February 14, 2010 | 8:00 a.m.

Staying in Touch

Sarah A. Johnson
Pastoral Resident, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 99
Luke 9:28–36

The day of my spiritual awakening was the day I saw—and knew I saw—all things in God and God in all things.

Mechtild of Magdeburg

This week I read an article in the op-ed section of the New York Times entitled “How High-Tech Devices Helped Me Refocus Instantly.” It was written by a woman who identifies herself in her byline as “wife-mother-worker-spy,” a clever way of indicating that she, like the rest of us, attempts on a daily basis to juggle a variety of roles and identities.

What this woman has discovered, however, is that thanks to various technological devices—her cell phone, Blackberry, laptop, and iPod—she has perfected this juggling act to a dizzying art form. Technology, she argues, has trained her to focus in an instant when something or someone new enters the picture; she is able to turn her attention—in ten different spurts—on a multitude of things at once.

She can type out her grocery list, send an email to her sister, call her mother, coordinate with her editor, and order a dress from Macy’s, all while yelling at her husband to take out the trash as she runs a paint swatch to the interior designer redoing her guest bedroom upstairs.

It is true for this woman and it is true in life: staying connected matters. It is how we attempt to remain present in all the different parts (roles and responsibilities) of our lives. But sometimes in the midst of this juggling act, we become so consumed by staying in touch via all these different connections that we loose track of the connection that matters most.

This is what Luke is getting at in his teaching today.

Luke makes his point by highlighting the disciples’ pattern of disconnection in the face of one of the great miracles that happens to Jesus. Jesus has retreated up a mountain to pray, and as he is praying, he becomes transfigured, or markedly changed in appearance so that he appears glorified as the Son of God. There, on the top of the mountain, the true revelation of God and God’s kingdom is fully recognized right in front of the disciples. The voice of God calls out, claiming Jesus, “This is my Son; my Chosen. Listen to him!”

But the disciples, the text tells us, are “weighed down by sleep.” They are totally out of it. They are tired, distracted by deadlines, daily routines, the demands of work and family; they are disconnected from God’s very presence in their midst.

So as Jesus is miraculously glorified before them, they make a few comments, ask a few questions, placing Jesus within their usual categories of understanding. Peter offers to build Jesus a tent in the ritual harvest festival commemorating the Exodus. In doing so, Peter identifies Jesus as just another “man of God” equal with Moses and Elijah. He might as well have noted Jesus’ credentials and offered to pencil him in on the calendar for a table at coffee hour.

Part of the practice of faith is about slowing down, reordering our lives, paying attention and staying in touch with the one source that matters most. Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor describes it as, “Waking up to the presence of God no matter where I am or what I am doing.”

It means we free ourselves from the business and stress of our lives long enough and often enough to be aware of the presence of God.

Jesus never says, “Go out into the world and measure your effectiveness, your worthiness, your faithfulness by the number of things that you can do and juggle in an hour.” Human life is created to live in deep communion with something larger than itself. It is something that is hard to live out in our culture. Even when it comes to church, it is hard to free ourselves from the frenetic pace of our programming and outreach, the stress of the bottom line, in order to stay connected to God.

One of my favorite places in my home state of North Carolina is the Duke University Chapel in Durham. The chapel is one of the most significant religious institutions in the country, and it sits at the center of a college campus that thrives on the accomplishment and the pressure of academic excellence. In the midst of this environment, the chapel defines its calling as “Keeping the heart of the university listening to the heart of God.”

For a church that sits on the corner of the busiest shopping district in Chicago, that is our central calling as people of faith: listening to the heart of God.

An important question still remains: “How are we to do this? What does this staying connected look like?

The key is found at the beginning of our passage today. As Jesus takes Peter and John and James up the mountain, he does so in order to pray. It is a common thread that runs through all of Jesus’ ministry and, in particular, the gospel of Luke.

One of the most consistent dimensions of Jesus’ life in the Gospel of Luke is that Jesus is constantly retreating to a quiet place to pray. As many as eight times in the first eleven chapters we find that Jesus has walked away from the crowds, the healings, the proclamation of the kingdom of God in order to sit in a deserted place to pray.

Jesus prays at his baptism, after healing Simon’s mother-in-law, before choosing the twelve disciples, after cleansing a leper, in the garden of Gethsemane, and in his final moments on the cross. Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom and his quiet connection to God are always in tandem

In his devotional classic Celebrations of Discipline, Richard Foster writes, “Of all the spiritual disciplines, prayer is the most central because it ushers us into perpetual communion with God. . . . All who have walked with God have viewed prayer as the business of their lives.”

I think sometimes we rush past prayer, giving it a passing glance at the beginning of a meeting or before we nod off to sleep at night. But Jesus practiced it as something that was central to everything that he did; the proclamation of the kingdom was incomplete with out it.

Prayer is our connection to God, who from the beginning desired to be in relationship. The Christian faith is not something we do alone with a Blackberry and a spreadsheet but in relationship to the God who said, “I will be your God and you will be my people.” It grounds us in gratitude for all God has given, including trials and tribulations, and it opens us to be present to the God who is the source of it all.

This January I traveled to Egypt for two weeks with a group of twenty people from this church. It is a privilege to be able to experience another country and culture that way. But like every new and unfamiliar place, there are always things to adjust to. One of these things when you are traveling in a Muslim country is the sound of the call the to prayer that happens five times a day—at dawn, midday, about the middle of the afternoon, just after sunset, and at nightfall. It is always an adjustment to hear the booming Arabic voice blast into your bedroom at 5:00 a.m. After a couple of days, however, it simply begins to weave itself into the fabric of your day to watch and listen as people stop what they are doing and turn to God in prayer. Perhaps this practice of praying five times a day is in some ways as domesticated as our weekly run to church. But the idea of millions of bodies literally bending before God in prayer several times a day gives me more than a moment’s pause in the context of Jesus’ call to you and me.

There will always be more things to do. There will always be responsibilities and deadlines, bottom lines and carpool lines. But God’s call to us is to first and foremost stay deeply connected to God.

So this week, as we go back to the routine of daily life, maybe each one of us can ask ourselves, “With whom and with what I am staying most deeply connected?”

All thanks be to God. Amen.