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Lessons from a Religious Greeting Card

Br. Bruce Neal, SSJE
Monastery

Sunday, February 3, 2008

Matthew 17: 1-9           

I was confirmed and received into the Episcopal Church on my 20th birthday.  It wasn’t planned…it just worked out that way.  My local bishop had been scheduled for a confirmation service on Sunday, April 28th, which just happened to be my birthday.  Needless to say, many of my birthday gifts and cards that year had a religious theme…but I didn’t mind.  Since I had been raised in the rather stark Southern Baptist tradition, I was enthralled by this new world of religious kitsch.  I got a rosary that glowed in the dark; a pocket-sized prayer book; a crucifix; a T-shirt with the question “Have you hugged an Episcopalian today?” imprinted on the front; a small bottle of holy water, and all sorts of religious greeting cards.  I held on to many of these gifts and cards for quite some time.  One of the cards I got still stands out in my memory.   On the front was an image of the Transfiguration, and inside were the words “May your life of prayer and loving service help to transfigure the world into the image of Christ.”  A bit sappy, yes, but those words have stuck with me. 

This morning, on the Sunday of the Transfiguration, I would like to talk about the power of God to transfigure our world and transform our lives.  I believe that all of us would agree that our world desperately needs to be transfigured.  And I suspect that many of us hope and pray that our personal lives may be transformed.

Before I moved to New England to become a monk, I spent many years out on the West Coast – in Southern California and in Seattle, Washington.  It was in Seattle that I first heard of the “disease” of affluenza, first “diagnosed” by the local filmmaker and social activist John de Graaf. 

Affluenza is caused by too much affluence; by having too much of a good thing…and it is rampant in our nation today.  It is described as an epidemic of stress, overwork, waste, and debt caused by the pursuit of the American Dream.i  It is a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition“…that is having a devastating impact on our families, communities, and the environment.  We have more stuff, but less time…our quality of life seems to be deteriorating.”ii  We seem to have little time for each other…we seem to have little time for God.  We grow ill from twisted priorities, from non-sustainable lifestyles, from constant running around.

Advertisers spread the sickness through manipulation, by telling us that we must have the latest electronic gadget – the newest ipod, blackberry, cell phone, or flat-screen high definition television set…in order to be truly happy.  We must have a larger house with that state-of-the-art kitchen, a perfectly manicured lawn, the newest SUV…in order to be truly successful.  And those who fall victim to the disease begin to measure their self-worth by what they possess and the size of their disposable income. 

And while we suffer from affluenza, we also grow more and more worried about the state of the world…a world of war and senseless killing; natural disasters and acts of terror; poverty and suffering.  In an article that appeared in The Wall Street Journal a couple of years ago entitled “A Separate Peace”, journalist and author Peggy Noonan writes that there is an unspoken subtext in our society right now.  She states “…that a lot of people are carrying around in their heads, unarticulated and even in some cases unnoticed, a sense that the wheels are coming off the trolley and the trolley off the tracks.  That in some deep and fundamental way things have broken down and can’t be fixed, or won’t be fixed any time soon.”iii  Noonan goes on to say that the privileged and elite of our society, “our educated and successful professionals” have made a separate peace in these troubling times, believing that “there is nothing they can do about it.”iv

It’s a rather bleak picture.  According to de Graaf and Noonan, we live in an age of anxiety, and we are either trying to stifle this anxiety through rampant consumerism, or making a separate peace with it through apathy, or both.

But today’s Gospel lesson gives us hope.  The story of the Transfiguration offers a way to heal the anxiety found in both our lives and our world.  But how do we seek this healing?  Well, that tacky card I received on my birthday and confirmation day, with the bad art on the front and those sappy words inside “May your life of prayer and loving service help to transfigure the world into the image of Christ.” tells us how.  Through the simple way of prayer and service.  This ordinary, undramatic way of prayer and service, the foundation of our Christian faith since the very beginning, is the healing balm that can transfigure our lives and transform our world.

The Gospel lesson begins with Jesus going up a high mountain with Peter, James, and John.  Luke’s version of the story states that they “went up on the mountain to pray.”v  And while Jesus was praying, “…he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white.  Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him.”vi 

We know from the Gospels that Jesus often went off alone or with his disciples to pray.  We know that Jesus was a person of prayer – that he desired to pray…for to desire to pray is to desire God.  It was through his constant prayer that Jesus communed with his Father, that he encountered his very nature as the Son of the living God.  But here, on the mountain…Peter, John, and James were allowed to witness this communion, this eternal relationship between Father and Son.  In the cloud that overshadowed them, they were also brought into communion with God, a communion that spreads throughout history from their forefathers Moses and Elijah to the Christian community today.

Through our baptism, we are all brought into this very same communion, this relationship between the Father and Son, expressed through the Spirit.  And we experience the unceasing love of this relationship through prayer.

It is through daily prayer that we experience God’s healing and transforming love; that we hear Christ’s voice say to us “get up and do not be afraid.”vii  It is through daily prayer that we begin to see that the things of this world can never make us truly happy.  Through our prayer we are able to gradually release our attachments and false notions of success, and our “affluenza” is cured as we realize that our happiness is found in God alone. 

Through our prayer; through our commitment to spend time with God – to rest in the bosom of God for just a few minutes each and every day – we are transfigured into people of true joy and peace.  As the Jesuit Thomas Green has said, our relationship to God is found mainly in “the day-to-day fidelity to undramatic growth.”  And it is exactly this day-to-day fidelity to prayer that transforms us and surrounds us with God’s dazzling light.

The story of the Transfiguration continues with Peter’s response to the wonder he has just seen.  Peter replies, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”

Peter wants to stay, to remain on the mountaintop and make three dwellings, to build a new place, a new Jerusalem.  But Jesus does not allow this to happen.  Despite this incredible, transforming experience, where the glory of God was revealed in dazzling light, Jesus knows that they must leave and go back down the mountain.  Jesus knows that he must face his suffering and crucifixion in order to redeem the world.

Peter cannot have his separate peace on the mountaintop, while the world below suffers from violence and corruption.  Peter cannot have his new dwelling place, his new Jerusalem, at least not yet – they must journey back to the old Jerusalem, and work to transform it into a city of love by bringing the transfiguration down to its people. 

We, too, are called to work for transformation.  We, too, are called into service; to help the poor and those who suffer; to bring the transfiguration to a dark world so desperate for its light.  We cannot remain in the dazzling light of God without sharing that light with others.  Prayer leads to action – action in service to the lonely, the hungry, the forgotten, and the outcast.

You see, the Transfiguration is not just a past event.  The Transfiguration reveals God’s ever-possible, ever-present,
ever-now alternative to our world of anxiety and suffering.  The vision that Peter, John, and James shared on the mountaintop is the vision that we own today—it is the vision that our church must continue to show to the world.  It is a vision of love—love of God expressed in prayer; and love of neighbor expressed in service.

This Wednesday is Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. The season of Lent, with its emphasis on self-denial, repentance, prayer, and fasting, is a good time to seek the things of God and receive healing from our anxiety; it is a good time to serve others through our acts of love.  So, during this Lent…to quote from a sappy, yet profound, religious greeting card…“May your life of prayer and loving service help to transfigure the world into the image of Christ.”

  © 2008

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