2 Corinthians 3:12 - 4:2 (links validated on 2/5/25a)
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Sermon Starters (Transfiguration)(C)(2025)
The December 20, 2016, edition of the New York Times included an article entitled, “The Brilliance of a Stradivarius Might Rest Within Its Wood.” It reported that for hundreds of years the best violinists have almost unanimously preferred Stradivari or Guarneri instruments. But no one had been sure why other makers couldn’t replicate their sounds. The Times went on to report on a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that suggested the answer may lie in the wood: “Mineral treatments, followed by centuries of aging and transformation from playing, might give these instruments unique tonal qualities.” Scholars found evidence of chemical treatments in the Stradivarius and Guarneri violins’ wood that contained aluminum, copper and other elements that aren’t found in later generations of violin makers. While no one is sure whether this was a deliberate move by the famous violin makers, researchers now suspect that it makes a huge difference in the quality of sound a violin makes. However, top violinists also feel like the old violins of Stradivarius and Guarneri vibrate more freely, perhaps the result of centuries of vibrations caused by playing them. These vibrations allow violins to express a wider set of emotions. All of this led a colleague to wonder if this is a kind of metaphor for God’s work of transforming us to be more and more like Jesus Christ. “Our Christ likeness, after all,” he writes, “comes from both the ‘soaking’ of the Holy Spirit and years of practice in acting, talking and even thinking like Jesus.”Embracing the Light
a United Methodist pastor from Virginia with the unusual name of Bass Mitchell once wrote about one of his more memorable family vacations, saying: “[…] we happened by Luray, Virginia, and went into the famous Luray Caverns. Soon we found ourselves in a strange, new world. The cool, misty air filled your lungs, a welcome change from the humidity and heat from the outside world. The whole place was like God's sculpturing studio. “Minute-to-massive rock figures in multi-colors rose majestically from the ground and plunged from the ceiling. Occasionally a drop of sediment-rich water would drop on your face as you looked up, reminding you that the infinitely patient and ceaseless process that created all of this was still at work. “But of all we saw that day the most interesting and inspiring to me was ‘Mirror Lake.’ It’s a section of the caverns that’s covered with about 8 to 10 inches of water. The water was practically invisible. Had the guide not told us it was there, we would have been completely unaware of it. Such was the perfection of its reflective power. I reached out and touched the water just to see if it was really there. “As I stood there thinking about how this tiny lake reflected perfectly the beauty of the ceiling about it, it came to me that this is what I have been striving for in my Christian life — to be a mirror lake, to perfectly reflect the One above, whose love is so wondrous. “I had to admit that often I was a poor reflector, a tiny, dingy lake. But somehow I felt renewed and encouraged. If that little lake could so flawlessly reflect the beauty of God’s handiwork, then surely I, surely we, with the help of the Spirit, can reflect in our lives the beauty of Christ.”...
Resources from 2022 to 2024
Sermon Starters (Transfiguration)(C)(2022)
John Murray was a 20th century Scottish-born prolific theologian and writer. In The Collected Writings of John Murray, he asks: “How is it that [people] who are not savingly renewed by the Spirit of God nevertheless exhibit so many qualities, gifts and accomplishments that promote the preservation, temporal happiness, cultural progress, social and economic improvement of themselves and of others? How is it that races and peoples that have been apparently untouched by the redemptive and regenerative influences of the gospel contribute so much to what we call human civilization?”Seeing God In The Mirror
Years ago, Al Franken, the now-cancelled comedian and former U.S. Senator, played Stuart Smalley on Saturday Night Live. Dressed in a light-blue cardigan and a yellow button-down shirt, Smalley, “a caring nurturer, a member of several 12-step programs, but not a licensed therapist,” began each episode of “Daily Affirmation,” his mock-self-help-show, by looking into a mirror and reminding himself, “I’m going to do a terrific show today, and I’m going to help people because I’m good enough; I’m smart enough; and doggonit, people like me.” By the end of each skit, however, Smalley had fallen apart, overwhelmed by his emotional struggles, hardly reminiscent of the mantra he had spoken only minutes ago. Accordingly, he concluded each broadcast the way he started, looking into the mirror and trying to convince himself of his own worth, though the second time around there was nothing convincing about it...A More Honest Light (SS)
On May 31, 1921, a teenaged black boy was falsely arrested for a supposed attack on a white girl. Around 25 black men, some wearing the uniforms they proudly wore serving in France during the First World War, assembled outside the jail to protect the young man. Scuffles broke out when a white man attempted to take a rifle away from a black veteran. A firefight broke out, and by the time it ended around twenty-five people, both white and black, were dead. The next day ten-thousand-armed white people descended on Greenwood. They killed, looted, burned, and destroyed without any intervention from civil authorities. When the National Guard finally arrived to restore order, bureaucratic delays prevented their deployment for many hours. When all was said and done, over three hundred African Americans were killed. Ten thousand were homeless. As many as 6,000 were interned in camps. Hundreds were hospitalized. Thirty-five square blocks of the Greenwood neighborhood were burned to the ground. The equivalent of $33 million dollars in property and land in today’s currency was destroyed...
