Genesis 1: 26,27; Matthew 17:1-9

A moment of brightness

We stand a week away from the beginning of Lent.  We find ourselves on top of a mountain, reading a story we don’t quite know what to do with.  Peter and James and his brother John go up with Jesus. They are about to get a vision of Jesus that will scare him and will fill them with wonder.  They see Jesus in a dazzling light and hear the voice of God acknowledging Jesus.   But then just as quickly the moment is gone and when Jesus touches them they look up and only see Jesus.  Now with a text like this it is better to take a more poetic approach.  I was listening to a song by Don McLean called Crossroads and although it is not a religious song at all, I imagined that it could verbalize what Peter who had been at Jesus’ side, might have felt like at the time of this new dazzling experience: “Then lay your hands upon me now And cast this darkness from my soul. You alone can light my way. You alone can make me whole once again. We’ve walked both sides of every street, through all kinds of windy weather. But that was never our defeat As long as we could walk together. So there’s no need for turning back `cause all roads lead to where we stand. And I believe we’ll walk them all No matter what we may have planned.”

The three disciples experience a moment of brightness, a moment when they looked at Jesus and everything lit up for them. It’s like when there a bright bolt of lightning and you can suddenly see the landscape around you.  More often than not, friends, life is not like that at all. It is not like that at all.  Life can be a lot like the life of an anesthesiologist: long periods of sameness and even boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.   That light that the disciples saw was more like a flash in the pan.  Life is so mundane and often very difficult.  I think I am pretty correct in assuming that few of you today I have seen a bright vision of Christ just before coming to church this morning.  Visions like that are few and far between for most people.  Even going to church can be part of a routine.

Frederick Buechner (The Hungering Dark) recalls an evening many years ago when he was watching the Italian film La Dolce Vita in a small theater with some students. The movie starts with a helicopter flying over Rome, piloted by a couple of hot shots.  Underneath the helicopter a statue of Jesus with outstretched arms is dangling at the end of a rope.  The young men are on their way to the Vatican to deliver it. But on the way out they see beautiful young women in bikinis by a pool.  So they circle the building and try to set up a rendez- vous with the girls.  Buechner says that the students were laughing at this odd scene.  The acts of the young man seems so inappropriate and yet so funny.  But then the great dome of St. Peter’s comes into sight and the camera zooms in on the bearded face of Jesus which fills the screen and this is what Buechner writes:”…at that moment there was no laughter at all in that theater full of students and their dates and paper cups full of buttery popcorn and La Dolce Vita college-style.  Nobody laughed during that moment because there was something about that face, for a few seconds on that screen, that made them be silent-the face hovering there in the sky and the outspread arms. For a moment, not very long to be sure, there was no sound, as if the face were their face somehow, their secret face that they had never seen before but that they knew, if only for a moment, they belonged to.  I think that is much of what Christian faith is. It is for a moment, just for a little while, seeing the face and being still; that is all.”  Friends, for the three disciples, they saw that face in a whole new way.  And as a result they saw themselves in a whole new way.  Only in that moment did they fully understand the Lord they were serving.  And that raises a question about us?  How are we different, how are we changed, how are we transformed by the fact that we belong to that face, that face on the statue, that face lit up on that moment, that face on all the thousands of paintings, drawings, icons and statues made of Jesus.  How are we different because of it?  There is a poem by Yagi Jukichi, a Japanese poet (shared by Frederick Buechner in “the Hungering Dark)), about a face:” I first saw my face in a dream…I had gone to sleep paying to Christ and a face was revealed, not of course a face nowadays nor my face when I was young nor the face of the noblest of angels as I always picture in my mind…. And I knew at once it was my own…The next day when my eyes opened…in my heart was a strange calm.” Jukichi sows us a bit of hat divine light that is in all of us, as our text in Genesis so clearly says.

Friends, the story of the transfiguration is about how we are changed by our faith, how we become different people by belonging to the face of Christ.  Now you probably want me to say exactly what that should be for you, but for each of us that is a little bit different.  Being touched by Christ and by seeing the light is unique for all of us.  So think about this question:”How are you changed?” Thanks be to God.

COACH’S CORNER

Explorations X: asking powerful questions

Dear friends,

For nearly eighteen years the title of my contribution to our newsletter has been “coach’s corner.” So it is appropriate that I talk specifically about “coaching” in the Church.  In the last decade “coaching” of pastors and congregations has become increasingly popular. Rev. Tobin, the newly retired pastor of the Davis Community Church is planning to get certified as a “coach.” She wants to make it her retirement calling. At Presbytery she gave a little introduction about what she was learning at the moment and she quoted the work of Ronald Heifetz and Donald Laurie in Harvard Business Review (Jan-Feb 1997) and in their book Leadership on the Line (Harvard Business School Press, 2002).  They distinguish between “technical problems” and “adaptive challenges.”  This applies to many organizations. It made me think that at Parkview, as we go through our period of exploration, we can also make a distinction between “technical questions” and “adaptive questions.”  A technical question would be:” what material should we use to fix the roof” or “how can we safely increase seating during a concert” or ”how can we increase our income without asking for money and doing too many fundraisers” or “should we do a rummage sale this year?”  Adaptive questions are of a different nature. Those questions, when phrased correctly, make you sit up and wonder.  They push to a new perspective, a new way of doing things, such as “what is the cost of continuing as we are” or “how committed are we” and “how do we show our commitment?”  Another good one is “what would you do if you could not fail” or “what would success look like” or “ what is your vision for the next ten years” or “where do you see yourselves in twenty-five years“ and “what is God saying to you?”

Technical solutions are easily identified, can often be implemented quickly and require just one or two people to make a decision and are often reasonably well-received.  Adaptive question often lead to a change of values, beliefs, roles and relationships, there is more resistance to the answers and they often lead to required experimentation.  They are harder to identify, more emotionally taxing, but also more powerful.

It is these powerful, adaptive questions I think we should ask in our next exploration/ reflection meetings. The facilitators of your groups (and some other Parkview family members) will be meeting to formulate a few key adaptive questions on April 6 and we welcome your input before that.

Thank you for participating! May God bless both our questioning and our answering. See you in church.