The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for February 26, 2006

Texts: Exodus 24:12-18/Matthew 17:1-9

Title: “His Holiness in Scuffed Shoes”

              My first acquaintance with ritual came at an early age.  Saturday night and Sunday morning at the Millers followed a consistent pattern.  First there was the Saturday night bath.  Next the Sunday wardrobe; the suit, the white shirt, and the little clip-on bow tie was laid out.  [By the time I was twelve my tie collection numbered about half a dozen, the tie being the only part of the wardrobe that varied week to week.]  After the clothes were laid out the shoes were next.  I had my school shoes and I had my Sunday shoes. The Sunday shoes got special treatment, a good buffing every Saturday night, and a fresh coat of polish at least once a month. If the condition of my soul were to be judged on the appearance of my shoes I would have shown up very well.

              Growing up I never really questioned why my parents put so much emphasis on church-going rituals.  The bath, a white shirt and tie, and the freshly polished shoes were just what we did.  But rituals are like that, aren’t they?  They are just “what we do; life on auto-pilot.

              Religious practices tend to be highly ritualized.  The church follows a pretty well defined worship ritual, a ritual to which we devote little thought.  Weekly repetition has engrained our rituals within us, what we do from beginning to the end of a service like this one is activity as familiar to most of us as taking the Sunday wardrobe out of the closet and shining my shoes was once familiar to me.

              Rituals form around activity for a number of reasons, and efficiency is at the top of the list. Ritual gives what we do shape and form, relieving us of the burden of thinking all the time. We don’t have to innovate.  Saturday night we got ready for church.  Sunday night you got ready for school Monday morning.  Saturday morning you cleaned the house.  Saturday afternoon you mowed the lawn.  Rituals give a certain coherence to life.  Their predictability offers comfort amid a world and circumstances whose unpredictability can be threatening.

              We honor things we value through ritual.  The rituals we enact on Sunday mornings are designed to express our adoration for God.  Each part of the worship ritual is a special witness to the awe and power God inspires.               

              Before I paid much attention to sanctuary furnishing and was introduced to their significance, my young mind fastened on what I brought to the space. I associated church with a suit, a white shirt and polished shoes.  They were a fundamental part of the ritual through which I learned to honor God.

              Clothing is a ritualized part of the pastoral Sunday presentation.  Before the storm I dressed for worship in a black robe called a Geneva gown, the origins of which date from the Protestant Reformation.  The clergy reformers of the 16th century wore those plain black unadorned robes to distinguish themselves from their brothers in the Roman church whose taste in dress ran to the finely tailored, colorful, even gaudy, presentations.   

              The gown, like the chasuble---the robe the priest wears---is symbolic of church officer, but it is also a means to demonstrate our respect and reverence for God.  Clothing, datable to Old Testament times, has played a prominent role in worship traditions.  You can read lengthy descriptions in the book of Exodus, Leviticus, and elsewhere that demonstrate just how attentive the people were to clergy dress. Verse after verse lays out in careful detail how the priest was to dress for worship.

              Rituals of dress make important statements, a fact no one who has ever seen a Mardi Gras parade could possibly deny.  Little did I know while  I was attending to my

Saturday rituals in preparation for worship on Sunday that I was part of a tradition datable to the priest Aaron.  While my preparation for worship at age 10 little resembled what the priests of old undertook in preparation, the impulse and motives for our actions shared a common source.  We were preparing ourselves to go to a holy place where the people of God gathered to honor God.

              Great ritual has evolved to honor God; those rituals often carried out in places carefully, even meticulously designed and erected to image God’s awe and power. As much as the rituals we use in honoring God, the places where we gather to honor him reveal a great deal about our attitude toward God. 

              The place where God is worshiped has always been a priority for God’s people, as was certainly the case for the  ancient Hebrews.  The Hebrews believed that the Jerusalem Temple was God’s habitation on earth.  Grand scale, bold in vision, the Temple represented a peoples’ effort to glorify God, not a god or gods like the gods to which the people around them paid homage, but the God who sovereignly reigned over the vast heavens and earth.   

              The rituals we establish and the buildings we build in God’s honor make major theological statements.  In other words, what we think about God gets worked out in the buildings we build, our worship practices and liturgies, even the clothing we wear.

              Several of us who met with professor Stan Hall from Austin Seminary were introduced to the wide diversity of ways in which ritual was accommodated in worship space.  Throughout Christian history the sanctuary furnishings, pulpit, communion table, and baptismal font have grounded Christian ritual in familiar objects in which great meaning is invested. Craftsmen spared no imagination, and their patrons spared no expense, to get those objects just right.

              Many of you have visited the great cathedrals of Europe.  Decades, even centuries, in the construction, those cathedrals make a bold and exquisite statement about God.  If you were able to linger for a service of worship in one of the cathedrals you know that the ritual was equally impressive.

              The awe and transcendence of God evokes our response in sacred spaces and sacred rituals. Awe and transcendence, of course, are the theme of the transfiguration. 

