[Propertalk] Last Epiphany

[Ann Fontaine]

Some yeast for our discussion - kind of quiet this week??  Maybe  
everyone is immersed in Lenten prep?

Ann

 From Out of Nowhere by Lane Denson

Epiphany last/Transfiguration (Mk 9.2-9)

When the prophet Elijah was called by God, he searched for the  
evidence of that call in some spectacular sign -- earthquake, fire,  
wind, thunder, lightning. His answer came, instead, not nearly so  
grandiose, but in the familiar King James Version's  "still, small  
voice" and in the later American Version's far more poetic and  
lovelier "sound of gentle stillness" (1 Kgs 19.12 AV).

That may often be the same for us. Like Elijah, we look for signs,  
rather than simply listen for them.

The Transfiguration tells such a story. No noise, just a super  
wardrobe malfunction. It would be hard to imagine a more brilliant  
scene than that of Jesus's consort with Moses and Elijah and having  
his garments suddenly lit up like half-time at a rock concert. We  
can't fault Peter, James, and John for being overcome and wanting to  
negotiate a more permanent arrangement. It was only natural. It is  
only natural with us churchers. Majestic cathedrals, fancy vestments,  
great music and liturgy, all pointing to us in the hope that maybe  
like those disciples, the world will want to negotiate and join up.

The Voice from the clouds up there on the mountain says, simply, "This  
is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased." These were God's words  
at Jesus's baptism. But the  Transfiguration story seems to suggest  
that there's been an attention deficit in the meantime, as if that  
simple recommendation was not enough. There on the mountain, the Voice  
adds a simple command... "Listen to him."

Perhaps this story is about witnessing. Witnessing that takes at least  
two forms. The obvious and more common  one is telling the story of  
our experience as a people with God, enacting our story, making it as  
attractive as we possibly can. The perhaps less obvious way of  
witnessing is to listen to the other's story, the neighbor's story,  
the world's story, listening for God presence, for Christ in the  
other. Listening, giving audience, paying attention may be, after all,  
a most profoundly magnetic and winsome way of witnessing. Listening  
for the "sound of gentle stillness."

"This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased; listen to him."

In his little monograph, "Reaching Out," Henri Nouwen rings changes on  
the Great Commandment to love God and neighbor as self.  He calls our  
growth in fulfilling this commandment "spiritual maturity" and  
describes it as offering audience to self and to neighbor and to God.

That we don't listen to ourselves, he suggests, results in our  
profound loneliness. There's a saying around Alcoholics Anonymous  
circles that "boredom is a personal insult." Whereas, to give  
ourselves unrestricted, unconditional audience, Nouwen says, defines  
the difference between loneliness and truly creative solitude.

As well with our neighbors must be our gift of audience, of truly  
listening without condition, without planning our next speech, opening  
from hostility to a true and welcome hospitality. And finally does  
Nouwen say, we must offer such audience to God without condition, by  
opening up from mere illusions about God to attentive prayer. Or put  
another way, by attending not to God as we understand God, but prayer  
as searching, enquiring of God to discern how God understands us and  
the ways in which he has imagined us to become.

Deafness comes in many forms... arrogance, vanity, compulsive talking,  
dismissiveness, aloofness, and, so much more subtly, through an  
obsession with always having to be right (and just happening to have  
the biblical text on hand to prove it). The church is called to be a  
listening community, a community where the deaf can be healed. There  
is much in our corporate worship to hear. Great stories of our long  
family history. Thoughtful prayers. Better than average hymns. And, of  
course, each other with mutual and peaceful greetings, exchanges, and  
catching up. But our good liturgy also offers us moments in certain of  
its parts when we can simply be silent, listening, reflecting on what  
or who we have just heard or seen, surely awed by the majesty of the  
possibilities of access to God's grace.

The prophet Isaiah once admonished us in one of his more provocative  
ways to "Seek the Lord while he wills to be found... " (Is 55.6a)   
Thankfully, God was more gently gracious to those who waited for Jesus  
on the Mount of Transfiguration and for those who wait for him here  
when he said, "This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!" (Mk 9.7)


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Ann Fontaine
Wyoming GC2009 c3

http://seashellseller.blogspot.com

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