Transfigured

The sermon I heard this morning started with a question.  "Why do you come to church?"  It was an amazingly appropriate question, as I have been pondering church and the meaning of church for several months now.  It probably started last summer when Hubby T and I closed the doors on the season we spent at our first church and started looking for a new church near our new home.  We quickly realized that searching for a church as a family was going to be much harder than searching for a church as a couple had been.  So we put some serious thought into what features of a church were important for us and started looking.  Then my school semester started and my Old Testament professor showed us scripture after scripture that indicates that worship of God should really be about action and what we as God's people are doing to bring God's justice and love into being here on earth.  Now if you evaluate a church through that lens, almost all of them will miserably fail.  Most churches are incredibly inward focused, and I was left wondering whether a church even existed that met this standard, or what it meant to be part of a church that didn't meet this standard.  Then over Christmas I caught up with a friend who has chosen to leave a mainline Protestant church to "do" church in yet another completely different way.  My head has been spinning.  What does God want church to look like, and does it line up at all with the way most American churches look?  Have we all been getting it all wrong?

So back to this morning, which found Hubby T and I at the "Bagels with the Clergy" meeting for newcomers at the church we are considering settling in.  It hasn't been an easy journey to find a new church home here in our new place, and we're still not completely sure of our decision.  But it's where we are for now.  After an encouraging meeting with the church leaders we settled into the new rhythm of the Episcopalian service and sat back to listen to the sermon.  "Why do you come to church?"  There are lots of reasons that I could offer to this question: for friendship and fellowship, to worship, to learn, to be centered, to find opportunities to serve the community.  But the gospel reading for today led to yet another answer - to be transformed.  The transfiguration story finds the disciples on a mountain top with Jesus, who suddenly is transformed into an image of his fully divine self.  The disciples are dumb-struck, but they hear God clearly speaking, "This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!"  The disciples may have seen Jesus transfigured, but you have to figure that they are the ones who walked away truly changed.  And that was the suggestion of the sermon - you come to church to be transformed by God.  And (this part comes from me) this is what allows us, as Christians, to do the work my Old Testament professor called for, to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with our God.  So maybe, just maybe, I was given some divine clarification today of what church should mean to me.  Thank you Lord.

Lent starts this week, the church season where we anticipate and prepare for Jesus' death, and then the resurrection.  I plan on taking Little B to the children's service on Wednesday to experience an Ash Wednesday service together.  I have an idea for a daily devotional action that we can do as a family to recognize this season.  And I'm thinking ahead, because for the past couple years, I have ordered a picture puzzle that the kids receive in their Easter eggs on Easter Sunday.  The picture is from the previous year and represents an experience or memory of what church has meant for our kids during that year.  And this year I have no picture.  We spent so much time away from any church this year and easing the boys into a new church has been slow and hard.  How do I want my kids to remember experiencing God this year?  A year when so much in their lives changed.  Quite possibly it will be a picture from outside church walls, which is yet another valid way to define church.  So here I go again, wondering what church means.  I have no doubt that God is working in this season of searching, and am cautiously hopeful for the next steps to be revealed...

"And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.  Therefore, since it is by God's mercy that we are engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart..." 2 Corinthians 3:18-4:1