Resources from 2019 to 2021
Transfiguration (C)(2019)
Commenting on John Baille’s book, Our Knowledge of God, Neal Plantinga asks, “Do our doubts have moral roots?” Are our souls, as Plato suggests in his Laws, 886 a and b, “Urged toward an irreligious life by a lack of self-control in the matter of pleasures and desires?” Baille comments, “Part of the reason why I could not find God was that there is that in God which I did not wish to find. Part of the reason why I could not (or thought I could not) hear him speak was that He was saying some things to me which I did not want to hear . . . When we do not relish God’s commandments we are tempted to deny his being.”The Reasons for Veils (Exodus & 2 Corinthians)
What is the purpose of a veil? Is it to conceal? It is to reveal in part? Is it to protect? It is to hint? The story of the veil worn by Moses is told in Exodus (34:29-35) and then is referenced by Paul in II Corinthians 3:12-4:2. Over the course of those two texts, the veil is examined in a variety of ways...
Resources from 2013 to 2018
Face to Face
("The 2010 drama film The Social Network portrayed many interesting features of Mark Zuckerberg's development of his online creation. But they missed a big one: the name he chose for his baby --'Facebook'. Let's face it: humans are obsessed with the unique, defining nature of our faces. The arrangement of our eyes, nose, mouth, chin, cheeks, forehead, never ceases to amaze and fascinate us...")
Resources from the Archives
Chains of Love
Over the weekend we learned about love in Iraq. Our guests were our new refugee friends from Iraq, Ziyad and Ghadah, who explained to us that their marriage was arranged by their parents. Ziyad is very much in favor of arranged marriages, explaining that parents love their children and want the very best for them, and sometimes the parents make better decisions that young lovers do. That's hard to argue with. Some of the parents in the room wanted to pick their children's spouses too. It was a very traditional courtship. Ziyad did not speak to Ghadah alone until after they were engaged. And Ghadah wore a hijab, which is a headscarf worn by Muslim women, sometimes including a veil that covers the face except for the eyes. Some Muslim women wear a burqa, which is a loose, usually black or light blue robe that covers the body from head to toe. I think all of us were fascinated by these veils worn by the women. One of our Muslim guests said that she wore a hijab when she came to the states, and a woman came up to her and said, "Listen, honey, you don't have to wear that anymore because you are in America now!" But Ghadah and the other Muslim women explained to us that wearing these veils was not a dishonor, but rather an honor. It fulfilled the Islamic requirement of modesty, but it was also a way of saving their beauty for their husband. She said it was like having a beautiful diamond that you didn't show everybody, but saved it for only special people to see. After all this talk about Muslim veils, I was surprised when I looked closely at our text for today and discovered that Paul mentions veils in this text five times!...The Unveiling
In the mid 1980's, Joseph Campbell sat for a series of televised interviews with Bill Moyers which eventually led to a book called The Power of Myth. I recall a statement from one of those interviews, when Dr. Campbell offered a reflection on the middle-class protagonist of the 1922 novel Babbitt, by Sinclair Lewis. Through a character he named George Babbitt, Lewis drew a satirical portrait of the power of conformity in mundane early twentieth century values. Dr. Campbell said, “Remember the last line (George Babbitt uttered in the novel)? ‘I have never done a thing that I wanted to in all my life.’ Well, I actually heard that line when I was teaching at Sarah Lawrence. Before I was married, I used to eat out in the restaurants of town for my lunch and dinners. Thursday night was the maid’s night off in Bronxville, so that many of the families were out in restaurants. One fine evening, I was in my favorite restaurant there, and at the next table there was a father, mother, and a scrawny boy about twelve years old. The father said to the boy, ‘Drink your tomato juice.’ “And the boy said, ‘I don’t want to.’ “Then the father, with a louder voice said, ‘Drink your tomato juice.’ “And the mother said, ‘Don’t make him do what he doesn’t want to do.’ “The father looked at her and said, ‘He can’t go through life doing what he wants to do. If he does only what he wants to do, he’ll be dead. Look at me. I’ve never done a thing I wanted to in all my life.’” Dr. Campbell, reflecting on this brief encounter from many years before said, “And I thought, ‘My God, there’s Babbitt incarnate!”Botox Spirituality
Julie wanted a total makeover-hair and skin. She visited a "one-stop shop" that had a "makeover dream team" of doctors, dentists, hair stylists, colorists and other practitioners. The staff begins by mapping Julie's face to outline the areas that will require improvement. Julie will not need dramatic surgery for a few years so the doctors use Botox treatments to smooth the lines on her forehead and around her eyes. Stylists then color, cut and highlight her hair. A few days later, she returns to have the creases around her mouth filled with a newly approved drug and a foot massage. Then she strolls over to the dentist chair for a brighter smile. Finally, a makeup artist put the finishing touches on her and Julie's transformation is complete, well, almost. She will have to return to the 'one-stop shop' in a few months to receive additional Botox treatments. She does not hesitate injecting into her skin one of the world's most poisonous substances to prevent her wrinkles from returning. The Botox will eventually stop removing the wrinkles and she will require surgery to maintain her youthful appearance. But Julie is not thinking about the future. Her thoughts are captivated by her rejuvenated youthful appearance...With Unveiled Faces
("The devil came to me the other day, as he often does, and he said, 'Preacher, how about joining me for a little walk. It never hurts to walk and talk a little bit, now does it?' I had to admit that I couldn’t see any harm in walking and talking, and so I agreed to walk with him for a little while. He led me out the door of the church and up the street to one of our neighbourhood convenience stores...")