The Rev. Clare Fischer-Davies
St. Martin ’s Church
February 26, 2006
Last Epiphany B
Sooner or later, you have to come down off the mountain.
Peter doesn’t understand this – he is so completely overwhelmed by his incredible experience on that mountaintop, his only thought is to somehow preserve it. “Let’s build something!” he cries – make something permanent, tangible and substantial.
It’s just so fabulous being up there! He’s one of the inner circle – the chosen three invited up on the mountain to witness something none of the other disciples get to see. Look! Jesus is transfigured right before his eyes – and what do you know – Moses and Elijah appear with him and they all three have a conversation. Nothing like this has ever happened to Peter before – and he wants to figure out a way to make the experience last forever.
The Transfiguration is always the gospel lesson for the last Sunday of Epiphany. It’s the last image, the last teaching about Jesus that we carry with us as the Lenten journey begins. Jesus takes Peter, James and John up onto to a high mountain – to a place where everyone in Mark’s audience knows the boundary between heaven and earth is thin and permeable.
Up on that high place, three things happen: First - Jesus changes in appearance – he is himself, but more intensely, blazingly, gloriously himself than his disciples have ever seen him. Second – Moses and Elijah appear – the Law and the Prophets – the cornerstones of Jewish faith and tradition stand with Jesus – he is their equal, their partner. And third, a voice from heaven speaks – and repeats the words that we first heard at Jesus’ baptism. “This is my beloved Son – listen to him.”
No wonder Peter wants to make the experience last forever. No wonder he wants to build something that will enclose, preserve and protect that incredible moment of revelation.
But the intense white light fades, Moses and Elijah disappear, and Jesus and the three disciples start back down the mountain.
I didn’t know what to expect this week at the meeting of the Consortium of Endowed Parishes. I was not expecting a mountaintop experience – but I did think that I was going to be breathing some pretty rarified air. The member parishes of the Consortium represent significant financial and political assets; I knew this meeting was going to have a high concentration of alpha Episcopalians. Although I knew I had signed up for workshops, and had been told that I would soak up lots of useful and practical information, still I thought the meeting would feel like a mountaintop, withdrawn from the mundane, hand-dirtying details of daily life and work.
The first session opened with a presentation and conversation led by four rectors from parishes in Louisiana and Florida. They talked about the devastation of Hurricanes Katrina and Wilma, and about how the church responded. They discussed what it meant to have the church show up when government failed, how they coped and what priorities they set in the first few days, how their endowments made it possible for them to retain and pay staff, how the diocese supported and equipped them to keep operating, and what they had learned about being prepared for the next disaster.
It was perhaps just about the most meaningful and provocative hour I’ve ever spent in the church. I had expected something, if not quite mountaintop, at least removed from the grind of ministry in the trenches. Instead all of us were plunged down the mountain into a sober examination of how the church responded to the call to mission those natural disasters presented.
The whole conference was focused on mission, especially mission in response to unexpected, catastrophic events, and mission to the world’s poorest, hungriest and most vulnerable people. I was really surprised. I went to the Consortium meeting because we are members, and I figured it was expected of me, but I anticipated it was ultimately going to be mostly about how to protect and increase assets – after all, endowments don’t grow themselves.
I was wrong. This conference was about the responsibility of leadership. It was about how parishes like St. Martin’s, with significant resources, visibility in the community and a tradition of excellence, are positioned to advocate for change on the local and global level. Jim Wallis, author of God’s Politics, and the keynote speaker, made a passionate case for economic justice, not just as a Christian value, but as the most effective means the church has to make the world a more peaceful and humane place.
I just reread that paragraph and realized that some of you are now probably thinking that the Consortium encourages parishes to get rid of their endowments – and that I’m going to start urging St. Martin’s to sell our investments. No – what the Consortium wants member parishes to understand is that our economic assets give us both influence and accountability. Endowed parishes can find it temptingly easy to sit back, relax and let the endowment do the work – why worry about stewardship, about momentous mission projects – why worry about anything when you’re sitting on a pile – a mountaintop of stocks and equities?
What I discovered at the conference this week was a network of able, experienced, passionate and deeply committed Christians all coming down off that mountaintop in order to be faithful disciples.
In Mark, the story of the Transfiguration is book-ended by what scholars call a “passion prediction”. That is, right before Jesus goes up the mountain, and right after he comes down, he tell his disciples that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, be killed and after three days rise again. In between these two references to what awaits Jesus in Jerusalem, is the extraordinary experience on the mountaintop that reveals more about his true identity.
But the cross is still the future. It is the future before they go up the mountain, and it is the future when they descend. What has changed is that now, the readers of Mark - if not Peter, James and John - realize that Jesus’ suffering and death are a part of God’s redeeming work. “This is my beloved Son – listen to him.” His crucifixion will not just be another example of wanton human cruelty – it will be the healing of the world. But the cross is still the future.
I think part of the reason the Consortium exists is to remind endowed parishes that the cross is still the future. Those who have gone before us, who have left us the incredible gifts that make up our endowment, did not leave us that wealth so that generations later, we could sit up on the mountaintop and have a nice, safe, quiet religious experience.
The cross is still the future, and we are all called to follow Jesus down off the mountain and give our lives to the Kingdom. The rectors of those parishes in Louisiana and Florida have experienced the terrible shock and pain of the cross, but they have also experienced signs of resurrection, and their stories of hope for the future were as eloquent as their descriptions of catastrophe.
I was proud, in Alexandria, to be able to talk about how carefully our endowment is managed, how disciplined we are about using it, and about how the finance committee has a long-term goal of continuing to reduce our draw on the endowment to support operating expenses. In plain English, that means we expect within the next three to five years, to support our daily operating costs ourselves, which would free up the endowment to be used wherever the cross looms in the lives of people who are hungry, homeless, sick and powerless.
And that means all of us will have to come down off the mountaintop and embrace stewardship, not as an annual event, but as a way we order our daily lives in relationship to God and one another. It will mean, again and again, listening to me tell you how blessed this parish is – how truly rich you are in assets – not just financial, but in the assets of this glorious building, in your intelligence, energy, passion and hope for the future.
St. Martin ’s is tremendously well-endowed. Oh, other congregations have many more millions in the bank than we do, but I’d put our array of gifts up against anyone’s. Whatever cross may be in our future – I have no doubt that we have the resources to bear it – to follow where Christ leads – down off the mountaintop and into the world he gives up his life to save.
|
