Reflection on Luke 9:28-43 - Trinity

 

The pastor found her just around the corner of the funeral home, sitting in the long-cut, Georgian lawn, staring forward.

“May I sit beside you?” the pastor asked.

“Sure,” the young woman said with a smile.

The pastor lowered himself, making an indent in the long grass; legs outstretched matching the young woman’s.

He looked over at her face and was confused by what he saw. What he expected to see was anguish. What he expected to see were red eyes and a running nose that required one of the pre-loaded tissues in his breast pocket. The pastor expected to be counseling a crushed soul who needed a savior in a harsh world.

Instead, he saw that the smile that she had given him still lingered as she stared forward across the lawn. Granted, it was a smile with a slight hint of pain, but a smile none-the-less.

“You’ve just lost your husband. I can’t believe you would have a smile left in you.”

“Not just my husband Reverend, but also my grandfather a month ago, and my best friend to an automobile accident two months ago.” After she spoke, there was a great silence. The smile lingered in the silence.

Finally breaking the silence the Pastor stated, “You know, when someone loses so many people in such a short period of time, it is normal to be angry with God. Some people wonder why bad things happen to good people. Still others wonder if God is good at all. This is all normal, in case you’ve felt any of it recently.”

“Thank you Reverend for your words, but I tend not to worry about the things I cannot know or answer. I don’t know why bad things happen to good people or if God intended all of these bad things to happen. Maybe, God wants to prove a point, or maybe they just happened. I don’t know. I don’t get riled up about such things. There are depths to God that I just cannot know, so I don’t worry about them. But, there is one thing that I do know…one thing that keeps me going…one thing that allows me to smile even now.”

The Pastor searched her face, waiting for the answer; waiting as a gentle breeze blew waves across the lawn.

As the woman indicated, there are just some things that we cannot know about God.

Oh, how we wish we could ascend the mountain with Jesus and his disciples, see the glory of God shining through Jesus, and listen in on the holy discussion that Jesus has with Moses and Elijah about the depths of God’s purpose. Oh, how we wish, like Peter, that we could pitch a tent with the three of them, and over the course of a few days be guided and enlightened by the deep truths of the Holy One. But, the reality is: such insights into the divine are short-lived and fade quickly.

I remember one night in college; I was pondering the depths of God’s grace in my mind.  No, I was not some holy child during my college years, I had a paper to write on the subject.  None-the-less, I was pondering God’s grace.  I was just on the edge of sleep, and at that very moment I had an insight. It was as if I had been brought up the mountain of God to see the depths of God’s heart. And, for one instance…one brief moment…I felt what it must be like for Jesus to love even an enemy so much that he would go to the cross for them.

I can remember that what I felt was an empathy that understood someone’s pain, their longings, their misguided desires to fix their world. For one brief moment, I felt what it must be like to have unconditional love with no reservations. But, it was just a moment later, and in the next it was gone.

It is weird, I remember that I had the experience, but I cannot for the life of me bring myself back to that mindset where I had that unconditional love with no reservations. That memory blew away just as quickly as it had come. The depth of God’s love that I understood for that brief moment is just as hidden today as it had been before that mountaintop experience. Some things just are not available to us to understand.

Maybe, it is because our visions of Jesus’ pure light are so brief that God gives us further instructions.  Maybe it is because of the inaccessibility of God’s depths…the inaccessibility to the answers to the questions such as “Why do we suffer?” and “Does God intend this evil for good?”…that God does speak out clearly from the cloud saying, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”

“Listen to him.”

Listen to Jesus.

In fact, this church’s vision statement practically is the transfiguration story.  Our vision statement, by the way, is the thing that guides who we are and who we could be as followers of Christ.  Our vision statement is: “Come and see, come and serve, follow Christ.”  “Come and see.”  Come and see who Jesus really is, the holy one…God’s very hands and feet come to the world.  He is the one revealed to us in the transfiguration. 

“Come and serve.”  We will get to that one in just a second.  It is “follow Christ” which gets at what God is saying when God booms that voice from the clouds, “Listen to him.”  We listen to Jesus. We look at his life. We pay attention to him.  We follow him.  And when we do, we will see who God is and what God cares about. 

And this is where the “come and serve” part off our vision comes into play.  When we see what God cares about, then we know how to serve God.

As we watch Jesus walk down the mountain, we do see, immediately, what God cares about. 

In the story, God cares about a child.  One of the lowly ones is brought to Jesus, infested with a terrible spirit. The child spits and snarls and screeches. No one else has been able to give him any help.

Maybe, no one believes that he can be helped. Maybe, no one believes that he is important enough to be helped. Maybe, people are afraid to even look at him. That is what people tend to do when they see the hopeless walking about, they tend to look away.

But, Jesus looked. He looked and he healed. Maybe, we do not know what it feels like to have God’s unconditional love…love that knows no enemies and fears no one…, but we know what it looks like. It looks like giving time to even the most lost of causes. Even people who are the most lost of causes are children of God.

“This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”

“Thank you Reverend for your words, but I tend not to worry about the things I cannot know or answer. I don’t know why bad things happen to good people or if God intended all of these bad things to happen. Maybe, God wants to prove a point, or maybe they just happened. I don’t know. I don’t get riled up about such things. There are depths to God that I just cannot know, so I don’t worry about them. But, there is one thing that I do know…one thing that keeps me going…one thing that allows me to smile even now.”

And, she pointed straight ahead. Ahead, the Reverend saw what looked to be a three year old boy spinning with his face to the sky with complete abandon. He recognized the boy as the woman’s son. The boy seemed oblivious to the pain surrounding his world.

“I smile because of him. I smile because Jesus cared that little children be given a fair shot at life.  In the Bible Jesus takes the time to stop what he is doing and heal children. Well, that boy right there deserves the same. He does not deserve a broken mother or a broken world. I smile because I love him, and he needs that love right now.”

The child stopped spinning, and waved to his mother and the pastor. The mother kept smiling and the pastor gave a smile of his own. It was a fake smile, of course. But, for the child it was the reassurance that life can be whole and new and wonderful again. The smile told the story of the cross...of death and resurrection. One does not need to understand the depths of God to understand the need for God’s unending love.