Welcome Home
Mothering Sunday is an English and Irish tradition that began in the 16th century. It was originally to honor and give thanks for the Virgin Mary — Mother Mary. It was a day for Christians to return to their “mother church,” a day of family celebration and giving thanks for our mothers.
Welcome Home is the spirit. Yes, “there’s no place like home.”
I remember a driving trip Jai and I took through Mexico. We drove down the east coast all the way to the Yucatan Peninsula, arriving in Chetumal shortly after a hurricane had torn most of the city apart. I wanted to drive to British Honduras, now known as Belize, but we didn’t have a multiple-entry permit for the car.
The guy at the border crossing said we could mail in our single-entry permit and wait for new papers. Remembering how it took a postcard four weeks to get to my mom, I decided to forego the offer.
When we finally got back to Mexico City a couple of weeks later, we were exhausted. We spied a Denny’s as we navigated our way along this huge nerve-wracking thoroughfare with seven or eight lanes in each direction. No one paying any attention to the lane markings. We were so homesick for some American food that we pulled right into that Denny’s parking lot. It was a big disappointment. Our hamburgers didn’t at all taste like what we got in Los Angeles. Definitely no place like home.
Jesus tells a parable to answer the objection of the religious authorities concerning his hobnobbing with notorious sinners. People who should be cast out of their common religious home.
You know it. About a father with two sons, one who thought life would be better on his own. So, he took his share of the inheritance and set off for a far country.
Things didn’t work out as he had hoped. Especially after he had wasted all his money on high living and loose women. He’s soon wished to be dining with the pigs, sharing their seed pods.
And you know the end of the story. As the father spies his returning, bedraggled son far down the road, he opens his arms, running to meet him. “My son was once lost but now is found!” Joy and merriment broke out that night. And of course, we remember how the elder, dutiful brother felt about this homecoming reception. But that’s another sermon.
Home, for most all of us, has special memories and significance. It’s a place of last refuge. As Robert Frost said, “Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in.”
Unfortunately, many have found themselves far from home. Not of their own choice. Not due to their own wandering, but because they had never been fully admitted in the first place. Our history is replete with those locked out and shut out.
Recently, I stumbled upon a documentary of a group of people whose full personhood had never found a home in the American Dream – stewardesses. The documentary, Fly With Me, records the history of the first women cabin attendants in aviation.
This is the story of girls coming into full womanhood by dint of their own efforts. Every step a struggle against male, piggy exploitation.
It was a chronicle of the first ground-breaking women who opened the door for their sisters in aviation. It all began when Ellen Church convinced Boeing that having nurses aboard flights would put passengers at ease. As planes were not pressurized, they were limited to 10,000 feet. This resulted in a lot of turbulence, and most passengers were predisposed to be nervous about flying to begin with.
Soon, airlines began to realize that “sex sells.” Stewardesses’ uniforms became skimpier and skimpier, demeaning the women as sexpots and Barbie Dolls. Finally, degrading to “hot pants.” Really!
Glamor was the ticket. And a pleasing, compliant personality. The women must be petite – 100 to 118 pounds, max. They would be weighed at the bottom of the aircraft stairs every time they disembarked the plane. One pound over and you’re gone. You couldn’t have a waistline over 38 inches. This was just the start of the harsh employment guidelines.
You had to be 22 to 26 years-old to be considered. Couldn’t be married and must leave or be fired when you reached the age of 32, later 34. And you must be white. There were four physical exams required every year. Pregnancy was instant cause for dismissal.
Did the men have to abide by such standards? Heck, no.
Fly With Me is the film that records the struggles of a growing cadre of women in a most demanding profession to achieve, and be paid, for their invaluable contribution to the airline industry. You can see it on YouTube.
Soon, most major airlines were running training schools, lasting in the range of seven or eight weeks, sarcastically known as “Charm Farms” by the women.
Ann Hood, a stewardess – and later a writer, but more about that later – writes a wonderful memoir, Fly Girl: A Memoir[1], revealing all.
