“Pay Attention”

Mark 9:2-9

As a way of getting into the text I’m going to read the final verse of Mark 8 and the first verse and part of the second verse of Mark 9 from The Message: “”If any of you are embarrassed over me and the way I am leading you when you get around your unfocused and fickle friends, know that you’ll be an even greater embarrassment to the Son of Man when he arrives in all the splendor of God, his Father, with an army of the holy angels. Then he drove it home by saying, ‘This isn’t pie in the sky by and by. Some of you who are standing here will see it happen, see the Kingdom of God arrive in full force’. Six days later three of them did see it.”

Up on that mountain with Jesus Peter, James, and John witnesses the Transfiguration of our Lord. They saw him for who and what he really was. They got a glimpse of the realized Kingdom of God. It was an overwhelmingly awesome experience. They saw Jesus in a whole new, and not a little scary, way. They saw Elijah and Moses, whose coming was to be a forerunner of the Day of the Lord. No wonder Peter went babbling on about building memorials and staying on the mountain.

We know that didn’t happen. The experience ended. Jesus led them back down the mountain to continue the day in and day out, real life world of mission and ministry. They began anew their trek with him in the way of the cross. Everything was the same for them as it had been. Yet everything was different.

The most significant experience they had on that mountain was that moment when the Lord God spoke to them out of a radiant cloud, telling them, “This is my Son, marked by my love. Listen to him.” Jesus really was the Messiah. He really was the only begotten Son of the Father, the Word made flesh dwelling among us. They already kinda, sorta had that figured out. They still had a lot to learn, and they did learn it as they followed the way of the cross to its bitter end on Good Friday and experienced the glorious reality of the Resurrection.

When the voice from the cloud commanded them to listen to what Jesus had to say, what God was really saying was, “Pay attention. Listen to what my beloved Son has to teach you. Learn from all that you experiences as you follow him, even those lessons that will be painful. Watch what he does and how he does it. Observe and imitate his life. Pay attention.”

We were not privileged to witness the Transfiguration. We didn’t get to walk, talk, and have meals with the risen Lord. We only know Jesus through the words of Scripture and the work of the Holy Spirit. And it is to those words and the voice of the Spirit that we are to pay attention. See what Jesus said and did, and then do likewise. Open the eyes and ears of our hearts to the work and words of the Holy Spirit.

And what will we learn? We will learn the way of Jesus, the way of servanthood, humility, and self-sacrifice. We will learn of his vision of the Kingdom. We will move, as he moved, past the letter of the Law and into the real spirit of it. We will see in the Sermon on the Mount a vision of life lived as a true counterpoint to the ways of the world: how to pray, how to give, how to treat those whom we love, how to reappraise the stranger, and how to turn our fear and hatred of our enemy into loving forgiveness.

In other words, we will learn how to love the Lord our God with the very best of whom and what we are, and our neighbors as ourselves. Through the eyes and ears of our hearts we will see Jesus washing the feet of his disciples and hear his new commandment that we love one another. We will be witnesses to his willingness to die on a cross for our sins. We will hear him ask his Father to forgive the very people who crucified him. We will experience the thrill of his resurrection. We will hear his Great Commission to go in to the entire world and make disciples, to be his witnesses wherever we are and wherever he might send us.

As a traditionally taught Presbyterian pastor this opening of the eyes and ears of my heart is something new and different. Trained to use reason and intellect, to read and study, and to not stray far from the neo-orthodoxy I learned in seminary, it has been difficult for me to plug my gifts of imagination and intuition into the that enterprise that is my life and ministry. It has been difficult at times to live up to the words of that particular ordination vow to serve God’s people with energy, intelligence, imagination, and love. Energy expended without love amounts to nothing. Intelligence stripped of intuition and imagination never matures into wisdom. A love that is truly honest to God and Christ-like isn’t easy.

Maybe that’s why I like that song “Open the Eyes of My Heart, Lord” so much. For when I open the eyes – and ears – of my heart I see and hear the lessons that can only be learned from the heart. I understand what the former president of Union Seminary, T. Hartley Hall, was trying to say when he described the seminary’s mission in terms of wanting to send neither smart alecks nor dumb bunnies out to serve the church.

As I was pondering what it means to pay attention to Jesus I came across two devotional readings that spoke to the deepest part of me. One came from Max Lucado’s book He Still Moves Stones: “Leo Tolstoy, the great Russian writer, tells of the time he was walking down the street and passed a beggar. He reached into his pocket to give the beggar some money, but his pocket was empty. Tolstoy turned to the man and said, ‘I’m sorry, my brother, but I have nothing to give you’. The beggar brightened and said, ‘You have given me more than I asked for – you have called me brother’. To the loved, a word of affection is a morsel, but to the love-starved, a word of affection can be a feast.”

We never know when a kind word, a smile, or a simple act of generosity will allow someone to experience not just our love, but the love of Jesus. We never know when some small bit of affection can be a feast of love and caring for the one who experiences it. We never know when simply treating a stranger as our brother or sister will supply that bit of grace he or she needs in order to feel the full dignity of being a human being.

Such acts come from the heart not the head. They make manifest the love of Christ. They don’t arise out of perfect doctrine or theological orthodoxy. They are rooted in the politics of neither the left nor the right. As Blaise Pascal wrote, “The heart has reasons which reason does not know.” And thus I sing and pray, “Open the eyes of my heart, Lord.” Let me know not just what Jesus would do, but how faithfully following Jesus is to inform and shape all that I do and think and feel. And I cannot perceive the answer to that prayer until I hear and speak the language of the heart.

Which leads me to the second meditative reading, found in the devotional Answers in the Heart: “In a scientific age we rely on reason for explanation of the world and our conduct. If our minds tell us something is unreasonable, we tend not to do it. Our heads rule our hearts. But our hearts have voices, too, and they deserve to be heard. Emotion is not just a force; it is also a language whose words are often more powerful and effective than those of the mind’s language. Our hearts can tell us about caring and affection and helping and loving and being in touch.”

John Wesley described that moment when he finally got what God’s grace is all about as that moment when his “heart was strangely warmed.” It is no accident that those early Methodists reached out to those in need, no accident that they fed the hungry, clothed the naked, and housed the homeless, no accident that they could love the unlovable and minister to society’s most poor and wretched people. And they did so all the while proclaiming the Gospel. Why? They heard and spoke the language of the heart. They paid attention to the words and actions of Jesus.

In terms of our Reformed theology was their doctrine suspect? Yes. In terms of Presbyterian polity was their form of church government suspicious? Yes. But after almost sixty years of life and thirty-three years of ministry I’m discovering more and more that I just don’t care very much about such things anymore. I cared about them in seminary and during my early years of ministry. I still respect and uphold them. But deep down in the very core of my being I don’t believe that Jesus is overly concerned about these ultimately petty theological battles we like to fight.

Please hear this. I am not abandoning Reformed theology or Presbyterian polity. I’m not about to run off and become a Methodist. What I’m saying is that all of us need to pay attention to who Jesus was and is and what Jesus did and is still doing. We need to allow the Holy Spirit to open the eyes and ears of our hearts. We need to learn how to better speak and listen to the language of the heart. Why, so we can obey God’s command to listen to his Son; so we can pay attention to Jesus. Amen.