Message: “Unselfing” : Thin Places Between Here and There, Sunday, February 19, 2012 Transfiguration

A thin place between what was and what will be.....

 

 

 

 

Date – February 19, 2012 Place – SAPK

Text – 2 Kings 2: 1-12; 2 Corinthians 4: 3-6; Mark 9: 2-9;

Psalm 50: 1-6

Occasion – Last Sunday after the Epiphany; Transfiguration

Other Info – Theme: “What is God Up To?”

Sermon Title: “Unselfing”

2 Kings 2:1-12
2:1 Now when the LORD was about to take Elijah up to heaven by a whirlwind, Elijah and Elisha were on their way from Gilgal.
2:2 Elijah said to Elisha, “Stay here; for the LORD has sent me as far as Bethel.” But Elisha said, “As the LORD lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.” So they went down to Bethel.
2:3 The company of prophets who were in Bethel came out to Elisha, and said to him, “Do you know that today the LORD will take your master away from you?” And he said, “Yes, I know; keep silent.”
2:4 Elijah said to him, “Elisha, stay here; for the LORD has sent me to Jericho.” But he said, “As the LORD lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.” So they came to Jericho.
2:5 The company of prophets who were at Jericho drew near to Elisha, and said to him, “Do you know that today the LORD will take your master away from you?” And he answered, “Yes, I know; be silent.”
2:6 Then Elijah said to him, “Stay here; for the LORD has sent me to the Jordan.” But he said, “As the LORD lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.” So the two of them went on.
2:7 Fifty men of the company of prophets also went, and stood at some distance from them, as they both were standing by the Jordan.
2:8 Then Elijah took his mantle and rolled it up, and struck the water; the water was parted to the one side and to the other, until the two of them crossed on dry ground.
2:9 When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, “Tell me what I may do for you, before I am taken from you.” Elisha said, “Please let me inherit a double share of your spirit.”
2:10 He responded, “You have asked a hard thing; yet, if you see me as I am being taken from you, it will be granted you; if not, it will not.”
2:11 As they continued walking and talking, a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them, and Elijah ascended in a whirlwind into heaven.
2:12 Elisha kept watching and crying out, “Father, father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!” But when he could no longer see him, he grasped his own clothes and tore them in two pieces.

Psalm 50:1-6
50:1 The mighty one, God the LORD, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting.
50:2 Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth.
50:3 Our God comes and does not keep silence, before him is a devouring fire, and a mighty tempest all around him.
50:4 He calls to the heavens above and to the earth, that he may judge his people:
50:5 “Gather to me my faithful ones, who made a covenant with me by sacrifice!”
50:6 The heavens declare his righteousness, for God himself is judge. Selah

2 Corinthians 4:3-6
4:3 And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing.
4:4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
4:5 For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake.
4:6 For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Mark 9:2-9
9:2 Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them,
9:3 and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them.
9:4 And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus.
9:5 Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”
9:6 He did not know what to say, for they were terrified.
9:7 Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”
9:8 Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.
9:9 As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.

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We are standing on the edge of another in-between, a thin place at which this world and the next touch. It is a week in which there will be a strange admixture of the sacred and profane, so-called; this Tuesday is Mardi Gras, Fat/Shrove/Pancake Tuesday. It was called Fat based upon a custom of eating up all of the richer, fatty foods on the day before the fasting period of Lent began – hence, Pancake Tuesday in which the fats in the house were used up to cook up a simple dish. ‘Shrove’ is from the word ‘shrive’, meaning ‘to write out a penance’, referring to the practice of confession in preparation for the upcoming season.

