The Day of Resurrection-Easter Day Year B

The Rev Melanie Dickson Lemburg The Day of Resurrection: Easter Sunday Year B March 31, 2024 This year as a part of my Lenten observance, I’ve been reading the book A Different Kind of Fast: Feeding our True Hunger by Christine Valters Paintner. In this book, the author invites us to get in touch with our true hunger that we so often try to feed or placate with other practices, practices that draw us away from the heart of God and from our own truest hearts. She has written a Lenten retreat to encourage us to consider fasting from these practices and in the space opened by that fast, embracing more life-giving practices over the different weeks of Lent. As a part of this Lenten practice, I’ve been invited into a different fast each week for the past 6 weeks—fasting from multi-tasking, from anxiety, from speed and rushing, from always trying to hold it together, and from list-making. It has been a challenge, this gentle invitation to examine and re-shape my own inner landscape and spiritual life. But it’s the final fast that I really want to delve into here today, on Easter Sunday. The final fast has been to fast from certainty. Paintner writes, “Fast from certainty and attempting to control the outcome of things so that you might grow in trust in the great mystery of life.” i Her invitation is to embrace the beauty of the unknown and be nourished by new possibilities we would have never dreamed. When I’m faced with uncertainty, my temptation is to try to force something to happen to bring about certainty through results. This is not always helpful. Others can become paralyzed or frozen in the face of uncertainty—a sort of spiritual stuckness. In fasting from certainty, there’s an invitation to befriend the opposite of certainty, which isn’t necessarily uncertainty but is, instead, mystery or even that delicious word precarity. The writer and theologian Kate Bowler in a talk titled “There’s no escaping precarity,” says that precarity suggests something that is given but can be taken away at any time. It helps to describe the contingency of uncertainty. Bowler says that Dorothy Day described precarity as the ability to live inside uncertainty without always trying to imagine it’s the thing you’re going to get over. [Bowler posits that] It’s the question we’re always trying to answer. How do we live beautifully inside things we cannot change? As Christians, it’s our job to learn to live inside precarity as people of hope. People who live in the not-yet-ness of the Kingdom of God.” There’s no better gospel reading to invite us into mystery, into precarity, than the story of Jesus’s resurrection from Mark’s gospel that we just heard today. Where other gospel accounts give us visions of the Risen Christ (who is mistaken for the gardener), a race between two of the disciples to see the empty tomb, or an angel in dazzling white sitting on top of the stone that had covered the entrance to the tomb, Mark gives us a mysterious young man dressed in white as messenger to tell the women not to be afraid, that Jesus is no longer dead and has been risen, and to tell the disciples that he has gone before them back home to Galilee, where they also need to go in order to see him. And then what happens in Mark’s gospel? The women flee in fear, and Mark tells us that they tell no one because they are afraid. And we can’t really blame them, can we? as we have done this ourselves in the face of unfathomable mystery, in the face of unyielding, unrelenting