“Transfigured in the Darkness”

February 28, 2006

Scripture Reading:  2 Corinthians 4:4-12 - Mark 9:2-9

Rev. Dr. Carol L. Kerr

Blue Point Congregational Church

The last two weeks, as most of you know, our family has been going through a very scary and difficult time.  Gavin, our fourteen year old freshman in high school, had a stroke in the thalamic area of his brain.  One Wed February 8 David and I went into his room at 6am to wake him up early because he wanted to get a little extra homework done for school that day.  He was breathing steadily, he had good color, he would moan and move as we shook him, but he would not wake up.  We put wet wash rags on his face, we turned up the music loud.  We clapped our hands.  We shook him and pulled off the blankets.  But nothing would rouse him.  Something was terribly wrong.  We called the ambulance and took him to the emergency room.  There, Dr. Steve Rioux, a member of our congregation, and a pediatric neurologist, met us.  The MRI revealed that the had a small stroke and was in a light coma.  Fortunately, Dr.  Rioux soon reassured us that there would most likely be no permanent brain damage.  After searching high and low, the reason for the stroke which is so rare in someone so young has been discovered.  Gavin has a anomaly at the base of his skull and his first vertebrae.  They are attached for some reason.  This anomaly then effects he vertebral artery.  When he throws back his head it kinks the artery.  Because he does so many spins and tricks on the terrain park skiing the artery became damaged.  Particularly, he was practicing his tricks Tues night on a trampoline with his friends before he fell asleep and threw the clot in his artery that produced the stroke.  Gavin is in a neck brace now, and will have surgery next Monday fusing his first and second vertebrae together.  A new and improved neck, as I tell him. 

What has been the spiritual reality for me?  What have I learned going through this terrifying passage?  It has been something very close to the words the apostle Paul writes in today’s scripture passage:   For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. 

I did not learn that God’s promise is that our troubles will pass away with time.  Although I do believe Gavin will recover from this and live a long and fulfilling life.  I did not learn that God’s promise is that what we struggle with and consider hard in our life is only superficial and not deeply troubling if you have enough faith.  The promise of God is not that the darkness will never come.  The promise is this: It is in dying that the risen Christ is most felt.  The greatest promise every made is that when darkness begins the glory of the light of Christ becomes paradoxically at the same time more apparent. 

Let me demonstrate… (Go and turn off the lights of the sanctuary.)  When is the brilliance of the stain glass window best seen?  Not when we have all the lights on in the sanctuary.  Not when we can read the bulletins most easily.  Not when we can easily follow the words in the hymnal.  Not when we notice the colors of our clothes, and the specks on our shoes.  But when the lights in the sanctuary are turned off.  When we cannot read what is coming next and do not know our cue when to come in.  It is when the pulpit goes dark and even the cross lays in shadows.  That is when we see the glory of that stain glass window the best.  That is when the face of Christ is most illuminated.  That is when Christ’s eyes gaze directly upon us and into our hearts. 

Today we read about what is called the “transfiguration” of Christ.  It is when Christ took Peter, James, and John and led them up a high mountain, apart.  He became very different right before their eyes.  His clothes became dazzling white.  There appeared two great prophets from the Old Testament, Elijah and Moses.   Jesus talked with them.  For a moment on the mountaintop the disciples saw Jesus for who he truly was, not just an ordinary man, but truly divine.  They caught a glimpse for a moment of what was going to become the resurrected Christ.

The transfiguration of Christ didn’t happen just any old time in Jesus’ ministry.  The transfiguration happened just as the darkness was beginning to descend.  Life with Jesus up to that point had been good.  He had healed all kinds of people.  He was very popular.  The disciples learned about crowd control.  His teachings were controversial, but so loving.  Being a disciple of Jesus was easy.  Then sunny Jesus started to darken.   He started teaching them strange things.  He spoke of how the Son of Man would have to undergo great suffering.  Jesus talked about these crazy dark thoughts openly.  It started getting on the disciples nerves and unnerving them.  Peter told him to quit it.  Jesus called Peter “Satan.”  Not a good scene.    