For us as a congregation, this is a special Tuesday for another reason: it is a time of publicly announcing a renewed partnership between Kingston Street Truck Mission and our Special Meals Ministry which have both been in ministry for over 20 years right next to one another. For a long time, there has been a commercial van-type of truck parked in front of the entrance to Barclay Chapel. Every evening from mid-autumn to end-April, the Truck has been open to assist people whose lives have been referenced on the streets of Kingston. A warm place to sit, socks, sweaters, gloves and overnight bedding, simple hot liquids, soups or noodles that can be prepared from boiling water – all of these have been served up in the name of Christ and for the sake of human dignity and respect which accrue to any of God’s living creations. There has been a metaphoric thin-place right on our doorsteps with the Kingston Street Truck Mission and through the commendable efforts of this congregation in a Sunday-meal ministry carried out in Gill Hall accessed from the parking lot outside. Well, as of March 1^st, their Mission is dropping the word ‘Truck’ from their name because our partnership involves them coming indoors. It’s mutually beneficial, for their excellent volunteer organization is also assisting us in ramping up again with Special Meals. You’ll hear more about it when you come on Tuesday for our Pancake Supper, 5 to 7 PM right in Gill Hall. The truck will be parked for the day in our parking lot so you can take a tour through it to get a sense of what it’s been about. Ted Hsu, our local MP, will be present – we’ll hear stories about how KSTM, now KSM, has had an impact on folks, — there will be appropriate band music and there might even be beads – and, of course, pancakes will be available. Hundreds of invitations have been sent out electronically and on paper because we want people to know that KSM and SAPK are thin-places where the love of God shines through! We believe its’ a win/win/win/win – KSM has a more permanent and safer place through which to carry out their Matthew 25 sense of mission; SAPK emphasizes, in an even more profound way, that we reach out to people. We care for this community which has been our congregational home for 194 years. The larger business and civic community has another great opportunity to care for it’s citizenry and city — and the principles of God’s better kingdom are carried out in communal caring for our sisters and brothers . In the words of the old song…” and Christ’s great kingdom shall come to earth, the kingdom of love and light. “

Yes, that’s right – there is a subversive, even radical alternate kingdom which exists right here in our shire called Kingston, originally called ‘King’s Town’. Our congregation is sitting in a conspicuous thin-place at the corner of Princess/Clergy in downtown old Kingston. We are only one example of signs of the kingdom which are being planted. It’s a kingdom that Jesus knew about, as did his cousin John the Baptizer. Both of those radicals told people they were to repent, to change their hearts , minds and decisions – they were to repent because the kingdom of God was near. That ‘thin place’ had a name – Jesus the Christ the Son of the Living God. The One who became known as Jesus the Christ kept on sharing his life and ideas with other radicals (his disciples) who went on to start a movement called the Church. A book of Rules for Radicals had been coming together for awhile — and those disciples and their students began adding to that book’s chapters. The library called The Bible has been disturbing individuals, families, peoples and nations ever since, upsetting the way things have always been in revolutionary ways for the intervening centuries.

Now, we’re all in the millennial generation, aren’t we? We’re two thousand years down the road from the time when 12-year-old Jesus astonished and upset his family, surprised and amazed the teachers and leaders of the Temple by explaining to those learned men with his superior grasp of Godness what the scriptures really meant! That upstart named Jesus has not stopped being a fomenter of rebellion and revolution ever since his Bar Mitzvah – it just shows you what can happen when Someone is so changed by God — about whose business we are all about in the temples and in the streets where we live — that they can’t shut up. They can’t help but rattle the chains and disturb the equilibrium of society. That’s what happens when we live on the very edge of in-between times – God gets through to us and says, “this is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to Him!” Like Peter, James and John – those 3 closest followers of Jesus — we hear those words which must go like an arrow into our hearts. They were being unselfed of themselves, more and more, as the cross drew ever closer for Jesus, as a thin place showed up for them on a mountain before they went down into the valley of everyday, tough, real living.

So, on this Last Sunday after the Epiphany, the beginning of a week of Mardi Gras and Ash Wednesday which heralds the beginning of Lent – let us take a look at what God’s unsettling book says. The title of the message is ‘Unselfing’, a term that’s been rattling around in my heart and mind for years now. A very specific philosophical conversation about this concept has been underway in the upper echelons of those thinking deep thoughts; but, for me, it’s an inner dialogue about what it means to ‘deny one’s self’, a phrase which been used and abused for centuries. I believe that ‘unselfing’ gets at the meaning best: it is not to deny one’s personality, to deny things as an ascetic or to withdraw from the world. It is rather a turning away from narcissistic self-idolatry, away from childish self-centredness, away from seemingly natural human attempts to constantly orient life by the tyrannies of mere self- interest.More positively, unselfing is a turning toward a developing other-centredness which becomes a conscious default action and reaction toward others because of their intrinsic worth as creations of God, as we are. It is a choice we make and a reaction we take.

