Matthew 17.1-9
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning,
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado

When was the last time you saw someone’s appearance change radically? It seems to me that something phenomenal — or at least peculiar — happened on the mountaintop, either to Jesus or to the disciples who were with him. Did Jesus undergo some sort of metamorphosis that caused him to be radiant? to shine like the sun? to have an aura? to beam? Or do you think that he was always radiant, but people didn’t notice until his followers — Peter, James, and John — go up to the mountain and literally see Jesus in a new light. I suspect that all of us have at times observed the change visage of a friend or loved one after they have had a life-changing experience. There are outward manifestations of inner changes in us that our friends and families notice.

Assuming for the moment that Jesus did change, why is that important? Does it mean that he was surrounded by the divine light? Did something in his life shift at the moment he began to glow? Does it mean that this was a moment of transformation for him, as was his baptism by John? God speaks at the moment of transfiguration, just ask God speaks at Jesus’ baptism, saying, “This is my son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased,” using exactly the same phrase.

Christians are asked to be baptized as Jesus was, but has anyone asked to go through some sort of metamorphosis or transformation? Maybe? When we join Plymouth, we commit to give ourselves unreservedly to God’s service, which is a big deal, but it isn’t quite asking us to be transformed. In a few weeks, you will hear that thorny line in John’s gospel, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above, [John 3.7, NRSV], or in the language of the King James Version, “born again.” No, I’m not about invite you to come forward for an altar call, and I’m also not going to dismiss the idea of you having a spiritual transformation or many spiritual transformations. I’m not going to try and tame the idea of your having a metamorphosis.

Marcus Borg writes, “The metaphor of rebirth, being born of the Spirit, is an image of radical transformation. An old life has been left behind and a new life has begun…Being born again is utterly central to Christianity, one of the main images for the goal and promise of the Christian life. It describes our transformation and, ultimately, the transformation of the world, for those who are born of the Spirit of God as known in Jesus share God’s passion for a more just and peaceful world.” [Marcus Borg, Speaking Christian (SF: HarperSanFrancisco, 2011), p. 169.]

By a show of hands, how many of us really want to be changed, transformed, pushed out of our comfort zone by the spirit of transformation? It’s not easy, and it’s not without consequences. Transformation means changed hearts and changed lives. What would you expect if you, yourself, saw Jesus in the flesh? Would you expect it to be a transformative experience? 

Many years ago, I was in a therapy group for Adult Children of Alcoholics in California, and for me it was a transformative experience, and helped me to get a fresh start on my journey, and it marked a new beginning. I know others of you who have gone through the process of recovery, and it can be an incredible transformation. What are the moments of transformation in your life that have turned you in new directions or offered you a fresh start? It doesn’t have to be recovery, it could be the birth of a child, starting a new career, finding a hidden talent or a new avocation. But having a fresh start on life because of a new relationship with God is something incredibly powerful and different. 

Most of you know Plymouth’s mission statement that says “It is our mission to worship God and help make God’s realm visible in the lives of people, individually and collectively, especially as it is set forth in the life, teachings, death and living presence of Jesus Christ. We do this by inviting, TRANSFORMING, and sending.” 

That middle element, transformation, can be difficult, don’t you think? …especially if we think that we’re done transforming into new persons or that we simply have no need to change. The Kingdom, or "realm," of God is about transformation of THIS world into the world as it would be if God were immediately in charge, instead of the forces of Empire. Doing the work of justice is about transformation. Loving the unlovable is about transformation. Moving away from self-interest and radical individualism is about transformation. Giving yourself to something bigger than consumerism and acquisition is about transformation. 

We cannot try and tame transformation without taming the Kingdom of God. And we won’t be part of the Realm of God unless we are transformed and born of the Spirit. And that requires openness to new beginnings, to change, to transformation of our lives, to letting go of some old burdens, to adopting some fresh practices and ways of being Christian. 

We are about to enter the 40-day season of Lent, which mirrors Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness; it was a period that was anything but tame: a period of radical transformation for Jesus, even without the radiance he experienced later. Wilderness can be a place for transformation, where we come face-to-face with our truest selves. Perhaps rather than being seen as a period of penitence, we can see Lent as a transformative journey into the wilderness, a time of gestation, of metamorphosis, of new beginnings, of being within the chrysalis — ready to emerge reborn. And it isn’t something we have to do alone…we have companions on our pilgrimage of transformation.

I invite you to open yourself as we finish this season of Epiphany and walk together into the season of Lent next Wednesday evening. I invite you to join all of your sisters and brothers at Plymouth on a pilgrimage of transformation as we walk through the wilderness for these 40 days. 

May you be transformed in the midst of your life, knowing that new beginnings are possible.
May you see change as an opportunity instead of a threat.
May you be blessed as you uncover new truths about yourself.
May you know that you are journeying with kindred spirits through the wilderness.
Amen. 

