Glimpses of Glory

Mark 9:2-9

February 22, 2009

Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.

For the past two years when Daniel has had his trade show in Anaheim in January, I have accompanied Lauren and their two daughters Sage and Story to Disneyland. At first, I thought that I would like to visit the happiest place on earth or that after getting through a long and busy Christmas holiday season and when ask what I was going to do next that I might say, “I’m going to Disneyland!” But as I reflect on our days of hopping between the Magic Kingdom and California Adventure, I realize that what I was more intrigued about is the wonder that I can see on Sage’s face.

It’s the gift of wonder and the sense of awe that I miss in my adult life that I can see on Sage’s face or for that matter on the faces of children everywhere. That’s what’s going on at the Mount of Transfiguration. In this glimpse of glory, God tries to give the disciples the gift of wonder.

In the middle of Mark’s gospel, Jesus takes his closest friends with him to pray on the mountain. Peter, James, and John think that Jesus is going to share some great secret with them. According to Luke’s version, the disciples couldn’t stay awake and dozed off. Their slumber is broken by the sound of voices and the brightness of the light. When their eyes are completely open they see Jesus’ face and clothes shining. Moses and Elijah are here. The disciples are so overwhelmed that they don’t ask themselves how they’re able to recognize Moses and Elijah. They just knew. It was like seeing Sage’s face when she met Sleeping Beauty! You just know that something awesome was happening.

A popular Jewish expectation was that leaders from Israel’s past would reappear at the coming of the kingdom. The presence of Moses and Elijah is for Jesus a sign of God’s approval. When the disciples saw what was happening, they were overcome. Peter’s comment, “Let’s make three houses” is to memorialize the moment because he didn’t want the moment to end. Peter was so enthralled by the sight that he didn’t know what to say. Then a cloud envelops them and from the cloud a voice, “This is my dear child, do what he tells you.” In other words, “Be quiet, Peter. Listen. Pay attention.”

Pay Attention

The voice from God is always instructing disciples to listen, pay attention, and catch a glimpse of glory every once in a while. The historian, Philip Toynbee argues that the basic command of religion is not “do this” or “don’t do that!” but simply “look!” Linguistic scholars believe the root “lig” in the word “religion” means “to pay attention” or “to give care.” To have a truly religious attitude is to pay attention to the glimpses of glory and give careful attention to other people. But somehow, as we have gotten older and have become adults, we have often forgotten that gift of wonder and that sense of awe.

The goal of the spiritual life is to live with wonder, but most days, wonder is a luxury we do without. In the comic strip Peanuts, Snoopy’s brother Spike, who lives in the desert, is sitting with his back against a cactus, writing a letter that says, “At night the sun goes down, and the stars come out; and then in the morning the sun comes up again. It’s so exciting to live in the desert.” We’ve gotten used to sunrises and sunsets, mornings and evenings, the moon and the stars. We’ve gotten used to music and art, friends and family, joy and sorrow. We have too easily grown accustomed to the wonders that surround us.

Two weeks ago while driving back from Southern California on 580 before the Altamont Pass in the late afternoon, I marveled at the landscape in front of me. I saw the dark thunder shower clouds touching the green hilltops and I received this sense of awe. I woke Joy up to see. For the past few days, as I look out from my home office, I can see the flowering trees knowing that by late summer, these buds will become juicy red and yellow plums. Now our walkways are speckled with white petals from these tree flowers reminiscing of white snow when we lived in the East Coast. These are gifts of wonder. When we pay attention to God’s natural creation, we can see glimpses of glory.

It would be a disaster if we pass through our one and only earthly life and miss its glories. We need to see the depths of beauty right in front of our office windows. To do that we don’t need to turn away from the ugly facts. Brokenness, tragedy, suffering, and war are real, but no more real than hope, joy and peace. If we live with a heightened sense of God’s presence in the world, then we’ll discover the gift of wonder that is just beneath the surface. We need a sense of awe or we’ll miss what’s most real.

Glory of God

“No one has seen God,” says John’s Gospel (1:18). But we do see God’s glory. We experience something of the gift of wonder and the sense of awe that characterizes God’s presence among us.

In scripture, whenever God is present, that is always a moment of glory. When God spoke to Abraham on that starlit night, it was an instance of God’s dwelling among us. When God heard the cry of the suffering people in slavery and told Moses that they were going to be delivered and when God spoke in the bush that flamed but was not consumed is the God who dwelt with us.

Then, again in the Exodus, the newly liberated people of God were told by God to pitch a grand tent, the tabernacle. The tabernacle was that place on earth where God graciously revealed himself. No matter where the people of Israel found themselves in the wilderness, God found them there and entered the tabernacle. There, God dwelt and was glorified.

And the prophets too. The prophet Joel prophesied that day when “you shall know that I, the Lord your God, dwell in Zion” (Joel 3:17). No sooner that Israel returned from the Babylonian exile, Zechariah preached to them, “Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion! For lo, I will come and dwell in your midst” (Zech 2:10).

God gives Ezekiel a vision of the temple now restored saying, “this is the place of my throne…where I will dwell in the midst of the people of Israel forever” (Ezekiel. 43:7).

