5 Years of +KINDRED
Luke 9:28-36
28 Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus[a] took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. 29 And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling bright. 30 Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. 31 They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. 32 Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake,[b] they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. 33 Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings,[c] one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah”—not knowing what he said. 34 While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. 35 Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen;[d] listen to him!” 36 When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.
Five years ago, a community of faith said a final goodbye to a church they loved and to a way they had known, to listen for what God may be saying. The people of Grace Lutheran Church left their proverbial fishing boats, to venture out into new and uncertain waters, unsure of if or how who they had been would carry on into what would be. They closed the doors of their beloved congregation when all +KINDRED was, was a name, a hopeful idea, and handful of strangers. I could wax eloquent, and often have, about the beauty of new possibilities and wide open spaces. I do believe in that and trust in God’s glorious faithfulness there, but it is also a terrifying cloud to find yourself in. I am in awe of the courage it takes to stand there anyway.
We, as +KINDRED, are born out of their legacy. From time to time we’ve been described as “the little church that could,” and that’s exactly what people said of Grace before us. Even now, as we are dispersed across the city, we stand on that sacred ground where God shows up with stunning wonder in the midst of a small, ordinary people, who don’t always know how to respond to what God is doing.
Five years ago, this community of faith gathered in a park by the bayou…with terrible parking and dim lighting, dragging down lawn chairs and a makeshift altar to speak of and embody what God can do with ashes and scraps. Since then we’ve sat down for over 300 meals together in worship and in community, discovering the face of Christ in the faces across the table. That also means we’ve washed approximately 10,000 dishes together! Faces familiar and fresh share in the work while swapping stories or telling jokes, with a few tough scrubs and even broken pieces along the way. We’ve asked big questions of God, of ourselves, of one another, and in the world to develop a faith that goes beyond the surface. We’ve tried new things that have exceeded our wildest dreams and others that bombed spectacularly. We’ve shown up, listened, marched, advocated, gathered, and shared so that God’s goodness may be reflected even among oft-overlooked and undervalued corners, so that even among what seems ordinary we might recognize the divine extraordinary. We’ve learned that this way of being in holy relationship isn’t necessarily easy or convenient or tidy, and has called us into the proverbial principal’s office more than once…but it is good for us to be here.
As much as this day is one to celebrate our story, and the ones that it is built upon, it is only because they sit as a part of God’s story. Like Jesus and the disciples, today we reflect on how big moments and big questions beckon us toward prayer – so that we might hear and know God’s own self amidst everything else.
All throughout this chapter of Luke, the question keeps coming up, “who is this Jesus?” In verses 7 & 8, King Herod is perplexed about it because he was sure he’d silenced the mouth of God when he executed his detractors like John the Baptist. And yet, people were still saying that this teacher and healer might be John resurrected, or another prophet, another messenger of God’s goodness and power, like Elijah, returned. In verses 18-20, Jesus asks the disciples “who so the crowds say that I am?” To many, the best explanation they can come up with for the incredible wonders they’ve seen and heard is that John the Baptist is still among them, or Elijah, or another prophet…maybe somebody like Moses? Sure, deny it all you want, but tell me….have you ever seen Jesus and the other guy in the same room?
This incredible transformative story must belong to someone or something that is a known quantifiable entity. Something that they know has worked before. What they’ve known in the past is how they understand the present and shapes what they imagine as possible. But those who have walked closest with Jesus, followed them waking and sleeping, day in and day out, across different place and among different people have begun to notice…this Jesus is something different, something altogether new.
Standing on top of a mountain next to the heroes of the faith gone by, we get a further glimpse of Jesus is and isn’t. It is made clear that even as Jesus stands alongside them, Jesus is not a reboot of what was. The Messiah isn’t about a kind of new and improved version of old ways, not a frame-for-frame formula from the past. Jesus is the one they have all pointed to and is still unfolding, what they have had glimpses of before and is revealed anew, something even bigger and better than even the greatest monuments in our minds.
This changes the way things appear. In this place and this moment, what was dusty and drab becomes dazzling. The truth of who God is shines brilliantly through. In the Gospel of Mark, the writer goes on to say that Jesus’ clothes became brighter than any launderer could possibly clean them. This splendor is then not the result of just being so incredibly squeaky clean or particularly excellent, but it is the very nature of their being which is revealed here, engulfing us. It’s glorious.
It is a glory that is not only for some hereafter, some other plane of existence, but in our midst. Leading up to this moment, Jesus has promised that “Some standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.” (v. 27) God’s goodness and glory is not reserved for “someday” but also evident here and now. God invites us to bear witness to these thin places, where the space between the eternal and the everyday is made narrow, where the line that separates the ordinary and extraordinary becomes so small that it seems to dissolve entirely so that they dwell together there.
Still, the cynic in me wonders, what good is glory? I mean, who doesn’t love shiny things, but at the end of the day…what’s it for? If it’s just another story of self-aggrandizement that serves to make others feel small…it doesn’t really seem like news and certainly not Good News. I long to hear a way of glory that is more than puffed-up ego. Here, at what forms a sort of middle of the Gospel of Luke, this edge of glory is shown to be a threshold for something beyond hollow grandeur that fades as soon as the moment passes. This wondrous celebration is also a turning point that holds together who we’ve been and who we are becoming.
When Jesus is finally revealed in glory, we learn that this glory is not what we think we see. It may sparkle and shine sometimes but it’s more than the old razzle dazzle routine. We overhear the conversation between the ancestors and the Christ, who in this moment of glory are speaking of Jesus departure, their exodus, their liberation…which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. Does this mean God’s death on the cross? Or Their resurrection from the tomb? The reader is left to wonder.
It seems God’s true glory also looks an awful lot like glory’s opposite - messy, unpolished and uncomfortable. On the mount of the transfiguration, we catch a glimpse of the divinity of Jesus, literally shining through. But also a foretaste of what, in Christ Jesus, that divinity means and what it is for. It is for us. It is for a kind of transformation that is more than self-serving splendor but a transformation that shines onto and through the ordinary and even the profane. It does not stay safe and pristine high above everything else, but enters into and overshadows all things.
The disciples are given a charge – listen! “This my Child, my Chosen; listen to them!” The charge is not merely to hear God’s word, to acknowledge and even quote it, but then keep it at arm’s length. Hearing is just the physical process of sound entering our ear, with nothing to say of what happens to the words from there. But listening means that as the Word surrounds us, it moves us for understanding and formation. It causes us to reflect what we have heard and shapes how we move in the world.
This sacred story alongside our story in light of God’s enduring story reminds us that we don’t have to have it all figured out with exact clarity or precision or polish, but invites us to always be listening and looking for God’s promises and presence so that it would transfigure us to reflect God’s glory, even and especially among the ordinary elements of life. This is my prayer for +KINDRD, for you, that you would always be a people on the lookout for God’s showing up and listening for God’s voice so that you may be shaped formed to show Christ’s radiant love in the wholeness of your life together. Amen.