Tsunami Homily Transcript

Gospel Question: What images coming out of Japan this past week have stayed with you the strongest?

The images have been arresting as they have flowed to us day and night from Japan and across the world. Some will stay with us for a very long time.

One that is very much with me still is of a guy driving along a coastal road and his camera is on and this huge 30 foot waves begins to cross the road in front of him and starts lifting up his car and carrying him like a boat. It was frightening and disconcerting to watch. How powerful that we have those images of this thing called a Tsunami! Now we’ve heard of Tsunami, we’ve known of the terrible toll they take on life and cities, but we’ve never had so many images….

Revelation is happening all the time, right in front of us. Sometimes revelation happens through the events of nature, even when nature is at its most ferocious. Revelations are the deepest down things shown us about ourselves, about our God, and about what matters in life. Some are so obvious, but some perhaps take a little deeper listening for us to really get it.

What might a Tsunami reveal? What might a tsunami teach us about our own true nature? 7 LESSONS OF A TSUNAMI:

1) Know your own power and the power of your impact on others and on the earth. You are powerful! YOU are powerful. And you have the power to destroy.

2) You can go someplace and and leave a mess and never clean up after yourself. If you make a mess of things (and you will!) at work, at home, in your friendships, a relation with God, clean up after yourself. It’s the least you could do!

3) Be prepared, all the while knowing there are some things for which you can never be prepared.

4) JUST 6 WORDS: Things can change in an instant.

5) The tsunami is oblivious to human life; indifferent to you and every person in its path. There are so many in our lives who we will encounter along the way who will not care about you in the least, take no interest in you, and even be out to get you–hurt you–even destroy us in the work of your hands and your loves along with it, maybe even your life. As the Scripture shows from its beginning to its last pages: “you will not go through this world without enemies.” We’d so like it to be otherwise—that maybe if I do it right, say it right, everybody will like me, but truth is the “haters” will always be with us.

6) JUST TWO WORDS: Nothing lasts. Absolutely nothing lasts! That home full of memories, that you worked so hard to build and invested so much of your life into, so full of memories of tears and laughter and conversation and making love, washed away, forever.

7) After a tsunami the skies can shine beautiful and blue as if nothing happened when really everything is changed. Nothing is the same. Life goes on—our worst days are somebody else’s best days. We stand on a street corner after our mom dies or a best friend and the bottom has fallen out for me, but everybody, 99.99% of the world goes on like nothing is changed at all.

Ya see, Encounters with the divine Love can take place in scenes of utter desolation. Love speaks thru the rubble of our lives. Telling us the Truth about ourselves. Love rebuilds even where the devastation has been most awful and terrifying, as people chose hope and people from half a globe away respond to each of these scenes with compassion in the One who is compassion itself.

What does all this have to do with Transfiguration? If we listened to life, if we listen to even disaster when it strikes, if we listen to what is happening right in front of us, we can be changed to. We can be changed for the better. If we take these lessons to heart, we can be transfigured! Something of light, something of glory, will shine through us. So that even the most terrible disaster can open us and help us discover something of our true nature.

As we watch these scenes in Japan, played out again and again, nature at its most ferocious, JUST ONE WORD: listen….