Ann notes that on her opening day at the TWA school, Breech Academy in Kansas City, they were tested mathematically, physically, mentally, given drug tests, and divided up into teams to test cooperative and personality skills.
On that first day, their instructor told the seated group, “It’s easier to get into Harvard than to sit in your seat.” Out of 14,000 applicants only 550 would be hired. Yes, they were special.
Not special enough to merit a decent salary and humane working conditions, however. As the country became socially aware in the activist 60s and 70s, these women, and soon a few men, discovered the power of unions. Through their collective organizing they finally did make a home for themselves in the American dream.
Many of the sexist standards fell by the wayside, replaced by decent pay, ability to work until retirement age, same as the pilots, and a pension. They could marry and have a family. Full womanhood in a profession most of them loved. They made a home for themselves.
Fly With Me is a heartwarming story, as is Ann’s book.
Oh yes, I mentioned “more about that later” referring to Ann Hood as a writer. Some sexist man on the board of one of these airlines expressed the sentiment of many of his colleagues when he opined, “These women have the looks but they have absolutely no brains.”
Au contraire. Many of these talented women went on to have second careers as authors, teachers, lawyers and highly-placed government workers. Many went into business or started their own businesses. No brains? Give me a break! Ann has written ten books. What? No brains?
No place like home. And that is our obligation as members of the Jesus Movement, to lay out the welcome mat of full inclusion for all. And shelter the shunned and those given no chance.
We are now told that ICE is going only after “the worst of the worst.” Not true.
In the Los Angeles Times there was an article on an Orange County couple who had been living peacefully in the U.S. for decades. They had three grown daughters, American citizens, living here.
ICE grabbed them up when they reported to their routine check- in as per their agreement to remain in the country. This happened on February 21, and within hours they were on a deportation flight to Columbia.
Yes, the couple had tried numerous times to gain citizenship, but ultimately the 9th Circuit Court denied them.
This couple was law-abiding, hard-working, raising a family and never missed a check-in appointment.
One of their daughters said that “This cruel and unjust situation has shattered our family emotionally and financially.”[2] Aren’t these exactly the sort of people we should be welcoming?
What happened to welcome the stranger, shelter the foreigner? All part of Torah Righteousness and Gospel Goodness.
By the way, how does one know when this administration is lying? Their lips are moving.
Like the Loving Father in Jesus’ story, through the prompting of the Spirit, we stretch our arms wide to welcome all home – the foreigner, the disparaged and locked out, the addicted and incarcerated, the shunned. Yes, even the sinner! And in the doing, there is more joy than in heaven. “Olly, olly oxen free, free, free.” All home.
Emma Lazarus on the Statue of Liberty nailed it — sentiments straight from this parable.
“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Can we all say a big AMEN?
[1] Ann Hood, Fly Girl: A Memoir (New York: Norton, 2022).
[2] Ruben Vives, “An O.C. Couple’s Sudden Deportation Sends Shock waves,” Los Angeles Times, March 26, 2025.
March 30, 2025
Lent 4 – Mothering Sunday
Joshua 5:9-12; Psalm 32;
2 Corinthians 5:16-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
“Welcome Home”
The Journey from Was to Is
One of my favorite passages of scripture opens with the words, “In the beginning…”
As a science major, and before that as a small boy, creation always fascinated me. Later as the astronomy coach for my physics teacher at Cerritos Community, on clear evenings I would roll out our telescope and train it on some cosmic delight, the object of that day’s lesson.
We could view Jupiter with its great red spot and the Galilean moons, the four largest moons being: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. Later, many more would be discovered. We could easily see the rings around Saturn. Mars was a distant, fuzzy orange speck.
On trips out to the Mojave Desert, at night, the sky was spectacular with the Milky Way sparkling overhead with its millions of stars. We didn’t yet know that it was a monstrous black hole that kept it – and us – all in regular order slowly circling its gravitational pull.
