Tag: spirituality

Elements of Worship: Prayer

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Elements of Worship, SermonLeave a comment

This week’s sermon from First Pres, Boonville.  2nd of 5 in a series on the Elements of Worship.

The text is Matthew 6:5-15.

Mahatma Gandhi, the great Indian social reformer, once said something quite profound when someone asked him what he thought of Christianity.  He said, “I like your Christ but I don’t like your Christians.  They are so unlike your Christ.”  In a similar vein, the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once said to a group of Christians (in his typically caustic fashion), “Yuck, you make me sick!  Because you redeemed don’t look like you’re redeemed!”

While these comments are more than a little bit harsh, I think we Christians have to admit they are also more than a little bit true.  For a long time, Christians have held onto a crazy idea that we are the guardians of infallible doctrine and impeccable morals.  The end result of this idea is that the rest of the world has come to see Christians, not as messengers of good news and amazing grace, but as “sour-faced saints” with their halos screwed on just a little too tight.  Under these circumstances, church becomes little more than a “holy club” for people with an answer for every question and a solution to every problem.

Is this who we’re meant to be?  I think not.  Consider Nietzsche and Gandhi’s words in reverse: how would you describe someone who “looks like” he or she is “redeemed”?  Can you imagine what it would be like to live in moment-to-moment awareness of the truth that within, behind, and beyond the apparently random facts of life there is, at the very heart of the universe, a “Love that will not let me go”?

Christians (in their better moments) believe there has been at least one such life in the course of human history.  By this, I am referring of course to the life of Jesus.  Folks come out in droves to celebrate with us at Christmas and Easter the beginning and the end of Jesus’ thirty-something years on Earth (and we’re delighted to welcome them on those days).  But there are, of course, fifty other Sundays of the year when we celebrate everything that happened in the middle!  Jesus’ amazing life is something worth remembering, celebrating, and imitating all year long.  There is something so wonderful about the life of Jesus that even Gandhi, a devout Hindu, sat up and took notice.

“I like your Christ, but I don’t like your Christians.  They are so unlike your Christ.”

What was it about the life of Jesus that caught Gandhi’s attention?  What kind of moment-to-moment awareness of Love’s presence did Jesus live with?  One phrase that he liked to use more than any other was “the kingdom of heaven.”  For him, this wasn’t some far away realm where angels played harps on clouds, but a very present reality.  For Jesus, the kingdom of heaven was very near, “at hand,” closer to every atom than its own nucleus, closer to every person than her own soul.  If you asked him to describe it, he would start telling stories about the things he saw around him.  Jesus saw heaven everywhere: a farmer sowing seed, a woman baking bread, a merchant buying pearls, a shepherd tending sheep, a woman sweeping her house out, birds that nest, seeds that grow, and flowers that bloom.  For Jesus, the question isn’t “where is heaven?”  For Jesus, the question is “where isn’t heaven?”  This is the kind of life that Jesus lived: a moment-to-moment awareness of the truth that within, behind, and beyond the apparently random facts of life there is, at the very heart of the universe, a “Love that will not let me go.”

“Believe the good news,” he said, “the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

This week is the second in a five week series of sermons on the elements of worship.  We’re looking at who, what, when, and where but also (most importantly) why we do what we do each week in church.  Last week, we talked about the Word of God, found in (but not mistaken for) the words of the scriptures, which forms a kind of central fulcrum around which the rest of our liturgy revolves.  This week, we’re talking about prayer.  In the coming weeks, we’ll cover service, sacrament, and relationship.

I began this week’s discussion on prayer by describing the kind of life that Jesus lived: a life of moment-to-moment spiritual awareness.  In doing this, I kind of started at the end.  This is the point to which we will return.  This moment-to-moment spiritual awareness, demonstrated and embodied in the life of Jesus, is the purpose of all prayer and the final destination of every praying person.

But before we get back to that central point: a few words about what prayer is not.  First, prayer is not magic.  There are many churches and organizations out there who teach that if you pray for something long enough, hard enough, or in a particular way, you will (or should) always get what you want.  Many prominent televangelists and proponents of the so-called “Prosperity Gospel” have made use of this idea as a fund-raising strategy.  The most corrupt among them have willingly and knowingly manipulated people into giving up their money as a “seed of faith” in exchange for some sort of miracle.  A private investigation of one such organization during the 1990s found that the donations were being sent to a bank where the checks were deposited and prayer requests were simply thrown into the trash.

