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“That’s when I saw his true colours.” You’ve heard that phrase before, I’m sure. It is simply seeing somebody for who they really are. It’s usually used in a negative way. For example (and this isn’t going to be a good story), in a Presbytery I used to minister in there was a minister who had served a particular church for twenty or so years and wasn’t that far from retirement. It was his second church, but I think he was the first called-minister of that particular charge which was a church plant from back in the ‘70’s. It was a multi-ethnic church with a lot of kids who just loved his children’s sermons because he used puppets. He was well loved by the congregation.
It happened that the treasurer of the Presbytery suddenly died and we needed one in a hurry. As his first career was in accounting, he volunteered to do it until we found someone else. It took about a year. The incoming treasurer who was a respected accountant requested the books be audited before he took over. Lo and behold, some discrepancies were found amounting to over $14,000. He had apparently been withdrawing small amounts from ATM’s over the year and then placing the money in his personal account. He said he was trying to close out an unnecessary account the former treasurer had created and didn’t want to go into the bank to do it. So he was emptying it and placing it in his personal account in order to lump deposit it into the Presbytery main account. Oddly, the money had disappeared from his personal account and he didn’t have the funds to replace it at that time. He said his wife mistakenly spent it. She didn’t know that he was holding the money for the Presbytery. He seemed to think Presbytery wouldn’t know manure when we smelled it.
This embezzling of funds prompted a bigger investigation by the Presbytery into his congregation’s handling of money because he was apparently one of the primary handlers. The people thought that since he was the minister he could be trusted without question. We discovered that whenever there was a fundraiser, it was he alone who counted the money and deposited it. He had a habit of saying he knew of a family that needed some help and so he would readily and regularly take pre-deposited cash from fundraisers to help “anonymous” families. The congregation thought he was a saint for doing that and never questioned. We also found that he had a regular practice of asking congregation members for personal loans to help an “anonymous” family in need. Again, they all thought he was a saint. In their defence, the church’s neighbourhood had a lot of new immigrants to Canada whom you could imagine would from time to time need some cash. Maybe that’s what they thought he was doing.
Presbytery’s investigation showed that he had embezzled at least $50,000 that could be traced. He had borrowed over $70,000 from congregation members. That’s just from those who would admit loaning him anything. There is no telling how much he pilfered from fundraisers. Presbytery put him on suspension and eventually defrocked him and turned the case over to the OPP.
Oddly, the congregation fought Presbytery tooth and nail for over two years believing that we were persecuting their saint. It wasn’t until Presbytery finally cited the congregation to appear before it to give reason as to why they believed they should still be called a Presbyterian Church in Canada congregation that they saw his true colours. When it became evident that they would lose everything, that’s when they saw the brutally painful light that their minister, whom they had blindly followed, had betrayed them. He never owned up. It took several years and much help from Presbytery for the congregation find some healing and eventually call another minister.
Not a happy story. Sorry. Let me lighten the mood. Maybe you remember the movie “Home Alone” which to my knowledge was the last big box office hit to portray Christianity in a positive light (1990). It was about a little troublemaker named Kevin who was mistakenly left behind from a family trip at Christmas and had to defend his home from burglars on Christmas Eve. There was also an elderly widower who lived next door, Old Man Marley, who kept to himself and shovelled his sidewalks a lot . All the kids thought he was a serial killer known as The Southbend Shovel Slayer.
Early in the evening on Christmas Eve Kevin and Marley wound up meeting in a local church. Kevin had gone there to pray and ask forgiveness for the way he had treated his family and that God would reunite them. Marley was there to see his young granddaughter rehearsing with the choir for the Christmas Mass. They sat next to each other in a pew and Kevin soon discovered that Marley was really a kind and gentle but broken-hearted man who had been estranged from his only son for years after an argument over something stupid. His son refused to let him have a relationship with his granddaughter, so Marley had snuck in at the church to catch a glimpse of her. Kevin very maturely encouraged Marley to go home and call his son and make the effort to reconcile.
