Sermon August 9, 2009

Pentecost, Proper 14

1 Kings 19:4-8, Psalm 34:1-8; Ephesians 4: 25-5:2, John 6:35, 41-51

Lot of stuff has happened this week! Lots of things in the news:

     We have a new Supreme Court associate justice - Sonya Sotomayor.

     We have another 2 billion for "Cash for Clunkers" (though since my aged truck gets 19 mpg it will continue to make ghostly appearances on the highways and by-ways of south Whidbey!

     And Thursday had two newsworthy items - they were both funerals of sorts.

     At 8:15 a.m. in the middle of a small Japanese city, a bell tolled, as it has done, obediently, every day, for nearly 64 years. Thursday at 8:15 a.m. local time was the 64th Anniversary of the destruction of Hiroshima. No one will know for sure exactly how many died but somewhere around one hundred thousand seems to be the consensus figure - many of them in the instant the bomb exploded.

     So much death.

     On Thursday there was another funeral - of Harry Patch, aged 111 years, the last British survivor of the trenches of World War I. Patch was part of a British offensive that began July 31 1917 at Ypres, in Belgium - the British solders called it "Wipers" because they couldn't pronounce the French name. It was the third battle there, and when it drew to a close it was given a name that even I remember: Passchendaele. The offensive took three months, gained five miles, and claimed 800,000 casualties on all sides.

      So much death.

Thursday was also notable for another remembrance: Thursday was the day we celebrate the Transfiguration of Jesus. You all know the story: Jesus takes Peter and James and John and they go up a mountain, and the three disciples see Jesus transfigured before them - his face a blazing white - and then notice that there are two figures with him, whom Luke identifies as Moses and Elijah. Peter celebrates the moment, proposing that the three build three booths, one for Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elijah. Luke adds an editorial comment to this proposal: "for [Peter] did not know what he was saying".

This event, on the mountain top, marks a turning point for Jesus - he sets his face to Jerusalem, and will not be distracted. At the end of the journey there stands a cross.

     So much death.

The three events I mention are all linked, and that link begins, not with Jesus, but with the three disciples. It's easy to miss - we tend to focus so much on Jesus, and this dramatic light show surely steals center stage! But take a look again at the three disciples and, in particular, Peter, and do so remembering that these words were written down by Luke as much as 50 years later. "Let us build three booths" Peter said. The words echo the Feast of booths, Sukkot, commemorating the building of booths in the wilderness during the Exodus to welcome the famous leaders of the remnant - Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joseph, and David - and culminating in a prayer for the coming of the Messiah. Peter is saying "the Messiah has come."

But then Luke adds his comment: "[Peter] did not what he was saying". Luke, with the gift of Paul's letters, understood something Peter did not. He understood that it wasn't necessary to build booths to house holy ancestors. Or to house the Messiah. Or to house God. It wasn't necessary to build them because, Luke is telling us, they already existed. Peter and James, and John - they were the booths.

Luke is telling us that after Jesus God comes to us in a different way. Paul underscores this again and again when he writes to the Corinthian church: "...you are God's temple....God's Spirit dwells in you" (1 Cor 3:16).

The Spirit of God dwells in us.

How then, are we to respond? How are we to respond in the face of so much death?

As is traditional at Japanese funerals, thousands of paper lanterns were released into the Motoyasu River at Hiroshima, in memory of all those who died August 6th 1945.

The people remember.

And they remember, on that day, not just those who died in Hiroshima, or in Nagasaki, but those who died in London, , in Auschwitz, and Dresden, in Rwanda, in New York - everywhere where innocents die - everywhere where anyone dies - as a victim of war.

They remember, and they pray for peace, and the speak for peace, and they work for peace.

Harry Patch spent all of his later years taking about the eight and a half million soldiers who died in World War One, and saying, again and again, that the solution to disputes should never be war. Before he died he asked that there be soldiers in his funeral from all the sides represented at Ypres - British, French, Belgian, and, yes, German, because in the end soldiers are the first victims of war, no matter what side they fight on.

He asked us to remember, and to pray for peace, and to speak for peace, and to work for peace.

That's Luke's message to us - that if we genuinely believe that the Spirit of God dwells within us, if we genuinely believe we are temples of the Holy Spirit, then there are consequences for us: how we live should reflect who we are, and who we are is of God.

We are, therefore, to live in ways that reflect the words of our Savior. We are to remember, and we are to pray for peace, and we are to speak for peace, and we are to work for peace. And, too, to remember the standing cross is not really the end, but the beginning. Ahead of it stands the stone rolled away from the tomb, and a group of eleven disciples who discovered the joy and celebration of community, and love, and God that even death could not overcome. That quest is ours. And we can only find it if we embrace the love of God and each other, and live the peace which passes all understanding.