precarity. But it’s interesting because this is how the gospel of Mark originally ended—with a big gaping mystery, teetering on the knife edge of precarity and no further evidence of Jesus’s resurrection. So what might this ending, this story, have to teach us about living with mystery or about the precarity of our own lives? The word mystery offers us a sense that something is continuing to unfold that will eventually be revealed. Henri-Frederic Amiel writes, “Let mystery have its place in you; do not be always turning up your whole soil with the plowshare of self-examination but leave a little fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the winds may bring, and reserve a nook of shadow for the passing bird; keep a place in your heart for the unexpected guests, an altar for an unknown God.” ii Mystery invites us to stay open to possibilities, to potential. It invites us into a humility that comes with not knowing, and it invites us to loosen our attachments around how we think about God and also how we think our lives are supposed to turn out. “Often we meet this mystery in the place of our own unfulfilled longings. Howard Thurman writes about the patience of unanswered prayer: ‘Slowly it may dawn upon the spirit that there is a special ministry of unfulfillment. It may be that the persistent hunger is an Angel of Light, carrying out a particular assignment in life.’ It’s an important reminder that the spiritual life isn’t always about happiness or comfort. Instead, it often calls us to stand in uncomfortable places and to meet and embrace God in the unexpected places in our lives.” iii We know that the story from Mark’s gospel didn’t really end there-with the women fleeing in terror and not telling anyone the good news of Jesus’s resurrection. If it had, none of us would be here together right now. It’s an important reminder for us that there is a gift in the unexpectedness of mystery and if we are always rushing toward certainty, or like me, trying to force it, then we miss out on the revelation of God’s presence. God also has a way of helping things unfold for us so much better than we could have ever even planned or imagined. Your questions to ponder today on this Easter Sunday are: Where are you currently craving certainty and how are you being called to embrace precarity, to lean into the mystery that is slowly unfolding in and around you? Can you remember a time in your life when what unfolded was even better than what you had planned or imagined? As you ponder the gifts of mystery and examine your need for certainty, what hunger in yourself do you uncover? In closing, I’ll offer us all Christine Walters Paintner’s blessing that she uses to close the chapter on fasting from certainty. God of Holy Darkness, be with us in our desire to know, in the ache to be certain, in the longing for assurance. Sit with us in the long quiet nights, hold us in our winter seasons. Wrap us in the grace of mystery, finding comfort in this mantle of unknowing as we rest our thoughts. Remind us of how everything emerges from the black fertile womb space of new beginnings, from the rich soil where seeds are planted. Sustain us in the times when not knowing is painful, fearful, anguished. Abide with us in the space of sacred Mystery, bring comfort, whisper words of love to us in the silence. iv i.Paintner, Christine Valters. A Different Kind of Fast: Feeding our True Hungers in Lent. Broadleaf: Minneapolis, 2024, pp 29-31 in kindle edition. ii.Ibid pp198-199 iii.Ibid. p 201 iv.Ibid. pp 217-218

