It seemed like darkness would never come on those magical 4th of July nights when I was a kid. The game would get over and the lights would go out, but there was still that glimmer of dusk in the air and so we’d wait. We’d wait and we’d wait and we’d wait, until, finally, the first flash of light would pop over the outfield fence, and we knew that everything for which we’d waited had finally come.
Why did we have to wait, on those summer nights when I was a kid? It was a question of time. We waited because the time wasn’t yet quite right for the fireworks show. The people running the show knew that the flash and sparkle of the fireworks would be at their height if they waited until the time was right, when darkness had descended and the audience would be even more impressed by the grandeur of the show. So we waited, until the time was right for things to come to pass.
Waiting is something not many of us know how to handle. There’s an internet commercial going around about the Slowskys, a family of turtles who prefer waiting for their dial-up service rather than having the instant response of broadband. It’s satire, of course: doesn’t everyone want faster downloads and better response time from their computer? After a 15 year hiatus, Domino’s reinstated their 30 minute pizza delivery process last year. But in our reading from Exodus today, we hear how Moses waited. And waited. And waited. Seven days on the mountaintop, and we have to ask ourselves: what was the point of all that waiting? What happens with all that time?
There’s an ancient Celtic belief in “thin places;” places where the world we know comes into close proximity with the eternal. I think that any place can be a “thin place” if God chooses it to be so, and that waiting has something to do with that. I believe that Moses was called onto the mountaintop to wait so that when God’s glory came near, the full impact would be made upon him. I believe that sometimes God lets time run until the time is right for the eternal to come near, and that in the places where that happens the waiting and the experience combine to allow incarnation to happen, the eternal reshaping the temporal into a closer approximation of the image in which it was first created. And I believe you and I know these times when they happen – we just don’t always think God has anything to do with it.
I remember taking a walk with Kristin on a snowy afternoon a few weeks after we started dating – that walk seemed to last for hours, but at the same time, when it was over, it was like we’d just left the coffee shop where it started. I had the same feeling the day Ainsley was born. Yesterday morning I had coffee with Dave Krumm, our board president; he shared the story of catching an 8 pound trout in a lake in
The ancient Greeks had two words for time: chronos and kairos. Chronos is watch time, appointment time, bus schedule time. Chronos is measured in units, from nanoseconds to millennia, but the units are set and do not change. A minute is a minute is a minute. The world record in the mile is held by Hicham El Guerroj of
These moments when Kairos and Chronos combine are the moments when incarnation happens. The word we translate as “glory” in Hebrew is dbok;. It literally means weighty, heavy – the Latin word would be gravitas – wholeness & immensity. In a world filled with frivolity and meaninglessness, God’s presence can be unbearably demanding and even harsh, but it also is uncontrollable, unpredictable, utterly worth the wait. To be brought into the presence of God, the very power of all eternity, is transformational – you can never be the same again. These are moments that transform the rest of your life.
When the full dbok; of Jesus was revealed to Peter, James and John on the mountaintop, though, it was more than those three disciples who were changed. The whole world was changed by the Transfiguration of our Lord, because those three disciples became the tellers of the story, those who were changed by their kairos moment with Jesus and couldn’t keep it to themselves. But even kairos can take a little chronos to come to full impact. Jesus asked them to wait to reveal what they’d seen, because sometimes God uses chronos time to let those kairos moments mature into the live-giving faith they would need to speak clearly about what they had seen and who they believed Jesus really was and is and will be.
So the questions for us rise up today. What am I waiting for in my faith? Do I trust God when changes don’t happen instantly? Have I learned to remain in the presence of God while God is silent? Do I take God’s silence as an opportunity to practice the faith I’ve been given? Is God transforming me in the waiting time as well, or only in the immediate moment of God’s glorious presence? I think that kairos is what will help us learn to answer these questions – not with absolutely certain knowledge, but with the hope and trust that simply asking the questions means we’re on the way of following Jesus. In the early church, people went through a three year period of teaching called “catechesis” before they were baptized; it’s where we get our modern word “catechism” and it is the root of what we call “Confirmation.” It takes TIME for God to transform us, both chronological time and kairotic time, thin time, where God steps into our world and the dbok; and gravitas of God’s presence transforms us into something new.
But this isn’t always the easiest thing to bear. In fact, sometimes it seems like our church doesn’t WANT transformation, doesn’t WANT the true presence of God, BECAUSE of the power and weight and gravitas that presence brings. Writer Annie Dillard once wrote: “Does anyone have the foggiest idea of what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets! Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews! For the sleeping God may awake someday and take offense, or the waking God may draw us to where we can never return.”[1]
This is that the Transfiguration of our Lord means: when God’s kairotic presence invades our chronological world, whether we are waiting or caught up in a moment unprepared, nothing is ever the same. Were it not for the love of Jesus, the presence of God would be more powerful than we could bear. But look at the end of our gospel text today. Jesus touches his beloved disciples and says, “Get up, and do not be afraid.” The touch of Jesus reassures and calms the fears of the ones caught up in the dbok; of God’s presence. In Jesus, God is both overwhelming, immeasurable gravity and serene, kind reassurance. This is time worth waiting for. This is a Savior worth every moment we have. This is glory worth worshiping. Amen.
Wow. Great stuff, as usual. Thanks for sharing your sermons online...I've really come to look forward to them on Sunday afternoons or Mondays.
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