Later, the James Webb Telescope would delight us with the fantastical images of far-off nebulae and pictures of millions of other galaxies in far off reaches of space. Because the light arriving from some had taken billions of years to reach us, what we were actually seeing was a glimpse into the early creation of everything. Almost all the way back in time to the Big Bang.
Just as an aside, go treat yourself to a planetarium show at the Griffith Observatory right here in Los Angeles. It is a spiritual experience.
The Creator is to be found in the splendors of the sky and the natural world. All around us — as close as that annoying mosquito keeping us awake at night, as bright as the sun and Sister Moon. It’s all dazzling to behold.
In Abram’s despair over a living inheritance, he complains to God concerning his childless existence.
The Lord God commands Abram to step outside. “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them…so will your descendants be.”
I can only imagine Abram staring open-mouthed, beholding the cosmic light show. Stars beyond measure.
And if he had lived in the northern reaches of Alaska and Canada, he would have beheld the Northern Lights dancing across the skies – pink, purple, magenta, dazzling white.
To seal the deal of a new beginning, God’s faithfulness is enshrined in a lasting Covenant. Abram, on his part, sacrifices a young goat, a turtledove and a young pigeon. That’s how the Art of the Deal was done back then.
After the sun had gone down and a deep sleep had fallen over Abram a “smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between the pieces.” God always works God’s wonders in “terrifying darkness.” The Covenant was sealed. Such a deal!
All this metaphorical language sounds very primitive and bazaar to us modern folks. Not unlike a children’s fairy tale or ghost story.
Yet, here is the truth wrapped up in this passage. However we moderns might understand this Covenant, the fact is that we are here. We live on a planet uniquely suited to our being present. The place is not only habitable (or at least it was not too long ago), but is a most delightful place.
I notice the splendor every morning as I go out to my car and see the flower stalk on the agave next to the driveway. It’s taller each day, now approaching ten feet. My neighbor Jim tells me the flowers on it should bloom sometime around April or May.
As it shoots towards the sky, I told my wife that actually that plant grew from some magic beans I bought with our life savings from a little boy out in the street.
Delightful, all of it. That is how I understand this promise from the salvation history of Deuteronomy. The hallmark of all this is the simple fact that I’m here. That we’re here.
Think of it – of all the impossible trillion possibilities of a certain egg meeting a certain sperm – well, the odds against it are astronomical. Replicated over billions of years – and here we are! Beyond quantum computation. Incomprehensible! Sheer grace. The same for the odds of you being here.
Sheer existence, messy as it is, is the primal seal of this Covenant, birds and goats aside.
In that Big Bang, was all the eventual ingredients for the “wonders of interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses, and this earth, our fragile home.” All released in a nanosecond of a nanosecond after the Big Bang. From aardvarks to zebras along the little creepy-crawlies we don’t like in our kitchens.
As hostile as the environment would seem at times – here we are. Alive, descendants of some Cro-Magnon Adam and Eve. Given an amazing ecosystem favorable to our continuing flourishing. Unless we totally mess it up.
This is what was, always moving towards what is and what will be. All the ingredients present.
But we haven’t been left without an instruction book and guidance. Wisdom and reason have been bequeathed us. Torah Righteousness instructed us as to our relationships with one another, as to our relationship to this our fragile “island home.”
Through the prophets, again and again, we have been given promptings on how to flourish and thrive. Jesus Christ being for us a living example, a spiritual mentor, opening the door to eternity. A vision bringing each one of us to the full Glory of God – women and men fully alive. Alive to ourselves, to one another and to the One who left us here. And, all this, too, out of the Big Bang.
We are not left adrift. The Spirit of Christ continues to move through conscience, thorough imagination, through inventiveness, through delight and creativity.
I have been fortunate to have a caregiver from the wonderfully named organization, “Motherly Comfort Care.” Most of us have been fortunate through part of our lives to have known a mother’s tender care. It is the first evidence most of us have as newborns of a hospitable universe.
