With the Saints Marching in...

This weekend we are joining a celebration already in process.

In worship we will be welcoming our favorite guest jazz musicians, which is highly appropriate, especially given that it is Mardi Gras weekend.

And in addition, we are traveling to the mountain to see Christ transformed. As I wrote on a marquis sign several years ago: "Christ was transfigured before Star Wars made it cool." We will behold Christ as God's own Messiah bathed in light. A truly Jewish embodied figure squarely centered between Moses and Elijah - I Am's greatest prophets. The One who was and is and is becoming made flesh.

It is this mountaintop moment that pivots Jesus's journey from ministry towards Jerusalem.

And of course, the disciples completely miss the point.

They see the glory. They feel the excitement. They realize they are the only one's getting to do this.

And they immediately try to put God in a box and keep Christ forever in that moment.

Stay... Stay... (yes, you should hear me talking to Zoe in your head).

Far too often in this life we treat God like a pet at worst and a fast food restaurant at best - something we can control to something we can order around. Our god looks just like our prejudices and our desires writ large.

That is not who our God is.

Any time we think we comprehend God even a little, our God expands. Unfolds. Spreads. Metamorphosizes.

It is not that God changes - it is that we never fully understood who God was in the first place.

What God has revealed to us, in addition to the appearances throughout the scriptures, is God's own self made flesh in Jesus Christ. It is in this Living Word that we find the true expression of what we do know:

God is Love. God loves equity filled justice. God cares most for the vulnerable and the unwanted. And God wants us to do the same.

So, as we get ready to party with the saints marching in, may we remember that our job as those saints is to live into Christ's own calling on this earth while we're still here.

Blessings,

Rev. Janie