Kevin and Marley left the church having formed an instant, meaningful friendship due to having seen each other’s “true colours” as they each owned their mistakes. They were just two hurting people desperately wanting to be with their families and have those relationships healed. Marley took young, remorseful Kevin’s advice and called his son. The movie ends with Kevin reuniting with his family and things are better and stronger than before. And finally, we see Kevin looking out his window over to Marley’s house to see Marley and his son reunite.
I appreciate that Home Alone portrayed the Church and Christian faith in the light that it did…as an environment where we can own our mistakes and be forgiven, where we can find deep meaningful friendships, and that God hears our prayers and acts to heal us. Church is the place where God’s help can be found for the healing and reconciliation of broken relationships. That’s usually not how the Church and Christian faith are portrayed anymore. Most media sources will simply present the Church as I did at the beginning of this sermon...as the place where very painful scandals happen…a place of darkness not of the Light.
So, true colours. Looking at our reading today, we see Jesus in his “true colours” and it’s just pure, dazzling white light. And I have to point out again how the theme of what’s going on with Jesus is something as big as the Creation event itself. This passage is rich with allusion to the Creation Story in Genesis One. It’s starts out six days after Peter made the confession of faith that Jesus is the Messiah. The Light of the first day of creation is turned on with Peter confessing that. Six days later would make it the seventh day, the day God reposed, that Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up on a mountain. There, they meet God and God is Trinity…The Holy Spirit hovers over them as a cloud like on the first day of Creation. The Father speaks as on the First day of Creation, but this time he says, “This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him.” Jesus is the Light. When God finished the Creation, God pronounced it “very good”. So also, Peter says, “It’s good for us to be here.” And so, he wants to build some little tents and repose…rest…they have entered into the seventh day of Creation and are reposing with God. But, there’s more to do and they must come down the mountain.
So, true colours…the light of Christ. Jesus shows us our “true colours” if we’re willing to set aside our egos and rest in the “good” shelter we find in humility. The light of Christ is something, someone, whom we see, whom we feel when we listen to him; especially when we do this listening together. Wrestling with who Jesus is together in the presence of the Holy Spirit and trying to live accordingly is a taste of New Creation.
I cannot emphasize enough the importance of relationship in all this. We have had ingrained in us to our detriment that Christian faith is mostly about me and my personal belief and my moral conduct and all of that is just between me and God and so you keep your judgey big nose out of it. But God is relationship…the unconditional, self-giving loving communion of the Father Son and Holy Spirit who give themselves to each other so completely in unconditional, selfless love that they are one. We are made in this relational God’s image which means the image of God in us shows up in how we do relationship…particularly in how we give ourselves to one another in selfless love; in how we serve one another and seek what is best for each other not just ourselves.
The image of God we are created to bear is not found in how I do me. It is found in how we do us. In fact, how I do me is defined by how we do us. Our culture has this completely backwards. Our culture seems to think that me being fully me is what I need to bring to an us, but that us never seems to work. We are like children playing beside each other in the sandbox rather than children playing together in the sandbox. When we are just playing beside each other, relationship is based on taking from each other. When we play with each other, relationship is defined by sharing.
The minister I described at the beginning of this sermon was all about himself and he hurt a lot of people. Our culture idolizes self-actualization – strive to be all that you can be. As I see it, the full extent of self-actualization will always strand us in some form of addiction whether it be narcissism, or to money, to power, or to a relationship, or to a substance. Addiction has its horrible side effects of shame, deception, blame, and debt. That minister was hooked on something. It didn’t appear to be drugs. It was more likely gambling or porn. Whatever it was, he caused so much hurt by what he took from the people he was supposed to serve. He was just playing by himself in the sandbox taking what he could from others.
On the other hand, looking at Home Alone, Kevin and Old Man Marley, their actually getting to know each other and working together at healing the broken relationships of their lives and doing it together in a church pew is what the image of God looks like. They were playing with each other in the sandbox and sharing their lives in such a way as to bring about healing of hurts and reconciliation. That’s how the light of Christ Jesus does its work of Transfiguration in us. His true colour manifests in us as loving, honest, healing communication with each other that leads us to serve with deep compassion and generosity. Amen.