That came into clearer focus for me in preparing for today, from the wild stories we have heard from the Older and Newer Testaments, as well as in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, a self-idolizing bunch if ever there was one! Let us briefly observe what’s happening in each case:

• In 2 Kings, Elisha the apprentice is about to experience the absence of his father-mentor Elijah, a fact which he is resisting for it means the loss of someone essential to his own sense of who he is. Each time Elisha is reminded that God is about to take away Elijah, he tells them to be silent. Even when Elijah tells him not to come where he is going, Elisha insists ( both out of great love and respect and because of his denial that things are going to change profoundly) – he insists that he’s coming along, no matter what. Essentially, these 2 men were going on a tour around places sacred to Elijah’s prophetic career; it was a farewell tour and everywhere they went , there was a cadre of Elijah’s contemporaries, some who had been called in the aura of Elijah’s own call. Times were about to change, to a time when the community was going to be essential to their people’s sense of God’s presence. Elisha asked for a double portion of the spirit which had inhabited Elijah’s life and that was granted; but it was granted only when there was a great separation between past and future. Elisha was being unselfed of himself and reoriented to the community, to others and to ultimately to the Spirit of God directed him to a future different than what he had experienced.

• Then, in the gospel, we have another transition time in the lives of other followers of a great leader. This time, Jesus, Moses and Elijah showed up on a mountain-top. It helps to know that Peter assumed this was a sign of the end of the age, as had been expected. His response, strange to our ears, would have been appropriate – if that had been the end of the world. It truly was the end of that particular time in Jesus’ life and ministry and for them, as well; from then, nothing was ever the same again. From the mountain-top to the valley, from the exalted experience of being in the presence of 3 men , all of whose lives and home-goings were unusual, down to the valley to the hard realities of a cross and a new commission to go and make disciples — these 3 men were being unselfed of themselves. Their self-centred world, their inadequate views of God’s kingdom being established on earth as in heaven, their belief that Jesus would be with them forever and ever – were about to be replaced by a denying, a taking up and a following.

• Finally, even in the Corinthian letter, Paul writes in clear, unequivocal declarations: “ For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake. For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. “ To the early Christians and to us, it is made clear: the kingdom is not about us, it is about others. First, the One who is Wholly and Completely Other than we are is the Lord of you and me; second, we are the slaves, the servants of others in the name of that wholly other. To be unselfed is to recognize that we are to live the others-centred life.

How do we go about doing so this week, in year 2012? How can we be about our Father’s business just like Jesus was when he was twelve years old?

• If you are being asked to change in either simple or profound ways – in your attitudes or actions, in your relationships, in your sense of call, in your work – then, change. Learn to be unselfed of your myopic view of what’s supposed to happen and listen to the One who is speaking to you. Jesus is God’s Beloved, His Son. Listen to him and ask God to help you to change.

• If there is something threatening your sense of equilibrium, if you are being challenged by something that doesn’t seem right to you, consider the possibility that God is trying to get your attention. You May Be Wrong! As the old saying goes, if you are sincerely sure that you are right, you may be sincerely wrong. Truly wrong. Unself your self and get God’s perspective on that perplexing situation. Ask for advice from others and test your thinking out on them. Tell them you want to know what you need to know, no matter what.

• Simplify, simplify, said Henry David Thoreau. Those are words that we Christians need to hear. See if there’s any truth in this simple declarative statement: We have too much stuff in our lives. ( Say it out loud.) Get rid of things. Unself yourself of all but the most essential: things, activities, technologies, clothes, activities, …oh, right, I’m repeating myself. Too many notes, steps too far – these are both phrases that show up in conversation between Marie and me. Sure, part of that is just the fact that life speeds up the older you get, and you have to travel light! But, at every stage, we have too much stuff…..and nonsense. Divest yourself of old grudges, ancient biases, unnecessary barriers between you and others in your life. Simplify, unself, get ready for the next new adventure, simplify.

• Pay attention , this Fat Tuesday and Ash Wednesday and Lenten Season. God may be asking you to do something you’ve never done before, to see things you’ve never seen before, to do things he has never asked you to do before. Get ready……set……..go!

Let’s pray.