Your Point of View

I preached this morning. Here's the written version of the sermon. I had fun.

Something that becomes clearer and clearer to me with each passing year is that things are not often as easily understood as we think they are. When we learn something we think everybody knows it. When we understand something, we expect everybody to understand what we are saying.

This just isn’t true. Understanding often depends on what you already know, what you think you know and your angle of vision.

Take the Super Bowl. (You didn’t think I would preach today without mentioning it, did you?) The way we all hear so much about what’s happening this afternoon, the stories that have gone on and on for two weeks, you’d think the whole country would know. Yet just last Wednesday I overheard a conversation that consisted of one simple question. “So, tell me. Who’s playing on Sunday?”

But that is only a small part of the lack of understanding. We haven’t even gotten to the game yet. When that happens, well, the announcers often sound like they are speaking a foreign language. Let’s take a moment and review some of the things you will hear.

Are they talking about money when they mention a Nickel defense, Dime coverage, the Quarterback sneak or a Single Wing formation?

What about the firepower of playing out of the Shotgun, or with that same gun, having a Pump Fake

Then there’s Play action, (which I don’t think is something children do at recess) and an item I would think any player would need- a Nose guard, which, as everyone knows, is one of the players on the field. (But which one?)

If you ever do go to a game you will discover that what you see on TV is often quite a bit different and usually more exciting than what you may see in person. All those TV cameras at all those locations with all the slow-motion or the really neat one that flies over the field and gets overhead shots of things happening gives a different ball game. Which is why the Monday morning quarterbacks have such a better understanding of what went wrong. They saw it more clearly. Or at least think they did.

Of course none of this is just a problem just for football. It is a human problem.

Which means it can be a problem for us in the church as well. We know what we are talking about. We know all the inside phrases and words and patterns. But there are a lot of people in our neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, and daily travels who know next to nothing about the church and Christianity.

Even in some of the more highly churched parts of the US, there is still 30% of the population that is unchurched. Most of them wouldn’t know an offertory when it came out of the organ. And their understanding of what Christians believe and who Jesus is would probably stun most of us.

Yet week in and week out we worship and talk and pray in ways that would be a foreign language to many. When one of these unchurched people walks into one of our worship services or Sunday School classes they would be as lost as I feel every time I watch a football coach trying to diagram something on the whiteboard.

Yes, it depends on what you think you know. What is a Christian? Especially in an election year we get all kinds of definitions and interpretations. Many of them are right, many of them are wrong. Most have a grain of truth, some do not. It depends on how you look at it- your angle of vision.

Jesus took his friends up the mountain. While they were there something truly remarkable happened- Jesus changed right before their eyes. There was light and energy and who knows what. Matthew tells us that Jesus’ “face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus. … a bright cloud enveloped them, and a voice from the cloud said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!’”

Peter, who always thought he knew what was going on is amazed and thinks this is something about Jesus being a prophet, next in line with the great ones – Moses and Elijah. We know this simply by Peter’s reaction. He said to Jesus, "Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah." But then the words from the very mouth of God came from the bright cloud that was not just low-hanging fog from the Sea of Galilee.

They fell face down to the ground, terrified. They realized that they didn’t know what they were talking about. They were surrounded by a great mystery, the wonders of God’s own Son- whatever that meant to them- and the only response was simply to be terrified- and silent.

We often approach Jesus the same way- with what we think we know, our lack of understanding, our own expectations, - and finally our point of view.

Now I know I have painted a fairly broad picture here. I have jumped from non-Christians to us- from the unchurched person’s difficulty in understanding what we are doing to our own inability to capture all there is about the faith.

What I am trying to say is that patience is important- patience with others and patience with ourselves. They will find our language at communion odd and out of place. They will have no idea different churches actually have significantly different understandings of everything from Scripture to politics and whatever else may be found in-between.

In order to develop that patience we need to have the humility that reminds us that we do not have the final answer. At the heart of it is how do each of us discover who Jesus is? For that the example of the apostles on the mountain comes clear.

First, we need to spend time with Jesus (and His Father!) Prayer, worship, reading scripture, meditating on readings and music can all lead us into an openness to Him that we have not had before.

Then we need to listen. I have heard many great pray-ers in my life. They can give eloquent voice to the deepest understandings and longings of the soul. But if they don’t stop long enough to listen- it will be a pretty dull relationship. But that’s not easy. Look at Peter speaking his mind- on the mountain- but over and over in the Gospels. In the end it took God breaking through that made the difference.

Which is the third part of how we discover who Jesus is- the revelation given to us from God. God does this in all kinds of ways, of course. From the quiet times, from the reading of scripture, to the words of a preacher on Sunday morning or a friend on the phone on Wednesday evening. We learn when we listen. More will be revealed each and every day.

After all these years of taking communion, for example, I can’t explain it any better than I did say 40 years ago- or even last year. Each time I come to this table and hear a pastor- or myself- use the awesome words- this is my body, this is my blood- I am aware that something exciting and far, far, far beyond my poor human understanding is happening.

Which means that with that humility must come an openness to not have to know the answers and listen for what word from God is coming to me today. Like that cloud surrounding the apostles on the mountain, there is an invisible presence that is here when we gather as his people.