Creekside Church Sermon of February 22, 2004 "God in the Raw " Luke 9:28-36	Rev. David Bibbee
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Do you believe in the existence of God? That's a no-brainer! Of course we believe God exists. Why else would we bother being here?" If there was no God, life would be a free-for-all. As Dostoevsky said, "Where there is no God, everything is permitted." But believing God exists asks no more of us than believing in gravity. "Do you believe in God?" is another matter. Opinions won't do. If you believe in God, you sign on the dotted line with your life.

On Thursday I met a fellow pastor at the hospital. We talked about how things were going in our churches. He said that like us, his church had made a decision about location. "We decided to stay put," he said. "We didn't have the guts to take the risks you did." If you prefer, you may substitute "faith" for guts.

Believing is one thing. Acting on it is another matter. Any fool can believe God exists, but believing in God-having a gutsie kind of faith that takes risks, requires signing the dotted line.

The book, Raw Faith, recalls the night when, as a nineteen-year-old novice seeking admission to a religious order, he walked though the snow for spiritual direction from a monk he considered a kind, but not too bright holy man. He went because it was something he was "supposed" to do, but his real motivation was for a break in the excruciating monotony of daily life. He tried to convince the monk of his sincerity behind his manufactured troubles. He never forgot the monk's response: "Don't you believe in God?"

He felt like a discovered imposter. He knew all the right words, but the monk's question exposed him. He wasn't sure what he believed. That question, "Don't you believe in God?" has been asked thousands of times in his soul since then. He never says, "Lord, I believe," without asking God's help for his unbelief. He discovered that church membership, sacraments, prayers, meditations, spiritual books, dreams of holiness, and creeds were not the answer. He needed God beyond God… God beyond perceiving and imagining-God beyond words.

The younger generations are telling us something. They have no desire for a "church-ified" God. They have no use for a God rendered inaccessible by layers of tradition, rules, and regulations. They want a faith that makes sense in the streets. They want a faith that carries them further than Sunday dinner. Faith that doesn't connect with where they live and love and work and play isn't worth their commitment. They want God in the raw.

After allowing the disciples a few days to recover from a hard lecture on the necessity of suffering, Jesus took Peter, James, and John mountain climbing. The purpose wasn't to erect a flag on the summit. Jesus went to the top to pray while true to form, the disciples slept through the better part of a "theophany." Here's a word I haven't used since seminary. It comes from a Greek word which means to "shine" or "show." A theophany is an unsought appearance of a divine being or God to people.

As Jesus prayed, he experienced what the text calls a "metamorphoo," which translates "transfiguration." His face was altered. His clothing turned a radiant, blinding white. Then came company…Moses, the law giver. Elijah, the greatest prophet. The big three were discussing Jesus' "departure" in Jerusalem, then the disciples woke up. Imagine waking to such a sight. They must have stared in disbelief, thinking they were dreaming. They surely fell to their knees in awe. I picture Peter, James, and John tripping over each other like the Three Stooges.

Does this scene remind you of another biblical story? Like Jesus, Moses went to a mountain to confer with God. The appearance of both men changed. Both heard the voice of God. God prepared Moses to lead Israel's exodus from Egypt. Moses and Elijah discuss the "exodus" that awaited Jesus. Both were enveloped in the cloud of God's presence.

From the cloud the disciples heard God's voice. "This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased." These words were heard at Jesus' baptism. They provided a glimpse of who Jesus was and what he would do. But this time God not only made an announcement-God gave an order. "This is my beloved son. LISTEN TO HIM." The curtain is parted once more as God tells the disciples, "Look at him and you're looking at me. His words are my words." The experience was a burst of light and insight in the rarified mountain air-one they would cling to as the dark, impending cloud of death gathered.

Can you recall a time in worship or prayer or simply tending to some ordinary task when a wave of God's presence washed over you? You didn't demand it. You didn't follow a recipe and "cook up" a religious experience. You didn't order it like a pizza. It was an unbidden, unsought gift. The disciples didn't tell anyone what they saw. That's the way it is with such "God in the raw"moments. It is so intensely personal the best response is silent awe.

These experiences can happen to anyone, but it is not haphazard. It happens to those who are prepared for it-receptive people who regularly worship, pray, meditate; people who spend time in silence, people who contemplate the wonder of God's world and desire to do God's will.

H.G. Wells once said, "There was a time when I looked up at the stars and felt a sense of awe and wonder. Now, I look at the stars in the same sense that I look at the wall paper in a train station waiting room." Today we have sequenced the human genome and peered into the furthest reaches of the universe. We have mapped every square foot of our planet and have landed two glorified picture-taking, soil and rock sampling golf carts on Mars. We've probed the depths of the psyche and mapped the electric circuitry of the human brain and haven't discovered anyone's soul, much less found God.