The Great Vigil of Easter

The Rev Melanie Dickson Lemburg The Great Vigil of Easter Year B March 30, 2024 This is the night… This is the night when we remember the power of a single flame of fire leading the way in the darkness. This is the night when we follow that flame into the darkness of a tomb. This is the night when we huddle together in the warm embrace of candlelight and see the shadows of our ancestors gathered around us- a multitude of lights who participate with us in the sacred story. This is the night when we remember how God has acted and continues to act in love to save all of God’s good creation. This is the night when we weep with God over the ways we oppress and enslave and are oppressed and enslaved, how it sweeps away humanity in the swell of a huge tide and how we are all the lesser for it. This is the night when we watch in awe and terror as God takes what once was dead and gives it breath and new life. This is the night when we remember each of us has been claimed as God’s beloved, marked as Christ’s own forever, and we affirm that call and claim on how we live our lives. This is the night when the light returns, joy is resurrected, death is conquered and all creation is restored. This is the night When love finally prevails.

Palm Sunday Year B

The Rev Melanie Dickson Lemburg Palm Sunday-Year B March 24, 2024 On the very first Palm Sunday, there were two processions that entered Jerusalem that day. One was the one that we just read about—Jesus of Nazareth’s arrival in Jerusalem, where he knew he was headed to die. His procession entered from the East and was greeted by Jewish peasants lining the road, cheering for him, and the processions was accompanied by coats and branches of palm. The second procession entering in from the West was Pilate’s procession. Pilate, the Roman governor of that entire region was entering the city ahead of the Passover because often with Passover, the story of the liberation of the Jewish people, there would be trouble in Jerusalem, the heart of Judaism. Pilate entered Jerusalem at the head of an imperial unit of cavalry and soldiers and was accompanied by all the pomp, weaponry, and symbolism of the empire used to enforce its dominance over the occupied people. “Jesus’s procession proclaimed the kingdom of God; Pilate’s proclaimed the power of empire. The two processions embody the central conflict of the week that led to Jesus’s crucifixion.” (Borg/Crossan. The Last Week) Through the first quarter of this year, I’ve been learning about Christian Nationalism. Christian Nationalism is “a cultural framework that idealizes and advocates a fusion of Christianity with American civic life.” This “framework of thinking… demands Christianity be privileged by the State and implies that to be a good American, one must be Christian.” i. Our Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Michael Curry, has spoken out against Christian Nationalism, and one of the practical responses that he offers to Christian Nationalism is that as Christians, we must recenter ourselves on the teachings, example and spirit of Jesus of Nazareth. Curry talks about how whenever in history Christianity has gone astray, we have seen that Jesus of Nazareth (and his life and his foundational teachings and his example) gets moved aside in favor of this overarching “Christ figure” and Christianity itself becomes placed above and beyond following Jesus. Christianity becomes the be all and end all, and the teachings, example, and life of Jesus get lost. Curry suggests that we as Christians must recenter ourselves in love as a part of this process and that instead of focusing on any kind of cultural Jesus, we need to focus on what he calls “the Jesus of the book:” Jesus as depicted in the New Testament of the bible. Palm Sunday is a weird sort of day in the life of the church. It starts with a parade—shouts of hosanna and the waving of palms—and it ends in Jesus’ death. It marks the beginning of Holy Week, the week when we walk in the final footsteps of Jesus leading into and through his last supper with his disciples, his crucifixion, and his resurrection. There is no better time in the life of the church to try to reconnect with the life, example, and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, “the Jesus of the book,” than in the coming days. If we show up with open hearts, we can allow all the extra layers that we ourselves (and possibly our culture) have added onto Jesus to be stripped away as we experience alongside him his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the deep sadness and poignancy of his final meal with his friends as he struggles to tell them goodbye and to impart to them all the things they need before he leaves them. We experience his betrayal, his wrestling with God in the garden as he summons the courage to bear what he must bear. We walk alongside him and watch his unjust trial, and his horrible execution and death by suffocation on the cross. And we watch how he navigates it all as a fully-feeling human. There’s no better framework to engage with Jesus of Nazareth than the way these stories shine through in our ancient and vibrant liturgies—our Triduum services. This week, I’ve been reflecting on a poem I’ve recently encountered by Sheri Hostetler who is a Mennonite poet. (Y’all know I love the Mennonites!). I think it offers a lovely invitation to us all as we begin this journey into Holy Week together. Instructions by Sheri Hostetler Give up the world; give up self; finally, give up God. Find god in rhododendrons and rocks, passers-by, your cat. Pare your beliefs, your absolutes. Make it simple; make it clean. No carry-on luggage allowed. Examine all you have with a loving and critical eye, then throw away some more. Repeat. Repeat. Keep this and only this: what your heart beats loudly for what feels heavy and full in your gut. There will only be one or two things you will keep, and they will fit lightly in your pocket.ii How are you being called to get reacquainted with “the Jesus of the book”--the life, example, and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth--as we approach the holiest time of our Christian year? How is your Lenten observance culminating to strip away non-essentials and draw you closer to God? i.Definitions from Responding to Christian Nationalism Curriculum produced by Christians Against Christian Nationalism: https://www.christiansagainstchristiannationalism.org/ ii.Poem: "Instructions" by Sheri Hostetler, from the anthology A Cappella: Mennonite Voices in Poetry © Reprinted with permission of the author. From the Writer’s Almanac: https://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php%3Fdate=2005%252F10%252F07.html