Motherly comfort is a frequently used metaphor for God’s care and love.
Speaking of Jerusalem, the city that kills its prophets, the city doomed to disaster under Roman siege, Jesus laments. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem…How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings…”
And yet, the universe till now has done just that, given us an out-of-the-way planet just the right distance from its sun – evolved through the eons with an atmosphere that supports life and with faithful rains providing life-giving water.
Barbara Brown Taylor, through a meditation on having an orphaned baby chick, brings flesh to this picture.
Barbara, I think, is sort of like our member Ellen who has a tender heart for all sorts of strays. The stray in this case was an orphaned guinea chick. Barbara had heard that one type of chicken tended to be good mothers, the white Silkie.
She shopped around, and through the Market Bulletin, found a person selling them over in Royston. After a bit bargaining, she had one rooster, two hens and four juveniles. As she was about to leave, she spotted a gray hen.
“What’s that one?” she asked. “A Blue Silkie,” the woman responded. “A cross between a black and a white.”
“How much for her?” For another six bucks she concluded her purchase and left for home with all her chickens.
“When the Silkies and I got home, I saved her, [the Blue Silkie], for the orphaned chick. First, I lay on the grass while she and the baby watched each other through the mesh of the cage. Then I placed her inside. Both she and the baby froze. The baby cheeped. The hen did not move a feather. The baby cheeped again. The hen stayed right where she was. The baby took a few steps toward her. I held my breath. The gray hen lifted her wings. The baby scooted right into that open door. When I checked on them an hour later, all I could see was a little guinea chick head poking out from under that gray hen’s wing. Six bucks. What a deal.”[1]
Like that Blue Silkie, you and I are meant to be the Motherly Comfort Care for one another and for this creation. And for this republic.
Here’s the altar call – a call to each of us as a citizen. How will you use your God-given “reason and skill” that we have been bequeathed in service of the covenant we share as Americans? Every day we move from what was to the “is” of our present obligation to one another and to the stranger seeking refuge here.
We are that Blue Silkie for the one another – providing tender shelter under her wing.
To begin…here is the necessary, opening question when arising from slumber, “How can I be part of the solution to the ills daily besetting our nation?” How can I fulfill my role in this covenant we have with one another? What one action can I take today? Will you take? Now, in your mind’s eye, lay it on God’s altar.
As an American and as a Citizen of our World? — how can I be God’s Motherly Comfort Care? For friend and stranger? For family and neighbor? I guarantee you this…the Spirit will answer. And you will be the better for it. Such a deal!
Every morning is the First Morning of what today is and what tomorrow will be.
“Sweet the rain’s new fall, sunlit from Heaven/Like the first dewfall on the first grass. Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden/sprung in completeness where his feet pass.”[2] Amen.
[1] Op. cit.
[2] Eleanor Farjeon, Songs of Praise, second edition, (published in 1931), to the tune “Bunessan“, composed in the Scottish Islands, 1938. Made popular by Cat Stevens and found in many hymnals.
March 16, 2025
Lent 2
Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18; Psalm 27;
Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 13:31-35
“The Journey from Was to Is”
Gratitude Not Attitude
We’ve all been in stores that were understaffed. Sales clerks are often undertrained, underpaid and overworked. And what you find is a number of grumpy employees. And a big dose of attitude.
When I was at the skilled nursing facility recuperating from my hospital stay at Kaiser, most of the certified nurse aides were just fine, some, in fact, outstanding. But a few – let’s just say they had few people skills. “Would you like the lights off with some attitude?” You got it! Help to the restroom with attitude? Right! You got it.
What we got as a nation with the joint session of congress last Tuesday was a lot of attitude. Attitude in abundance. The performance by the president was unparalleled in length and in vituperation and grievance.
No gratitude at all for having been handed an economy in great shape. Record low unemployment. One of the largest increases in the number of jobs in the country’s history. Inflation coming down to normal levels.
