Clouds that Block, Clouds that Bless

This sermon was written for St Paul’s Episcopal Church in Seattle, Washington for Transfiguration Sunday. The gospel text was Mark 9:2-9.

There’s a game my husband and I play on our commute — maybe you play as well. The game is called: Is Rainier out? It’s initiated each time we near the West Seattle Bridge; either he or I will say, “Well? Is she out?” And we’ll examine the conditions, gaze into the sky, debate about the level of visibility. Whether we estimate correctly or not, when she’s out, we both feel like we won.

Perhaps this game is part of the reason it makes sense to me that the word “cloud” shares the same root as the word “clot,” as in a blood clot. They both come from clod: a clump of earth. Clouds are clumps of sky; clots are clumps of cells. It makes sense to me that these two words, cloud and clot, share their parent: both, material, stuck together; both capable of blockage and obstruction.

In this city, we know clouds intimately. We are familiar with their presence, familiar with their comings and goings, familiar with the way they seem to shift our landscape, shift what is visible and what is hidden.

My parents recently visited from Michigan, where they know clouds well but know very little of giant clods of earth. During their visit, as we drove about, they would comment on the landscape: the water, the green, the flower buds. The rain. But it’s winter; the view of the mountains, and of course the views of Mt Rainier as well, were continuously limited by clotty clouds, blocking our sight.

I tried to explain to my parents what they were missing. “There’s a glorious mountain right over there.” I showed them photos that didn’t do it justice. I pulled up a map. They said, Yes, sure, we know, we understand. But I knew they didn’t fully understand. They had the right concept — a hill but bigger, with snow on top — but they didn’t fully understand the right meaning. The clouds blocked their experience, and thus blocked their sight.

Peter, too, has the right concept but not a firm grasp on the right meaning behind it. The week before Peter sees Jesus transfigured on the mountaintop, Jesus asked him, “Who do you say I am?” Now, Jesus had triumphed over every foe: he had cured illnesses, debated critics, soothed nature, controlled spirits. And so Peter responds, “You are the Messiah.”

Peter was able to sincerely confess Jesus as the Messiah. But, like my parents relying on photos to understand the experience of a mountain, Peter was relying on insufficient images to understand who the Messiah is.  He believed the Messiah to be the one who will triumph over every enemy, natural and spiritual. The one who ends all suffering and death. The Messiah has come, and Peter believes that as a result he will see an immediate end to despair, betrayal, grief, suffering, death.

In Mark’s account, the line of text after Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Messiah, Jesus starts speaking of what is to come: his suffering, his rejection by all respected authority figures. Jesus tells his disciples that he will be killed. Peter is appalled and rebukes Jesus — death is a sign of defeat, failure of mission. Certainly the Messiah will not, can not be defeated. God will not abandon the Messiah in this way.

It is in the midst of this confusion that Jesus takes Peter, along with James and John, and they hike to the top of a mountain. On the mountaintop, close to heaven, Jesus appears as a brilliant, dazzling figure, and alongside him are Moses, the bearer of the Law, and Elijah, the great prophet. There can be no doubt that Peter was right in naming Jesus the Messiah. This is certainly God’s Holy, Chosen One.

And I imagine that Peter must have thought: this is it, this is the arrival of the Kingdom of God, from this moment there will be no more misery, no despair, no betrayal, no grief, no suffering, and certainly no death. He offers to make dwellings. He wants the Holy Ones to settle, to set up camp, to move into the neighborhood and build a permanent home. He wants this moment of glory to be where they stay.

A cloud comes over them all, and the voice of God speaks: “this is my Son; listen to him.”

Jesus is silent. The words we are to listen to are the ones that have already been spoken, the ones that Peter did not want to hear — Jesus telling of his upcoming shame, suffering, and death.

To Peter, who had been hopeful, even certain, that the world was done with suffering and death, this cloud might have felt clot-like. This cloud might seem to obstruct the settling of Moses, Elijah, and Jesus. This cloud might be felt to obscure the immediate presence of the Kingdom of God by affirming that Jesus will, indeed, suffer and die.

I, too, was frustrated with clouds, during my parents visit. They had never been to Seattle before and I wanted them to have this image of dazzling beauty to take back home with them. I wanted the clouds to part and the sun to shine on the mountain and them to have the experience of seeing Rainier in all her glory.

But precisely because I was so focused on them seeing Rainier, I often missed the beautiful things we were able to see, the things my parents, in their enthusiasm, kept drawing my attention to: The moss growing thickly on banisters, turning a safety device into an enchanted thing. The incessant waves of water, their rhythm conveying something of the infinite. The way the clouds moved among the buildings. The clouds in all their beautiful grays. The very clouds I had been cursing have a beauty all their own.

Peter, too, wanted glory, and was slow to realize that there is beauty and glory in the grey, cloudy, clotty places; indeed, the voice of God, the blessing of God might be found precisely in the cloud that comes over us like a shadow.

In her poem Early February, Marilyn Chandler McEntyre writes:

Grace doesn’t always come as a rainbow.

Sometimes it hovers like a pewter sky

tucked in around the treetops,

bringing the landscape close to the eye.

 

Still, grace comes on a day like this

in odd disguises…

 

For the gifts of greyness let us give thanks:

cobblestones and flagstones and boulders of granite,

clapboard houses, dark-shuttered and lamplit in the afternoon,

snow on asphalt, pencil and charcoal,

the naked stretch of steel that protects us

at the bridge’s edge,

old movies from a kinder time,

the wolf and the owl — hungry and hidden —

the rabbit’s fur,

the hawk’s eye,

the dolphin’s back,

the cocoon where a caterpillar

quietly works out

its salvation.

