MEMO FOR FEB 14
Luke 9:28-36 (37-43a)
What kind of God is this--Indeed?”
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Can you believe it? Transfiguration Sunday is upon us and we have another seven inches of snow.
I don?t know who puts these lessons together, but I think that Deuteronomy 34:1-10, the account of God showing Moses the promised land and then telling him that he can?t go in would have made a better parallel for the Gospel for this day. Remember, after God takes Moses to the mountain and shows him the promise land. God refuses to let Moses cross over. Just rules him out on a technicality and gives him an unmarked grave. What kind of God is this-- indeed? Three of my saints got unmarked graves, Moses, Mozart and Calvin. (Some would say that Calvin deserved his!) but, certainly not Moses.
When we read the Luke passage, we find Jesus and the disciples up on the mountain of transfiguration, and Moses is conferring with Jesus. Moses if you are back there in that unmarked grave, how is that we find you in the future that God is preparing? What kind of God is this-- indeed?

If we read further in the Gospel text for today, we discover a demon fleeing from Jesus. It would seem that Luke?s Jesus is the enemy of all things broken and lost, the one who restores. I found 26 healing stories in Luke. What kind of a God is this--indeed? I think all of this tells me that God is the one who restores our broken dreams and lives, even so Moses. But God?s ways are certainly not our ways--thank God!

Abraham Heschel reminds us that some see a single flash of light in the entire night of their lives. With others there are long or short intermissions between the flashes of illumination... He continues there is a loneliness within us that hears. When the soul parts company with the ego and its petty conceits; when we cease to exploit all things but instead pray the world?s cry, the world?s sigh, our loneliness may hear the living grace beyond all power. We must first peer into the darkness, feel the ...hopelessness of living without God, before we are ready to feel the presence of God?s living light. God in Search of Man, A philosophy of Judaism, The Jewish Publication Society of America. 1956,