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The Rev. Dr. Dennis E. Morey, Pastor
Scripture: Luke 9:28-36
The Look Of Love
God is at work among us. In fact God is working in you and me. Something important is happening. Something is going on inside each of us. Maybe you have noticed there are some changes happening in your attitude or your mood? Even in the gloomy days of winter, there is a spark building in you.
You have come to this place today to worship God. There are at least a hundred other things you could be doing during this time but you chose to come to this place to join your voice with the voices of others in praise to God.
You may be thinking you have come today to meet your friends, or maybe to hear the music or because you had a special part in the worship service. You may be thinking you have come to get your spiritual batteries recharged.
God has caused you to come to this place today as part of what God is doing in your life.
At your age, with what you have experienced in life, with all that you have ahead of you and with the exact number of years you have left in this life, God is at work in you.
God created each of us. God chose our parents and grandparents all the way back to the beginning, so that the person who is uniquely you could be born and live in this place during this time in history.
God orchestrated your DNA, put you together so that you can be a part of the miracle of God’s love at this time.
God did not just put us together and then let us go. God continually molds us, gives us choices, and forms us every day in his image.
God not only made you to experience God’s love, but God is making you a part of the means through which God will love someone else.
God has called each of us to be a part of God’s family, working together for God’s Kingdom.
Next Sunday is the first Sunday of Lent, a time when traditionally we are supposed to look deep within our souls and see our need for God.
This year I want to turn that around. We all already know we need God. We don’t need to spend our time discovering that. If you don’t think you need God in your life, there are some serious lessons waiting for you.
I want Lent, these next six weeks until Easter, to be a time for us to take a look at the fact that God is working in our lives. God is molding us, calling us, and forming us to be the best Kingdom participants we can be.
God is at work in you, changing you and forming you to be the best possible recipient of God’s love and the best possible distributor of God’s love.
Now maybe your life is just fine the way it is. Maybe you think you don’t need pressure from the pulpit that challenges you to stretch your spiritual muscles and grow in your faith. Maybe you think the pulpit is supposed be your source of encouragement and comfort, helping you hold on to the status quo in a progressively stressful and deteriorating society.
There are pulpits designed for comfort; in fact, funeral home pulpits specialize in comfort.
It is true we all live with pressures. We know what happens in the weather when high pressure meets low pressure. A storm erupts.
When you get high pressure from the pulpit to get into this love God has for us, this love that Jesus died for, and you want to maintain the low pressure of the comfortable, the status quo, you can expect a storm.
Peter, James, and John were following a low-pressure teacher. Jesus healed people, he fed people, and he met the needs of everyone he encountered. The disciples just followed along and were amazed.
Jesus showed the fishermen where to catch fish, he brought a little girl back to life, and this whole new life for the disciples was just one thrill after another. Jesus asked them, “Who do you think I am?” Peter declared Jesus to be the Messiah of God.
From that point on, the pressure began to build. Jesus told them that he would be turned over to the religious authorities and be killed. He said that if they were to find this new life he was talking about, they would have to forget themselves, take up their part of the responsibility and follow where he led.
He said, “If you want a life of low pressure, you will end up with a meaningless life. If you follow me, it will be high pressure, but in the end you will have really lived a life that counted for God’s Kingdom.”
Some believe this event of transfiguration took place at night. Jesus, Peter, James, and John went up the mountain to pray. We read that the disciples “were heavy with sleep.” There, as Jesus was praying, something about him changed. Luke says his clothes became “dazzling white.” The original Greek meaning is that his clothes “flashed like lightning.” The Greek word in the text of the Gospel of Matthew and Mark is metamorphosis, which means to change from one thing to another, or to literally become on the outside what is on the inside.
At this point, in what we call the “transfiguration,” Jesus became on the outside who he was on the inside.
The Spirit of the Lord was upon him, since his baptism. The Holy Spirit working through him made Jesus able to do those miracles. His human body was a kind of veil that covered the glory he had inside. That glow inside him that those three disciples saw made his clothes shine white.
If any of us had any idea of the power of God inside us, we would be amazed to see how the thick human veil we wear blocks out the power and the glow God has put inside us. We wear a think human veil of worry over what to do next, regret that we have made a bad decision, and apprehension about the future.
What would happen to our mood, our worldview, our anticipation for the future if we really believed God loves us? Would we go around with such dull looks on our faces and such gloomy hearts?
Some Christians have a very thick veil. They deliberately try to hide their faith. They work at not showing their faith. They try to cover up the fact that the Holy Spirit dwells in them. When something about God is brought up, they quickly become determined to stay out of the conversation, even if what is being said is wrong.