Somewhere in the middle of this, Jesus took the three disciples to the mountain and transfigured before them.  It is at this point that Jesus turned off the lights of the sanctuary and showed them how the stain glass window really glows in the darkness.   You don’t even know the power of the window until the darkness descends. 

How did the light of Christ shine through even in such dark days for Gavin and our family?  Let me start by saying the stain glass window is really a kind of puzzle.  It is a puzzle made out of little colored pieces of glass and fixed together by black strips of lead.  Rabbi Lawrence Kushner writes that each of us is born with a set of puzzle pieces.   It is the puzzle of our life.  Only when it is assembled can we see the bigger picture.  Only then can we figure out the meaning of what we have gone through and the meaning of who we are.   Some people, a few, are born with pretty much all their pieces on hand, and they simply assemble the puzzle as they go through life with no problem.  But, most of us, are born with only some of our pieces.  And everyone carries with them at least one and probably many pieces to someone else’s puzzle.  The fact that we are born with all these puzzle pieces that fit in other people’s puzzle is what makes us all angels for each other.

The Hebrew word for angel is “malach” which also means “one who is sent” or “messenger.”  An angel is not a cherubic creature that you see on valentine boxes.  Nor is an angel the willowy feathered creatures that you see in romantic English paintings.  An angel can be fat.  An angel can be old.  An angel can even swear a lot and smoke.  As long as the angel delivers the message that God wants it to deliver it doesn’t matter what the angel looks like. 

On the one hand, an angel can be a spirit sent by God.  This is like angel Gabriel sent by God to announce to Mary that she was going to have a child who was the Messiah.  On the other hand, an angel can be a person too.  A person also can deliver a message from God to another person.  The difference between spiritual angels and people angels, however, is that people angels rarely know what the message is that they are giving someone and who it is that they are giving it to.  But, the knowledge of their function as a messenger from God is not a requirement of being an angel.  We all are potential angels because we all carry puzzle pieces that end up belonging to someone else’s life.  We often deliver these pieces unsuspecting and unaware.  But, exact knowledge of our function as a messenger is not a requirement of being a messenger.   Have you entered a room and met someone and said something to someone.  Years later they tell you how important that meeting was to them and how it significantly changed their life?  We are consumed by our own itinerary and schemes.  We think that this is the purpose to our day.  However, the real purpose is delivering these puzzle pieces we happening to be carrying to other people.   The person has a big hole in their life and we come along and somehow they can fill that hole.  Perhaps it is a piece of advice.  Perhaps we introduced them to someone who introduced them to someone else who introduced them to someone who hired them for the job of their dreams.  Even perhaps your whole puzzle fits into their whole puzzle and only together do you get the real picture.   

During this terrible time with Gavin all these puzzle pieces began to be exchanged between, us, Gavin, and everyone.  For instance, I use to teach spirituality health and healing at Bangor Seminary.  In one of my classes was a woman, Judy, who was an CAT scan technician.  She took my class about 7 years ago.  In January I got a phone call from her.  I did not recognize her name, but she told me about being a student in my class and she had since then graduated from BATS and was starting a small counseling practice.  I met with her the Tues after noon before Gavin’s stroke.  She told me that because of my class she decided to go to seminary.  She told me that she in fact met the man she ended up marrying in my class.  I really had no idea of this impact on her.  We talked and shared thoughts.  She was on her way to work at MMC after talking to me.  It ended up that the next evening when they were giving Gavin another CAT scan and I went down with him, she was the one I met there.  Her puzzle piece and my puzzle piece suddenly fit together like a glove. 

