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Homilies by Rev. Andrew Collis unless indicated otherwise.

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Transfiguration, Year A
South Sydney Uniting Church
February 26, 2017

Exodus 24:12-18; Psalm 99; Matthew 17:1-9

‘An eccentric Word’

Peter, James and John are exposed to what sociologist John Carroll calls the "Shining" – the true being of Jesus – the Human One in the Spirit of a passionate Love – highly creative, courageous, vulnerable to the world around him, yet responsive, responsible. More traditionally, we say that the disciples see the divinity of Christ (or the movement from humanity to divinity and back again). God be with you ...

How will Peter, James and John (the same three will witness Jesus' agony in Gethsemane) respond to the Shining? What will be their response? To hide from it or disown it? To admire it from afar? To enshrine or institutionalise it? What difference will it make in their lives?

The story in full (from retreat in the mountains to daily dale) teaches that disciples are to become it – we are the body of Christ, a spiritual movement from humanity to divinity and back again – which also means helping others to "shine". There are many ways, perhaps as many ways as there are individuals responding to the call of Love.

"The glory of God is the human person fully alive", said second-century bishop, Irenaeus of Lyon. That’s an ancient text worth repeating – chanting, singing, writing in big letters somewhere prominent or private.

A lamentation – the witness of protestors with candles shining, mourning, longing for justice. "The glory of God is the human person fully alive."

An affirmation – the witness of persons in transition, from childhood to adulthood, from awkward to elegant, from ashamed to unabashed, the happy glow of an expectant or proud parent. "The glory of God is the human person fully alive."

At Boston College I took a course in Philosophy and Painting. The professor, John Sallis, shared voluminous writings on aesthetics by the German idealist, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), who made repeated references to "shining" as a particular quality of painting.

"It is in the shining of colour that the irreducibly sensible basis of painting consists.” The shining of colour might be understood as the spirit of matter, or something like that.

One implication of this is to see painting bound to colour over what may be regarded its central subject and thus bound to what lies at an extreme. Hegel praised the eccentricity of painting; the painter a spiritual eccentric, living on the edge, more than a little unconventional, alert to the forsaken, to blind spots ...

Our Gospel offers a truly eccentric Word – it is precisely as the Beloved (the Human One in the Spirit of a passionate Love) that Jesus will suffer and die (Romans 8:32; cf. 5:6-10; John 3:16). It’s this that Peter the disciple finds intolerable. Poet-philosopher Jean-Louis Chretien comments: "Divine wisdom advances in the blind spots of human wisdom, because we had decreed that it could not come that way – in weakness, in poverty, in humility, in Jesus the Christ."

In lamentation – the witness of protestors with candles shining, mourning, longing for justice. "The glory of God is the human person fully alive."

In affirmation – the witness of persons in transition, from childhood to adulthood, from awkward to elegant, from ashamed to unabashed, the happy glow of an expectant or proud parent. "The glory of God is the human person fully alive."

Another example we might well relate to – editing as an eccentric spiritual practice – editing as a way to help others to shine. I've mentioned, in the past, working with William Emilsen on the Uniting Church Studies journal, and reading the same essays over and over, checking for consistent footnoting, italicised titles, sub-headings, headers, etc.

That’s the task. To help bring to clarity the work of different writers – some of whose interests more closely than others resemble our own interests. Lyn, Dorothy, Miriam, Cathie and Catherine know what this is all about. It’s enlightening (a means of learning and growing) to realise, again, that editing is about helping others to shine.

As is teaching, coaching, the art of musical accompaniment, chaplaincy, ministry ... Theology is not something rarefied but something close to real life, something close to ordinary life – life in the neighbourhood, or in the valley, we might say. All these movements from humanity to divinity and back again.

So much of what we do and say is motivated, most humanely, by a desire to help others to shine. It may be so at any moment. I think of this community which allows for expression of faith in tears, words, colours, stories, food, drink, friendship, frustration, forgiveness, silence, everyday kindness, presence.

We can talk about the glory of God in the tradition – in the Scriptures, in the structures and liturgies and doctrines of the churches. That’s important talk, valid and faithful. And yet our talk about the glory of God ought to resonate with what Irenaeus calls the human person fully alive. The body of Christ as we make our way in the world – loving and failing, helping and healing, dying and rising to new qualities of life. You and me, alive to the world, to Creation, alive to the needs and gifts of one another, alive to our own peculiar needs and gifts ...

Lamenting – the witness of protestors with candles shining, mourning, longing for justice. "The glory of God is the human person fully alive."

Affirming – the witness of persons in transition, from childhood to adulthood, from awkward to elegant, from ashamed to unabashed, the happy glow of an expectant or proud parent. "The glory of God is the human person fully alive."

That’s why Mardi Gras is a theological, as well as a political, social and personal, event. It’s wonderful that the churches celebrate the Transfiguration during the Mardi Gras festival because sex and gender diverse people, like all people, are called to live full and blessed lives (and if they choose, married lives).

Mardi Gras is the LGBTQI community’s opportunity to shine. Can we not see today the eccentric/queer Christ whose proud sense of self and Spirit eludes those who would contain, categorise, control – three awful words that all-too accurately describe a conventional, that is, lazy, institutional religiousness? In response, and in keeping with our theme, Chretien offers this eccentric word: "Nothing suffices for the soul but that which exceeds its capacity."

On seeing the light/true being/divinity of Christ, we are more than a little dazzled/overwhelmed, then commanded to listen, to heed the eccentric Word: to look again for a shining, sometimes dim, sometimes bright, aglow in all people. "The glory of God is the human person fully alive."

When have you witnessed a person "fully alive"? ... Amen.

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