The Glory of God Revealed in an Empty Seat

Delivered at Agnus Dei Lutheran Church. Transfiguration, Year B.
Text: 2 Kgs 2:1-15; 2 Cor 4.3-6; Mk 9.2-10

We as the Church carry a lot of anxiety over empty seats. There are a lot more empty chairs in here today than there used to be. This is normal across the country, and that makes us very nervous. Those empty seats make us worry about how we are going to fill them. We worry about what programs or music we are offering to bring people in, about how we market ourselves, about how we compete with other weekend activities like sports and after school programs. All our worries about the survival of our congregation and our denomination really boil down to a question of identity and worth: we are worried that who we are is not important or appealing to the world around us, and that this means we are not being the Church well enough.

The Church struggles with our identity because we as people struggle with our identities. In a culture which values individuality and independence, people are cautious about which organizations and groups we choose to join. As we all seek to form our own identities, we don’t want to be connected with groups or organizations that don’t reflect who we believe ourselves to be.

The trouble is that while we as individuals seek to create our own identities and be masters of our own fate, we also live in a world that is saturated with marketing. Embedded in all this marketing are messages about the kind of values by which we should be measuring our worth. We are being told that being productive, trendy, powerful, and beautiful are the virtues to which we should aspire. Even as we are trying to define ourselves among or against everybody else in the world, our identities and our priorities are being shaped by the forces of economy and consumerism. In the end, no matter who we fancy ourselves to be, our real worth out in the world is being measured by how much we consume.

In a sense, the Church is also being caught up in this system of value based on consumption. We measure our worth based on attendance (how many people are consuming our product) and giving (how much we are able to spend). It is here, with all these things floating around in our heads, that our story meets us today.

In the ancient world, people’s identities were determined by the people they came from: you were known by your tribe and your family. Knowing that Joshua was the son of Nun and that Jesus was from Nazareth told people something about them. If you wanted to know who somebody was, you had to know who they came from.

Take Elisha. His mentor, Elijah, was a famous and powerful prophet, somebody who spoke for God. In preparation for the end of his ministry, God instructed Elijah to take Elisha as an apprentice. Now, people knew who Elijah was and what he could do, but who was Elisha?

As Elijah prepares to end his work, Elisha follows him over the River Jordan and asks to receive a double portion of his spirit as he is taken up into heaven. A “double portion” was what the firstborn son and heir received from his father as inheritance: a share of the property twice what any of his younger brothers received. As Elijah is taken up by the chariots, Elisha cries out and calls him “father” All this is to say that Elisha is, for all intents and purposes Elijah’s “son:” that he carries all of Elijah’s authority, and that he carries on Elijah’s work in his stead. Indeed, as Elisha crosses back over the river, he performs the same miracle Elijah had just done and parts the waters, and the company of prophets declares, “The spirit of Elijah rests on Elisha.”

Likewise, in Jesus’ Transfiguration on the mountain, Moses the lawgiver and Elijah the great prophet appear beside him. By their presence, they endorse Jesus as a lawgiver and prophet in their tradition, and with their authority. This scene on the mountaintop is Mark’s way of establishing for us Jesus’ reputation; that he really is the fulfillment of the Law of Moses and a prophet who speaks for God. This is, in a way, what separates Jesus from David Koresh or Jim Jones. Koresh and Jones made declarations about themselves which turned out to be false; but Jesus has Moses and Elijah, two of the greatest figures in Jewish history, to speak for him. If we trust them, we can trust Jesus.

Just as Moses and Elijah teach us about who Jesus is, through baptism, Jesus himself becomes our family, and informs our identity. When we are washed in the water and sealed by the Spirit, Jesus claims us as his own and joins us into his family, the Church. Just as Elisha got his authority as a prophet from Elijah, we get our authority and our identity as the Church from Christ.

Apart from being a neat story about Jesus and some proof of his authority, the lesson of the Transfiguration is a lesson to us about who we are as the Church. The life of Christ is the life of the Church; we see in him and in his experiences the key to interpreting our own lives together. Sometimes it feels like the odds are stacked against us. Sometimes it feels like the Church is headed for a slow and torturous death. Does that sound familiar? We feel ourselves dying, and so did Christ. We know that death is not the end for Jesus, and he promises that it will not be the end for us. Because we are baptized into his death, we also share his eternal life here and now.

Here’s what I mean by that. Look around you and find one of those empty seats that gives us so much anxiety. I want you to look at that empty seat and see it in the glory of God. See how that seat is not empty: sitting here among us are all the company of saints, all those who have ever gathered to worship and follow Christ. St. Peter is in that chair; so is St. Paul. Sitting with us here is St. Bernard of Clairveaux, St. Teresa of Avila; among us are St. Martin Luther and St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Dietrich Bonhoeffer and St. Marcus Borg. Sitting there is your brother in Minnesota, your sister in California. Sitting there next to you are your great-grandparents, long dead, and even your great-grandchildren, not yet born.

You may not be able to tell, but as we gather here we are Transfigured by God into the Body of Christ, and though it may appear that there are many empty seats, there is, in fact, standing room only, as the great cloud of witnesses stretches out the door and into the street. When we gather as the Church—for worship, for prayer, for service, for fellowship—we are Transfigured like Christ. On the mountain, Moses and Elijah came to stand with Jesus. When we gather, Jesus brings us all together across time and space to be one community of neighbors, one family of God sharing in his resurrection, one holy catholic and apostolic Church.

We see this reality lived out in our liturgy, our hymnody, our prayers, even our scriptures. They are the product of a community spanning thousands of years and multiple continents. Millions upon millions of people have been and continue to be a part of what we do here every Sunday morning. We didn’t invent this community or its worship; it is bigger than us, it has its own integrity. It has grown and continues to grow organically through the work and reflection and prayer of generations upon generations of people who follow Christ. Nowhere is this gathering of saints more real and more present than when we share in the sacraments, when we are all washed in the same name with the same water, and when we all gather around one table, eating from one loaf and drinking from one cup.

What is truly amazing is that if time and space and even death present such paltry obstacles to a God who transcends them to bring us together like this, then imagine how insignificant the obstacles are that we create for ourselves—obstacles like personal grudges, political ideologies, or theological disagreements. What binds us together is so much stronger than all these things, because what binds us together is our identity as God’s people.

It is this community and this savior who give us that identity, who tell the world who we are and what we are worth—not the number of butts in our pews or bucks in our plates. When we gather here and across the world as the Church, God’s glory Transfigures us from a collection of individuals into a community of faith. That is our identity, and that is our value: we are the body of Christ. When the world looks at us, it sees him. We listen to him, we follow his voice and learn from his wisdom so that, like him, we too can reveal God to the world. We listen to and learn from Christ so that we can give everyone the message that their worth comes not from how much they can consume, but from God’s love revealed to us through Christ.