A Threshold Moment: Action and Intention
The last two days, I was just south of Nashville in Brentwood, TN at a board meeting of the Ministry Leadership Center, an organization formerly known as the Center for Youth Ministry Training. MLC exists to equip leaders working with children, youth, and young adults so that future generations embody Christ’s love in the world.
Once a year, the staff gather for a couple of days of strategic conversation – a meeting they call the 30,000 foot retreat – the focus is to think big picture, to remember their why, and to focus on ways that their collective efforts are really in fact transforming young people.
After those 30,000 foot conversations, the board shows up, and staff and board members spend time getting to know one another and dreaming about the future.
This year, the meeting was a little different – we were putting the final touches on that name change, having melded three other organizations into the original mission. This merging of organizations has happened since COVID. As a result of the pandemic, so many of our ways of gathering, of being the church, of coming of age as adolescents has changed. As one manifestation of blending organizations in the post-COVID world, the staff, now quite large, is spread out across the country from San Diego to Houston to Orlando to New York City.
And bringing four organizations together under a single mission, collecting all of that staff from all over the country under a single leader, requires a level of focus…it requires clarity. It requires intention.
By that I mean that the left hand needs to know what the right is doing. Folks have to agree on terms and benchmarks and next best steps. Everyone has to know how to keep checking in with their intentions.
Right now the work is messy and imperfect, but because of a compelling mission, because of people with big hearts who care deeply about that mission, we left our time together hopeful for the ways we will walk out into the world as the Ministry Leadership Center – Christ-centered, hope-filled and focused on our commitment that future generations will embody Christ’s love in the world.
With our intentions set, we are prepared to act on them. And we’ve reflected on our past actions in order to frame future intentions. Will it be easy? No. And it is going to be ok. Perfect? No. And it is going to be ok. Tidy? Definitely not. And it is going to be ok. It’s going to require checking back in to be sure things are happening according to intention. Over and over again. And it is going to be ok.
I arrived in Brentwood mindful of where we are in the church year – this morning you have heard, as you do every year on the Sunday before Ash Wednesday, the gospel account of Jesus transformed before the disciples’ eyes on a hillside. This is commonly known as the “transfiguration.”
It is a threshold moment – a threshold in Jesus’ ministry, a point of transition between seasons of the church year, a threshold between themes for our worship time here at Faith.
The church year is a predictable cycle – we begin with Advent when we wait for Emmanuel, God with us. We move through Christmas and celebrate Jesus’ birth. In Luke’s gospel, Jesus’ birth is announced by angels proclaiming the glory of God.
Then in early January we celebrate Jesus’ baptism in the wilderness, with God’s voice speaking into the moment – this is my son, the beloved in whom I am well pleased. In that particular story as told in Luke’s gospel, we witness Jesus as we do again today, praying at the time when God’s voice is manifested.
Through the lens of Luke’s gospel since that story, we’ve watched Jesus’ ministry unfold – from rejection in his hometown through miracles and healing and parables to teach. He’s traveled through Galilee, picked up disciples and followers, designated apostles among those.
As those stories unfold, there is a lot of confusion among those who gather about who Jesus is. Even his own disciples waver between getting it and being blind to what is happening right before their eyes.
And every year, right before Lent, we land at some version of this story. This is the threshold to Lent in this church year.
This year during Lent at Faith, we’re diving into “Everything in Between,” an exploration of what truths we might find between ideas that seem like polarities or seem in tension with one another.
Quoting from the sermon planning guide for this series, “We sometimes lose the “shock factor” behind Jesus’ words, as his teaching tactics likely felt extreme for those in his context. He described a stigmatized Samaritan as a good neighbor. He emphasized the value of 1 sheep in a herd of 100. He dined with a tax collector who amassed wealth through extortion. While dying on a cross, he told a convicted criminal he would soon find paradise. Jesus intentionally highlighted the cultural and political polarities of his time to emphasize the radical, inclusive, and surprising love of God.”
To prepare for the work of Lent, I am asking you to sit this week with the tension between these two ideas: intention and action.
Merriam Webster defines intention as a determination to act in a certain way, or resolve. As I pondered the relationship between intention and action, I was struck that we can have an intention and fail to act in a way that fulfills that intention. We can also act without having considered what we really intend. And we can have an intention and act on it and further down the road completely forget our past intention.
In light of that, let’s a look at the story of the transfiguration to see if there is anything here for us that might help us to set an intention for our actions as we stand at the threshold of Lent this year.
At verse 30, while it is lost in the new revised standard translation you heard today which reads “suddenly, they saw two men…”, is the word often translated in Luke’s gospel as “behold” or maybe the truer meaning is “hey look.” This is the same word “behold” in the proclamation of angels speaking to Elizabeth, to Mary and to Zechariah, announcing the miracle births to come of Jesus and John. It is a literary echo that connects this part of the story to a much earlier part of the story. This is another revelation.
And what Peter, James and John behold is Jesus standing with Moses and Elijah, talking about Jesus’ “exodus.” This word suggests that Jesus’ journey (which we will soon discover is into Jerusalem) as an exodus journey – a journey to leave the confines of some sort of slavery and achieve a new kind of freedom and promise. And like the exodus of the Hebrew slaves, Jesus’ journey will include hardship and toil and grief.
Up on the mountaintop, just as Peter is suggesting the construction of dwelling places to capture these grand lives and this moment, a cloud comes and overshadows all of them, hearkening back, again, to Moses on Sinai or in the tabernacle, being with / consulting with God.
While they are all engulfed in the cloud, God speaks into the moment – “This is my Son, my chosen. Listen to him”. It is yet another echo in this text from Luke – an echo from Jesus’ baptism. But it moves past the echo to the command – “listen to him.”
Peter doesn’t build those booths. And they don’t stay there to remember what has happened. They move on down the hillside and just a few verses past what you heard today, we will learn that Jesus (accompanied by his disciples) turns his face toward Jerusalem…where Jesus will at first be greeted with shouts of Hosanna and then shouts of “Crucify him!” That moment of seeing Moses and Elijah, of hearing God’s voice, of being in the clouds is a threshold to what is next.
It seems to me that God’s direction on that hillside, “listen to him,” ought to shape the intentions of Peter, John and James. Let’s watch for whether or not that is true in weeks to come.
And maybe, give the timing, given the way this story serves as a threshold into Lent every year, that same direction might shape our journey into Lent.
If we go into Lent with the intention to listen to Jesus, how might our actions align with our intentions. What might we do to hold onto that intention to listen to Jesus across the 40 days of Lent?
We have some resources for your journey. Here in worship each week we’ll explore everything in between:
Between stranger and neighbor
Between faith and works
Between rest and growth
Between lost and found
Between righteousness and mercy
Between shouting and silence
Between power and humility
Between acceptance and resistance
Between grief and hope.
There is a lot of everything between those things…
Will it be easy? No. Perfect? No. Tidy? Definitely not. But it is going to be ok.
May it be so.
Amen.
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