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February 14, 2010 Sermon

As Ones Who Shine (Exodus 34: 29-35; Luke 9: 28-36)

Rev. Sally Harris

Awaken us God, and shed your light upon us that we might behold you and come to recognize the hope that you always hold out to us. Amen

What a Sunday to behold – we gather as a community to honor our elders,
    we gather as a community in the midst of a city full of the world,
    we gather as a community to remember the mountaintops of our lives
    we gather as a community on St. Valentine’s a day to remember love.

Our readings this day are all about beholding…
behold Moses as he returns from a mountaintop experience in the presence of the divine. Behold the pilgrimage by invitation only… Jesus wants to pray but he does not want to pray alone so he invites a few of his friends to journey up a mountain to pray with him… a pilgrimage of prayer. I guess the pilgrimage was hard because Jesus’ friends promptly fell asleep only to be awakened by their elders… Moses and Elijah are folks from some of the oldest stories told among the Jewish people. Jesus’ elders are reminding Jesus that his pilgrimage will not end on top of the mountain – it is a journey just begun and it will take us the next 40 days to touch the truth of who Jesus is and what Jesus is about.

But Peter and friends don’t want this moment to pass… they want to build lodgings and keep things unchanged but Jesus knows and we know that life moves on… we honor the moments where briefly we catch a glimpse of the light of God and we, like Peter, want to keep it shining. We want Jesus to just keep shining on us…

Perhaps that is why the gathering of our faith community is so vital – it reminds us that on our pilgrimage of life we are sustained by moments of community, moments of retelling the stories that define us, moments where God shines through… We gather to remember to let our little lights shine in the midst of a city full of the world (Sung by the choir and arranged, directed and accompanied by Ron Smail)

Oh let your little light shine by Joni Mitchell

Oh let your little light shine. Let your little light shine
Shine on Vegas and Wall Street place your bets
Shine on the fisherman with nothing in their nets
Shine on rising oceans and evaporating seas
Shine on our Frankenstein technologies
Shine on science with its tunnel vision; tunnel vision
Shine on fertile farmland
Buried under subdivisions

Let your little light shine
Let your little light shine
Shine on the dazzling darkness
That restores us in the deep sleep
Shine on what we throw away and what we keep

Shine on Reverend Pearson
Who threw away The vain of God
kept Dickens and Rembrandt and Beethoven
And fresh-plowed-sod
Shine on good earth, good air, good water
And a safe place
For kids to play

Shine on bombs, exploding
Half a mile away
Let your little light shine
Let your little light shine

Shine on world-wide traffic jams
Honking day and night
Shine on another bad driver
Passing on the right!
Shine on the red-light runners
Busy talking on their cell phones
Shine on the Catholic Church
And the prisons that it owns

Shine on all Churches
They all love less and less
Shine on a hopeful girl In a dreamy dress

Let your little light shine. Let your little light shine
Shine on good humor
Shine on good will
Shine on lousy leadership
Licensed to kill
Shine on dying soldiers
In patriotic pain
Shine on mass destruction
In some God's name!
Shine on the pioneers
Those seekers of mental health
Craving simplicity
They traveled inward
Past themselves...
May all their little lights shine

We are here because you have dared to keep your little lights shining.

It is great way to begin another pilgrimage – the pilgrimage of Lent – from ashes to palms. In the lengthening days ahead ashes remind us of the stuff from which we have been made, and to which we will return. The pilgrimage of Lent and the season it heralds, seeks to ground us, to make us mindful of the humus, the humility of our existence. Yet before we begin the journey of Lent we are reminded of the wonder of the presence of God so we may be as ones who shine.

Julia Ward Howe, one night in November 1861 in the middle of the Civil War awoke experiencing the presence of God in the veiled brilliance of sunrise. In that transfiguring moment she experienced this light-shedding presence and chose this God to be her horizon. And then her pen flew across the page writing out the words Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory.

In the journey set before us may we also remember
    the presence of this divine light that is our horizon. Amen

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