Sermon for Sunday, February 11, 2024 || Last Epiphany B || Mark 9:2-9
I’ve noticed over the years that one of the enduring themes of my sermons has to do with perspective, with the manner in which we perceive our place in God’s creation. This is going to be one of those sermons.
The only way we perceive the world is from the standpoint of our own bodies. When I look up at a blue sky, I can’t be sure that I’m seeing the exact same shade of blue that you see because we have different configurations of all the little anatomical bits that make up our eyes. Beyond vision, think of a tall staircase rising before you. Someone with good, young knees might think nothing of climbing those stairs. But someone else with older, creakier knees might look for an elevator.
We practice humility when we remember that ours is not the only perspective that exists. We deepen our practice of humility when we also recognize that our perception rarely, if ever, comprehends the whole story. We see a beautiful sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean and watch the orange orb ascend into the sky. But is that what’s actually happening? No! We are standing on a point on earth which is rotating towards the sun. With this change in perspective on our minds, we look out at the horizon and remember that the horizon is simply the limit of our vision, not the limit of the earth.
In today’s Gospel lesson, Peter, James, and John encounter another change in perspective as they witness what we call Jesus’ “transfiguration.” For a brief moment, they see Jesus in a new way. The boundary between human and divine vision breaks down, and they perceive Jesus as a luminous being, full of the light of God’s love and blessing. The boundary between life and death breaks down, and they see Jesus speaking with Elijah and Moses. With this momentary gift of greater perspective, the three disciples recognize that these boundaries are far more permeable than they realized.
We have a tendency to erect artificial boundaries between the miraculous and the mundane. We do this because of our limited perspectives. We think of miracles as God intervening in some event or situation. But the very concept of intervention supposes that God is elsewhere to begin with. If we start from the faithful perspective that God’s presence is everywhere, then we have the opportunity to participate with that presence, to be in the midst of God’s movement. Rather than waiting for God to come, we recognize that God is already here, no matter the event or situation.
Because God is already here, we believe that God “directs everything toward fulfillment.”1 We call this God’s “Providence,” and we get to participate in this divine activity. Theologian Paul Tillich says, “God’s directing creativity always creates through the freedom of [humanity] and through the spontaneity and structural wholeness of all creatures.”* In other words, all of creation, including us, partners with God to bring creation to its fullest aliveness. What we perceive as miracle or coincidence or luck or happenstance is part of this directing creativity. When we change our perspective to account for God’s Providence, we can begin to perceive the great tapestry of relationships that God is weaving toward fulfillment.
I know this is a heady discussion, so I’ll use the rest of my time to tell a story that illustrates a moment of God’s Providence in my life. It is a simple moment, but even simple moments can be shot through with the miraculous.
The date is December 2009. The place is Berkeley County, West Virginia. I woke up to about a foot of snow outside, the beginning of a whopper of a blizzard that would eventually dump 30 inches on the mid-Atlantic region. The problem for me was that I didn’t have a shovel. I got out my broom and fended off the wall of snow that was creeping up my front doorway. We’ll leave me at my front door for a moment and back up to the early months of that year, when a dear man from my congregation named Marvin purchased a new car. He had been getting tired of his old Buick, and so he went for a shiny, silver Japanese sedan. But within a month of driving the car off the lot, Marvin fell ill.
The cancer had been growing slowly, and for a time, the doctors held it at bay. Marvin spent several weeks in the hospital, until the medical staff, his family, and he decided that being comfortable in his own bed at home was as good for his condition as any drug. For several more weeks, he held on, making his wife Ruby laugh and cry, joking with the hospice nurses, and slowly disintegrating from the inside. Not until his final day did the awareness, the flash in his eye, fade. He died in July, leaving his loving wife, a daughter, grandchildren, a cluttered house full of memories, and a brand new silver Japanese sedan.
Fast forward from midsummer to mid-autumn. A deer ran into my little Korean car on the way home from a soccer game, and the insurance company whisked away my Kia to the total loss center to be evaluated. For some foolish reason, I didn’t have rental coverage as part of my insurance plan. But I did have something even better: Ruby, who I’ve talked about many times in sermons. She found out that I was without a car, and asked (in her sweet, typical fashion) if I would help her out: “You see, Marvin’s car’s been sitting in the garage since summer and if it doesn’t get driven, it will start to fall apart. I would be very pleased if you would drive it for me.”
I readily agreed to the arrangement, all the while smiling to myself because she made it sound like I was the one doing her a favor. After two weeks, my damaged car finally made it to the auto shop, the insurance company having decided it was worth repairing. I hoped to have it back by Thanksgiving, but the mechanic found more damage than the original estimate covered, which necessitated another visit from the adjuster. So when will it be done, I asked; by mid-December, the mechanic promised. “Keep the car as long as you need to,” Ruby said.
I called the auto shop in mid-December, “We took the car for a spin,” said the mechanic, “but it needed realigning so we put it on the lift and noticed something. Did you say your insurance company took the car to a total loss center first?” Yes, I said, not liking where this conversation was going. “Well,” the mechanic continued, “at those places, they use this kind of crane to lift the cars… We’d’ve never noticed it if we hadn’t put the car on the lift, but it looks like the crane cracked the fuel tank. So I need to get your adjuster out one more time to look at it.” Great, I thought. How long, I said. Another couple of weeks, what with the holiday and all, came the answer.
Two days later, the snow hit. With broom in hand, I stood on the front stoop and looked at the snow-covered Japanese sedan. The car had been driven a total of 317 miles before I took the wheel. I had put nearly two thousand miles on it during the last month. I thought about that dear man Marvin, a practical fellow, who bought the car last winter. I trudged out to the sedan, swept the snow from the trunk, and opened it. Inside was a shovel.
Now that’s Providence.
Banner Image: The snowstorm in question, along with my very cunning winter hat.
- The full quotation is: “Providence is a permanent activity of God. He is never a spectator; he always directs everything toward fulfilment. Yet God’s directing creativity always creates through the freedom of man and through the spontaneity and structural wholeness of all creatures.” (Tillich, Paul. Systematic Theology. Vol 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951 (p. 266)) ↩︎
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