4th Sunday in Lent Year B

The Rev. Melanie Dickson Lemburg The 4th Sunday in Lent-Year B March 10, 2024 Two of our readings for today are full of both dichotomies and paradoxes that invite us to wrestle with our lives and our faith in different ways than we might normally engage. In the Old Testament reading, we see the Children of Israel wandering in the wilderness and they are, once again, complaining. But their complaints are paradoxical: “why have you brought us out here in the wilderness? There’s no food out here!” And in the next breath: “we detest this miserable food that you keep giving us!” They make a critical error in complaining against God (up until this point, they’ve just complained against Moses), so God sends venomous snakes into their camp which bite the people and the people begin to die. They plead to Moses and God to save them, and God instructs Moses to make a bronze serpent and put it up on pole, and when the people look upon it, then they will live (and be healed?). The very thing that has wounded them has become the source of their salvation. In John’s gospel, we are plopped down in the middle of a scene that deserves some context. It’s the middle of the night, and a leader in the Jewish synagogue named Nicodemus has come to visit Jesus under the cover of darkness. Nicodemus is curious about Jesus and he has some questions for him, and the two get into a discussion. In their conversation, Jesus talks about being born anew or being born from above (which is a paradox), and Nicodemus leans into the dichotomy of how can you be born anew when you are already born and living? Jesus goes on to talk about darkness and light, intimating that light is preferred over darkness. (And yet, we note that Nicodemus only feels like he can come to Jesus under cover of darkness, so without darkness, their conversation probably wouldn’t be happening.) And then Jesus likens his coming death on the cross to when Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness—a story that Nicodemus would have been very familiar with. So what are we supposed to do with all this? How does it even make any sense to us or how can it be relevant for our lives and our faith? For most of us, it is our nature to try to make sense of the world by creating dichotomies, and we live in a world that encourages this: right versus wrong; good versus evil; light versus darkness: healthy versus sick; well versus wounded. (Dare I say it in this election year? Republican versus Democrat) When really so much of our lives and especially our growth is found in the in-between places, or in the gray areas. These in-between/gray areas are often places of wisdom, nuance, and understanding. Just think about all the things that can grow and thrive in the dark: seeds, roots, babies in the womb, intimacy. Think about the ways that modern medicine must often wound people further as a part of their healing: surgery, chemotherapy. Think about what it means to be empathic—how we can lean into the sorrows of another, sharing those burdens, and it can help someone be healed. In a world where we are encouraged to dichotomize and polarize, Jesus raises up the image of the bronze serpent on a pole and he points out how rather than polarizing, it becomes a reconciling, both/and experience—the serpent is both the distributor of a lethal snake bite and an instrument of healing. Jesus cross—a symbol of humiliation and torture and an instrument of death—becomes the tree of life upon which hangs the salvation of the world. Your questions for this week: think about a time in your life when you were both right and wrong at the same time? (Or when you needed both darkness and light? Or when something that wounded you also helped heal you?) What did that teach you about living in an in-between space? What occurrence in your life or in your faith now is inviting you to stop seeing it as a dichotomy and is inviting you into living in the gifts that can be found in the gray areas, in the both/and?

