Paying Attention to What Matters

“Paying Attention to What Matters”

The Rev Jen Van Zandt

February 19, 2023

I was listening to a fascinating interview the other day by the author of the book, All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me.  Author Patrick Bringley discussed some of the most engaging facts about the Met and his own experience as a guard - one of almost 600 that guard the artwork in the museum.  He says that the museum is a special place and there's an entire ecosystem below the entire Met.  There are plants and gardeners and copy machines and glue and archivists and all sorts of people that are underground in this 2.2 million square foot space!  He shares many of the details that further describe what drew him to this job; the things he learned about being a guard, about himself and all the visitors.  Among them,  he decided to quantify visitors into five main groups:

             Those who are looking for something to do when the weather is crummy;

             Those who are budding artists, who want to be inspired and sketch or paint a particular piece of artwork;

             Those who have a very special room and a place in which they go to get engaged;

             Those, of course, who are Out-of-Towners, frantically scrambling to get through the entire Museum, because they want to see the “big                 dinosaur” which, of course, is not at the Met; and then

             Those locals who return time and time again to one specific gallery or to look at one or two specific pieces of art to seek more and                           more meaning and depth from the art itself.

Bringley, himself, although not initially a huge lover of art, had left a very prestigious job at the New Yorker to be a guard to heal from the grief of losing his brother from cancer at the age of 27.  He needed to stop and literally stand and fade into the background and let others go on living while he pondered and grieved.

In his time as a guard, he was deeply moved by many of the depictions, especially of Christ and the apostles even though he doesn't call himself a religious man.  He particularly loved looking at a 15th Century piece, called “The Crucifixion of Christ” by Fra Angelico.  In it he found a reminder of his own mortality; that suffering is a part of life, and that loss inspires love and lament, and that bravery and suffering are inextricably linked.  I think that's exactly where we're being invited today by this story, The Transfiguration.

Clearly, Peter thinks he's being both brave and faithful.  He now sees this vision of Moses with Jesus and Elijah and he wants to capture it  by  building three dwellings to stay in this place of joy and ecstasy.  Kind of like the Met visitors who want to get engaged in a specific place.  Or the artist who wants to replicate the beauty on the walls or in their sketchbook or on a canvas.  But these are one-dimensional parts of us that want to hold on to the happy, the joyous, the light, without having to endure the hard and the painful and the difficult. 

God sees that in us and in the Disciples and puts a stop to it immediately.  Notice in the text that the cloud and the voice don't come until Jesus is praying.  God wants the disciples to know this is only part of the story.  It's as if when God shows up on the scene, it's like, “Uh, hellooo…you're focusing on the wrong thing.  You're not here to take in the joy and the beauty of Jesus and latch on to His power.   I'm calling you to the hard work of denying yourself and picking up the Cross to follow Jesus--not every once in a while.  Daily.  And to accompany Jesus on his journey through the difficult, through the suffering and to the other side.”  In that, is God's desire to shift us away from the drive of self-preservation that we so desperately hold on to and move more towards God's desire for our own transformation.  How we respond, my friends, is front and center as we commence Ash Wednesday--this Wednesday, This is when we're called to really be mindful daily of what God is calling us to let go of, stop worrying about and to start giving up and giving away those things that are focused on self-preservation.  The disciples really had no idea what was going on during the Transfiguration and they certainly had no idea what was about to be put in front of them as they followed Jesus.  Like they say about anything that's extremely difficult,  “If I had known how hard this would be, I probably wouldn't have done it.”

So now we have 40 days to practice.  We have 40 days to pay attention to the Light of Christ, the Power of Christ; but, also, know that we are following not only our Savior but also a suffering servant.  We have an opportunity this year, again, to look at the body of Christ and the next six weeks I'll be focusing on individual parts of the body of Christ, as we look to literally the parts of the body, like the heart and the mind and the hands and the feet and the body of the community and how that helps us grow into more of what Christ wants us to be.  It's a huge opportunity for us to begin again.  It's a huge opportunity for us to step away from our preoccupation of self and our judgments of others and focus solely on the one thing that God wants us to do, which is to focus on the Beloved and listen to Him. The words that came from God in that cloud were not an invitation but a command! The command of “Listen to Him” solely puts our needs and our wants and our tantrums and our tempers and our hungers aside.  That's the only way, friends, we can grow truly into becoming disciples.  And then, therefore, not denying Jesus in the Garden, as Peter did but denying ourselves and picking up the Cross to follow the one in whom we live and move and have our being.

We're going to again use the Lenten cards that we did last year and there are packs are available if you can’t find them from last year. Please take another pack of Lenten cards to bring to a friend, a spouse, a sibling, a neighbor, or someone who maybe doesn't have any plans for Ash Wednesday, so that they, too, can learn how to follow the way of the Cross and deny themselves to follow the One who is Love and Light and Hope and Peace.

May it be so.  Amen.