nothing's so wrong

that the right song / can't make it better

a sermon on Jesus' out-and-out glory on that mountainside

The film, Banshees of Inisherin, a contender for this year’s best motion picture and probably a lock for my favorite film of the year depicts, without flinching and yet full of pathos, life devoid of Christ’s hearty redemption. The movie takes place on a fictional island, on the coast of Ireland, at the tail end of the Irish Civil War. In this movie, two drinking buddies come to an abrupt impasse. The rift emerges when one of the friends can no longer bear the prattle that passes for conversation in the pub.

Colm, played just excellently by Brendan Gleeson, decides he no longer has the time to while away the hours. Instead of spending his afternoons idly at J. J. Devine’s, the local tavern, Colm determines to dedicate himself to more meaningful pursuits, primarily composing music on his fiddle.

This sounds simple enough, but as you and I know, such things rarely are. While a fixation like that would usually just mark a person as an eccentric, on Inisherin, it represents nothing less than a full-throated repudiation of life on the little island. And none bear the weight of that rejection more than Pádraic.

I should note Colin Farrell plays Pádraic with a vulnerability that could bring out the mothering instinct in the chilliest of us. 

Pádraic is a simple animal husbandman. He’s perfectly content to graze his animals, sell their produce, and spend his afternoons in the pub. Those low stakes totally meet Pádraic’s ambitions for life. So as you can imagine, Pádraic’s utterly flummoxed when Colm’s suddenly declines their usual afternoon pint.

When Pádraic asks why, Colm tries to explain that the burden of mortality is getting the better of him. Colm doesn’t feel like he has the time for leisure anymore. He feels the need to finally get around to composing that music he always thought he would. Pádraic, though, can’t even comprehend such a notion. 

So instead of leaving Colm to his peace and quiet, Pádraic tries to insinuate himself back into Colm’s good graces. As such tactics usually go, though, the gambit backfires. Instead of ingratiating himself, Pádraic just drives Colm further and further away.

It all comes to a head when Colm tells Pádraic that if he doesn’t stop talking to him, Colm will cut off one of his own fingers every time Pádraic tries to speak with him. It’s drastic, and a little absurd, but such are Colm’s straits. 

Predictably, things only escalate from there. I won’t say more. But suffice it to say, things don’t play out the way either expect. The movie ends, literally, in ashes.

…When I first watched Banshees of Inisherin, I impulsively identified with Pádraic. After all, Colin practically summons your empathy. Plus, I’ve been on the wrong side of a suddenly rescinded friendship before. It’s an awful and confusing experience. Isn’t it?

On the second viewing, though, I began to sympathize more with Colm. After all, one of the disorienting things about middle age is that indistinct slip of youth and creep of the years. Your mortality CAN play on you. Can’t it? And when it all piles up, you do start to get a little desperate. Don’t you?

That’s the bind Colm and everyone within his unhappy little orbit come up against in Banshees. But it’s what Peter collides with in today’s Scripture. You were wondering when I was going to get to the Gospel. Weren’t you?

Today is Transfiguration Sunday. And lest you think this is merely some historical remembrance or church concoction, you should understand, you stand in Peter’s shoes, or should I say sandals, right now. 

In today’s Scripture, Peter finds himself, at long last, at the very epicenter of the glory he always knew he was right on the verge of. And when he finally gets there, he’s not about to let it slip away. No, without a moment’s hesitation, he starts doing what we all would. He starts making plans. 

Surveying the mountaintop, Peter devises a program to preserve that instant of Jesus’ out-and-out glory. Peter envisions a temple or retreat center. It’s not clear. It’s not clear because while Peter is still making his pitch, a voice from that luminescent could interrupts. And the voice doesn’t intervene to improve Peter’s proposal. Does it? No, the voice interrupts to silence it for good.

God thoroughly refuses to have anything whatsoever to do with our immortality projects. When it comes to Christ, it’s not a self-continuity project we’re dealing with—it’s more like its exact opposite. When it comes to Christ, it’s not a matter of life and death. No, it’s a matter of death and life—in that order. 

Faith lives where your glory story has died. It’s as we like to say around here, isn’t it? God’s office is where? Right! At the end of your rope! God’s office is at the end of your rope.

Here’s the capital-t, cross-stamped, bonafide Good News, Christ is just getting started where Banshees of Inisherin ENDS! The fundamental difference between the Gospel and Banshees is that everything that masterpiece strains to express is merely the preamble to all that Christ has in store for you today!

In Banshees, it takes Colm losing nearly everything for him to even begin considering the prospect that his glory story might be fatal. In the Gospel, though, that hard-won wisdom is merely the prelude! Today, the Transfiguration takes US right up to the edge of that precipice Banshees describes. Then, the Holy Spirit just shoves US over the ledge! 

And to all our surprise, that end is not the end at all! On the contrary, it’s only the beginning! The beginning of something totally foreign to this old world Banshees knows so well! Banshees might end in ashes. In the Gospel, though, all that’s mere hoopla for the first half!

…There is an other side! And Christ’s transfiguration reveals that, in him, it’s not so far away! The real surprise, though, is that the way to this transformed existence isn’t through completing your glory story. No, it’s in the obliteration of it!

That’s how it went for Peter. Wasn’t it? While he was still making his plan for that little glory stockade, God intruded. And when that happened, Peter summarily came to the same conclusion as Banshees. Didn’t he? He hit the deck. 