Yes, what we got was a grievance-filled tirade vilifying Joe Biden, Democrats and “unelected bureaucrats.” Packed with lie heaped upon lie. He blamed the price of eggs on Joe Biden, or was it Hillary’s emails? Not an ounce of gratitude.
Yes, life is sometimes difficult, precarious. But we in America have no cause to be down-in-the-mouth. Even our poorest live far better than many across this globe.
There is much to be grateful for. That is the sentiment expressed in our lesson from Deuteronomy. Entering the Promised Land, thankfulness is the order of the day.
“When you have come into that land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it, you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest…You shall go to the priest…who takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of God…you shall make this response before the Lord your God:”
“My father was a wandering Aramean; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders he brought us to this place…”
It’s about gratitude for a journey which is always ongoing. America has been blessed beyond measure: we are Seminole, Aleut, French, African, Russian, Chinese, Mexican, Cherokee, Tlingit, Korean, German and English. A rich Heinz 57 variety of cultures and nationalities, all now on a journey together into the Light, if we would but see it. What’s not to be grateful for?
The temptations of Satan in Luke are about an attitude of presumptiveness, of entitlement. All of which, Jesus refuses.
This idealized, romanticized version from Deuteronomy omits all the savage brutality that was involved in taking possession of that land. It justifies the present dispossession of Palestinians from their land – the wanton slaughter and destruction of Gaza. All with your tax dollars.
Just as is the case with the settlers’ conquest of America. The genocide of the “Trail of Tears” and the so-called Indian schools in the Southwest, Canada and Alaska. It omits over 300 years of slavery. Yet here we are; let’s deal with it. Despite all, we are blessed with unmeasured riches and opportunities our parents never had.
The moral arc of the universe has bent a bit more toward justice in the American story. The panoply of our history is repleat with invention, courage, renewal and correction.
My mother should have gone to college, but instead went to a business school, because that’s what a woman did back then. Or she went into nursing or teaching. Or waitressing or sales-clerking. Or caregiving. All underpaid work.
The other evening, Jai and I watched an episode of NOVA on the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore when struck by a huge container ship the length of three football fields. I was delighted that the engineer heading up the recovery process was a young woman. In my mother’s era, never would she have been considered for or promoted to such responsibility. As she discussed the intricate physics of untangling the mess of twisted steel that had been that bridge, it warmed my heart. I became choked up. Gratitude for her success filled me in that moment.
I’ve been reading a book by a Jew who is deeply troubled by his people’s role in Gaza. Peter Beinart, in costly gratitude for the ethical heritage of his people, dares to tell truth.[1]
He writes, “Over the last year, I’ve struggled with the way many Jews—including people I cherish—have justified the destruction of an entire society. This book is about the stories Jews tell ourselves that blind us to Palestinian suffering. It’s about how we came to value a state, Israel, above the lives of all the people who live under its control.”
In his willingness to consider the plight of the Palestinians, Peter has faced ostracism by many of his own tribe. Yet, out of a generous spirit, he continues to believe in a possible future for both peoples. This book “is about why I believe that Palestinian liberation means Jewish liberation as well.” Peter’s book is written in gratitude not only for his people, but for the possibilities for reconciliation for both peoples. It’s written in his gratitude for a rich Torah and prophetic heritage of truth and justice.
As we enter these 40 days of Lent, would that Christians might have the same humility, the same willingness to dare a larger vision of America. Gratitude for a shared future is called for. Not attitude.
Gratitude for the moments of joy that pierce the darkness will get us through these evil days. We may sing the blues, but that lament carries us through the week to resolution, to possibility. To a manageable Monday.
The other day, I passed by the strawberry stand in Chino on my way back from our P.O. box there. On a lark I made a U-turn and swung into the parking area. When I arrived home, I took one of those strawberries from the basket and indulged. It was so flavorful, so delightful – it made my whole day. Self-care is now so essential.
