Luke 9:28-36, [37-43a]

About eight days after Peter had acknowledged Jesus as the Christ of God, Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, "Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah"--not knowing what he said. While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said, "This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!" When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.

On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met him. Just then a man from the crowd shouted, "Teacher, I beg you to look at my son; he is my only child. Suddenly a spirit seizes him, and all at once he shrieks. It convulses him until he foams at the mouth; it mauls him and will scarcely leave him. I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they could not." Jesus answered, "You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you? Bring your son here." While he was coming, the demon dashed him to the ground in convulsions. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the boy, and gave him back to his father. And all were astounded at the greatness of God.

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Because I'm not looking in a mirror, I can't be really be sure about my own face, but I can tell you that, this morning, your faces are glowing. We have waited for this day for some time. And many before us, for decades, have dreamed of the day when there would be an Episcopal Church in Bentonville. Seeing all of you gathered here...those of you whom I have gotten to know meeting in our various small groups, those of you who visit our theology pub, those of you who shared your stories with me in coffee shops and cafes. And now we are here, in a Junior High School auditorium... that looks a lot like church. Like Moses, our faces are glowing - maybe even transfigured. And I am tempted, like Peter, to say, "It is good for us to be here; let's make three dwellings - one for Moses, one for Elijah, one for Jesus - and let's settle in.

When I was a kid I loved to build dwellings. It started when I was very young and I would drape my mother's sheets and blankets across an assemblage of chairs and tables - creating tent-like hiding places in the living room. Later, every scrap heap became a source of building material for the forts and tree houses that eventually dotted the valley below my family's small ranch - most with a sign clearly posted on the outside - "girls keep out". Later a dense bamboo forest along the creekbed, became the haven for an entire village of bamboo huts. Populated by my savage, marauding band of 11 year old friends.

But the fort, the dwelling, that was our crowning glory was created from a haystack. By midsummer our barn was filled to the rafters with bales of sweet smelling Costal Bermuda hay - the result of two abundant harvests and much labor hauling the hay from the fields on flatbed trailers and systematically stacking row upon row into the barn. All this work done so that the cows would have plenty of fodder to see them through the winter.

But as the long Texas summer wore on, we eventually grew bored with our bamboo huts and tree houses and our gang turned its collective attention to the hay stack and we began to rearrange the bales. Working harder than we had ever worked in the fields, we created a series a tunnels and rooms within the hay, a labyrinthine network replete with trap doors, false turns, dead ends, and for those willing to crawl on their bellies through the itchy straw and endless darkness - a sanctuary - hidden deep in the heart of the haystack. This inner room was large enough to stand up or sprawl about, but mostly we sat cross legged in a circle, our dimming flashlights, placed upright in the middle of the ring, pointing skyward. There we shared our childhood secrets and talked of our dreams of what we would become and thought - "It is good for us to be here." And it was.

It was, that is, until the winter came. I remember clearly, my Dad coming into the house, one cold January evening. He had been feeding the cows. That was usually my job, but I had gone to a basketball game that night and he had taken over my chores. Dad said, "Son, did you know that our haystack is hollow? I thought we had more feed for the cattle. There isn't enough hay to get the cows through the winter."

You see, in our ecstasy, in our delight in creating a satisfying dwelling, in our eagerness to proclaim that, "It is good for us to be here" - we had created an empty shell. Rather than being filled with the sustenance that the cattle needed to sustain them through the winter - our haystack was simply a cavernous void. An illusion of abundance, concealing an empty crater hidden within.

One of the first questions that people ask me, upon learning that I am church planter is: When are you going to build a church? I patiently tell them, "Well, you know, the church really isn't about the building. It's about people. We are building community. We think that God is in the relationship and so we are focused on creating sustaining, sacred, relationships."

People usually respond by smiling, nodding their agreement, saying "Yeah, yeah, that's right...but where do you think you will put the church?

I've been reading a book by Professor Abraham Joshua Heschel, titled simply The Sabbath. Professor Heschel speaks of how technical civilization is largely about conquest of space. He says that technical civilization is the result of man's desire to "subdue and manage the forces of nature - things - tools, houses, manufacturing, special surroundings. He points out how this same spatial orientation extends into the world of religion. We think of a God that resides in particular places, mountains, forests, temples, cathedrals, shrines, and sacred spaces. But as Dr. Heschel points out, "a god who can be fashioned, a god who can be confined, is but a shadow of man." Instead, consider the notion that we find God much less in the creation of scared spaces, than we find God in the recognition of sacred moments. We live in a world where the measure of a church is taken by its magnificence, the prominence of the building. I ask you to consider that time, that time itself is sacred as well.

I am not overlooking the importance of sacred space. Indeed, last Sunday morning when we gathered to unload and arrange the altar, the pulpit, the lectern, the baptismal font - even the Bishop's chair. I was amazed at the transformation of the space, how a Junior High Auditorium, the day before filled with noisy, smelly pubescent kids, became a place where we were inclined to speak in hushed tones. Even the furniture glowed, although I'm willing to admit that might have just been the lemon oil.

What we share here today, is by any measure, one of those mountain top experiences. The introduction of a few pieces of furniture, your presence here, has transformed an ordinary Junior High Auditorium into a place that feels an awful lot like church. In a few moments we will break bread together, experience the shared body and blood of Christ, as a community, for the first time. It is an historic occasion. And, indeed, it is good for us to be here.

But if we stop here and pat ourselves on the back, we will be as Peter was "not knowing what he had said." We can, and should, relish this moment. It has been a long time coming. But if we allow ourselves to think that we have now become the church, we will be as hollow as the tunnel riddled haystack of my childhood.

I used to be asked, usually when I said something slightly heretical, and before I began to wear this collar around, "Are you a Christian?" My favorite reply, was usually, "No, but I would really like to be." I think of myself more as a "Jesus follower", as one who aspires to be a Christian. And although what we have here looks and feels like a church, I think a church is what we aspire to be. We have been in the process of becoming church for quite a few months and I believe we should stay in the process of becoming as long as we can. We are an emerging church. What church is going to look like here six months from today is a little difficult to say. We have gathered here from a variety of backgrounds, a few Episcopalians, but many Baptists, Methodists, Roman Catholics, those who claim no denomination, those who have no church affiliation, and those who wonder it God exists at all. Our expectations of what church should be about vary widely. But we are all God's children, each one of us loved by the Divine One. And everyone of you welcome here.

We celebrate our diversity, but I think that a common thread that binds us is a belief, or at least a hope, that God can be found in community. I've heard the Bishop of the Diocese of Atlanta say, that God is not simply in relationship, but that God is relationship. In the formation of this emerging church we have relied heavily on the small group model. Relational groups are at the core of this congregation. These groups are our heart and soul. As beautiful as it is to gather with you here on a Sunday morning, if we are truly to be in close relationship with one another, we need a chance to hear each others stories, to know one another deeply. Without that intimate knowledge of one another our chances of becoming a real church, a church that is more than walls and steeples and giant crosses, are really pretty slim.

In our theology pub we have been exploring a way of thinking of how God acts in the world called process theology. Process theology is all about relationship, how God changes us and we in turn change God and that all of creation is linked together in this web of being and shared love. A principle tenet of process theology is that God isn't an all powerful, omnipotent being that sits apart from the world and directs events here on earth - causing earthquakes and hurricanes or intervening directly in the minutia of existence. Rather, a process theologian would say that we worship a God without hands. That God acts in the world through us. That we are called to be the hands and feet of God.

We are called into relationship with God, not merely to bask in the glory of a mountaintop experience, but to experience the love of God in relationship with one another. And it is in and through relationship, experiencing the diversity that is God's creation; we learn to live into the challenge of being the vehicle through which God acts in the world, accepting what it means to be the hands of God.

As the Franciscan priest, Richard Rohr has said, "We need relationships of duration and truth to unveil our faces so that we can reflect like mirrors the brightness of the Lord." My prayer is that we as an emerging Christian community, will "all grow brighter and brighter as we are gradually turned into the image that we reflect; this is the work of the Lord who is Spirit". (2 Corinthians 3:18).