The Second Sunday in Lent-Year B

The Rev Melanie Dickson Lemburg 2nd Sunday in Lent-Year B February 25, 2024 Last fall, I was driving down Highway 17 in South Carolina, and I saw a figure approaching in the distance along the shoulder of the road. I watched as it approached, and my eyes began to discern what I was seeing. It was youngish man, probably in his twenties; he was dressed casually, but nicely—in blue jeans and a ball cap. And he was carrying something slung over his shoulder. As we grew closer still, I discovered that he was holding a wooden cross, with one of the arms draped casually over the front of his shoulder, and as he approached, I noticed that the cross seemed to somehow be bumping merrily along behind him. Still trying to make sense of what I was seeing, I glanced over as I passed him to discover that the wooden cross that he was so intentionally carrying while walking down the shoulder of Highway 17 was attached to a wheel. (Hunh!) Our gospel reading for today from Mark’s gospel gives us Jesus’s first out of three predictions of his death and suffering. This is happening in the center of Mark’s gospel and is immediately followed by the Transfiguration (which we read two Sundays ago), and we talked about how the disciples in that moment are invited to go from being spectators to being witnesses. But today’s reading sets the tone for the rest of Mark’s gospel, which focuses on the question “What does it mean to be a faithful disciple of Jesus?” and continues to show, over and over again, how Jesus’s disciples fail to understand what Jesus’s mission and ministry is all about. In our reading for today, Jesus predicts his suffering and death on the cross; Peter, who has just had a beautiful shining moment when he actually gets it right and has named Jesus as the Messiah, takes Jesus aside and rebukes him, and Jesus, in turn rebukes Peter, telling him that he is trying to distract him from his mission. Then he calls together his disciples and the crowd who is following along with them and says, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” Now, before I really delve into this passage, let me take a minute to identify some of the pitfalls. (Another writer suggests that this passage is rife with possibility to be problematic, likening its treatment to how one picks up a snake. There are lots of ways a person can pick up a snake and it can go horribly wrong, but really only one right way.) So let me say very clearly that I do not believe that Jesus (or God, or the Holy Spirit) wants us to suffer or willingly inflicts suffering on us. We also have to be mindful of all the ways that this particular passage has been used to oppress people—specifically women and people of color— whom the system has been stacked against and this passage is quoted to basically tell them to suck it up and deal with their suffering as a way of following Jesus. So what is Jesus actually saying? What is happening here? Listen to what Contemplative writer Joyce Rupp writes about Jesus’ difficult teaching for followers to “take up their cross and follow him”: “What did the crowd following Jesus think when he made that tough statement? Did they wonder what carrying the cross meant? Did they have second thoughts about accompanying him? Jesus wanted his followers to know that the journey they would make involved knowing and enlivening the teachings he advocated. In other words, Jesus was cautioning them, ‘If you decide to give yourselves to what truly counts in this life, it will cost you. You will feel these teachings to be burdensome at times, like the weight of a cross.’ She continues, “We can’t just sit on the roadside of life and call ourselves followers of Jesus. We are to do more than esteem him for his generous love and dedicated service. We do not hear Jesus grumbling about the challenges and demands of this way of life. We do not see him ‘talking a good talk’ but doing nothing about it. He describes his vision and then encourages others to join him in moving those teachings into action.” i “If you decide to give yourself to what counts in this life, it will cost you.” We know this, right? Suffering is, strangely enough, an essential part of humanity, of loving engagement—with others and with life itself. And yet, so often we want to have our cake and eat it, too. We want to be followers of Jesus, but we want to be comfortable. We want to be good people, with meaningful relationships, but we don’t want to suffer. We want to be able to witness to Jesus by walking down Highway 17 carrying a big wooden cross, but we don’t want to strain our muscles, or for it to rub too much on our shoulder, so we slap a wheel on the bottom of it, and voila! No more suffering! How many times do I try to slap a wheel on the cross that Jesus has invited me to carry as a part of what it means for me to grow deeper in my discipleship? What do I lose when I do that? What is lost in my community of faith when I do that? Your invitation this week is to think about one recent way that you may have tried to slap a wheel on the cross that Jesus has invited you to carry as a part of your discipleship. Or here’s how another writer puts it: “How have you actively avoided suffering, rejection, or unpleasantness this week? [Maybe it is as simple as not telling someone the truth?] Was there a cost to you, to loved ones, or to your community in doing so? How might facing suffering directly, even just naming what is happening…open you to greater fullness this week?” ii And just for fun, here’s a poem I wrote about my encounter on Hwy 17. Wooden Cross on a Wheel Melanie Dickson Lemburg I saw his silhouette in the distance on the shoulder of 17 and I could not make sense of it. Eventually emerged a man in his prime blue-jeaned and ball-capped with a wooden cross slung over his shoulder bouncing merrily along behind him. As I passed I discovered the wooden cross was on a wheel. Why carry when you can roll? Is such work pleasing to God? Well, it certainly makes a statement. (Even Jesus had a little help carrying his cross.) Carrying crosses is cumbersome bulky and bumping with no place to rest it unless there’s a convenient corner handy to prop. Jesus never said to take up his cross. I am to take up my own cross embracing suffering and that which slowly kills me and in the awkward struggle God reveals salvation. i.Quoted in Richard Rohr's Daily Meditations From the Center for Action and Contemplation for Thursday, February 22, 2024. Original citation is Joyce Rupp. Jesus, Guide of My Life: Reflections for the Lenten Journey. Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 2023, 20–21. ii. These questions come from Everyday Connections: Reflections and Practices for Year B edited by Heidi Haverkamp. WJK: Louisville, KY, 2023, p312.