© 2020 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal@plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.

Acts of the Apostles 9.1-20
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado
 
Today, we start a cycle of lectionary readings from a book in the New Testament that is neither a gospel nor an epistle, but something different. The “acts” genre contains a sequence of things that were done after Jesus was no longer on the scene in the same way, so they basically the adventures of the apostles, who are those people sent out to spread the word. (Sometimes people are confused about who is a disciple – a student or follower – and who is an apostle…and though people like Peter are both, but today we hear about Paul, who didn’t know the pre-Easter Jesus, so wasn’t a disciple of Jesus, but is sent out as an apostle.) Between now and Pentecost in June, you’ll hear all kinds of adventures that are described in the Acts of the Apostles. There are also books in this genre that didn’t make it into our New Testament, like the Acts of Paul and Thecla, which is a great read!

But back to the Acts of the Apostles and today’s famous story about a Jew born in the diaspora, in Tarsus, in what is now Turkey. And in today’s story we hear that he was called Saul (and later called Paul [Acts 13.9]), and that he was persecuting the Jews who saw Jesus as the messiah and who had introduced a provocative reform movement called “The Way” into the heart of Judaism. Saul appears to be working with the central authority of the religious establishment, the High Priest, in Jerusalem, and asks for letters authorizing him to root out followers of the Way in Damascus in Syria, about a week’s journey away from Jerusalem on foot.

And as he nears Damascus, he has what can only be described as a mystical experience…a first-hand experience of the risen Christ who appears in a blinding light and asks Saul why he is persecuting him.

Three days later, Christ appears to a disciple (not an apostle) named Ananias and instructs him to go to and find Saul and lay hands on his eyes to end Saul’s blindness. Can you imagine what Ananias is thinking? “I’m supposed to go and cure this guy who has been trying to defame our movement, arrest our people…and cure his sight? What’s the deal? He deserved to be blinded!” Ananias goes anyway.
And having experienced a sequence of miraculous transformation, Paul not only gives up persecuting The Way, he gets swept up into it and begins to proclaim that Jesus was, in fact, the messiah.

In light of centuries of antisemitism and synagogue shootings in Pittsburgh and San Diego, I want to make a brief digression to talk about New Testament references to “the Jews.” When the author writes that “the Jews plotted to kill” Saul, it sounds like Saul isn’t a Jew himself. But a lot of the people in this story are Jews. Jesus was a Jew, was circumcised, and lived and died as a Jew. Paul was born a Jew, circumcised, and he becomes part of a Jewish renewal movement called The Way. John’s Gospel is perhaps the most vociferous in the New Testament about condemning “the Jews.” It is absolutely critical for modern readers to understand the context in which this was written. John and others like him were being excluded by the religious establishment, not because of their ethnicity, but because of what was perceived as their heresy. It’s not unlike the experience of being a gay kid and being thrown out your family of origin. John was a Jew…virtually all the members of his community were Jews. They happen to be part of a Jewish renewal movement that eventually morphed into a separate religion that we know as Christianity. All of which is to say that Jews are our older siblings, and it is from Judaism that every part of the Christian household descends. And if it isn’t clear: antisemitism has no place in Christianity.

So, back to Saul, later Paul. He has quite an experience. It is such a major turning point in his life that we use the term “Damascus Road experience” as an archetype to describe a sudden transformation.
And lest we think that we in the Congregational strand of the UCC are not eligible for mystical experiences, conversion experiences, or sudden transformation, allow me gently to remind you that in many Congregational churches in 18th century New England, prospective members had to display a “visible sign of conversion” before they could be taken into covenanted membership. Obviously, we don’t use that as a litmus test for membership at Plymouth and never have, so don’t let that scare you off from our new members class in two weeks!

One of things we will discuss in that class is Plymouth’s own mission statement, which you all should know by heart. “Our mission is to worship God and help make God’s realm visible in the lives of people individually and collectively, especially as it is set forth in the life, teachings, death, and living presence of Jesus Christ. We do this by… remember the dance?? Inviting, Transforming, and Sending.
The middle action in our mission statement is not there by accident! It is a clear recognition that every last one of us is in need of growth and movement in becoming more whole human beings. What are some of the ways you could transform and grow more Christlike? How do you need to “Go Deeper” in your faith?

A wise Jesuit writer, Anthony de Mello, wrote that “Most people would rather have a definition than an experience.” That fits most of us at pretty well. Definitions are safe. And I’m sure that Saul would rather have had a definition than an experience!

Not all of us have the Risen Christ show up, knock us to the ground and blind us to get his message across. But how many times have you said, “Show me a sign, God…and make it a big one!” This is a 2 x 4, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said “God, I need a sign…make it obvious.” But, I don’t really want to have God swat me with a 2 x 4, nor do I want to be blinded. I hope that something a little more subtle would work.

When I was in my early 30s, my former wife and I were members of First Congregational UCC in Boulder, and I had Public Relations business at the time. We had received a book from our minister by John Dominic Crossan, who has spoken here at Plymouth and with whom Jane Anne and I led pilgrimage in Ireland. Dom’s book is called Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, and one afternoon as I was reading it at our dining room table, I had a sense that someone had put their hand on my shoulder. It was a palpable sense of a presence, and it came with a message: “You can do this.” For me, that was a moment of transformation that led me to change careers and become a minister. And I share that with you not because I think you all should become ministers, but rather to let you know that people do have transformative, life-changing, sometimes mystical experiences…and not all of them involve lightning bolts, blinding lights, or 2 x 4s.

So, what have been pivotal life-changing moments in your experience? I have an Episcopal priest friend who uses acronym to describe those moments when we are confronted with change: AFOG. A.F.O.G., which stands for Another Fantastic Opportunity for Growth…though the F-word she used was not “fantastic.” When have you been faced with an AFOG or transformation or crisis that shifted life? For some people, getting into a 12-step program is utterly transformative and directs them toward the Spirit. For others, the process of becoming a parent changes their spiritual life and opens a new access point to the sacred.

If you are on the church mailing list, and if you’ve opened your mail, you read that during Holy Week I found out that my prostate cancer has returned, and I’ll be starting hormone and radiation therapy, and the outlook is still good. That’s an AFOG. I don’t know if there is a message I’m supposed to get from my journey with cancer, but I hope it will become clear. I do know how many of you have dealt with cancer with grace and courage and faith, and you are my examples. And I know that God is with us every step of the way. I know you’ll want to do something, so I would be really grateful if you would keep me and Jane Anne and our family in your prayers.

One of the things we all can learn from Paul’s example is that sometimes we have a transformative experience when what we’d really like is a safe definition. And we also can learn from Paul that after you’ve found yourself on the ground, you can get up, and that you will be changed, and you can go forward in new, unimagined directions. God has a lot of surprises yet in store in each of our lives, and in our common life as a congregation. So, be on the lookout for moments of transformation…and if you find yourself on the ground, know that you have a God-inspired community to lend a hand.
Amen.
 
© 2019 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal@plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.

Luke 9.28–36
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning,
​Plymouth Cong’l UCC, Fort Collins

Sometimes something happens within us that is so significant people can tell the difference just by looking at us. Has anyone ever said to you, “You’re just beaming!” And we don’t necessarily take that in a literal way, but we know what it looks like when something wonderful has happened to someone. We even use the word, “radiant,” to describe someone’s visage.

John O’Donohue, the late Irish priest and poet, comments on the outward reflection of what is going on inside us: “The face is the icon of the body, the place where the inner world of the person becomes manifest. The human face is the subtle yet visual autobiography of each person. Regardless of how concealed or hidden the inner story of your life is, you can never successfully hide from the world while you have a face. If we knew how to read the faces of others, we would be able to decipher the mysteries of their life stories. The face always reveals the soul; it is where the divinity of the inner life finds an echo and image. When you behold someone’s face, you are gazing deeply into that person’s life.”  [1]

So, when the writer of Luke’s gospel says that “while [Jesus] was praying, the appearance of his face changed,” you can imagine the ways that reflects a monumental internal transformation. 

For me, this story of the transfiguration isn’t so much about what happened to Jesus up on that mountaintop so much as it begs the question: how does transformation happen to us – transformation so great as to change our visage…the way we project our face in the world.
​
Have you ever had such a moment? A time when something really shifted inside you? An occasion that moved you so deeply that people could see it on your face? I think for some women the experience of childbirth can be such a moment. I don’t know what those moments are for you, but I’d invite you to think about it for a just a minute: what are some of the deepest transformative moments in your life?

The old-fashioned word for religious transformation is “conversion.” In many New England Congregational churches in the 18th and early 19th centuries, at the time of the First and Second Great Awakenings, a visible sign of a conversion experience was a requirement for full membership in the church. That said, the Unitarian Congregationalists and middle-of-the-road Trinitarian Congregationalists didn’t take much stock in hyper-emotional experiences of the divine. (This was a serious controversy that divided Congregational churches across New England.) Yet, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was ordained as a Congregational minister and eventually became a Unitarian talked much about “first-hand religion” or a direct experience of the divine, rather than the sometimes cool, intellectual apprehension of the faith that is still a hallmark of many of us in the Congregational strand of the UCC. 

The word, “conversion,” can be alienating for some of us, just like the related term, “repentance.” Conversion, in its Latin roots, literally means to “turn with” and repentance means to “reposition” something. The Greek word, metanoia, can mean changing one’s way of thinking or conversion or repentance or transformation. Metanoia (and I’m going to translate it as “transformation”) is a wonderful and important action in our lives of faith. Metanoia keeps us from becoming stale and static and self-satisfied.

Valerie Schultz, a Roman Catholic writer had this to say: “Metanoia is a word I love. It sounds like a medical condition or a punk band. I can picture it on a prescription bottle or a T-shirt.... Metanoia is more lasting than a momentary epiphany, more active than an intellectual revelation. Metanoia is a radical change of heart, forcing one to dig deeply. It is a prayer answered, but it requires a further response.” [2] And that reflection invites us, using the words of Plymouth’s theme for this year, to Go Deeper into our faith and into our very lives.

For me, and I suspect for many of you, conversion or metanoia or transformation isn’t a one-off, lightning-bolt kind of experience. I have had times when I really felt in touch with God, moments when I felt as though God was with me and moving through me. But, if I look at my faith journey, I see many moments of transformation…like coming back to church in my 30s, becoming a parent to Cameron and Chris, going to divinity school, feeling called to be the minister of this church, when I met and married Jane Anne. And sometimes I think we see transformation better in retrospect than we do at the moment. Metanoia happens, too, in the unhappy occasions of our lives. When my parents died, when my marriage ended, when I was diagnosed with cancer: those are moments of transformation as well. For me, the big question is “Where do I find God in that experience?” What are those moments for you? And where do you find God in those moments?

In our church’s mission statement, we say: “It is our mission to worship God and help make God’s realm visible in the lives of people, individually and collectively, especially as it is set forth in the life, teachings, death and living presence of Jesus Christ.” We do this by…inviting, transforming, and sending. 

How would you react if I said that we all need to experience spiritual transformation…not just once, but again and again? I think a fair number of us at Plymouth think that we are evolved and enlightened…in short, that we have arrived. I hate to be the one to break the news…but all of us are in need of further transformation, growth, renewal, even conversion. You and I are works in progress, not fully formed, and ready for growth. 

Every day, we encounter some new situation or condition or challenge, and in the course of those new experiences, we are going to be changed. The question is not whether we will be transformed, but how. In what ways can we make the deep changes in our lives shape us in positive, faithful ways?
What are the tectonic forces in our lives and in our souls that with great heat and force shape the persons we are becoming? Are we being forced into a mold by the economic forces around us? What do the teachings of Jesus say about that? Are we succumbing to the prejudices of racism, homophobia, and sexism that underlie every aspect of our culture? What do the teaching of Jesus say about that? Are we falling prey to having enough income and leisure time so that we neglect enhancing lives of others? What do the teachings of Jesus say about that? Are we becoming complacent about caring for one another because we are “too busy?” What do the teachings of Jesus say about that?

We need to let our faith become the greatest tectonic force in our lives. If we can’t allow ourselves to be molded, shaped, and transformed by our faith, then frankly, it is meaningless. None of us wants to have a hollow faith, but rather one that is vibrant, resilient, and life-giving…and it is possible when we open ourselves to the possibility that God is at work in our lives.

I suggest that during the coming season of Lent, we look at ourselves and that we use the 40-day period to examine ourselves and in what ways we need to be transformed into the people God expects us to be. How do we do that? One way may be by adopting a small faith practice during Lent, which begins with Ash Wednesday this week. It doesn’t have to be dramatic, like fasting during each day and eating only at night. And it doesn’t have to be “giving up” something like chocolate or booze or Fritos. I knew someone once who gave up his wristwatch for Lent, because he felt that he was being ruled by the pagan god, Chronos! You might try keeping a short journal, or spending five minutes in prayer each morning, or keeping track of where you saw the movement of the Spirit each day.

Soren Kierkegaard made a distinction between Christ’s admirers and Christ’s true followers, and a lot of it has to do with Going Deeper. Kierkegaard writes, “The admirer never makes any true sacrifices. He always plays it safe. Though in word [s]he is inexhaustible about how highly [s]he prizes Christ, [s]he renounces nothing, will not reconstruct [her] life, and will not let her life express what it is [s]he supposedly admires.” [3] In short, the admirer won’t admit Christ into the process of transformation.
When we take seriously the words our membership covenant, “I give myself unreservedly to God’s service,” and try to live into that tall order, we open ourselves and our lives to Going Deeper, being changed, to being transformed, to be shaped by metanoia. As we journey together, may this band of pilgrim people walk as one, into a future that is marked by God’s promise of changed lives.
Amen.

© 2019 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal@plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint.

1. John O’Donohue, Anam Cara. (NY: Harper Perennial, 1998), p. 39.
2. Valarie Schultz, “Metanoia,” in America, December 6, 2003. 
3. Kierkegaard quoted in Bread and Wine (Farmington, NY: Plough, 2003), p. 60