A further problem with the “prayer is magic” approach is how it deals with the inevitable question: “What happens when we don’t get what we pray for?”  This is not so big a deal when we’re talking about some trivial thing that the heart desires, but it becomes a big deal when we’re praying about things that really do matter: What happens when the cancer doesn’t go into remission?  What happens when the child isn’t found alive?  These are big questions that make a big problem for those who subscribe to the idea that prayer is magic.  Sadly, there are those in this group who answer this question by blaming the victim.  “Oh well,” they say, “I guess you just didn’t have enough faith.”  If you’ve ever had someone say that to you, let me be blunt and tell you that it’s nothing but a load of baloney.  It’s a lie from the pit of hell.  Don’t believe it.  There are many stories in the gospels of Jesus working miracles for people, but never once does he look an individual person in the eye and say, “Go away.  You don’t have enough faith.”  Don’t take my word for it, go and look it up for yourself.

In response to this obviously destructive idea that prayer is magic, many other folks have adopted the very modern notion that prayer isn’t actually anything at all.  They would say that prayer is a placebo.  For those who might not be familiar with that term, the Placebo Effect is an event that doctors have noticed during clinical trials of experimental medications.  When they’re testing a new drug, they run a test where half of the people are given the real medicine and the other half are given a sugar pill (i.e. placebo) that looks like the real thing but doesn’t actually do anything to your body.  Nobody knows which pill they’re getting.  What the doctors found is that the patients who received the placebo nevertheless showed signs of improvement.  The mind was tricked into believing that it was receiving a new medical treatment that would make the body feel better.  So strong was this mental expectation that the body responded by feeling better, even when there was no actual medicine involved.  This is known as the Placebo Effect.

Those who view prayer as a placebo see it in the same way.  They think that prayer is just a mental exercise that people undertake in order to make themselves feel better.  It would be foolish, they say, to think that God would intervene to make a difference in human circumstances.  Honestly, the idea that prayer is a placebo makes me just as uncomfortable as the idea that prayer is magic.  I have a hard time believing that this universe is a closed and mechanical system with nothing beyond itself.  I think that God is real, that God does care about our pain, and that God does make a difference in this world.  I feel stuck between unfounded idealism on the one hand and hard-nosed cynicism on the other.  I can’t claim to have the final answer to this conundrum, but I have a hunch that the reality of prayer is actually a mystery that somehow encompasses and yet transcends both of ends of the ideological spectrum.

The Presbyterian Book of Order defines prayer as “a conscious opening of the self to God.”  I really like that.  It reminds me of the first verse from our beloved hymn: “Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee, God of glory, Lord of love; Hearts unfold like flowers before Thee, Opening to the sun above.”  While I do believe that prayer can and does make a tangible difference in this life and this world, I don’t see that as the reason why we pray.

Even though it’s become kind of a dirty word (even in church), I have to admit that I like the term religion.  It comes from a Latin word that means “to reconnect”.  Thanks to online tools like Facebook, people all over the world today are enjoying that feeling of reconnecting with old friends from days gone by.  It’s the same way with religious practices.  Through them, we find ways to reconnect with God, ourselves, our neighbors, and the universe as a whole.

Now, I should qualify that statement by saying that I don’t believe we are ever completely disconnected from God in an absolute sense.  The scriptures tell us that it is in God that we “live, move, and have our being,” that God is “above all, through all, and in all,” and that “from God, through God, and to God are all things.”  When we reconnect with God, we are reconnecting with that which is already nearer to every atom than its own nucleus and closer to every person than her own soul.  It would be more proper to say that through prayer and other religious practices, we are nurturing our conscious connection with God.  Prayer brings us to an awareness of the Reality in which we already live, move, and have our being.

