FCC Winchester

What this passage from the Gospel of Matthew makes clear is how central to Jesus his healing ministry was. Jesus was a healer. Someone described that his healing activities are so prominent in the Gospels that Jesus is either on his way to heal someone, coming from healing someone or in the midst of healing someone. Healing was so front and center that you could make the point that it was the point of it all.
John in jail asks his disciples to ask Jesus if he is the one who is to come. John was not so sure, for whatever reason and so he sends his disciples to ask and Jesus’ response is telling. He says “Go tell John what you hear and what you see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, those with skin disease are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” That he heals, in Jesus’ mind, is evidence that he is of God, the Messiah come to save.

I’d like to believe there’s joy here in this passage of the transfiguration of Jesus, that it’s not actually a solemn scene. I wonder at times if there is much more lightheartedness and laughter even in the scriptures than we allow for. Are we too serious sometimes? Am I too serious sometimes? I think probably so, here in our very serious worship services where there is no foolin’ around.  The kids give us permission to let loose a tiny bit and laugh and be antsy and be a little playful but then they leave we’re like “ok now, settle down, it’s time we get to adult things and get serious!” 

Jesus and the disciples went up to the mountaintop and Jesus became radiant and the disciples were terrified and Peter blows it again by suggesting memorials might be built and God gets angry at him and now Jesus must go down the mountain and walk his death walk to Jerusalem. And here we go into Lent and have to give things up and be disciplined and serious and have ashes rubbed on our faces this Wednesday and be reminded that we are going to die one day and that we are nothing but dust! 

Maybe you’ve heard about the kid at the funeral who hears the severe minister say “we are but dust” and the kid turns to his mom and says ”what the heck is butt dust?”

Stop this is not funny. This is serious. But seriously maybe we do a disservice to some of this when we make it only serious. Cause I think some of it has got to be joyful, right? Of course the passion and the crucifixion that we’ll come to at Holy Week is in no way joyful but we haven’t entered into Lent yet and we are not at the point of Jesus’ suffering and death and in Jesus there must have been equal parts joy too right? If he was fully God and fully human then his suffering and sorrow must have been as deep as any humans and his joy and enjoyment must have been as deep as any as well. Many Christians do the suffering and sorrow and judgement quite well, but give short-shrift to the joy and playfulness and and lightness that is equally in God if not more so in God. I mean, look at creation and tell me God is not playful as well as serious! 

11 of us from our church are beginning to meet and make plans for our Service-Learning Trip to South Dakota to the Pine Ridge reservation that we’ll do over the summer. I’m looking forward to it and the learning that will happen for us there and leading up to it. We’ll also volunteer on the reservation but we also know that the benefit will be as much to us as it is to them. 

As I begin reading a book by Ned Blackhawk called The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of US History, I’m struck by how it frames the violence in Minneapolis and Maine and ICE aggression against immigrants. While many of us are horrified by what’s going on, shocked as we watch the lawlessness of our own government and the violence perpetrated against citizens no less, we should remember that this isn’t unfortunately a departure from the nature of who we are as a country but endemic to who we are. Our present is so entangled in a terribly violent past of genocidal practices by European colonizers against the people who were here first and so entangled with the violence of slavery against Africans that this is really another chapter of government-sponsored violence in our land not some aberration or distortion of who we are as a country. We are so uncomfortable with that truth that there’s an aggressive campaign to white-wash our history again after we’ve just gotten real about it, to make a cleaner and more righteous picture of who we are, to reclaim once again the sinful Christian doctrine of manifest destiny, that God especially blesses the United States of America. Blessed are we who are meant to rule the world! 

But that is wrong...