 

Moses, Elijah, and Jesus, and Peter, John, and James — they do not get to stay on top of the mountain in the moment of dazzling and obvious glory. The Messiah will not avoid the hardships of human life. Jesus will not settle where it’s comfortable. Neither do we get to stay in shining moments for long, near heaven, on top of mountains.

The voice from the cloud comes to affirm what Jesus has told the disciples about his death, and to bless it. God comes in a cloud in a dramatic affirmation that Jesus will indeed continue to be God’s agent of redemption. Suffering is not the result of a withdrawal of heavenly favor. Death is not the result of a withdrawal of heavenly favor.

This God does not shy away from suffering. This God is not afraid of death. This God does not bypass the difficult things.

Jesus will not take the easy way, for he knows there is no shortcut to new life. And though we may look for shortcuts — the Seven Easy Steps to a Better, Fitter, Healthier, Happier, Richer, Kinder You — it should, perhaps, be unsurprising that we find ourselves with Jesus on the long, slow journey to salvation. So we go to the doctors appointments and treatments. We spend the hours in counseling. We show up again and again for the 12-step meetings. We apply for this job, and the next one, and the next. We grieve one day at a time. We come to prayer in rhythms, regular or irregular. These are our own slow, gray cocoons, in which we quietly work out our salvation.

God does not bypass the difficult things on the way to salvation, but joins us in them. The savior we know is named Emmanuel, the God who is with us. Just as God was with Jesus in his baptism, God is just as much with Jesus in his suffering and death. And God will be just as much with us through our times of suffering and, yes, death, as God was with us in our baptism.

And God is with us through our despair, and is loyal to us when we are betrayed. And God intimately knows our abandonment. And God weeps with us in grief. And God suffers alongside us.

For this God, in Christ, goes through death, and blesses it, on the way to new life.

Easter morning in a cloud on Mount Nebo
Easter morning in a cloud on Mount Nebo

Eulogy for Karen Campbell

The only time in my life I was certain I was dying was when I was eight years old.

I had been running up Maxwell Street when I tripped. Most of my weight landed on my knee, which landed on a corner of a stair – Larry’s stair, actually. And it was Larry’s towels that were wrapped around my knee as I was placed into the back seat of Pete’s car, but not before I had seen the damage. The cut went to the bone. I had never seen so much blood before; there was no question in my eight-year-old mind that this was the end of my life.

Pete drove; Karen insisted on coming along. In fact, she insisted on sitting with me in the back seat. She squeezed beside me and peeled back the towels to see my injury and said, “Well, shit,” and I knew it was serious because she didn’t apologize to me for swearing.

She had run out of the house without grabbing a thing, and as Pete drove around town trying to contact my parents, Karen searched her pockets for something to give me, and offered me the only thing she had on her: a peppermint.

When Pete managed to get my mom on the car phone, I heard her voice and started sobbing: this, I thought to myself, would the last time I heard my mother’s voice. As I sobbed, Karen patted my arm and told me how brave I am. As I shook, she told me how strong I am. My breathing slowed; we made it the hospital; I grew into a well-adjusted adult who realizes her life was never in danger.

I tell this story as a testament to Karen’s character. Crises, fortunately, don’t happen all that often, but when they do, they have a way of revealing our identity, of illuminating the best and the worst in each of us.

I tell this story because in the midst of my young crisis, Karen joined me, came beside me. There was no question, for her, that she would be in that car, and that she would be immediately beside the person in need. And this was always true of Karen: no matter what I was going through, I could be certain that she would be in it with me. I could trust that she would recognize and name a situation for the shittiness it is.

I tell this story because it illustrates Karen’s generosity. A woman who wasn’t happy until everyone in her home had a full, cold drink in hand – of course she offered me a found mint. Even at the time, I’m pretty certain I laughed through my tears at the absurdity and helplessness of her offering a mint to an injured child. But that’s who she was: offering comfort and hospitality in the most tangible ways.

I tell this story because Karen always had a gift of narrating my best self — back to me. That day, while I was still sobbing uncontrollably, she told me I was strong. While I was terrified and trembling, she told me I was brave. Karen had a gift of sight, a gift that enabled her to see beyond behavior and into the heart of the person. She saw each of us as our best self, and told us who we are, with such certainty that we believed her – and moved toward becoming our best selves in response.

It’s true she offered this narration to me on that day I fell, but was equally true each and every time I saw Karen. Every time she saw me, she told me I was more beautiful than when she had last seen me – even when I was a gangly child and an awkward adolescent. When I was yet uncomfortable in my own skin, she saw me as beautiful.

As a child I was shy, quiet; I easily went unnoticed. But Karen noticed me, and exclaimed that I was smart and bright and brilliant; when I was easily overlooked, she saw me as shiny.

I wonder how she saw each of you, gathered here, the people she loved. I wonder about the too-easily unnoticed people that, in her eyes, are surrounded by light. I wonder who you understand yourself to be and who she believed you to be, and I wonder if you can believe that you really are as strong, smart, brave, brilliant, and beautiful, as Karen told you are.

And I hope you continue to become that person, that you continue to become yourself. I hope we all continue to become as lovely as Karen told us we are.

Because that, I think, is perhaps the greatest gift of Karen’s love: When we were yet unlovable, she loved us, and in doing so made us lovely.

I am indebted to her, to some degree, for calling me to become who I am, but it is not a debt that can be repaid. Rather, it is a gift that can only be passed on. May we go into the world and see others through the borrowed vision of Karen’s eyes. Through Karen’s eyes, may we notice the scared and see their strength. Through Karen’s eyes, may we look behind brokenness and see beauty. Through Karen’s eyes, may we look past the unlovable and encounter someone truly lovely.