Luke 9:28-43a

Last week I mentioned Sallie McFague’s book Life Abundant and her story about writing God’s name more than her own. I got about a paragraph further in that book when I was inspired to write another sermon. Reading one woman’s spiritual autobiography helped me to start my own. Not in paper but in sermon form.

Throughout our lives, we change. We’re supposed to. If you were the same as you were when you were 5 and nothing ever changed about you what would be the point of the rest of your life? We are destined throughout our life to transfigure. To be astonished. To be awed. To become something new and greater than the flesh and blood that came of this earth. To shift your focus from the outside world, to the inside world, to the divine world. Perhaps our soul mission in life is this transfiguration. To become a reflection of God. When God’s name becomes superior to our own, we do indeed glow from the inside out. Maybe not to the extent of Jesus Christ, but then again, maybe we can if we’re willing to see it.

Have you ever met someone like that? Someone who just glowed with the holy spirit? There are Sunday’s I feel like I should! Maybe not this Sunday and not at this moment but there are definitely times when I stand in front of a group of a people and speak and I can just feel God radiating all around and I wonder “Can they see it too?”

Sallie McFague writes the definitions of sin and salvation in her book that I just love the more I think about it. She says sin is when we are the center and salvation is when God is the center.

Short simple, beautiful and… terrifyingly possible. Sin is when we are the center and salvation is when God is the center. Sin is when anything is about us and salvation is when they’re about God. Either your life is about you or your life is about God. Either you are doing something for you or you’re doing it for God.

You’ve heard me say it before and I will say it time and time again. It isn’t so much about what we choose to do or not do in life, it’s all about WHY we choose to do something or choose not to do something. Do we do it because it brings us closer to God or do we do it for ourselves? Wouldn’t it be easy if when you were in doubt about whether or not you should be doing something you just asked yourself “Am I doing this for God?”

If your reasoning is you’re doing it to make yourself feel good, because you want it or because you think someone else needs it. Wrong answer. You aren’t in charge of their life, only yours. So, either you do it for God or you do it for yourself. Because you want it, because you don’t want to feel guilty, because you’ll feel better if you do it any of those are doing it for you. Or, you do it for God.

Just as we hunger and thirst for God, we can also hunger and thirst so for ourselves. I’m going to make a judgment call on my own personal experience here. Anyone hunger or thirst not because they were actually hungry or thirsty but maybe because they wanted unwanted feelings to go away?

Maybe you were lonely or depressed and feeling down about yourself and thought perhaps some chocolate, a cake, or an entire carton of ice cream eaten with a spoon might help? Or something rough happened, lost a job, a broken relationship, someone you love died, and you thought maybe a bottle of something strong might make it go away at least for a few moments? Was that hunger and thirsting for God or yourself? And… how’d that work out for ya?

Remember what I said last week about having to practice to use God as your coping skill? Yeh… reflecting anything but God from your soul has a tendency to come back to haunt us like that.

Let’s take a look at what our disciples have been up to. They come down from the mountain and immediately a crowd gathers. One man, desperate, shouts “Teacher, I beg you to look at my son; he is my only child and he needs your help. I begged your disciples, but they could not.”

Do you think when the disciples came back to Jesus, maybe as they were hiking up the mountain together to mentioned this incident?

“Oh, Jesus, by the way… while we were umm… supposed to be going around healing people… we kind of… didn’t.”

Or do you think the disciples decided to keep quietand hope that it just stayed buried under the rug?

When Jesus asks “How was your day.” The disciple’s response was “Fine.” Like talking to a sullen teenager.

Funny how reflecting anything but God from your soul has a tendency to come back and haunt you isn’t it?

I can just imagine the look on the disciples faces as they come around the corner of the mountain and there is this man, this man that they knew, this man that had begged them on his hands and knees to save his child just waiting there… with a crowd of people.

Oh, that’d be embarrassing. I’d want to crawl under that rug myself.

Jesus doesn’t seem too happy here about it either. But, he’s Jesus so he gets over it quickly. “You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and put up with you?”

Jesus quickly finds God, his center. “Bring your son here.”

Remove the “I” and the accusatory “You’s” from a sentence and suddenly it changes your center from yourself, to God.

Now, why couldn’t the disciples heal the boy?

How about we read on for a moment…

While everyone was marveling at all that Jesus did, he said to his disciples, ⁴⁴ “Listen carefully to what I am about to tell you: The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men.” ⁴⁵ But they did not understand what this meant. It was hidden from them, so that they did not grasp it, and they were afraid to ask him about it.

⁴⁶ An argument started among the disciples as to which of them would be the greatest. 

They did not grasp the problem.

The were afraid to ask about it.

How’s your day? Fine. Now, let’s talk about how great we are and pretend our failures didn’t happen.

And so, I ask you, again, why do you think the disciples couldn’t heal the boy?

The disciples were not reflecting God from their souls were they? The disciples thought that they, themselves, were the ones who would be doing the healing. They thought that they were the center. That they were the source of power. There were too many accusatory “You’s” in their sentences and too many “I’s.”

Was it ever the disciples who were healing people? Who is thinks maybe when the healing didn’t take place they blamed the one being healed? Maybe that man committed some sin that passed on to his son? Maybe his son did something and that’s why he’s sick. Obviously the man or the son doesn’t have enough faith right? Couldn’t be me. Wrong.

Who was doing the healing? The disciples? The faith of the man or the boy? Nope.

God and God alone. God was working through the disciples but it wasn’t the disciples themselves who were capable of anything. The disciples had not yet learned to be reflections of God.

Jesus took the disciples up the mountain, gave them an opportunity to repent of their sinfulness, of their thoughts that they were the center. While on the mountain, Jesus showed them the transfiguration that was possible if they were willing to let go of themselves being the center and know that God is the center.

The disciples could not channel God because God was not being reflected from within them.

Sin is when we are the center and salvation is when God is the center.

And they were all amazed at the greatness of God. That’s the final line of our gospel reading today, isn’t it? And they were all amazed at the greatness of God. God is the center.

Do you want to be transfigured? Do you want to be able to glow from the spirit within? Our souls are like tiny mirrors we can either reflect what’s in front of us or we can reflect the one who made us.

Which do you want sin or salvation? The answer lies in the center.

Who’s there? You or God?

Reflecting God comes from the Holy Spirit being at your center, Jesus Christ at your side and God in front of you leading the way. God can only transfigure you if you let him. God can only make you shine if you let him. God can only do this is God is the center, not you.

Sin is when we are the center and salvation is when God is the center.

This day as we prepare our hearts to receive the blessing of Holy Communion. Let us first acknowledge and repent of every way we have put ourselves in the center.