Sermon Archive

OK. I admit it! I’m a Star Trek fan. Indeed I’m one of the originals, for I was among those who tuned in to the very first NBC broadcast of Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy, and crew, way back on Thursday night, September 8, 1966. And I’ve stayed tuned in to it and to all of the follow-up series—The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise—I’ve stayed tuned in ever since.

Indeed, long before Star Trek, from the time I was a young boy, I’ve felt drawn to the light of the heavens.

I well remember one particular night when, having spent several hours staring at the stars while listening to the pounding waves roll up onto Miami Beach, I startled my parents by announcing, proudly, that I felt called to become a Navy chaplain (a post where I could get paid to stare at the stars every night)! Well, I didn’t wind up answering that particular call from the galaxies, but had there been such a role, I’m sure that a decade or so later I would have signed right up to become Chaplain Shafer of the Star Ship Enterprise!

Since then other visions of the light in the heavenly realm-above have drawn my spirit upward and outward and then returned me to earth awestruck, yet refreshed and newly invigorated for the living out of my life in whatever way God may choose to use me.

And, as it is described for us in this morning’s First Lesson, that, too, was the experience of the young man Isaiah some 2,750 years ago.

“In the year that King Uzziah died” (742 B.C.), Isaiah went up to the Temple in Jerusalem to worship God, and there he experienced far more than he had bargained for. As he stood amidst the dense smoke billowing from the incense pots and from the smoldering coals of the sacrificial fires, Isaiah had a mystical vision. In it, he could feel the ground moving beneath his feet, and he could see the pivots of the portals shaking. And then, gazing upward through that veil of smoke, he caught a glimpse of the light of God’s glory, a sight of the awesome, majestic, sovereign God of Heaven, enthroned above.

In this vision of his, Isaiah saw soaring there, in the space between him and God, a company of six-winged angels—“seraphs,” who as they were flying kept calling back and forth to each another in adoration of God, saying: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of God’s glory.”

And in the midst of Isaiah’s mystical experience of this awesome, exalted God, he sensed his own lowliness, and he called out aloud to God a confession of his sinfulness. In response, one of the seraphs took a red hot coal from the altar, touched it to Isaiah’s lips, and pronounced an absolution, saying, “Your guilt has departed, and your sin is blotted out.”

And at that very moment, the voice of the One enthroned among the angels-above called forth to Isaiah, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And Isaiah responded, “Here am I; send me!” And God said, “Go!”

Thus it was that Isaiah’s mystic experience of having been drawn into the light of God’s glory became for him a summons to vocation, a call to go forth into the world speaking and acting on behalf of God.

Isaiah’s vision of the heavenly realm and of the light of God’s glory had drawn his spirit upward and outward and had then returned him to earth awestruck, yet refreshed and newly invigorated for the living out of God’s purpose for his life.

Our Second Lesson from the Gospel of Luke recounts still another mystical experience, still another life-shaping vision. The disciples Peter, James, and John were fighting off sleep on that mountaintop, and in that moment they experienced a vision in which they beheld Jesus transformed into a figure of dazzling glory. And there, standing and speaking with this Transfigured One, were two of Israel’s great leaders from the past, Moses and Elijah—Moses the lawgiver, who had proclaimed for all generations God’s will for our human conduct, as summarized in the Ten Commandments; and Elijah the prophet, who had shown for all time how to speak God’s truth to power.

And at the climax of the disciples’ mystic, mountaintop vision they heard a voice calling out from heaven and saying: “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him”—obey him, fulfill the vocation he has given to you, the call to follow him throughout your life.

Thus it was that the disciples’ mystical experience of having been drawn into the light of God’s glory, manifest to them in the transfigured Christ, became for them a summons to vocation, a call to go forth into the world speaking and acting on behalf of God.

Their vision of these mountaintop figures and of the light of God’s glory had drawn their spirits upward and outward and now would return them to the valleys of their daily-lives-below awestruck, yet newly invigorated for the living out of God’s purposes for their lives.