There are many ways that we seek to nurture this conscious reconnection in our public worship.  First of all, there are those parts of our service that are explicitly referred to as prayer.  In our Call to Worship, we acknowledge God’s presence and invite God to work in us whatever needs to happen in order for us to become the kind of loving and compassionate people that God wants us to be.  In our prayer of Confession, we acknowledge our shortcomings and celebrate God’s undying and redeeming love.  Confession is not about guilt and fear.  Confession is about honesty and trust that God never gives ever up on us.  In the prayer for Illumination, as we talked about last week, we ask the Spirit of God to enlighten our hearts and minds so that we can hear, believe, and follow God’s Word.  In the prayers of the People, we lift up to God our specific needs and concerns, trusting that God is working in us and in the world to bring peace and wholeness to all.  In the prayer of Thanksgiving, we raise a voice of gratitude for all the goodness we see in the world around us and we dedicate our lives to cooperating with God’s work in the world.  Finally, we gather all our various prayers into one great prayer that Jesus taught his disciples: the Lord’s Prayer.  There is so much to be said here, but time grows short and the hour grows late.  I will leave most of that for another sermon on another day.  For now, I’ll simply say that this one prayer encompasses all the other forms of prayer that I have already mentioned.  We say it by rote week after week, but I encourage you, as an extended meditation exercise, to stop sometime and really think about what you are saying: “Our Father, who art in heaven: hallowed be thy name…”

Not all prayer involves words or speech.  Music itself is a form of prayer, even when it is purely instrumental.  The preludes, hymns, anthems, offertories, and postludes of our worship service are not provided for your entertainment.  They are prayers in themselves.  The beautiful arrangement of sound into organized tones called music is meant to guide you and me into and through the present moment to the eternal mystery in which it rests.  Can you resonate with the music of the spheres?  Can you imagine, during an organ solo, the life-giving harmonies of our delicately balanced solar system?  Music, as a form of prayer, leads us beyond ourselves to participate in a larger reality.  A theologian once said, “The one who sings prays twice.”

Prayer can also be undertaken in total silence.  No words are necessary.  Sitting quietly for an extended period of time and focusing on the unconscious rhythm of each God-given breath is a form of prayer.  This kind of prayer, called contemplative prayer, lets go of all doing in favor of just being with God in the present moment.

“Prayer is a conscious opening of the self to God.”  In its various forms, we reconnect with that which is deepest in us and the universe.  We move beyond just “knowing about God” through dogma and theology.  We come to “know God” in a direct and mystical sense.  Through the regular practice of prayer, our lives begin to look more like Jesus’ life: living in that moment-to-moment spiritual awareness of the Love in which we live, move, and have our being.

Abundance at Christmas

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized1 Comment

I was in Price Chopper last week and noticed teeny little shopping carts with “Customer in Training” written on the side.  It occurred to me that training was a very appropriate word to use in that situation.  Our entire culture trains us to be good consumers from the time when we are young enough to walk and talk.  We are trained to believe in the power of scarcity.  We are trained to believe that security lies in our ability to take all we can for ourselves in this dog-eat-dog world.  Most of us have been so well-trained that we cannot even imagine society being other than it is.

The radical message of Advent and Christmas is that the way things are is not the way things have to be.  With Christ’s entrance into history, a new world becomes possible.  The life of Jesus demonstrated a deep and personal trust in the sheer abundance of providence.  He dressed like the lilies of the field and feasted like the birds of the air.  In the upside-down economy of heaven, one’s supply of love increases as it is given away.  In the new world that Christ ushers in, power is obtained through service, security through sacrifice, and justice through mercy.  The presence of Immanuel (‘God with us’) is meant to inspire our imaginations into visualizing and actualizing this new reality here and now.  Faith is the measure of our ability to trust the word of Christ over and against the way of the world.  Will we give ourselves over to this faith in the coming holiday season?

As I walked back out to my car after seeing the “Customer in Training” cart at Price Chopper, an SUV pulled into the parking lot with music so loud I could hear the lyrics as I put my groceries into my trunk: “I barely get by!  I barely get by!”

This is the heart-song of our society.  Its message of scarcity, competition, and consumerism trains us to believe that we’re always only “barely getting by”.  So, after a single Thursday of giving thanks, we charge out into the deep darkness of Black Friday, intent to grab all we can before someone else gets it.  Last year, a store employee was trampled to death.  This year, customers used pepper spray on each other.  So desperate are we to fulfill our perceived wants and needs!  So convinced are we that we’re only ever “barely getting by”!

During this Advent and Christmas season, let’s trust in the word of Christ, who “came that they may have life, and have it abundantly”, according to John 10:10.  We are not “barely getting by”.  We are blessed.  Let’s give thanks by giving back, in whatever way we can, out of the abundance that has been heaped upon us.

The following prayer, attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, speaks to me as the prayer of a heart soaked in abundance.  Let this be our prayer as we journey from Thanksgiving, through Advent, to Christmas:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope. Where there is darkness, light. Where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love. For it is in giving that we receive. It is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life. Amen.

Descent Into Sanity

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized3 Comments

Be still and know that I am God.

Be still and know that I am.

Be still and know.

Be still.

Be.

.

 

Note: I recently discovered that I unintentionally plagiarized this poem.  Call it a case of unconscious memory.  When I first wrote this post, I thought it was original to me, but then I went back and picked up the book Everything Belongs by Richard Rohr and found this same poem within its pages.  Oh, the embarrassment!  So, mea culpa: this poem is not original to me, but can be found on page 62 of Everything Belongs by Richard Rohr.  Apologies.

Wonders Known In The Place Of Darkness

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized2 Comments

This is my column for this month’s church newsletter:

Dr. Rodney Duke, my former college professor, was fond of saying, “My favorite thing about the book of Psalms is that these poets say things that would get you kicked out of church.”  I think he’s right.  Nowhere is this more apparent than in Psalm 88.

Many of the psalms are brutally honest about hard times and hard feelings in life, but most of them resolve with a statement of joy or praise at the end.  The notable exception to this rule is Psalm 88.  It ends with the chilling phrase, “darkness is my closest friend.”

The popular conception of spirituality in our culture is that it will make you into a happy, well-adjusted, and peaceful person.  When many people hear the term “spirituality”, they picture someone sitting serenely in the lotus position, chanting “all shall be well” over and over again.  Such a people are either lost in the exercise of “navel-gazing” or else wandering around with their heads in the clouds.  Seeing them, one can understand why Karl Marx called religion “the opiate of the masses”.

True spirituality, as I have come to understand it, enables its practitioners to honestly face the darkness of life without reverting to fantasy as a crutch.  It can ask God, with the author of Psalm 88, “Are your wonders known in the place of darkness, or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?”  Such people don’t often think of themselves as particularly religious or spiritual, yet their authenticity speaks for itself.  They are in a privileged position to discover, with the author of Psalm 51, that God has little to no interest in those who go through the motions of religion in order to “look spiritual” to others.  In fact, God has little interest in religion itself.  Psalm 51 says, “You do not delight in sacrifice or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.  My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, O God, will not despise.”

Those broken souls who often feel (or appear to be) farthest from the life of religion are often the ones who are most ready to be honest about themselves.  If the ministry of Jesus taught us anything, it is that these broken hearts are welcomed by God.  When we finally get real enough to say, “darkness is my closest friend”, we put ourselves in a position to find the presence of our Eternal Friend within the darkness itself.  Only then do we begin to see a way out.  Only then are we ready to hear the answer to the question, “Are your wonders known in the place of darkness, or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?”

I dare to posit that, in such a moment, an inaudible voice whispers back to us through that darkness: “Yes.”

Mindfulness Meditation

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Book ReviewLeave a comment

This is my church newsletter column for this month:

While my son was in the hospital this summer, I stumbled across the work of Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and founder of the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Clinic.  Dr. Kabat-Zinn is credited with being the first person to make use of meditation as clinical practice in western medicine.  According to Dr. Kabat-Zinn, the words meditation and medicine both come from the same Latin word: medeor, which means “to heal”.

After listening to an on-line lecture and reading Dr. Kabat-Zinn’s book Full Catastrophe Living, I decided to start practicing mindfulness meditation.  After almost two months, I can tell you that it has indeed been a “healing” addition to my daily self-care routine.  More than any other single practice, mindfulness meditation was most helpful in getting me through the crisis of my son’s early and traumatic arrival into the world.  My closest friends have remarked that I actually seem to be more relaxed than usual, in spite of my unpredictable circumstances!

Dr. Kabat-Zinn presents this practice from a clinical (rather than spiritual) point of view.  However, I have found it to be most helpful to my spiritual life as well.  By “tuning in” to the present moment, I have become more aware of God’s loving and peaceful presence within and around me throughout my day.  Sunsets and changing leaves have captured my attention in new ways.  I find that I can say in my daily life what we say to God during our Communion service each month:

Holy, holy, holy Lord,

God of power and might,

heaven and earth are full of your glory.

When I relax into the present moment and accept it as it is, I find that heaven and earth are indeed full of God’s glory!

