(Mark 9:2-9; 2 Corinthians 4:3-6)
(Mark 9:2-9) Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus, "Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, "This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!" Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus. As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.
(2 Corinthians 4:3-6) And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus' sake. For it is God who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
"Sometimes you just don't know what you need until you need it." That probably sounds like something Yogi Berra might say! I suppose that is pretty obvious! You know, we are not born knowing that we need shelter, or clothing for that matter. But if you can imagine being stuck out in the rain or in the cold - it would not take long to learn that we need shelter to escape the driving rain or clothes to keep us warm when the temperature drops. Shelter may seem like a basic human need - and it is - but we aren't born knowing that we need it. Life simply reveals that need to us.
And that is true with a lot of things. There are some things that - until we need them - we don't know we need them.
Jerry Clower tells a story about not knowing the need for something until it is too late. It is a story about the Ledbedder family from Rt. 4 Liberty, Mississippi. One day a bad fire broke out in their little Town Hall that threatened to destroy it. And all of the town's people rushed to the City Hall to see if they could help put out the fire. The fire department came rushing to the scene; siren blaring. The firemen pulled out the hoses and began spraying the fire with water; the town's people all did what they could do by throwing buckets of water on the fire. Everybody was working to put this terrible fire out. It was a catastrophe in the making. But it seemed that no matter what they did, the fire just kept getting bigger and bigger. They were losing ground. And pretty soon, the people began to lose hope of putting the fire out. So they just stopped what they were doing and watched as the fire consumed their beloved City Hall.
Well, about that time, they heard a loud commotion. Everybody turned around and looked. Coming down the road, lickety-split was Uncle Versy Ledbedder's old pickup truck. It was heading straight for the City Hall. And as it got closer to the City Hall - now engulfed in flames - the truck seemed to pick up speed. Uncle Versy was driving and Aunt Pet Ledbedder was sitting beside him on the passenger's side waving her arms frantically. All the Ledbedder boys were in the back of the pickup hanging on for dear life, hollerin' at the top of their lungs, "Get out of the way, get out of the way." Just then Uncle Versy's pickup jumped the curb at City Hall, nearly flipped Odell and Marcel out of the back, and ran straight into the middle of the fire. All the Ledbedders jumped out of the truck and started beating the fire with anything they could find. Aunt Pet jerked off her apron, Marcel took off his baseball cap, Claude and Newgene jerked the mud flaps off the truck, and Clovis started dancing around stomping on the fire as fast as he could; all of them were yelling and screaming. You could hear them a mile away.
Everybody thought the Ledbedders had gone crazy. But do you know, with all that stompin', beatin' and catterwallin', the Ledbedders put the fire out and saved the City Hall from certain ruin.
Well, the crowd roared with applause and rushed in to thank the Ledbedders. The mayor of the town was one of the first ones there. He took Uncle Versy's hand and shook it; he thanked him for saving the City Hall. Then he hushed the crowd and said, "Uncle Versy, that was the bravest thing I have ever seen in my life. You and your family risked your lives to save our beloved City Hall." The crowd roared again with applause. "And to show you our appreciation," the mayor went on, "I would like to present you with this fifty dollar bill as a reward. On behalf of a grateful town, I hope you will accept this small token of thanks for your heroism." The crowd roared again. Then somebody from the crowd yelled over the noise, "Uncle Versy, what are you going to do with that fifty dollars?"
Uncle Versy looked at the fellow from the crowd and yelled back, "The first thing I'm going to do with this fifty dollars is to fix the brakes on that old pickup truck."
Uncle Versy found out the hard way that he needed new brakes. But by the time he realized it, it was too late. He was already in the fire. But that is often the case with us, too. Sometimes we don't know that we need something until we need it. We don't know that our brakes need repair until we are barreling down the street heading for sure disaster. And sometimes our ignorance can get us into a lot of trouble.
And to be honest, it is not a lot different with our faith. We are not born knowing that we need faith, are we? Just because some of us may have grown up in a faith-filled home does not guarantee that we understand our true need for faith. We may hear the words of faith, we may have gone to church most of our lives, sung in the choirs, fed and clothed the homeless, built Habitat houses, you name it. But until something happens to our hearts, the words and the works don't mean anything. There is something more to a life of faith, than simply going through the motions. True faith involves understanding how lost we are without it.
Before faith comes, we think we are just fine. We are self-sufficient, selfish, ego-centric people. Our human nature leads us to believe only in ourselves. And why shouldn't we? People are pretty clever. We have solved a lot of the world's problems, haven't we? We have cured diseases, sent people into outer space, invented polyester and survived the disco craze. That is pretty good! I mean we still have problems, but there is a certain "cockiness" about us humans. We believe we can eventually solve just about anything.