When John’s Gospel says that in Jesus, God was dwelling with us, it is like John is saying to us: remember Abraham on that starry night? Remember Moses and the burning bush? Remember the prophets? Remember the tabernacle and the temple?

Jesus is the new tabernacle and the new temple. If you really want to see God present, dwelling among you, if you really want to worship God in all of God’s glory, if you really want to receive that gift of wonder and see glimpses of glory, then come to Jesus. God didn’t wait for you to come to him. God came to you in Jesus, making himself at home with you. Jesus is the dramatic, incarnation pitching of God’s tent, the building that is God’s new house, God with us.

Glimpses of Glory

When we see Jesus, we see God present, dwelling among us. Jesus is God here and now. You want to see God? God is standing right in front of you in Jesus. Because of the Incarnation that God dwells among us, than we can reasonably expect to see signs of God’s presence all over the place. We see God when we look up at night to see the stars. We see God when our breath is taken away in the splendor of beautiful landscape along the freeway. I see God in flowering trees. We can see God on the faces of children when they come face to face with Disney princesses.

God refuses to stayed locked up in heaven, remote and distant from us. God comes and dwells among us. When the disciples saw how Jesus was transfigured and his clothes became dazzling white such as no one on earth could bleach them, this tells us that God is among us. This is glorious!

We need to have a different notion of the meaning of “glory.” No doubt the thunder and lightning of Sinai was glorious or the elaborate rituals and complex design for worship in the wilderness tent was glorious or the grand architectural structure of the temple that Solomon built was glorious, but these are nothing compared with the glory of God that meets us in Jesus.

Jesus was rejected, ignored, marginalized, suffered, derided, died, and was buried. And that’s what Christians have learned to call “glory.” In all of this, even the most degraded and worst of it, we have come to see this as glory. God’s fullness of glory is found in Jesus.

Glory in Jesus is counter-intuitive to our values today. When Jesus was anticipating his almost certain death, he says to his disciples, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit…Now is my soul troubled. And what should I say…’Father, save me from this hour? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name” (John 12:23-28). Jesus’ cross is his greatest glory.

The question for us today is how can we see glimpses of glory in our lives? Those moments are unpredictable. We can’t force ourselves into a state of awe. Maybe I’ll get that sense of wonder when I visit Yosemite this year. Peter, James and John came down from the mountain and still didn’t understand what Jesus wanted them to see. How we experience the world depends on a hundred different things: how we feel that day, how the people around us feel, what’s on the front page, whether the sun is shining or the streets are frozen, whether we’ve had a good night or a sleepless one. Some days we are doing well to get through the day, but what we can always keep doing, though it may take a lifetime, is learning to see, notice, and pay attention. We can exercise our imagination as much as our reason. We can understand that there is no object and certainly no person, unworthy of wonder.

Being in Awe

We can choose to be astonished by the people around us. Unlike most of you, I have the privilege of coming to the church during the weekdays. Before I arrive at 7:30, there are already students waiting in front of our church to come in for the morning classes. They stomp us the stairs and fill up our classrooms. They use our restrooms and sit on the pew in front of my office waiting for the next class or for their friends. I get the chance to see these people who have made our church their place to learn five days a week.

When I meet them in the hallways and greet them with a “Good morning!” they are always delighted and appreciative that someone noticed them. But what amazes me is that they are just the group of people who come to church other than the group that comes on Sundays. As much as I love you, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people on the weekdays too. I chuckle inside when I hear them speak in Toisanese about picking up their grandchildren or what’s on sale at the local market.

I am in awe because the students who come to our church are God’s children learning English and walking around shining like the sun. The people around us, even you who I know well, shine like the sun.

We should wonder at ourselves. The mystery of you should keep you amazed. When middle C is struck on the piano the piston of bones in your inner ear vibrates exactly 256 times a second. Each day you think about 50,000 different thoughts—for some more than others. When you flex your hand you are using seventy different muscles. On the surface of your body there are as many bacteria as there are people on the surface of the earth. Maybe I should have skipped that one. You are an incredible work of creation. I stand in awe of you!

Sometimes people with a terminal illness discover a quality of life in their last days that has previously passed them by. We’re all terminal. Every day is a gift and opportunity. If we’ll open our eyes, then epiphanies, moments of God’s presence, sense of awe, like unopened gifts at every turn of the road and every stage of the journey of life. As we exercise our sense of wonder, we realize that the God beyond us is also in our midst.

Our everyday life isn’t everyday. The surface of what we see and hear isn’t all there is. When you laugh, when you cry, when you feel hope, open yourself to the possibilities. The potential God has placed within us is breathtaking. Christ calls his disciples to catch a glimpse of glory and live with a sense of awe.

Open your eyes. Listen carefully. Pay attention to God who is among us in Jesus Christ.

Let us pray.

Show us your glory, dear Lord Jesus. Give us the grace to see you more clearly, follow you more nearly, and love you more dearly, even when you are with us in ways we do not expect or always understand. We want to follow you if we can see you. Show us your glory today. Amen.