If you would like to try mindfulness meditation on your own, here’s how it works:

Sit still for three minutes, close your eyes, and try to pay attention to your breathing.  Don’t breathe any differently than you normally do.  You’re breathing all the time, whether you realize it or not.  Just try to become aware of what is already happening without your conscious effort.  Start with this and see what happens.  How did you feel before, during, and after the exercise?  Once you’ve done this once, try and do the same for five minutes a day.  When you feel ready, increase that amount to ten minutes a day, then fifteen, then twenty, etc.  Dr. Kabat-Zinn recommends practicing this exercise for 30-45 minutes every day (I’m only up to twenty minutes right now).

After practicing, you might not feel any different than you normally do.  That’s okay.  The point of this exercise is to practice being rather than doing.  It’s a healthy alternative to our culture’s constant pressure to “keep going” all the time.  Many of us have forgotten the sound of silence and the feel of stillness.  We identify so strongly with our activities and accomplishments that we lose touch with our true identity as beloved children of God.  I recommend this exercise as a way of bringing us back to an awareness of who we really are.

If you’re interested to learn more, check out this lecture on You Tube:

You can also order this and Jon Kabat-Zinn’s other books on meditation from Amazon.com:

A Wild Communion

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized1 Comment
Wild Ramps

During the week after Easter Sunday, I had the opportunity to gather wild ramps with my friend Nancy in the forest around her farm.  For those who are unfamiliar, ramps are kind of like little wild onions.  It was a clear and mild day during an unusually rainy spring.  Before heading out into the woods, we took a trip over to the greenhouse, where some seedlings needed watering.  Her greenhouse is a homemade structure with a cathedral ceiling covered in clear plastic.

As Nancy walked up and down the aisles with her water-hose, I thought back to the Easter Vigil service I had attended at an Episcopal church the Saturday night prior.  My friend Ed, the priest, had dedicated the church’s new Paschal candle, led us in the renewal of our baptismal vows, and sprinkled us with holy water in the same way that Nancy was now blessing the baby plants, nurturing fragile new life with the most basic elements of water and light.

After Nancy finished her botanical asperges with the seedlings, we made our way through some of the muddiest terrain imaginable toward the hillside where wild ramps were to be found.  As we sloshed through the quagmire, Nancy and I talked about how she came to fall in love with organic farming.  The details of that story are hers to share, but the process of telling the story as we walked reminds me of the many biblical readings from the Torah and the prophets that take place in the middle of the Episcopal Easter Vigil service.  The readings chronicle the long and messy journey of the Jewish people from slavery and exile into freedom.

Finally, we arrived at the wooded hillside that was covered in patches of wild ramps.  These precious little vegetables are currently in high demand among upscale restaurants all over the country.  Some farmers earn a significant portion of their annual income with a single load in their pickup trucks.  And there we were, sitting in the abundance of a remote hillside in rural New York with a small fortune growing around our feet.

Is this not the essence of Easter?  The triumph of abundance and life over scarcity and death!  It’s no mistake that Christians celebrate this, our highest holiday, during the springtime.  The smell of dirt emerging from beneath the melting snow and the sight of flowers bursting forth from their buds are sacramental reminders of the resurrection life that pervades this universe in which we live.  This most precious treasure is the free gift of God for all who will open their hearts and embrace it as such.

Nancy the farmer, priest of God’s green earth, made this truth real to me in a new way as she tore off a piece of edible ramp-leaf and handed it to me on that hillside saying, “Here.  This is Communion.”  As I put it in my mouth, I couldn’t stop myself from saying “Amen” with my whole heart.

To see a world in a grain of sand,

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

And eternity in an hour.

-William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

Tina Fey: Prayer for a Daughter

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized1 Comment

OK, this has absolutely nothing to do with ministry on the street or marginal theology, but it has to do with Tina Fey and spirituality, so it is therefore blog-worthy.  I’m the father of a daughter, so I can relate to much of this.  This passage is originally from Tina’s new book, Bossypants, but I nabbed it from Babble.com:

Prayer for a Daughter

Tina Fey

First, Lord: No tattoos. May neither Chinese symbol for truth nor Winnie-the-Pooh holding the FSU logo stain her tender haunches.

May she be Beautiful but not Damaged, for it’s the Damage that draws the creepy soccer coach’s eye, not the Beauty.

When the Crystal Meth is offered, May she remember the parents who cut her grapes in half And stick with Beer.