Ash Wednesday

The Rev Melanie Dickson Lemburg Ash Wednesday 2024 (7 and 11:30am) February 14, 2024 It’s always a little weird when Ash Wednesday falls on Valentine’s Day. It’s like the secular world and the church world collide in a way that seems starkly incongruous. But this year, I decided to lean into the connection to see where it would take me. And where it took me was, unsurprisingly, to consideration of the heart. Every year on Ash Wednesday, we recite or sing Psalm 51 either during the imposition of ashes or just after, and in that Psalm we ask God to “Create in me, a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” It has been an interesting exercise this year for me to think about this day, Ash Wednesday, and all of Lent in light of this request I am making of God. What does it mean for my heart to be created clean? What does it look like for God to renew a right spirit within me? There’s a camp song that our daughter learned when she was little that is set to this verse from Psalm 51. She went through a phase where she wanted my husband to sing it to her every night before bedtime. It goes Create in me, a clean heart O, God, that I might be renewed. Create in me, a clean heart O, God, that I might be renewed. So fill me. Heal me. And bring me back to you. Create in me, a clean heart O, God, that I might be renewed. What are the ways that you need God to create a clean heart in you during this Lenten season? What does it look like for God to renew a right spirit within you? (Or even to renew you?) Create in me, a clean heart O, God, that I might be renewed. What are you longing to change? What is the deepest desire of your heart that needs tending to? Create in me, a clean heart O, God, that I might be renewed. Lent is a season in which we fast from practices that break our hearts or break the hearts of others, fasting from practices that distract us and draw us away from the heart of God. So fill me. Heal me. And bring me back to you. And when we create space in our fasting then we can embrace practices that are more life-giving, practices that can restore our hearts with God’s help and gracious presence. Create in me, a clean heart O, God, that I might be renewed. This requires truth telling and radical self-honesty, which is part of the work that we begin this day. And this work can be supported by Lenten practices or disciplines. I’ve started reading a new book as a part of my Lenten practice that looks at fasting and embracing in a new light. The book is titled A Different Kind of Fast: Feeding our True Hunger by Christine Valters Paintner. And in this book, the author invites us to get in touch with our true hunger that we so often try to feed or placate with heart-breaking practices, practices that draw us away from the heart of God and from our own truest hearts. She has written a Lenten retreat to encourage us to consider fasting from these practices and in the space opened by that fast, embracing more life-giving practices over the different weeks of Lent. Listen to her invitation: 1. “Fast from multi-tasking and the destructive energy of inattentiveness… Embrace the practice of beholding each thing, person, moment, as you respond to that hunger for presence.” 2. “Fast from anxiety and endless torrent of thoughts that rise up in your mind, thoughts that paralyze you with fear of the future. [Embrace] the radical trust at the heart of things and listen to the hunger for contentment in the moment.” 3. Fast from “speed and rushing through your life.” Embrace “the grace shimmering right here in… holy pause[s].” 4. “Fast from being strong and always trying to hold it together, and instead embrace the profound grace that comes through your vulnerability and tenderness…exploring [your] hunger for the ability to reveal [y]our wounded places and have them seen and loved by another.” 5. “Fast from endless list-making and too many deadlines and enter into the quiet as you listen for what is ripening and unfolding, what is ready to be born.” 6. “Fast from certainty and attempting to control the outcome of things so that you might grow in trust in the great mystery of life.” Embrace the beauty of the unknown and be nourished by new possibilities we would have never dreamed. i It's certainly a different kind of fast than we usually take up, isn’t it? But just maybe, on this Ash Wednesday that is also Valentine’s Day, we need to give some attention in the coming season to all the ways that we break our own hearts, and how God is longing to restore and renew them for us. Create in me, a clean heart O, God, that I might be renewed. Create in me, a clean heart O, God, that I might be renewed. So fill me. Heal me. And bring me back to you. Create in me, a clean heart O, God, that I might be renewed. i. Paintner, Christine Valters. A Different Kind of Fast: Feeding our True Hungers in Lent. Broadleaf: Minneapolis, 2024, pp 29-31 in kindle edition.

