Sermon 2/14/2021 “A transfiguration story”
Preacher: Jo J. Belser
Location: Recorded for Greenwood Forest Baptist Church in North Carolina
Texts: 2 Kings 2:1-12, 2 Corinthians 4:3-6, Mark 9:2-9, Psalm 50:1-6
Day: LastEpiphany, Year B, during a pandemic
I have a tale to tell you today, a gospel story, a transfiguration story.
I am the Rector of a dying church—Church of the Resurrection in Alexandria, Virginia. Eight years ago, during the church’s interim period between Rectors, I volunteered there as a newly ordained transitional deacon. I heard a lot about the church’s former glory.
Resurrection is one of eight Episcopal Churches in Alexandria, Virginia. There are 39 congregations of all faiths and denominations in this small city, and all of them are shrinking. The problem for Resurrection is that most of the others had a lot more people than we did when the shrinking began. As of this moment, we have 134 people in 93 households and an average Sunday attendance pre-pandemic of 78. Since the pandemic, our worship attendance has tripled, but that’s another story.
Until recently, we were the only church of any kind in the West End of Alexandria, where crumbling apartment buildings provide the last remaining affordable housing in the city. The West End is a haven for new emigrants, 57% of whom speak Spanish and English at home, with another 10% freshly arrived from Ethiopia who speak Amharic. Do you know that, of the dozens of languages spoken by the people of Resurrection, NO ONE speaks Spanish or Amharic? Go figure!
In Alexandria, Resurrection is synonymous with “old people.” Most of its members are in their 70s or 80s. Of course, our three nearest neighbors are high-rise retirement communities. But families with young children are what everyone perceives as a sign of health in a church. And they are! But don’t discount anyone in a church. I believe that every single person in a church is there to help them do whatever mission God has in store for them. At Resurrection, hidden in plain sight is a whole cadre of intelligent, able old people who are passionate about helping others.
All I heard at first, though, was, “We have only five more years to live.” Every year: “We have only five more years to live.” Church records reveal this sentiment being expressed for 20 years, and the church is only 57 years old!
So, where is the Good News here? As our epistle lesson says today, “Even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing.” This means the eyes we use to view our world, to view our situation, determine what we will see. If we use “human eyes,” we will see the faults, the failures, and the shortcomings—we will see only death at The End. But if we view the world, view our situation through God’s eyes, through the eyes of faith, what we see is a vision that will transfigure the world, beginning with US.
At Resurrection, we didn’t know that at first. We didn’t live that at first. We took our business plan and our “logic brains,” and for a whole year we searched for someone to save us. We discovered that no one wanted to save us. In fact, some who would have profited by our demise actively worked to speed our death.
A curious thing happened, though. When we gave up, when we let go and let God, when we began to contemplate our death and imagine our legacy and our handover plan, THAT’s when we began to shine with new life. In short, we became Elijah, walking resolutely to embrace our death.
We had meetings. We had focus groups. We had Forums. We brainstormed. We collaborated. Key leaders began to ask, “What do we have that we can give away?” and “What can we do to help others by our death?” and “How can we die gracefully?”
That’s when “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ” began to shine through us, as today’s epistle lesson tells. In our case, someone noticed that 90% of the affordable housing in our city had evaporated between 1990 and 2000. That’s when we heard our hungry emigrant neighbors explain in halting English that they needed food because the rent is so high. So, we gave away our beloved preschool, a mission of 40 years, and used the space to open a food pantry while we worked to discern a way to give our church away.
We didn’t pray for a way to build affordable housing. Not then. We prayed for insight about why we—so improbably—still existed, and about who would walk with us to our death. For example, by this time the church had abandoned its search for a new Rector and called me as its full-time Priest-in-Charge. This was a gutsy move for a dying church whose operating deficit was projected to be $100,000 that year. We “only” ended that year with a $40,000 deficit, and we have ended each year since with a small surplus. But even THAT is only a sign of transfiguration.
Resurrection already had two tenant congregations, so when a third one literally knocked on the door, I was going to tell them “no.” However, we needed the money and they wanted to worship from 9 to 11 PM on Sundays. God had sent Romanian gypsies who operated taxicabs by day and evening and brought their young families to church with them at night.
“The Lord, the God of Gods, has spoken;” and
“God reveals himself in glory,” says our Psalm.
We’d be here all day if I shared every instance of God providing exactly what was needed to overcome every obstacle. We only had $600,000, bequeathed to us by two of our neighbors who were neither members of nor who attended our church. But we received $4.1 million for a 65-year ground lease on about half of our two-acre property. We got all the money up front, at closing. Our developer got the money for the project primarily through low-income housing tax credits. Although we didn’t know this until recently, it looks like the money we received will be just enough to build and fit-out the new 5,000-square foot church building our Bishop insisted we build with the cash. Turns out, our food pantry success convinced him there was a need for a church in Alexandria’s West End. Our opening services will be on Easter Sunday, April 4.
Apparently, God wants 113 units of affordable housing for working families in the poorest neighborhood of Alexandria, Virginia, and a new mortgage-free church as well. We have learned and relearned that God provides every single thing needed to do what God calls us to do: money, continued health, and new people with needed skills. Just like in our first lesson today, God sent us new old people and activated our existing ones to commit to walk with us to our death.
We don’t know who will end up with our mantle, who will carry on the work God has given us. The great prophet Elijah would have been a very hard act to follow. Yet, God sent Elisha to carry on and he turned out to be a great prophet, too. But greatness isn’t required to do God’s work. God makes fit those he calls, and results are up to God; we just have to be faithful knowing that God counts faithfulness as righteousness. I’ve begun telling people that there will be “even newer old people” to carry on when each of us is gone.
The synoptic gospels all tell that Jesus’ improbable successors went up a mountain with him just a week after he had told them that he was the long-awaited Messiah and that he would be killed when they reached Jerusalem. Luke’s gospel says Jesus went there to pray and talk to the ancestors about his “Exodus plan,” about his coming death. Scripture doesn’t say why Peter, James, and John followed Jesus that day. Perhaps, like Elisha with Elijah, they were determined to follow Jesus all the way. Jesus’ acceptance of the task he was given made his face and even his clothes to shine with the light of God.
The Gospel truth I promised to tell you today is this: We are all going to die; you knew that already. But do you know this? Only by embracing our death, as Jesus did on that mountain, can we be fully alive to do the work God created us to do. Only by discovering and carrying out the mission God has given us, can we gain new life that transfigures us here and now and prepares us for the life to come.
What is your mission, Greenwood Forest Baptist Church? Embrace that mission as if our very life depended on it—because it does—and God will transfigure YOU and provide everything you need to carry on.
