Dazzling

March 2, 2025
University Baptist Church
Minneapolis, MN

Luke 9:28-36

There’s a picture that I keep on my desk at home, where I write most of my sermons. It’s a picture of me surrounded by two mentors. It was taken a good 30+ years ago. I still had hair, and it wasn’t white. On one side of me is George Williamson, then pastor of the First Baptist Church of Granville. He nurtured in me a fledgling faith in God—even though I believed in ideas like Karl Marx's economic analysis and George Orwell's social analysis.  He spent a dozen years as the founding president of the Baptist Peace Fellowship and worked alongside Tai Shigaki. As the first Gulf War was ramping up, he went to Iraq, putting his life on the line to show the Iraqi people that not all US citizens wanted their annihilation. He was an irreverent reverend with a hearty laugh and a piercing social, political, and faithful analysis, in the tradition of fellow southerner Will Campbell. 

On the other side of me is the late Gustavo Parajon. He spent his life as an advocate for the poor and marginalized in Nicaragua. A polio survivor, he became a medical missionary in his home country, using his degrees from Denison, Case Western, and Harvard. He helped eradicate polio and measles nationwide, and his rural health programs became models for global health initiatives.  In his spare time, he served as pastor of the First Baptist Church of Managua—a position his daughter now holds. He was trusted by both sides of the conflict, and in the late 1980s, he was part of a peacemaking quartet of leaders who sought to reconcile warring factions.

Kim and I stayed in his home on our first trip to Nicaragua 40 40-something years ago. He became a friend, confidant, and mentor.  I look at that picture of the three of us, so much younger then. And I find myself inspired to be the kind of minister they both were.  

The picture also raises questions. Who are the ones who point you in the right direction? Who nurtures your spirit? Who holds up a mirror to our face, not in spite, but because we need to be reminded of our light, our dazzling sparkle, which is a reflection of God. And it’s in each of us. Our sister Laurie saw this, and she lived her life as a spark of light, dazzling us with her red hat, her huge smile, her belly laughs, and the way she sported wigs and even a bald head in these past several months.  We are supposed to be dazzling. That’s what Laurie would say.

This being the last Sunday in the Epiphany season, the lectionary gives us the story of the Transfiguration. Right before Lent, we might need to remember that we are supposed to dazzle. Jesus climbs Mount Tabor with his disciples, and they see him in dazzling light, but also accompanied by apparitions of Moses and Elijah. Are Moses and Elijah passing their mantles of leadership onto Jesus? And if they are, then maybe James, Peter, and John are the next in line. Why do these stories have three characters, I wonder. The disciples don’t know what to do, so they say the first thing that pops into their heads. “Umm, let’s make tents for each of you.” Tents, after all, were where the people gathered to hear from God. The Temple was a kind of permanent tent. Maybe they wanted to build the best tent of meeting for each of them. “Maybe we can have people visit these tents, they imagined. You three can answer their burning questions.” I’m paraphrasing, of course, but I also wonder. What are the questions that burn in your hearts? Where do we go for the answers to our burning questions?  And if you say to Jesus, remember that he often answered questions with questions.

Power is tempting. It’s like a drug. Once we get a taste, we can’t get enough. We have to have more.  That’s why Jesus was so concerned about the behavior of Peter, James, and John, the three musketeers of discipleship. He worried that their power might go to their heads, and then nothing would get done. The disciples are mesmerized, dazzled by the supernatural images of these three. And it made them not think straight. It made them consider preposterous things, like building booths for each of them, like audaciously asking to be at the right and left hands of power.  I imagine Peter James and John thinking, we can be just like them—admired, maybe even feared.

On Friday, the president of Ukraine came to the White House and was scolded by the US President and Vice President for the sin of speaking the truth, that the Russian president has a track record of breaking his promises.  He was looking for assurances from the US, and instead he got a dressing-down for not showing fealty to US leaders.  The US lost its opportunity to get precious Ukrainian minerals, and the war will continue. Who wins in this scenario? Some say it was an orchestrated media event to show US power.  And it took the focus off of Russia’s invasion. Power corrupts, and people die.  I thought about the bravery of the Ukrainian president and the Ukrainian people. To whom do we look for bravery?

