Every Tuesday and Thursday after school, I would get on the city bus from Cathedral High School, where I was in the tenth grade. It was a ten minute ride into the center of the little city...Springfield, Massachusetts. It was there that my father worked as the manager of the Merrill Lynch brokerage office and it was there that I was to learn the stockbrokerage trade on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. But I did not enjoy hanging around that office very much, so I found other things to do on my way. And that is how and why I found the marvelous little diner with the unforgettable name: the Nutty Goody.
At 3:15, every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, I walked into the Nutty Goody, took my place on a stool at the lunch counter and placed my order with the tall waitress who had a tattoo of a pretty, yellow butterfly on her writing hand. I ordered a grilled cheese sandwich and a cold lemonade...”fresh squeezed to order” the sign said, though I never saw them squeeze it. Sometimes the owner, a Forest Gump-like man named Al, came out from the kitchen and talked baseball with me. For three months, it was like clockwork: I ate at the Nutty Goody and showed up at my father’s office thirty minutes late, a pattern he was too busy to notice.
But then one day, there was a change. I took my place on a stool at the lunch counter and the tall waitress with the butterfly tattoo on her writing hand smiled at me. Until this moment, she had more or less ignored me. “I know what you’re going to have,” she said. And in less than a minute, she brought me a grilled cheese sandwich and a cold lemonade. This day, she was clearly different. “How was school today?” she opened the conversation. And as I nervously ate my sandwich, she stood and talked with me about everything from the current rock music scene to her sadness over the demise of the VW Microbus. And, if that were not enough, when I asked for my check, she said, “Don’t worry about it. You’re all set.” I walked out of the Nutty Goody mystified and mesmerized.
It turned out that this was to be a new pattern. So, every Tuesday and Thursday, I took my place before the tall waitress with the butterfly tattoo on her writing hand, ate a grilled cheese sandwich and cold lemonade, and left without ever getting a check. She had said it more than once herself, “I was all set.” Was I ever! ...and I wondered what had I done or said, that made her notice me? What had I done to deserve this royal treatment from one such as her?
In Control?
As we come to the end of Epiphany and look toward the beginning of Lent, we are confronted by a great STOP SIGN from God. It is Transfiguration Sunday.
This day is different from any other. When we hear the teachings of Jesus, it is appropriate to soak them in and try to apply them to our lives.
In our Gospel lesson this morning, Peter, James, and John are given a vision of God which cannot be explained in human terms. High on the mountain, where heaven and earth seem to meet, Jesus goes to pray. And while he is praying, the appearance of his faced changed, and his clothes became dazzling white and then there is an appearance of Moses and Elijah who are speaking of the dark days which are to come...and of what Jesus is to accomplish in Jerusalem. There is a great cloud and the voice of God declares, “This is my Son, my chosen, listen to him.” The three disciples see the glory of God in the face of Jesus. It is a powerful confirmation for them that Jesus is the Son of God, the long awaited Messiah. The Jesus with whom they lived and worked, the Jesus they had seen, and touched, and sat at table with, the Jesus with whom they had walked and talked...was miraculously transfigured before their very eyes.
And how do the disciples respond? Peter — always the head of the class — stands in for you and me...He wants to do something! Peter wants to hold onto this moment and he thinks it is somehow about him and the other disciples. “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three small huts for you, Moses, and Elijah.” In the face of a direct revelation by God, Peter (being a good Episcopalian) wants to keep busy, to remain in control.
It’s About God!
This day is different from any other. When we hear the teachings of Jesus, it is appropriate to soak them in and try to apply them to our lives. When Jesus heals the sick and promises such power even in our day, we are wise to try to touch the hem of his garment...to hope for healing at his hands. We break bread at this table week after week because he told us to do so in remembrance of him and promised his presence in that meal. But this day, this day of his Transfiguration on the mountaintop is different. Today we are reminded that the Christian faith is not, first, about us....The whole story is about God. And the story of Jesus is the story of a life lived totally toward God in love and obedience. It is about God.
It is the mark of a child, to think the world is always about him or her....”The world does not revolve around you,” my mother used to say to me and my siblings. “When I was a child,” writes Saint Paul, “I spoke as a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. Today we are confronted by the great “I am” and it would be childish to do anything but take our place before Him and worship. Indeed, St. Paul shows us a more excellent way... It is the way of true love and it is not, first about us, but God.
The obedience of Jesus was an affirmation of the power of divine love. He loved even to the point of exhausted silence on the cross and, ever since, silence has been the language of God and everything else is poor translation. I pray that our busy Lenten preparations will flow from this silence, this worship, and love. We will not compel God to save our souls. Our moral behavior, our study of the Scriptures and our service are faithful response to what God has already done in Christ. We are united to him in his sacrifice and we are made acceptable to God through him.
Our Response
And so, as we sit perched at the edge of Lent we will be wise to be still and wait for God...to do a certain kind of nothing. The kind of nothing described by Winnie the Pooh’s friend...that great theologian, Christopher Robin who declared, “What I like doing best is nothing.” And when Pooh asks Christopher Robin what he means he says, “Doing nothing...means just going along, listening to all the things you cannot hear, and not bothering.”
It was about two months after the tall waitress with the butterfly tattoo first noticed me, that my father asked me the question. After two months of the royal treatment and free meals at the Nutty Goody Diner, one day he said, “How are things over at the Nutty Goody?” I was stunned.
“How did you know that I ate there today?” I asked.
“How did I know?” he laughed, “I’ve been paying your bill over there for two months!”
And so it is with God. This is one check we cannot pick up. We are, in the end, saved by the faith and love of Jesus, through his sacrifice. Our faith and love in him – and whatever small sacrifice we make for his sake...is a grateful, irresistible response.
Jim Adams is the rector at Saint Alban’s Episcopal Church in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. His book, Prince Mammoth Pumpkin, is available through Faith@Work.