented by the Moderator, Revd Niall Reid, we were encouraged to envisage what living out of the graciousness of God might mean for us. My conversation partner and I were reminded of the many times that we might overlook grace-filled moments because they are found in humility and persistence rather than in triumph and show. It is easy to see triumphal achievements, and much harder to catch sight of the acts of mercy and love that sustain individuals, families and communities.

If it is the triumph and the show on which we focus, neglecting to understand the vision within them and the work required by that vision, then we will miss the glimpses of glory which surround us in the grace-filled moments of everyday encounters with the promises of God made present in our midst in struggle and hope.

If it is the triumph and the show on which we focus, neglecting to notice grace and love, mercy and hope, then we will miss the glimpses of glory that embody the presence of God in our midst.

If it is the triumph and the show on which we focus, neglecting to hear the call to costly discipleship, then we will miss the glimpses of glory that can only be found after long, pain-staking, arduous climbs to the tops of mountains.

The Basis of Union (Paras 3 & 4 Excerpts) puts it this way: "God in Christ has given to all people in the Church the Holy Spirit as a pledge and foretaste of that coming reconciliation and renewal which is the end in view for the whole creation. The Church’s call is to serve that end: to be a fellowship of reconciliation, a body within which the diverse gifts of its members are used for the building up of the whole, an instrument through which Christ may work and bear witness to himself. The Church lives between the time of Christ’s death and resurrection and the final consummation of all things which Christ will bring; the Church is a pilgrim people, always on the way towards a promised goal; here the Church does not have a continuing city but seeks one to come…

"The Uniting Church acknowledges that the Church is able to live and endure through the changes of history only because its Lord comes, addresses, and deals with people in and through the news of his completed work. Christ who is present when he is preached among people is the Word of the God who acquits the guilty, who gives life to the dead and who brings into being what otherwise could not exist. Through human witness in word and action, and in the power of the Holy Spirit, Christ reaches out to command people’s attention and awaken faith; he calls people into the fellowship of his sufferings, to be the disciples of a crucified Lord…"

Glory be to you,
Source of all Being, Eternal Word and Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning, is now and shall be forever. Amen.