Week 28 - "The beauty of the light upon this earth..."

Life in Cape Town has been treating me very well! I’ve enjoyed the last few busy weeks with Anglican Society at the University in Cape Town and at the Anglican Student Federation office. I’m also very much looking forward to my Mom’s arrival on Wednesday night! She’ll be spending a week with me here in the Mother City!!!!
 Last night, at the Sunday evening student service at St. Paul’s Anglican Church in Rondebosch, I had the privilege of giving the evening’s sermon.  I didn’t even think about the fact that it was World Mission Sunday all around the Episcopal Church community back home as I went on living out my mission here. Anyway, here is what I shared last night, based on the gospel reading Matthew 17:1-9:

As we sit here, pressing the pause button on our busy lives to enjoy our Sunday evening service, I’m sure many of you are plagued by the question, “Is tomorrow Monday already?”  Just knowing that when I go to bed tonight, I have to set that early weekday alarm again is enough to make me feel a little bummed, too. For students, Monday brings with it work and classes and for me it brings, my personal favorite, commuting in the summer heat. You go from one responsibility to the next – hardly able to process the nuances of your busy student day until it’s over, and by then, you don’t want to sit there reflecting. If you’re anything like I was last year, you’re probably really tired of thinking. All you want to do is zone out and get some sleep before another day of the madness.
    Now, Peter, James, John, and nine of their closest friends had a pretty intense daily grind of their own. They followed Jesus around watching him perform miracles and preach sermons people would remember for centuries. While I’m certain that this kept them exhaustingly busy, I’m also quite certain that it’s probably the coolest way to pack your daily routine in the history of the world. How do you even write a job description for something like that? In his book The Irresistible Revolution, Shane Claiborne speculates that Peter would answer: “’Well, I was going to be a fisherman, but then I met this dude, and he messed all that up.’”
    When Peter, James, & John follow Jesus up the mountain in Matthew 17, they doing it having already seen some pretty cool stuff. So when Jesus starts to shine like the sun and converse with the ghosts of miraculous leaders long past, Peter doesn’t hesitate to start suggesting ways to commemorate this Miracle of the Week… so they can climb down the mountain and do the next cool thing in the course of their daily gospel-spreading grind…. But this is clearly not what God had in mind, when God arranged for the Transfiguration of Jesus!
    God interrupts Peter and calls to him to attention, saying in v5, “This is my Son, my Beloved [with a capital B, I might add]; with him I am well pleased; listen to Him!” Listen, Peter, listen up! God knows how busy Peter is being a disciple. He knows how busy you are and how busy I am, but being busy is no excuse for ignoring the acts of Grace and the miracles present in our lives! No matter how frequent or infrequent.
    While Peter may not have so much ignored the truly awesome sights that he witnessed at the Transfiguration of Jesus in the Gospel reading today, he didn’t fully take them in either, which is part of what God means when he tells Peter to listen. Hit the pause button and take in the moment around you. “Life is a matter of a miracle that is collected over time by moments flabbergasted to be in each other’s presence.” So, you all too, take a moment to be flabbergasted – to be truly and deeply amazed. As they sing in the Broadway show Rent, “there’s no day but today.”
    Now, we may not have the privilege of witnessing the Transfiguration in the middle of our daily routine this week, but when something even just a little awesome does happen, will you be like Peter and rush through the miraculous moment, racing towards the next thing? Or will you be able to pause and listen long enough to take in the simple beauty of the light upon this earth.