Two lessons, two visions, two powerful mystical experiences.

Now we modern Americans are skeptical about mystical experiences. Yet anthropologists tell us that fully 90% of the world’s societies believe such experiences to be routine, or at least normal—these encounters with a realm-of-reality-beyond-the-earthly that come to people in a mystical state of alternate consciousness.

Certainly in the lands of the ancient Near East—that is, in the lands from which the Bible comes—such mystical experiences of a realm of reality beyond the earthly, coming through visions and trances, were frequent. And today’s lessons exemplify this phenomenon.

But let’s face it. There are few people in our own society who recount experiences on the magnitude of these dramatic transfigurations depicted in today’s texts—complete with billowing smoke, soaring angelic choruses, dazzling rays of light, shimmering images of past religious heroes, and resounding voices from enveloping clouds. (cf. Kathy Black, in The Abingdon Women’s Preaching Annual: Series 2, Year C [2000], p. 51)

Still, there are among us many who do report gentler encounters with God that light up our faces; experiences in which the presence and power of the Spirit are beyond question; mystical experiences—whether we call them that or not—that “confirm our identity as disciples of Christ”; mystical encounters, in which we see clearly “who we are and whose we are.” (Black, p. 52)

And I know, both because many of you have told me so and because I myself have experienced it—I know that the rite of ordination we are about to celebrate has been, in the lives of many of us, one of those deeply Spirit-filled, mystical moments of divine encounter and call.

Whenever one of you is chosen to be an elder or a deacon and is then ordained and installed, you are being summoned, you are being called to walk still farther into the light of God’s glory and to accept fuller responsibility for doing God’s will on earth as it is done in heaven.

For just as the mystical experiences of Isaiah and of Peter, James, and John drew them on into the light of God’s glory and became for them a summons to vocation, a call to go forth into the world speaking and acting on behalf of God, so, too, your experience of ordination and installation here today is meant to be mystical and is meant to call you on into the light of God’s glory and to draw your spirit upward and outward, to the end that you may return to your everyday existence freshly awestruck and newly invigorated for fulfilling the mission to which God has called you.

God says, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And you say in humble response, “Here am I; send me!” And then God says, through our laying on of hands, “Go!”

Now, when persons come down from this “mountaintop experience” of either ordination or some other mystical encounter—let me share this with you from personal experience— when we come down from such a mountaintop experience, the chief difficulty we confront is that of constancy, the difficulty we confront in trying to translate the inspiration of such a peak moment into the constancy of a lifetime of committed discipleship.

And that’s why we need the continuing sustenance of these mystical moments of prayer, song, preaching, and sacraments that we call “worship.” And that’s why we also need the continuing support that comes to us through the praying of the whole congregation.

There’s a wonderful expression that’s often used by African-American congregations. It’s this: “praying up the preacher.” It’s a phrase born of this recognition: if we preachers are to remain constant and faithful in our proclamation of God’s word, then we need regularly to be “prayed up” by you, both during the week as we are preparing our sermons and also during those parts of worship that precede our sermons—the prayers and songs.

Well, that’s what we preachers need. And this morning I want to emphasize that deacons and elders have that very same need. So you, the congregation, need to “pray them up,” too. For if they are to remain constant and faithful to the ministries of service for which God has chosen them, then they, too, need regularly to be “prayed up” by the rest of us, as they strive to fulfill their God-given vocations in both their secular work and their church work—as they strive to do that work with a constancy that is faithful—faithful to the light of God’s glory into which they have been called.

So, on behalf of all the elders, deacons, and pastoral staff of this congregation and on behalf of all those who are to be ordained and installed today, I invite from all of you in this congregation your continuing prayer that we shall remain constant to our calling beyond the moment of our mystical, mountaintop experience.

For I believe that with your prayerful support it shall indeed come to pass that through the fragment of God’s glory made visible in each of us, many others will likewise be called to Christ’s light.

Let us pray: