March 1st, 2009
Sermon – “Tranfigured and Transparent”
By Bryan
One of my favorite places is a mountain top in Western North Carolina, nearly every summer when I went to church camp there I would climb it. It was there that I first felt the presence of God. Sitting there on the rocks looking out the valley below, listening to the wind, and watching the clouds slide slowly across the afternoon sky I would feel that I was in another world, in another place, another time. I could sit there for hours, but always had to come back down to the everyday routine of camp life. I’m sure we’ve all had those moments when we are closest to the divine mystery, the presence of God. Sometimes it is on the mountaintop, sometimes it’s in the valley, sometimes it’s in even the most mundane everyday activities of our lives.
Kenneth Grahame in his wonderful little book “The Wind in the Willows” tells of a time when Ratty and Mole were called upon to search for a little hedge pig that had gone missing. The two best friends who lived along the river’s edge had taken their boat out onto the water to search the riverbanks for the missing hedge pig. As they searched, they found themselves on a part of the river they had never seen before. The trees and bushes overhung the river, dappling the water with their reflections. The air with heady with the perfume of the flowers and bush’s that surrounded them. As they moved slowly up the river the air began to change, the light became brighter and the music of the insects and birds became louder. Ratty, who was sitting in the front of the boat, was filled with awe and wonder if the sound of this strange and beautiful music. He asks Mole if he can hear this beautiful sound. At first, Mole could not hear it, but then as they approached an island in the middle of the river, Mole was suddenly overcome with the joyous sound of music. At that moment, as they stepped out of the boat onto the land, they were surrounded with a brilliant white light, and the music intensified. Suddenly they came upon a sight too beautiful to behold, they saw the Great God Pan standing in the midst of the glade with the tiny hedge pig curled up asleep his feet. As they approached the sight, the vision vanished, leaving them filled with awe, wonder, and fear. They had witnessed a theophany, a manifestation of the presence of God.