We sometimes sing a soulful song yet find the strength to move on, doing what we can. For as long as we can. Enjoying the pleasures that unexpectantly come our way. Like our Friday afternoon gathering of friends at our house I call SUDS ON THE DECK. More self-care.
In Lent is the assurance that as we complete the journey, it is not as aliens but as beloved sons and daughters of the Most High. We are all Wandering Arameans. Brothers and sisters of one another.
By the way, a love offering to assist with the Ukrainian refugees would surely be an acceptable gift to lay at the altar of the Almighty – just sayin.’ Or a donation for the fire victims. It might now be widow’s-mite time. Let’s have an attitude of gratitude.
“If thou but trust in God to guide thee through the evil days. Who trusts in God’s unchanging love builds on a rock that nought can move.” That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Amen.
[1] Peter Beinart, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning (New York: Knopf, 2925),
March 9, 2025
Lent 1
Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16;
Romans 10:8b-13; Luke 4:1-13
“Gratitude Not Attitude”
A Season of Lament
Like many of you, I watched the most recent debacle play out in the Oval Office. It was an ambush of a true and courageous ally under siege by a murderous war criminal. As more and more in that room piled on President Zelinsky I was nauseated.
Stalin had it right when he referred to such Americans as “useful idiots.” Our president repeated time and again Kremlin talking points. One lie heaped upon another. This Orange Felon must surely be leading the competition with Satan for the designation, “Father of all Lies”. And J.D. Vance would be a close runner-up. Disgusting.
We as a nation, taking the side of a murderous dictator, have much to lament. Many expressed their shame in their nation – an embarrassment to be an American.
It’s not just our allies that are we disparaging, but the least of us. As of this week orders have come down from the House of Representatives to cut billions from Medicare, Medicaid, nutrition programs for mothers and infants. Cuts to school lunch programs. The entire Department of Education fed to the wood chipper along with NOAA, the agency that warns of hurricanes, floods and tornados. Oh, did I mention FEMA, the agency that cleans up the mess after a national disaster. That too, sliced to ribbons.
Now you might not have much sympathy for a government worker if your own job history was tenuous, but these are real people with real families. The helpful response from GOP toadies? Our “thoughts and prayers.” And directions to LinkedIn and the unemployment office.
We have much to lament as we watch the social fabric of our nation, of a world order bound by rule, all ripped to shreds by the most unabashed narcissist ever to occupy the White House.
We have our own inaction to lament. The question that haunts me is, “What did you do when you witnessed the destruction and pillage of our republic?” We each have our own personal failures and shortcomings to lament – those things done and left undone.
A prayer from the Psalms brings consolation. “Create in me a clean heart and renew a right spirit within me.”
Today as we receive ashes, the reminder of our frailty and mortality, let us pray for a right spirit. Let us pray for wisdom and courage to do the little we can do.
As our team that sponsors Agenda for a Prophetic Faith gathered this past Tuesday, the agenda was short and to the point:
What is our national crisis saying to me as an individual?
What is it saying to the Church?
What is it saying to our nation and to us as citizens?
Indeed, what is this season of Lent saying to each of us deep down at soul-depth? O Lord, create in me a clean heart and renew a right spirit within me. And give us umption for our gumption – Lord, we pray. Amen
March 4, 2025
Ash Wednesday
Joel 2:1-2, 12-17; Psalm 103:8-14;
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
At Our Wits’ End
We are adrift in perplexing times. My parents, stalwart Republicans to the core, would be aghast that a president of this nation would be cozying up to a former KGB killer running the Kremlin – especially a Republican! That we would take his side over that of NATO. That this president would believe the KGB guy over our own intelligence agencies. That we would be adrift at sea with a would-be king.
Yes, after the Orange Felon put the kibosh on the Manhattan congestion pricing tolls, he posted a picture of himself sporting a golden crown with the words, “Long Live the King.”[1]
To which the governor responded that New Yorkers were under a king over 250 years ago and had to kill a lot of British soldiers to get rid of him; and we will not be bending the knee to one now.