The church gets hammered: "Where is this God you talk so much about? Give us a description. When was he last seen?" and too often churches offer clichés and vague, holy-sounding fluff. Chad Hall says that for postmodern people, there is a deep dissatisfaction with the church's presentation of God. "Church leaders often clothe God beneath impenetrable layers of muck. What postmoderns really want is raw God. We want a naked God. We want an arousing God whom we can see, feel, and experience."

For a better part of the last century people went to church because it was what good people did. The emphasis was upon how to keep the family, community, and the world together. The emphasis was upon loyalty to the denomination, good music, and intelligent, doctrinally sound preaching. It was the church's job to re-enforce the the values that kept society strong. Honoring religious tradition was of utmost importance.

That world doesn't exist anymore. People today have everything they want but still haven't found what they are looking for. The world as it is isn't enough to satisfy. Science and technology, important as it is, cannot save us. George Buttrick said, "We aren't as cocky as we once were. Psychiatrists are now more ready to admit there may be a depth of human nature, deeper than our psychiatry. More scientists are less confident than science once was."

It's hard being a Christian these days. The church will probably face harder times ahead. But God has given us great opportunity. The opportunity is not to just "tell" people about God who was revealed in Jesus. We must show and tell people how they can meet God, not as a concept or a code of rules, but as a living reality.

If you were given a chance to gaze into the face of God, would you? I would give it some thought, and decline. I figure I'll eventually get around to it after I'm finished with life. But to gaze upon the glory right now? I'll pass. You'll remember that Moses asked to see the Lord's face. What did God say? "No one can see my face and live." I'll just take God's word for it. But do you recall what God DID show Moses? His backside. He tucked Moses into the cleft of a rock. Said that when he passed, Moses could look…. at God's backside.

Moses wanted to gaze upon God's glory, but God said his goodness would have to do. "My goodness, mercy, forgiveness, and steadfast love-- my promise to stick with you till the end… this is what I'll give you."

Years ago, the Catholic theologian Kark Rahner wrote about the day in which we now live. Listen to this: "The 'believer' of the future will be a mystic, or he or she will not exist at all. By mysticism I mean a genuine experience of God emerging from the very heart of our existence. The spirituality of the future will have to live much more clearly out of a solitary immediate experience of God and his spirit in the individual. In such a situation, the lonely responsibility of the individual in his or her decision of faith is necessary and required in a way much more radical than it was in former times."

To see "God in the raw," we cannot depend on others for our spiritual growth. WE are responsible for minding our own spiritual store. Believing in God means staking everything on that belief. It means dedication to making ourselves available to God. It means regular personal and corporate worship. It means being intentional about prayer and doing whatever feeds it. Someone asked a woman, "What do you think about God?" She replied, "God is not a 'think.' God is a 'feel'." Worship doesn't mean leaving your head at the door, but it does mean seeing worship as an experience of God, sometimes experienced as a calm, quiet confidence, and sometimes in an emotional, mystical way. It means that in worship we must clear the sightlines of anything we practice which blocks our view of God.

Jesus' transfiguration wasn't something the disciples asked to see. Nothing in the text suggests that Jesus sought it. It was given at the moment it was needed, not the moment it was ordered. St. Theresa had prayed fervently for years that she be given a mystical communion with God. When it came, it lasted just a moment-barely two minutes. It happened once, and never again. Yet out of her meeting with the raw, naked God, the world was given volumes of some of the greatest spiritual literature ever written.

Believing in God means believing that God wants to be seen. Nearly seven hundred years ago Julian of Norwich wrote: "For it is God's will that we believe that we see him continually, though it seem to us that the sight be only partial; and through this belief he makes us always to gain more grace, for God wishes to be seen, and he wishes to be sought, and he wishes to be expected, and he wishes to be trusted."

I read the account of someone who attended the Boy Scout National Jamboree as a kid back in 1960. The "EVENT" of the week was a visit by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The scouts practiced all week for his arrival. On the big day they were marched in, lined up, and spit-shined ready an hour before the arrival.

Someone shouted, "Here comes the President!" A big black limousine drove past. Standing up in the back of the limo was a little bald man waving at the Scouts. He didn't look like a President. He looked like somebody's grandfather. He didn't even look like he knew where he was. He seemed dazed and disinterested. Afterward, a part of him wished he hadn't even seen the President.

If given the chance to see, would you look? How would you react to what the disciples saw? The transfiguration probably didn't last long-just long enough for Peter, James, and John to really see who Jesus was and do as God said, "Listen to him." This encounter with the naked glory of God, was enough to energize them for the work that awaited them when they climbed off the mountain.

Let me close with some verses by Madleine L'Engle called, "Transfiguration."

Suddenly they saw him the way he was,
The way he really was all the time,
Although they had never seen it before,
The glory that blinds the everyday eye
And so becomes invisible.

This is the way he was from the beginning,
And we cannot bear it. So he manned himself and came to us;
And there on the mountain they saw him, saw his light.
We all know that if we really see him we die,
But isn't that what is required of us?
Then, perhaps, we will see each other, too.

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