Last Sunday after Epiphany Year B

The Rev Melanie D. Lemburg Last Sunday after the Epiphany-Year B February 11, 2024 I have a new song that I’m quasi-obsessed with. It’s my new hype song; I listen to it when I’m driving in the car often on repeat because it makes me happy. It wasn’t a song I had planned to preach on until I woke up with it going through my head on Monday morning. The song is titled Shambala and it’s performed by Three Dog Night. Do y’all know this song? It was released in 1973 and the song is about the mythical kingdom of Shambala which is referred to in Tibetan Buddhism, and it is speculated that the song to this mythical place is actually about the spiritual path or journey. It starts: “Wash away my troubles Wash away my pain With the rain in Shambala Wash away my sorrow Wash away my shame With the rain in Shambala Ah ooh yeah Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah Ah ooh yeah Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah” The narrator goes on to sing about the people he encounters on the road to Shambala—people who are helpful, kind, lucky, and so kind-on the road to Shambala- and then launches into the rousing chorus: “How does your light shine In the halls of Shambala? How does your light shine In the halls of Shambala?” Today is the last Sunday after the Epiphany, the season in the church when we most focus on light—the light shining in the darkness, the ways that God is manifest in this world in the person of Jesus, the ways that God continues to be manifest in this world through the power of the Holy Spirit shining in our lives, weaving people and experiences together. So this question of how does your light shine is an especially appropriate one for us as we close out this season. But I think we can be a bit more specific in looking at how our light shines considering two of our readings for today—the Old Testament and the gospel. In the Old Testament, we see two of the greatest prophets of Israel-Elijah and Elisha; Elijah has served as a mentor to Elisha and Elijah is preparing to complete his time on earth and be taken up to heaven. There’s this strange group of spectator prophets who seem to be trailing after them wanting to see what will happen and kind of heckling Elisha, who just keeps telling them to essentially “shut up!” And in the gospel reading for today-the story of Jesus’s Transfiguration—we have Jesus’s closest disciples on top of the mountain with him when he becomes transfigured, and a voice from heaven proclaims: “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” Another writer says of this gospel account: “The disciples witness the deeds of Jesus, but fail to grasp the core of his character and mission. This is all the more striking, considering that the divine voice, heard in the transfiguration account, commands them to listen to Jesus (9:7). Narratively speaking this imperative suggests more than practices of passive listening. Here, the voice demands that the very disposition of Jesus’s closest followers evolve from spectators to witnesses.” We see this differentiation between witnesses and spectators at work in the Old Testament story as well. The spectators are the gaggle of prophets who are following along to see what’s going to happen to Elijah. But it is Elisha who insists on accompanying Elijah to the very end, and who receives a double portion of Elijah’s spirit as he is able to watch Elijah being taken up to heaven on chariots of fire with horses of fire in a whirlwind. And it is, thus, Elisha who becomes the witness and the next great prophet of Israel. So, what do you think is the difference between a spectator and a witness? Our Wednesday congregation weighed in on this question this week: for them a spectator indicates a certain amount of distance between the watcher and the event. But a witness implies connection, an experiential piece that changes the watcher making them become a part of the ongoing story; someone observed that witness is both a noun and a verb; and being a witness can sometimes mean standing up for what you believe is true or what truly happened. Think about how the disciples change from spectators to witnesses between the transfiguration and after Jesus’s resurrection (well into the Acts of the Apostles). Do you think the transformation from spectator to witness is a sudden development or more of a slow growth in the life of faith? How are you being called in your own life to grow from spectator or passive listener to witness to the manifestation of God through the Holy Spirit in your life or in the world around you? Or to quote my friends Three Dog Night: “How does your light shine in the halls of Shambala?” i. https://genius.com/Three-dog-night-shambala-lyrics ii. Smith, Shively T.J. As represented in Everyday Connections: Reflections and Practices for Year B. Ed Heidi Haverkamp. WJK: Louisville, 2023.