Greatness, Power, and Awe
II Kings 2: 1-12
Mark 9: 2-9 

It was a day filled with greatness, power, and awe! It was August 28, 1963, when our nation experienced a ground swell and movement of hundreds of thousands marching on Washington D.C.

My parents and I listened to the speech given by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on our car radio as we traveled on Georgia highways that afternoon, to the 1000-acre campus of Boggs Academy, which was located on a back road called Quaker Road.

The road was given that name by folks because it was the road that General Sherman cut and burned through the state from Atlanta to Savannah during the Civil War.

As I listened to Dr. King’s great speech “ I Have a Dream”, my thoughts were also focused on my own future and destiny- leaving home to attend boarding school, leaving my parents, my hometown and my insulated segregated community.

The Civil Right’s movement had really made an impact on Savannah. The last five years in our lives had been very busy and focused a lot on the “movement”. My parents, my teachers, my pastor had become closer knit in our segregated world. The boycotts, marches, and weekly mass meetings affected our daily lifestyles. It was exciting for me as a young teen, yet I knew my parent’s involvement sometimes risked their lives as they participated in the sit-ins and marches. We boycotted downtown stores by not shopping in them for over a year. We were tired of drinking “colored” water, and eating lunch in the basement of Woolworth’s. We were also tired of going to the back doors of restaurants to buy take-out orders.

Although our schools were segregated, our teachers were well educated because the state universities refused to educate them; so they funded the teachers to go to northern universities. My mother spent three summers away from her children and her husband to get her Master’s degree from New York University in Manhattan.

I was being sent to Boggs Academy, a Presbyterian High School, because integration was just gearing up to happen in the local schools. My parents didn’t want me to experience the new plan, which did not safeguard colored children being bussed. Integration did not safeguard us from receiving threats and facing hatred everyday.

Boggs Academy was a different world for me. It was a place where I first experienced interacting with White and Hispanic people- our staff and teachers. My teachers embraced me as an individual and did not shun me because of the color of my skin.

It was a place where I found the presence of God daily in my life. It was a place where Jesus stood next to me at an Easter sun-rise service as I listened to a girl sing Handel’s “ I Know My Redeemer Liveth”, a cappella.

It was also a place where I met and lived with youth from all over the country, including some of the King children and other kids of the Civil Rights’ leadership who, too, were seeking refuse and protection. We were insulated in this country setting except for having a cross burned on the campus by the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).

What a time it was for all of us, who can remember the Civil Rights Movement, even for those of you who were here at the Covenant. Our church history book recounts the stories, which happened here in Cleveland and the church’s role in the city’s Civil Rights’ events.

We were in motion-actively participating together. The moment was seized wherever we were- north, south, east or west. We all stood on common ground with united voices, singing protest songs in unison, marching in step, carrying picket signs which said, “Equal Rights for all,” and “Stop discrimination.” We were standing together for peace, reconciliation and love for our neighbors.

God was in our midst. God’s glory shone on our faces. It was a time in our history when there was an inner spiritual change, which seemed to be happening in our lives. We were followers, disciples of Jesus Christ, following him forward into the world as “change agents”; transformed as a Christian community; transformed as individuals to do what was right, what was just, what was true.

The Greek word for transfiguration is “metamorphoomai,” which means to “remodel”, to “change into another form”. When Jesus was transfigured before three of his disciples, his clothes glistened, showing him exalted. Jesus truly was Son of God in this world and in the world to come.

The disciples were watching this transformation happen before their eyes. They experienced even the presence of the Most Holy God in their midst. Elijah and Moses, were even present in this Epiphany experience, God spoke to them. God claimed Jesus saying, “This is my Son, the Beloved, listen to him!

The narrative ends with the disappearance of the supernatural phenomenon and when they looked around they only saw Jesus, and the reality hit. Our leader and teacher Jesus is like us again, what now? What will come of his ministry? Yet they had seen the glory and presence of God and knew without question that Jesus was indeed the Messiah, the Son of God. The one who had entered the world announcing that the kingdom of God had come near.

Never before in my life did I feel the presence of God in the midst of a crowd as when I marched with a group of hundreds for the first time. It was the morning  after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Our student body at Talladega College decided that we had to march to the courthouse downtown in Talladega, Alabama, to lower the flag to half mast to pay honor and tribute to Dr. King, because the town officials refused to do so.

The student body of about 650 marched and stood together as a unified force. As we stood on the square, windows in the courthouse slammed down loudly in protest of our march. We lowered the flag and peacefully marched back to the campus. We found out later that the KKK parked were in cars around the square pointing guns directly at us! The Spirit of God must have truly filled the air and protected all of us from what could have been a frightening and tragic experience. Lord knows the glory of God must have shone on our faces that day.

The apostle Paul’s idea of transformation refers to an invisible process, which takes place in Christians. In II Corinthians 3:18, Paul writes that, “in all of us with unveiled faces, we see the glory of the Lord, and are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another, for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.”

Paul believed that all Christians participate in the miracle of transformation. It is not a mystical event which happens, but it is this remolding of ourselves; it is this refashioning ourselves after the likeness of the Lord. Paul tells us in Romans 12:2, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good, acceptable and perfect.”

So today as we stand together on a common ground here in this place- a diverse group of God’s people. We look like a rich tapestry of colors and textures. It is our personal histories and stories that we share that make our tapestry hold together. We have sewn it together with care and support for one another.

Reflecting on this transfiguration story we can ask one another, “How do we stand this day”? How do we stand in a world where Civil Right’s protests of the past still are being challenged? We live now in a country where we have no spokesperson or leadership team to organize  mass meetings. There are plenty of issues that need to be addressed this week alone. The resegregation of schools our country; an abortion law in South Dakota; politics and secret deals made for major port cities. A potential civil war is brewing in Iraq and the question of what will happen to our soldiers there is being debated.

The Katrina victims are still waiting for shelters to live in all over that region.

Covenant- do we need to know “how and where Jesus is leading us now to take a stance?” What is your passion? What is unjust and disturbs you? What changes are you willing to stand up and speak out for?

Paul tells us we must not be conformed by this world. We who participate in the miracle of transformation must never forget our responsibility to constantly renew our minds so we can discern the will of God- what is good, what is acceptable, and what is perfect.

We who are disciples of Jesus Christ have seen and felt the glory of God in this place. We have seen God’s glory when we have spoken out against what is unjust outside these doors. We must never forget to follow him wherever the cause leads us.

May we discern what is the will of God as we see, feel, and experience God’s glory shining on our faces this day. We will do what is good, acceptable and perfect to overcome the injustices of this world.

“For deep in our hearts we do believe that we will overcome!”

Amen

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