Yes, in these disturbing times, what is the way forward? Or are we just too numbed to contemplate anything more that the fetal position under the covers?
But revelation does come. Maybe not on any mountain. But if we are listening, there are moments of inspiration, especially in times of extremity – if we but wake up. When we’re at our wit’s end – revelation.
When I was adrift, an academic disaster at Cal State Long Beach, I was lying out on the grass soaking up some rays, deep in distress.
Coming across the green was an old friend, Dan, who had been a fairly close friend in junior high. We began catching up on news. He was now an American history major. I was a floundering geology major. As a new transfer I had not made any friends yet.
Out of the blue, he asked me how was my love life. “Nothing going on,” I responded. I was lonely and despondent.
He suggested that I might want to attend the Methodist campus group, Wesley Foundation. To which I replied that I had had it with the church – just a bunch of social climbing hypocrites.
He said that there were some “mighty fine-looking women” who were part of the group. “When do they meet?” I asked.
My life in those brief, shining moments was transfigured, exactly as Christ’s.
Revelation! I was at my wits’ end – then my burning bush moment. Bright and shining — transfiguration! And I never looked back.
All true, such Spirit-filled revelation and transfiguration leads to God – transforming life-enhancing Torah values and Gospel goodness. That’s certainly where mine led. That’s where Jesus will lead.
The scene on the Mountain of Transfiguration is the culmination of Luke’s Sermon on the Plain – a restatement of the Beatitudes.
This passage from Luke for the last Sunday in Epiphany, Transfiguration Sunday, is a summing up of the teaching of Jesus, placing it in the Torah and prophetic fabric of Israel. It is Moses and Elijah who join that assemblage on the Mount of Transfiguration and Revelation.
And of course, true to form, the disciples are completely dumbfounded. Peter wants to enshrine the moment.
“Peter said to Jesus, ‘Master it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah’ – not knowing what he said.”
That’s not the plan, not the point of the moment. Certainly not Jesus’ plan. As a cloud envelops them, there is that voice, the same sentiment spoken at Jesus’ baptism, “This is my Son, my Chosen,” with the add-on, “listen to him.”
Yes, Listen!
The mission is to come down off the mountain and enter the messy trials and suffering of those down below — Of us down below. It is in those struggles — our struggles — that all shall be revealed. Even on a cross.
I’ve been reading a memoir by a woman who came out of an evangelical expression of the faith. An expression she now rejects. After her experience with her diagnosis of bipolar disorder, and her suffering the effect of the condemning theology of that brand of Christianity, she broke free. It’s a marvelous story of transfiguration as she frees herself from cult-like, destructive religion.[2]
Anna Gazmarian was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2011. While the diagnosis provided an explanation of the mind-wrenching swings of depression and manic activity, it created real problems in her evangelical community. The stigma attached by her church, interpreted theologically, condemned her as lacking faith, or worse, demon-possessed.
If she would just pray, read the Bible more, all would be okay. The condition was her fault; the bromides of her “friends” were no better than those of Job’s “friends.”
“Always look on the bright side of life,” that was the theology of her mother and those in her church community. If one only had a sufficiently strong faith, one could will cheerfulness. To do otherwise was sin and rebellion against God. The nostrum was more Bible reading and prayer. Little thought that such severe depression was an organic disease of the brain. Nothing to do with demons or Satan.
Anna writes, “For people living with bipolar disorder, a single thought can turn into obsession. Racing thoughts become repetitive, sometimes moving from subject to subject, almost out of nowhere. What stands out for those with bipolar disorder is that these thoughts are unceasing. Every coping skill imaginable, like breathing[3] exercises or long walks, fails to provide an end. You become trapped in your own mind.”[4]
It was only later that Anna recognized that her faith rested in the decision to get the real help she needed – a compassionate psychiatrist who understood and could treat her affliction.