              Considering the number of options that God had in getting the peoples’ attention, what Peter, James and John experienced on the mountain of Transfiguration, though impressive, must be regarded as comparatively mild stuff.  Having said that, however, what those three apostles of Jesus encountered was definitely God in his glory, they witnessed a three-part spectacle that included the transfiguration of Jesus, “his face [shining] like the sun and his clothes dazzling white”; a cameo appearance by two of the greatest prophets in Jewish history, Moses and Elijah, and to top things off, they heard God himself declare, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” The spectacle the apostles experienced was so grand and powerful, that overcome with awe, they were driven to their knees.

              So commanding was the experience that Peter sought Jesus’ approval to ritualize the event:  “I’ll make three dwelling places, Lord [think of monuments or memorials], one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.  The inclination to do something in response to an event that moves us is very strong, and Peter, overcome with awe, was moved to do something to mark the occasion.

              The transfiguration of Jesus on the mountain was an event to which the gospel writers point in celebrating the divinity of Jesus. Yes, Jesus was the son of Mary and Joseph, born in the Bethlehem stable, but the event of the transfiguration re-casts Jesus’ life, for the church affirms in the transfiguration that Jesus’ parentage is not merely human, but also divine.  The transfiguration unequivocally certifies that Jesus is God’s own son, but it is through Jesus’ activity in the world that his identity is sealed.  Transfiguration has transcendence written all over it, but it is not as the transcendent God ensconced upon the mountaintop that Jesus reigns.  No, Jesus came down from the mountain.

              Jesus came down the mountain with his disciples, and what was the first thing the three wanted to do?  They wanted to share what they experienced.  They were inspired to tell their story, just as the church has been inspired to tell that same story through great buildings and ritual.  But Jesus stopped his disciples in their tracks, “Not a word, say nothing of what you have seen,” and he added, “until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”  The trajectory of Jesus’ life put him on a collision course with a reality his disciples could not begin to comprehend as they journeyed with him back into the world.  Two opposing images vied for room in the disciples’ minds: Jesus was God’s own son, transcendent.  Jesus was their teacher, mentor and friend, human like they were, but also vulnerable as they were.

              Two opposing images.  Left unresolved for the disciples as they came down the mountain was one very basic question: Who is this Jesus, anyway, and what did this business about rising from the dead mean?”

              Some time ago I spoke with a man who was a member of a Presbyterian delegation representing our denomination in conversation with the members of the Vatican.  During their visit to the Vatican, this group of ten or so Presbyterians, were granted a private audience with Pope John Paul II.  In describing his visit the man shared an aside that injected some personality into his story.  The man described the Vatican salon in which the  meeting took place as regal, as one might expect.  He went on to give a rather detailed description of the Pope.  The Pope of course suffered with an advanced case of Parkinson’s and osteoporosis.  Drawing near to shake the Pope’s hand, our friend was impressed with the artistry displayed in the robes he was wearing.  The quality of workmanship was apparent even to the casual observer.  One, of course, would expect the Pope to be dressed impressively.  What was unexpected turned out to be the shoes the Pope was wearing.  John Paul’s shoes were described as being as scuffed and beat-up as any shoes you are likely to see.

              His Holiness in scuffed shoes; not at all what you might expect to see.  The two images, a regal Pope and scuffed shoes, collide.  Yet when you think about it the images don’t collide, for Pope John Paul built a reputation by traveling around the world, his commitment to social and economic justice, world peace, and reconciliation taking him to the most inhospitable places, places where you are likely to get your shoes scuffed.

              Present one moment to see the appearance of Jesus transfigured into something other-worldly, the disciples traveled back down the mountain into a world where Jesus’ holiness and transcendence would be displayed in far more mundane ways.  When you get down to it, “his holiness in scuffed shoes” is a pretty good description of Jesus. Jesus did not build his reputation by remaining on the mountain of transfiguration.  Son of God, Savior, Messiah, yes, Jesus fit the description on all counts, but Jesus didn’t grasp at transcendence as some honor to be enjoyed in the serenity of God’s heaven.  Jesus was willing to scuff his shoes.  Wherever people are in need, where there is tragedy, where there is neglect, where there is injustice, where there is suffering and pain, you will find Jesus.

              The Church has established many rituals to honor God.  We have built glorious houses of worship in which to enact those rituals.  We experience the transcendent power of God alive in us when we engage in our rituals, when we gather in our houses of worship.  We feel connected to God through spiritual disciplines like prayer, fasting, and contemplation.  We feel the spirit of God drawing us near to him. 

              The spiritual disciplines and rituals I just named are extremely important in shaping a Christian identity, however in our commitment to the contemplative life let us not forget that the way of Jesus leads to places where shoes get scuffed, where the cries of affliction are hard, where humans suffer injustice and neglect.  The road to which Jesus points leads into the world, our personal renewal a byproduct of our service to others, beginning with the least in the kingdom.

              My first acquaintance with ritual came at an early age.  Over the years I have learned a lot more about ritual, and the God our ritual is meant to glorify.  The worship ritual has meaning for me, and for many of you, but religion that begins and ends in worship ritual will change nothing outside these walls.  Many are seeking spiritual fulfillment, but undertake it purely as a quest to satisfy personal hunger and needs.  That is not the way of Jesus.  Jesus is calling us out into the world where need is great and shoes get scuffed.  Down from the mountain and into the world is where Jesus is leading.  Pray God the Church, this church, has the courage and faith to follow.