That is until an earthquake or tsunami or a massive hurricane makes us realize just how helpless we are and how far from omnipotent we really are. But we will soon forget those lessons. And once again feel that we are masters of our own destiny.
I think our problem is that we have a very unique way of seeing the world. We see it exactly as it is. That probably sounds like another Yogi Berra-ism. You see we are born with our eyes wide open. We see the world around us and we react to it, we respond to it, make adjustments based on our needs. But that is about as far as it goes. Because we see the world only from a human perspective. We see the world from the perspective of creatures - not from the perspective of the Creator. We are not born knowing how much better the world could really be. We are not born with a vision of the world as the Creator envisioned it.
That is where faith comes in. Faith is a gift from God that allows us to see the world from God's perspective. Faith is a gift that allows us to see how needy we really are. Faith gives us the sight to see a world from God's eyes and when we get that kind of sight, we begin to understand how much we have to do - and how far from God's ideal we have strayed.
Faith obliterates the "me-first" mentality that we are born with - that mentality that blinds us from seeing the kingdom as it should be. Faith replaces it with a new perspective allowing us see our needs and the needs of the world much more clearly. And faith is a gift from God alone. It is not something that we can achieve on our own. In fact, before we have faith, we don't even know that we need it. It is only after our eyes are opened to the mystery and the majesty of God that we even consider matters of faith. Before God opens our eyes, we are blind to our needs. We think that we are the centers of our own universes. But God changes all that when He touches our hearts.
Karl Barth, the famous German theologian from the last century, has a wonderful illustration about how faith works in our lives. He puts it this way: It is as if we are all standing in a room filled with light. We are surrounded on all sides by light. The problem is that we are all completely unaware that we are blindfolded. We stumble around in darkness - not because there is no light - but because we can't see it. We are not even aware that there is light around us. Our eyes are simply blinded to it.
Faith, then, is that moment when God reaches down to us, and pulls the blindfold off of our eyes. All of a sudden we can see a world bathed in light that we never even knew existed. We never knew we were blindfolded and were never aware of this light at all. But now with uncovered eyes we suddenly realize that the light was there all the time. In our blindness, all we did was to stumble around in the dark. Now we see a world of light and new possibilities.
It is like this: before we have faith, faith is not something that we can even pray for. Because, like wandering around blindfolded, we never knew it existed. How can we pray for something that we are not even aware of?
Once God has opened our eyes to the world around us by giving us faith, then we are able to see a world as never before. Through the eyes of faith we are able to see the world as God intended it. We are able to see the needs of others that we could never see before. We are able to see a better image of ourselves that was formerly obscured. We see how much we need God - and we see our own inadequacy. When faith comes, we can finally see just how far from God we have really been - even though we didn't know it. And we get to see how absurd it is for us to try and make it on our own.
When God grants us faith, our lives become something new. We are no longer bumping around in the dark, but we realize that we are a community that lives in the light of Jesus Christ. Listen to the familiar words of Isaiah 9:
"The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness-- on them light has shined… For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
The light of God reveals the kingdom that is before us - one that we would never know about if it were not for the grace and mercy of God - God's gift of faith.
Think back to our gospel text this morning. Put yourselves on the top of that mountain with Jesus and the three disciples. What a transforming experience that must have been for them! It must have been like the blindfold coming off as this brilliant light stood before them. The great figures of their faith - Elijah and Moses - dull in comparison to the brilliance of Jesus - who is now their new vision of faith. And from that moment forward their lives would never be the same.
I think it is precisely that way for us. All of us who have dwelled in darkness have seen a great light. In him was life and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.
We who once never even knew that light existed have had our hearts and minds bathed in sunlight. And it makes us shout for joy.
You know what makes me so excited about this passage, is what is does to our lives. If we truly understand that faith is a gift from God - and from God alone - then we are free to use our lives in the service of others. It frees us from that prison of works-righteousness. Rather than trying to earn our faith with good works, we can live our faith in freedom and joy and service, knowing that God's light lives within us. It is God's gift - freely and lavishly given to us. And how do we respond to this gift of pure grace?...With gratitude; humble thanksgiving for something we didn't even know we needed until we received it. We respond with a life of gratitude lived so that others might see the light of Christ in us. We carry that light into a world of darkness. When you have something this good, you want to share it. That is what gratitude looks like.
Maybe through our response to God's gift, you and I will be the shining lamp for someone else. Maybe God will use you and me to help pull a blindfold off of somebody else's eyes. I really believe that will happen when you and I seek to serve. The testimony of our lives, lived through Christ and for the world, will be like a beacon of hope. Let's start shining. Amen.