After Anna is sufficiently stable, she decides to try college one more time. She had already suffered through four attempts. At Hope College, a more permissive Christian environment, she ends up in a poetry class. Her guidance councilor felt this might be a good fit for Anna.
This became a moment of transfiguration for Anna. Sitting in the professor’s office, Anna announced that she wanted to become a poet. The professor, Dr. Glidsan saw through to Anna’s soul, to the true gifts in her writing.
The professor threw her hands up in the air, exclaiming, “You already are one. I think you should be a creative writing major.”[5]
Anna is not sure what the professor sees in her.
“Dr. Glidsan placed her hand on her chin. ‘You notice the small details,’ she said. ‘You notice things that a lot of people miss or ignore. Those details should be like the best whisky we keep on a shelf, only to bring out when people come over. When you write your poems, you bring out those details. That’s you. That’s your vision. I want you to write what only you can write.’”[6]
Anna sat there transfixed in a moment of pure Grace as she tried to keep the mascara from flowing down her cheeks. Transfiguration – bright shining as of the Glory of God. Right there in that professor’s office.
Days later, when Dr. Glidsan introduced the class to Elizabeth Bishop and her poem on loss, “One Art,” Anna came to another epiphany. Losing as an art, is one that could be mastered.
Memories flooded in as Anna recalled all she had lost. In her diagnosis she had lost her sense of self. She’s lost her faith. She’d lost her home. She’s lost friends. She’d lost her boyfriend Hunter. She’d lost her belief in the world as a safe place. So many losses.
She gasped as classmates turned to stare. As one girl handed her a tissue, she knew something about loss.
In retrospect, Anna could see that her time at Hope was a beautiful moment of Grace. Hope was different than what she had imagined college to be. It didn’t quite fit the slick promotional brochures she had read. Anna admits that her experience wasn’t “brochure-worthy, it was still meaningful, even beautiful.” She continues, “moments of grace can be hard to come by, and even when they do come, the feeling can be fleeting…After years of searching, I was surprised to discover, in the eyes of my teacher and in the words of those poets, that I’d already been found. That here were things only I could say. That all the little details, the things that mattered most to me, might also matter to God.’”[7]
“In reading and writing poetry, I no longer needed to think of every bad thing in life, every loss, as being part of God’s plan. Rather, I started to see my losses as things that could be named, honored, and, through art, brought into the present, transformed.”[8]
In the small poetry workshop groups of threes the professor set up, Anna found the freedom to share her struggles and hopes. And there found an acceptance she had never felt in her faith communities. Grace abounding!
She would later meet a young fellow who completely accepted her even with her mental health struggles. This, all through a madcap adventure involving a garden gnome purchased on a lark at Walmart. An improbable grace-filled journey leading to marriage and the birth of a son. Read it. It is nourishing soul food for Lent. Such is how Easter arrives.
Transfiguration can be a sudden change or it can creep up on one as if on little cat’s feet.
What we celebrate through this season of Epiphany is the transfiguration of the Church from the timidity of cowering in an upper room into a bold, prophetic expression of God’s will for us all. A kin-dom that binds us together. “In Christ there is no north or south, no east or west” – all brothers, sisters we. And in the Together is God. We, like Christ on the Mountain of Revelation, like a chance occasion on a college campus green, like an appointment at a professor’s office — Transfiguration! Amen.
[1] Benjamin Oreskes, “‘Long Live the King’: Trump Likens Himself to Royalty on Truth Social,” New York Times, February 20, 2025.
[2] Anna Gazmarian, Devout: A Memoir of Doubt (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2024).
[3] Op cit., 34.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Op cit. 82
[6] Op cit.
[7] Op cit., 83-84.
[8] Op cit., 85.
March 2, 2025
Last Sunday after Epiphany
Transfiguration Sunday
Exodus 24:29-35; Psalm 99;
2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2; Luke 9:28-36
“At Our Wits’ End”