Guide her, protect her
When crossing the street, stepping onto boats, swimming in the ocean, swimming in pools, walking near pools, standing on the subway platform, crossing 86th Street, stepping off of boats, using mall restrooms, getting on and off escalators, driving on country roads while arguing, leaning on large windows, walking in parking lots, riding Ferris wheels, roller-coasters, log flumes, or anything called “Hell Drop,” “Tower of Torture,” or “The Death Spiral Rock ‘N Zero G Roll featuring Aerosmith,” and standing on any kind of balcony ever, anywhere, at any age.

Lead her away from Acting but not all the way to Finance. Something where she can make her own hours but still feel intellectually fulfilled and get outside sometimes And not have to wear high heels.

What would that be, Lord? Architecture? Midwifery? Golf course design? I’m asking You, because if I knew, I’d be doing it, Youdammit.

May she play the Drums to the fiery rhythm of her Own Heart with the sinewy strength of her Own Arms, so she need Not Lie With Drummers.

Grant her a Rough Patch from twelve to seventeen. Let her draw horses and be interested in Barbies for much too long, For childhood is short – a Tiger Flower blooming Magenta for one day – And adulthood is long and dry-humping in cars will wait.

O Lord, break the Internet forever, That she may be spared the misspelled invective of her peers And the online marketing campaign for Rape Hostel V: Girls Just Wanna Get Stabbed.

And when she one day turns on me and calls me a Bitch in front of Hollister, Give me the strength, Lord, to yank her directly into a cab in front of her friends, For I will not have that Shit. I will not have it.

And should she choose to be a Mother one day, be my eyes, Lord, that I may see her, lying on a blanket on the floor at 4:50 A.M., all-at-once exhausted, bored, and in love with the little creature whose poop is leaking up its back.

“My mother did this for me once,” she will realize as she cleans feces off her baby’s neck. “My mother did this for me.” And the delayed gratitude will wash over her as it does each generation and she will make a Mental Note to call me. And she will forget. But I’ll know, because I peeped it with Your God eyes.

Amen.

Transfiguration

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Bible study reflection, Uncategorized1 Comment

Here is my collection of themes from tonight’s Bible study at St. James Mission:

Our text was the story of the Transfiguration, Luke 9:28-43a.

Mountaintop experiences can be intimidating.  I spent several years attending churches where dramatic stories of religious conversion were highly valued.  One had to be careful about attending services where time was given for individual testimonies of faith.  These services had a tendency to degenerate into amateur preach-offs worthy of American Idol.

These churches seemed to believe in a connection between one’s spiritual credibility and the intensity of one’s mystical experiences.  Is this connection justified?

I think most of us are unable to relate to a spiritual experience as profound as the Transfiguration.  The average person’s meeting with God tends to take a less dramatic form.  Some of us may have “A-ha!” moments where a spiritual truth will hit home in a new way.  Others of us might be able to relate to John Wesley, who felt his heart being “strangely warmed” by God’s presence.  Then again, many of us have not had any mystical experience at all.  Does that make us less worthy than those who see visions or hear voices?

When I look at Jesus’ disciples in this story, I feel compelled to answer in the negative.  This dramatic encounter, which involves shining lights, visions of ancient heroes, and voices from the sky, is not restricted  to the ultra-worthy.  Nor does the disciples’ witnessing the Transfiguration seem to have turned them  into saints overnight.  In this passage, they fall asleep, speak without thinking, and utterly fail in their attempt to heal a sick child.

Jesus says to them, “You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you?”  As harsh as this statement sounds, it highlights the truth that dramatic mystical experiences are not necessarily related to real faith.

Real faith is found in our response to God’s presence in our lives (regardless of how that presence manifests itself).  In the story of the Transfiguration, that response takes two forms.  First, the disciples are told to listen to Jesus.  In order to listen, one must pay attention.  Things like prayer, meditation, the Bible, church, and the sacraments are all effective tools for helping us pay attention, but they are not the only tools God uses.  What helps you pay attention to God in your life?

Second, Jesus leads the disciples down the mountain and back into the real world, where a father waits with his sick child.  It seems that Peter would rather stay on the mountaintop and build a monument, but Jesus is more interested in the work that needs to be done.  In our community, there are scores of people who are homeless, hungry, and hurting.  If we want our experiences on the mountaintop to mean anything, we must take them with us into the valley of the shadow of death.  Any spirituality that doesn’t matter out on the street is a spirituality that doesn’t matter at all.

“Blessed are those whose strength is in you, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage.  As they pass through the valley of weeping, they make it a place of springs; the autumn rains also cover it with pools.”  -Psalm 84:6-7