26 February 2006
Carolyn L Roberts

2 Kings 2.1-12, Mark 9.2-9

A number of years ago, Yvonne Delk was the keynote speaker for the annual meeting of Northern California-Nevada Conference. Yvonne is now retired, so like many others of a certain age, she knows first-hand what it was to grow up Black in the pre-Civil Rights United States. She knew first-hand that even as an elementary-school girl, when she stepped outside the doors of her home, the people she encountered were most likely to judge her by the color of her face rather than the content of her character. She knew first-hand the ugly practice of racial discrimination. Yet despite that crucible of negation, Yvonne was able to see herself as beloved, and grew to become a powerful voice for God's love and justice within the United Church of Christ.

Yvonne credits her mother's faith for her own strength and witness. Her mother would stop her every morning before she left the house. She would cup Yvonne's young face in her hands and lift her up in prayer. And she would conclude that prayer with a challenge and an admonition to Yvonne: remember who you are and whose you are. Then she would open the door to the best and the worst that life would bring to that precious child.

Under strikingly different circumstances, German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer also wrestled with issues of identity. How could he maintain his own identity in Christ, as well as the identity in Christ of those within his care? As early as January 1933, when Hitler was appointed chancellor, Bonhoeffer warned of Nazi dangers to the Christian church, warned against a political order codifying race, sexual orientation, and nationality as the foundation for citizenship. In a church increasingly dominated by so-called German Christians, Hitler and his policies found welcome support.[1]

I don't need to detail the tragic story of Bonhoeffer's life. But before his arrest and execution, he joined the Confessing Church in Germany which aligned itself against Hitler's efforts to control the church. They recognized that the allegiance demanded by Hitler and the German state conflicted directly with their commitment to live as Jesus' followers. Theirs was a minority voice in the majority wave of nationalistic furor-a minority voice that both the Confessing Church and Nazi Germany recognized as a direct challenge to the power of the state. A minority voice that sustained itself not in its identity with the German majority, but in its identity with God's majority.

But how do you forge that identity when the state controls the seminaries? How do you forge that identity when the leaders of the Confessing Church face arrest, and most congregations have thrown in their lot with the media-whipped sentiments of discrimination? For Bonhoeffer, Christian identity was founded in three key practices: daily immersion in the scriptures, so that God's living, still-speaking word could be encountered in its broadest narrative, from creation to the new Jerusalem. Secondly, Bonhoeffer paid attention to how he lived with others, to the need for silence as the balance to speech; to the way in which members of the community treated one another. And he focused on the celebration of communion. Like Yvonne's mother's prayer and admonition, these three together: the Word, life together, and the sacraments, formed Bonhoeffer's identity in Christ.

The glorious story of the transfiguration that we read today-the same story that ends the season after Epiphany every church year-is a story about identity. It echoes Jesus' baptism - also an identity story. The transfiguration follows immediately on the heals of Peter's declaration of Jesus as the Messiah, and in Mark's telling, Jesus' response that his disciples must deny themselves and take up their cross to follow him. Then in a manner reminiscent of Moses, who sees the Promised Land, in a manner reminiscent of Martin Luther King, Jr., who has been to the mountaintop, Jesus goes with some of his disciples to a high mountain. There on the mountaintop, he dazzles them all in clothes of shining white-the clothes of a martyr. There on the mountaintop, Jesus converses with Elijah, prophet of the prophets, and with Moses, giver of the law. There on the mountaintop, Elijah and Moses and Jesus are glimpsed for the briefest of moments. Together they are ushering in God's new order. There on the mountaintop, Jesus' disciples-each one of us-glimpse the invisible Realm of God in which we share.

There on the mountaintop, we hear for ourselves God's identity-bestowing claim that Jesus first heard at his baptism: this is my son, the beloved one. And there on the mountaintop, we receive our instructions: listen to him. Like Elijah and Moses, Jesus speaks for God. Like Elijah's disciple Elisha, we disciples are to pick up the mantle. We are to give witness to the living God.

But even if we have been to the mountaintop, even when we study the scriptures to discern the voice of Jesus, giving witness to the living God is not always easy. Sometimes the issue is relatively clear, as in the blatant attempts by the IRS to silence churches not supportive of the United States war in Iraq. Sometimes the issue is less clear, as in the question as to whether congregations should take advantage of Faith-Based Initiative funds to support programs that feed the hungry and house the homeless. Those who read the comics know that cartoonist Darrin Bell of Candorville sees an inherent conflict in accepting those monies. His Rev. Wilfred preaches, "Blessed are the poor, for yours is the kingdom of God....but blessed are the rich, for theirs is everything else." Sometimes the issue is clear, but bad habits make practicing it consistently a challenge. Last Sunday, one of our young people spoke of her struggle to express herself in language that is less salty. When as a Christian I cannot share the 270 freeway at its worst with those who barely leave the paint on my fender in their anxiety to pass, without some salty language of my own, how am I allowing the light of Christ's love to shine in me?

Sometimes the issue eludes us. How do we maintain our identity in Christ when we are at war? Last week, I received an invitation to join in a prayer vigil for Jill Carroll, the captured Christian Science Monitor journalist, and for others held captive in Iraq. There is no question that Ms. Carroll and the others deserve our prayers! I know those prayers sustain them. But what struck me about the invitation is that there was no mention of prayer for her captors. No mention of prayer for the hundreds in Guantanemo or Abu Graib, or any of the unnamed places in which our prisoners are secreted. No mention of prayer, even, for their captors.

That is where I struggle. If we as Christians cannot even think broadly enough to pray for those who wish us harm, to pray for those who do us harm, then our affirmation that we are each made in the image of God is as flat as yesterday's soda. We fail to recognize that each person who does us harm-from the Enron executive, to the drug dealer, to the Iraqi insurgent-is also made in the image of God.

Jesus was not on that mountain alone. Elijah was not alone when he was taken up with a chariot and horses of fire. Each of them was surrounded by God's power, surrounded by a power far greater than that which even the United States can mass. And both Jesus and Elijah had witnesses who understood that it was their job to pick up the mantle and bear witness to the living God. Only when we remember who we are, only when we remember whose we are, is that witness possible.

[1] John P. Burgess, After Baptism, Westminster John Knox Press, ©2005, pps 6-18.