And by the way, that just goes to show when you hear God calling quits on your immortality project; God will sound terrifying to you. And in a way, God is at that moment. So hooked are we to our own glory stories that the sound of any other narrative will always strike our ears as a calamity. 

At least initially. It’ll be another story when you stand on the other side of the affair. For now, though, that’s still down the road.

And so, on that note, allow me to be the voice of God for you this morning. Your glory story, and my glory story, they aren’t going to succeed. They aren’t going to succeed because God has set thy face against it. God is pleased as punch to let your immortality project utterly fail. 

Like Peter, God isn’t about to indulge your futile little glory story. And if you’re not going to willingly set it aside, and you won’t, God is happy to help you along. But when, not if, when that happens, you WON’T be happy about it.

However, and this is important, it’s not that God is some sadist. No, God is perfectly happy to let your glory story fail because should you succeed, you would be forever doomed to that sad state Adam and Eve found themselves trapped in before God called it quits on their immortality project. You’d be forever doomed to some cut-rate immortality. Never dying. But NEVER really living, either! Always running from your God caught in a never ending cycle of blame.

Sisters and brothers, Christ intends to give you more than was lost in the fall! Christ hasn’t just come to end the curse. No, he’s come to reverse it! God is perfectly happy to let your glory story come to nothing BECAUSE when you’re down to nothing, Christ is up to something! 

After all, just take a gander at Peter. Isn’t that what happened to him up there on the Mount of Transfiguration? While Peter was cowering for his life, Christ WENT to him. But Christ didn’t go to Peter to tell him to try harder. Did he? No, Christ went to Peter to raise him up! And cast out his fear for good measure, too! 

Then, when Peter looked up, he didn’t see anything! Did he? Well, nothing except Jesus Christ! He saw Christ amid all that nothing! As our Scripture for today concludes, “And when they looked up, they saw no one except JESUS himself alone.” No one except JESUS himself alone.

This is how it always goes for the people of God! When you hit that wall, when your glory story comes to nothing, you will unexpectedly glimpse something! Or rather, someone!

At the bottom of all YOUR nothing is the one who humbled himself! The one who humbled himself to give you EVERYTHING! His name is Jesus Christ! He’s come today to TAKE you TO the pinnacle of his glorious transfiguration! And he does all this, not when you’ve pulled it together, BUT rather when it’s all come apart! 

…And with that, we’ve hit upon the rocky shoals of reality. Haven’t we? Honestly, you DON’T need me standing up here telling you your glory story will come to nothing. Do you? No, you don’t need that because it’s already happening anyway, whether we like it or not. Isn’t it? And, for the record, we don’t like it. Do we?

Christ, though, has something better for you than some dilapidated glory story. After all, just ask Mozart; it’s cold comfort to be told you’ll be remembered someday when you’re struggling right now. No, Christ has something better for you than some old glory story that amounts to nothing. No, Christ has come to make something out of all that nothing!

After all, nothing is choice lumber in the kingdom of heaven! Nothing is the raw material of Christ’s glory! Nothing is everything Christ needs! Or, in other words, the less YOU have the work with, the MORE Christ has to use!

…Christ has come to give you the fullness of HIS glory today! But it’s a glory that’s upside DOWN to our way of reckoning! You see, CHRIST’S glory is a glory that’s fully revealed right when YOUR glory story comes to nothing! So if that’s where you’re standing today (and we all are), that just means you’re at the foot of Jesus’ glorious mount transfiguration! So get ready!

Christ has something for you today! But it’s nothing that dreams of transcending mortality. No, it’s something that actually TRANSFORMS it! Christ has come to create a new YOU out of you today! But he does it out of all your nothing! Christ has come to make your wits end INTO the beginning of your NEW life in him!

Christ has come to transfigure you today! Only, really transfigure you! Now, when life throws you to the ground, that’ll be ground zero for where Christ goes to you, places his loving hands upon you, raises you, and casts out ALL your fear, too!

And when that happens, well, words fall short. It cannot be prescribed. And it can barely be described! But the word Christians have used down through the ages is freedom.

When Christ places his hand upon you, raises you up, and casts out all your fear, you shall be free. Free from that tired old glory story. Free to set aside that quixotic quest for your own glory.

And instead, you’ll finally be in the position to do something really glorious! Like the humble pleasure of working for the well-being of others. Like those closest to you. You know, the ones easiest to take for granted. In the process, though, you’ll also discover a kinship with others spread across the globe! And even the very world itself, too!

But that’s not all! You’ll also discover a glory you could never have imagined hidden right underneath your feet! The glory of finding God has carefully and lovingly crafted the life you are living at this very instant. And what’s more, the glory of learning God is even right now, continuously making you out of the nothing that’s always lurking around the edges!

There’s still more, though! When this glory turns your world inside out and upside down, you shall finally sense that glory of GOD’S beating heart. God’s beating heart at the center of it all! God’s beating heart giving holy fire to it all! All around you! Right now! Come what may! Never to depart! Come what may!

And when you find yourself there, and you will, you'll hear the sound of God’s voice for the comfort it’s been all along! You’ll hear how your calamity was really your greatest godsend! And when you hear that, you’ll be just as transfigured as Christ was on that mountain!

…So, standing at the precise of all that, let’s lift our voices and sing a new song! That ever new song of Christ’s great triumph! His glorious victory that transformed all our nothing into the hotbed for the fullness of his glory!

Praise and Thanks and Adoration; ELW 783