Sermons

Taking to the Road

Anne Emry
St. Matthew's Episcopal Church
February 3, 2008

The novelist John Gardner once said that there are only two plots to all the stories ever told: a stranger came to town, and someone went on a journey . These two plots come together in the story of how the disciples came to follow Jesus. Jesus was the stranger who came to town, and then they all went on a journey together.

By the time Peter, James and John find themselves on the mountain with Jesus, they have been with Him on the road, and active in ministering to the people of Israel, for three years. The Gospel passage for last Sunday told us about their call: Jesus, the stranger in town, said “Follow me.” And they did.

They made a big decision, without having all the facts. As Michael Lindvall says in his book, A Geography of God , “Their faith was first a matter of heart, which is probably true for most of us. We set off because there is something compelling about Him that we cannot yet organize intellectually. Like Jesus’ disciples, we drop our nets and follow. After three years on the road, we may be able to answer the question Jesus finally asked Peter: ‘Who do you say that I am?’”

Peter answered “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.” And Jesus responded: “Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church” (Matt16:15-19).

Peter, James and John, we follow our hearts and make the leap of faith. We learn to trust our intuition about Jesus, and we trust our experience of following him on the road. And the road itself is a teacher. Most of what we perceive about God can be encountered only in the act of following Him. The deepest understanding of spiritual life is hidden from the eyes of those who do not go forth to risk the spiritual road.

So you take the risk.

You pray when you are still unsure how to pray. You worship when you can hardly find the words to describe the one you worship. You trust when your eyes and ears give no supporting evidence, when it is only your heart that encourages you to take the next step.

But this journey requires both your heart and head. If belief is solely intellectual it will eventually harden into a dry, lifeless religiosity, with only ritual to keep it going. But if faith remains only the flowering impulse of your heart, it will wither, cut off from the roots of cognitive understanding. Faith without a foundation of reason, leaves only a vague sense of the spiritual that can dissipate like fog when it meets with the hard experience of this world.

The Gospel we heard proclaimed this morning begins: “Six days after Peter had acknowledged Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” The heart-stopping vision and the voice from the cloud of glory knocked the three disciples to the ground and left them in no doubt about who Jesus was. It would have forced them to believe, if they didn’t already.

But Jesus didn’t coerce them into faith, and he didn’t dazzle them with a sound-and-light show so they would believe. They were invited to the mountain top to witness his glory because they already knew who he was; after three years on the road, their trust had moved, step by step, into understanding.

Our intuition about God is shaped into faith by our creeds and prayers, our reading of scripture, and our experience of the community of faith. In worship and study we move, step by step, into understanding.

Study is a form of journey, leading us deeper into the text. First we read for what happened—who did or said something? But then we take a second look and wonder what else we can learn. Why, for example, are Moses and Elijah in this story? What does it mean to Peter, James and John, who were faithful Jews, and to us as Christians, that those two figures from the Hebrew Scripture appeared with Jesus?

Saint John Chrysostom answers that question in three ways :

• They represent the Law and the Prophets (Moses received the instruction and covenant from God, and Elijah was a great prophet). This supports the understanding of Jesus as the one who embodies the relationship between God and Israel. • They both experienced visions of God (Moses on Mount Sinai and Elijah on Mount Carmel). Here, they are present at another divine vision. • They represent the living and the dead (Elijah, the living, because he never died, but was taken up into heaven by a chariot of fire, and Moses, the dead, because he did experience death). This signifies that Jesus has dominion over the living and the dead.

Another parallel that speaks to this text is from Exodus. When Moses came down from Mount Sinai, “the skin of his face was shining, and the people were afraid to come near him.” (Ex34:30). Moses had to wear a veil to cover the brilliance that was written on his face from looking at God.

In the Transfiguration, Jesus was unveiled in his divinity for the first and only time, and he shone like the sun. The three disciples looked on Him and knew that they were looking on the brilliance of God’s presence. The disciples followed Jesus for three years. It may be no coincidence that it takes three years in Seminary to become an Episcopal priest. Last September, at the beginning of the Fall Semester, one of my professors said that the goal of our work in his class was to attain wisdom. He also said that wisdom is hard to measure and he wouldn’t be grading us on it. I have not yet attained wisdom, but I have begun to acquire books at an astounding rate. If you piled them, one on top of the other, my textbooks for two semesters are taller than I am. Father Eric, I am well on my way to having as many books as you have in your study!

It is easy to think of Seminary when we talk about the importance of studying sacred text and exploring important ideas about our faith. But it isn’t just for Seminarians. The Seminary in Berkeley offers programs for the larger community: on campus, online, and around the Diocese.

Just this week, I attended a conference there entitled “Sacred Text as Window,” which focused on the three Abrahamic faiths—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—who share sacred texts, but often interpret them very differently. One of the distinguished speakers, Father Peter Phan, was inspired by the title of the conference. He said, “Nobody looks at a window, unless they build or repair them. Most of us look through a window. But we can’t see everything that is on the other side. What we see is framed, limited. A window is transparent, but depending on the angle it can function as a mirror, reflecting your own perspective back to you. And it can function as a lens, but it might be tinted, rather than clear. What we see though a window might be different from what the scene looks like on the other side of the glass.”

He was speaking about our embedded assumptions in looking at someone else’s context, and acknowledging the potential for error in reading someone else’s sacred text without understanding what it means to them, or in reading our own if we don’t understand the historic setting. The Church Divinity School of the Pacific is a wonderful resource for the Bay Area, but it is not the only place for education in theology. It is important to know that there is also valuable religious teaching and learning that happens here at St. Matthew’s: in the Day School, in the Sunday school, in the Lectionary circles and Lenten series.

Bishop Katharine has said “I encourage you to remember that education is the right and responsibility of all the baptized, in a process that continues for as long as we have breath.” Lifelong learning, indeed. It is possible to believe that God exists—either as a reasonable intellectual assumption or because it was the creed you were taught—and never so much as set foot on the road. But that is no way to experience a journey.

Taking to the road, without all the facts, is trust set in motion. It is the heart stepping forward, on impulse. And the heart needs to take the head with it so that trust can lead to understanding, and to active ministry, as it did for Peter, James and John. Our baptismal covenant requires that we live as active Christians, following Jesus Christ in the journey of faith that lasts our entire lives.

If we don’t set foot on the road, how will we ever understand what the journey has to teach us? You have a choice. Will you take the risk? What is your answer to Jesus when he says “Follow me?”

Sermons

Taking to the Road

Anne Emry St. Matthew's Episcopal Church February 3, 2008

Anne Emry
St. Matthew's Episcopal Church
February 3, 2008