At school when others are doing what we know is wrong, we may join in so we don’t stick out. We cover up our faith in Christ; we stifle the Holy Spirit, the power and the glow God has put in us.
We want to fit in. We don’t want to be too obvious about our faith, and so the veil grows thicker. We don’t let the light God has put in us shine. We are afraid of what would happen if we really got involved in what God has called us to do.
A great-grandmother who had never flown in an airplane booked a flight to see her ancestral home in Holland. When she sat down in the plane she buckled up her seat beat, gripped the arms of the seat, and squeezed her eyes shut. Lifting her small body off the seat a bit she tensed up as the plane began to ascend and she held her breath.
The steward came by and saw her eyes squeezed closed, touched her on the arm and asked, “Madam is everything all right?” She replied, “Tell me when it is O.K. for me to let my full weight down.”
If we really let our weight down, if we really relaxed and let God’s love shine through us, what an effect we could have on the world around us!
If any of us really let loose and allowed the presence of God that is dwelling inside us to show, look out! We would be spending time with God in prayer. We would be reading and enjoying God’s word. We would have a smile on our faces, secure in all the good things God has lined up for us. We would be working and attracting others for God’s Kingdom at lightning speed.
We’d be organizing mission trips to go and work and help. Already, even in February, we would be packing shoe boxes to send to Operation Christmas Child next November, each of us determined to send at least 12, one for each month of the year. Every time we pass the crayon aisle we’d buy a box, collecting school supplies to send again to Kenya next January.
We would be talking to our co-workers about our faith, we would be encouraging young people to follow Christ’s way, and every person we came in contact with would see the glow, the look of love inside us.
We can’t imagine the power gathered here today in this room, dwelling inside each of us. Even with this group of people our ages, some are too young, and many too old, by the standards of our society, to have much effect at all.
If we really allowed ourselves to begin to show that look of love on the outside that is there on the inside, we would be changing the world around us. There would be a look of love on our faces, a glow about our lives that would be attracting others to God’s love.
There is such great potential in us, such great power ready to be unveiled. If this group of about 100 of us began to show on the outside who we are on the inside and each of us invited just one person to come to worship this coming week; next Sunday we would have this building filled and seriously need to consider going to two services. If each of those invited one person and that happened the next week and every week thereafter, by Easter Sunday there would be 3,200 people gathered here for worship.
That kind of power is in us, if we are followers of Jesus Christ. We have that same Holy Spirit in us that was in Jesus. Jesus promised his followers that they would receive the Holy Spirit.
Do we have any idea what would happen to the problems at home if we dropped the veil, if we began to show on the outside who we are on the inside? What would happen to our finances? What would happen to our neighborhood and to the schools, the churches, and the whole community?
When Jesus met with Moses and Elijah, he knew he could really let go, and the veil fell away, and the disciples saw on the outside who he was on the inside. God wanted them to see Jesus without the veil so they could understand that indeed he alone is the Son of God.
In the Call to Worship today we read about how Moses’ face glowed because he had been on Mt. Sinai getting the Ten Commandments in the presence of God, and the leaders of the people literally put a veil over his face so he could go about his daily business among the people. It was too much for them; they could not look at such a glow. They weren’t ready for such a thing.
The day will come when Jesus returns and sets up a Kingdom that will have no end. Until then we are working toward that and we are rehearsing for what it will be like to live forever in God’s presence. We don’t have to live with this veil that hides our faith.
God believes we can be on the outside who we are on the inside. God has given us the Holy Spirit; there is a glow in all of us that is there for the purpose of attracting others to God’s Kingdom. It is what our ailing world needs most.
When Jesus comes there will be justice, but until then it is “just us.” The world depends on us, the followers of Christ, the lovers of God, to help the world around us get a glimpse of what it is like to know God.
Dropping the veil that covers who we are on the inside is not an easy thing to do. We need God’s help. That help can come only if we are in close contact with the God whose idea this is.
Jesus told the disciples that, if they were serious about following him, they had to take up their cross, they had to get serious about their responsibility. He did not promise a bouquet of flowers.
Jesus didn’t try to sugarcoat his call to ministry. Instead Jesus wanted to tell his disciples that it was going to be tough to cast off the veil. It was going to be tough to reorganize priorities and allow the glow of God’s love to show in us.
Matthew 5:14 records Jesus as saying,
You
are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid.
No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on
the lamp stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the
same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your
good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
Where does that light come from? It comes from the Holy Spirit dwelling in us. It comes from our yielding our life agendas to God’s plan. When we allow the veil to drop, the light created by the Holy Spirit inside us will begin to shine. It is that light in us that conquers the world’s darkness. It is that light that will change the world around us.
Amen.
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Luke 9:28-36 (From the
New Revised Standard Version of the
Bible) |
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