I finally got my copy of Bishop Marian Edgar Budde’s book, “How We Learn to be Brave”. She speaks of rising to a moment of decisive action. It’s built on a lifetime of making good decisions and learning from the not-so-good ones. She writes in the introduction,

The courage to be brave when it matters most requires a lifetime of small decisions that set us on a path of self-awareness, attentiveness, and willingness to risk failure for what we believe is right. It is also a profoundly spiritual experience, one in which we feel a part of something larger than ourselves and guided, somehow, by a larger Spirit at work in the world and in us. Decisive moments make believers out of everyone, for no matter what name we give to it, the inexplicable, unmerited experience of a power greater than our own working through us is real. The audacious truth is that we matter in the realization of all that is good and noble and true. (Xviii-xix)

Where do we find our bravery to speak a word of hope and reality when so many people seem (in the words of John the Revelator) drunk on the wine of the beast?  People are waiting for us to muster the courage to be brave.

Maybe that’s what Peter, John, and James were wanting from the Holy Trinity on the mountaintop.

Each of the three is worthy of praise and attention. Each has had a unique authority in the lives of the Hebrew people. The question is: whom do we follow?

Is your authority with Moses, who gave not only the 10 commandments but 603 other laws recorded in the first five books of the Bible, known as the Torah? Indeed, they have authority.  We have embraced lying and killing in our national and international dealings.  Would a return to Moses’ laws save us, set our ships right?

Is our authority with Elijah, the great prophet? The one who boasted I, only I am left. The one who made fire happen after a flood on the altar of Baal. And after that fire, in a torrent of self-righteous fury, he killed 50 prophets of Baal, saying in effect not only is my God better than your God, but any action in defense of my god is acceptable, even vengeful murder. Is that where authority lies?

But the voice from the cloud spoke.  And echoing the words spoken at Jesus’ baptism, said, “This in my beloved son, listen to him.”  The voice didn’t say “ignore Moses and Elijah,” but it said that Jesus was on at least a level playing field. In fact, perhaps even a better example. Listen to him. 

Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was. He responded, “well, you know what the good book says, ‘Love the Lord your God with all of your mind, heart, soul, strength.  The second is just like it, ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’  On these are built all of the law and the prophets.”  Moses represented the law; Elijah, the prophets.  Jesus represents the best of both worlds.

And maybe that’s what we are called to do, too.

One of my dear friends recently retired. Sharna spent a career as a pastor in San Francisco and then as a mental health counselor in Gallup, NM—a lifetime of drawing out the best in others. I received a package the other day in the mail from her. It included the picture I shared with the children of three teenagers she helped nurture at my home church in Cleveland, myself included. But also in the box was this robe.  It had been gifted to her by a couple she was marrying who wanted their wedding to be dazzling.  So, a purple robe with gold sparkling thread made sense to them. Sharna is on a retirement purge rampage, and she thought of me when she found the robe hanging in a closet.  She said it deserved to be worn. She even said that it ought to be worn by someone who is similarly doing the work of justice and bringing out the best in others. Her only stipulation was that when I was done doing my ministry thing, I pass it on to someone else to carry its legacy.  I humbly don this robe to remind myself not just to be dazzling, but to encourage someone to come into their own power.

Think of the people who hold up a mirror to you.
Think of the people who celebrate you warts and all.
Think of the people who see you as a dazzling example of all that is good.

If you don’t remember anything else from this sermon, remember this:
You are made to be dazzling. Not to outshine others, but to reflect God. For we all need someone to look up to.
So go into this day and dazzle someone —not with your greatness, but by reminding them of their own worth and beauty.

Imagine a world of dazzling people who not only believed in themselves but also believed in the capacity to call out the best in another.
Imagine that kind of leadership.
Imagine the voices unleashed.
Imagine the colorful and diverse ways we can sparkle.

That’s what the Christian life is about.