Steve Rioux is another phenomenal puzzle piece.  Steve Rioux is tremendous pediatric neurologist.  He is the one doctor of all the doctors in Portland that Gavin needed the morning of the stroke.  Of all the churches he happens to go to he happens to go to this small little church that I happen to be a minister of.  Because of this, I happened to have his cell phone number and was able to call him from the ambulance in the driveway and he met us at the emergency room in the hospital.  I cannot express what a tremendous support and comfort Steve has been for us medically, spiritually, and as a friend.  What kind of puzzle piece is that? 

Then there is Peggy.  This small church happens to have a woman like Peggy?  A person with a wealth of experience as a minister, and counselor, and mother, who was able to pick up immediately with the congregation, lead worship service for the last two weeks, share information, and hold us all.  The most amazing thing, which I think she told you about was the prayer shawl she had made.  Prayer shawls are shawls knitted by people in prayer which then are given to the sick and the ill as a physical reminder that prayers are covering them.  Prayer shawls are reminding people that many angels are lamenting to God about their condition, and bringing healing light from the heavens back to them.   Well, Peggy happened to have just finished a prayer shawl, for a man.  She called it a “prayer lap robe.”  It was made in browns and blacks.  After all, she thought “shawls” are kind of a woman thing.  So, she had just finished this prayer lap robe for some unknown man.  She had just a few days early had put it in her car to deliver it to the place where they keep them for future use.  When she got the call from me about Gavin, she got in her car and there was the prayer lap robe.  Now she knew who she had made it for.  Unbeknownst to her, God had her make it for Gavin.  A puzzle piece she delivered to us and which we laid upon him when he was still in a coma. 

Then there is the teacher in the hospital who is working with Gavin.  By the way, although Gavin seems very much the same on the surface, he has some memory problems, and some other cognitive difficulties, like finding the right word, etc. which will take a while to come back.  The hospital teacher works with the child and their school to get them back on track academically.  It so happens that somehow this teacher found out that I was a UCC minister.  She said that she use to go to the New Gloucester church and it had meant a tremendous amount to her.  But, now she was in Raymond and had not been able to find a church home for several years.  I suggested she try the Casco Village Church.  This is the church I had been the interim minister in right before I came to Scarborough.  It is also the church that somehow on the day Gavin was in the coma found out about it, and Joyce the minister called down, and they immediately put Gavin on a prayer chain they had.  They all knew Gavin when he was in elementary school.  That Sunday, Elizabeth, went to Caso Village.  During the joys and concerns when they mentioned Gavin, she was able to raise her hand and give them an update on the spot.  Plus, it is now going to become her new church home. 

Every single one of you has been part of the puzzle of our lives.  Every single card, has moved us and supported us.  You should have seen Gavin standing with the basket of red hearts on which you all spent part of the service on February 12 writing to us.  One at a time he read them aloud, with an IV drip, and neck brace on.  Prayers, your soul hugging our souls.  The meals frozen in our neighbors freezer across the street ready for us to use, give us yet another reminder of how we are all part of some greater picture.  You have been angels to us, messengers from God, filling in the holes and pieces as we, Gavin, David, Ian and I struggle through this very difficult time.

It is somehow in the dark times like these that puzzle pieces become strangely obvious, uncanny in their timing, and powerfully significant.  We realize that how it all fits together is master minded by an extraordinary power that belongs to God and not to us.  We are angels traveling to and fro delivering pieces that make a difference to each other.   

I do not know what the future brings.  Gavin is going to have neck surgery on March 6.  Hopefully all will go well.  He is young and strong.  I don’t think I will feel I can really breath again until he has not had another stroke or TIA for months. 

For what  do our puzzles look like when they are all done?  Sure there are differences.  We have different purposes and meanings to our lives.  But, ultimately when every last piece is put into place?  Each of our puzzles will look pretty much like the one that is before us in that stain glass window.  When we are done putting the pieces of our lives together and step back.  We will not see our own face, but we will see the face of Christ, transfigured and full of light gazing upon us even in, even more clearly in the darkness. 

So like the apostle Paul we can say We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that he life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. …    (1Cor 4:8)