March 2, 2025 · Rev. Derek van Gulden · Exodus 34:29-35; Luke 9:28-36
On Transfiguration Sunday, Rev. Derek van Gulden tells a story kept quiet for decades: at about twenty-five, during a hospital procedure, a cardiac arrest, a view of the room from the ceiling, a deep warmth, and a hand on the shoulder saying it was not yet time, the start of the road to ministry. The sermon ends by asking how we are being transfigured, and how we might transfigure our community.
Transcript
People of God. Would you join me in a moment of prayer? Gracious and holy God, this morning I ask you to move the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts by your love, and help each of us this day not to be the instrument of our own or anyone else's oppression, but to be an instrument of peace in every step, in every breath, in every moment of our day.
Every time I preach, I say that. So for thirteen years you've heard that maybe not fifty two Sundays out of the year, but somewhere. I think you know it enough, and I invite you to join me in saying it. Now, sometimes I say, help me not to be the instrument of my own or anyone else's oppression. So let's use that one. You think you can do it? Together. Gracious God, help me this day not to be the instrument of my own or anyone else's oppression, but to be an instrument of peace in every step, in every breath, in every moment of every day. Amen. Thank you.
The sermon I've prepared for you is one that. Took place a long time ago. It's a very personal one. and I never really felt comfortable sharing it.
Three things happened. About a year and a half ago. I was sitting with one of my colleagues, the Reverend Virginia Durr, and we were talking, and she always asked that we start out with Psalms, and I would read one and she'd pick one out and read one, and then we'd chat for a while. And one of those visits, she said, you know, I am a pastor. How can I help you? And at that moment, this experience came up and I told it to her. And I said, I'm not sure if it's something that I should share with people. She goes, because they might think you're a little off center. Lost a few marbles. And I said, well, when you put it that way, yes. And she said, you've shared it with me. It touched me. Find your words. An amazing pastor.
And then recently I was getting ready next Saturday, the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ is having what we call Super Saturdays. It's a day of getting together pastors and lay leaders from all over Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts, of the United Church of Christ worshiping together and then having the opportunity to go to different workshops in the day. I think you get to pick one in the morning, one in the evening from a pretty big list. And this Saturday will be all about storytelling. You know, at first storytelling, I don't need to go to that.
Well, I do for many reasons, but two things struck me when I was reading over the scripture. The Lukan passage, Luke nine twenty eight to thirty six of the Transfiguration with our Lectio divina. Bible study group that meets on Wednesdays at five. We read this through about four times, sometimes more often. But there was something that jumped out at me. If you listen to it, the part Lori read when they went up on the mountain and Elijah and Moses came and talked to Jesus. If you listen carefully, there are words from this That on Easter, Good Friday and Easter you will hear again. The one that always jumps out to me the most is. Then a voice from a cloud said, this is my son, my beloved son, listen to him. Even as the boy spoke, Jesus was found alone and they were speechless. At the time and told no one, no one, what they had experienced.
One of the many, well, one of the three resurrection stories is when the women go to the tomb to anoint Jesus's body, and when they get there, find out he's not there. There's a young man dressed in white, seated on the right hand side, and he says, you're looking for Jesus of Nazareth. He is not here. He has gone before you, like he had said. And then they ran from the tomb and told nobody anything. At the start of lent, coming up the Transfiguration, the scripture we hear really starts to tie things together.
And then this came out. This was actually part of the. Stuff that came about the workshops I'm going to this weekend. And this is written by Anthony de Mello. I don't know if anybody's heard of him. He's a Jesuit priest and a psychotherapist who was born in India, still does a lot of work there. And he has written many books. And one of his quotes just spoke to me this week. The shortest distance between truth and a human being is a story. So today I want to share with you. a story. Usually, I say at the end of storytelling, that's my story today and I'm sticking with it. Today I will tell you this is my story.
Back when I was in college, I think I was probably twenty five. Little delayed. I took a few gap years and I had in two months I had some major facial surgery, one on the sixteenth of December and the second one on the sixteenth of January. And after both of them, I noticed because back then you stayed in the hospital like five, six days and I was at New England Medical Center that my left leg hurt, having been working in health care by for eight years. Then if a patient told me that, I would know pretty quick, Well, maybe you have blood clots, but when you're the patient, you don't think of these things. And so I didn't think of it during my recovery over a month. And then the second surgery I noticed two days after surgery, my left leg hurts again. Didn't tell anybody. There was nothing you could see. And I went home and I went home. My wife at the time time Heidi had just a month before beginning of December giving birth to our second child, Nathan and Cory. Our oldest, was two years old. And she was stuck with an invalid because I couldn't speak. My jaw was wired shut for, I think, three to four months. I could only drool.
But that night I woke up in the middle of the night and my leg was really hurting, and I looked down and my calf was about this big, huge, and then I knew what it was and the temperature was ten below. I couldn't get Heidi to drive me to the hospital because one, I didn't want to expose the kids to anything like that. And two, it just made no sense. So I drove myself to the hospital. We lived in Milford, mass. At the time, and I went into the ER and after about a half an hour of trying to tell him what was going on, and finally I just wrote it out for them and they looked at my leg. I was admitted to the ER and sometime just like now, I think I spent the night in a bed in a hallway.
In the morning they came and they wanted to do a test on my leg, which they don't do much anymore. It's called a venogram where they put an IV in your foot. They shoot dye up there, and they look to see if there's any blockage in the middle of that procedure, which was done in the. X-ray department. And there were a couple doctors there and nurses I cardiac arrested, meaning I stopped breathing and I couldn't tell you for how long. What I can tell you is I just remember myself thinking something is not right, and then everything goes black.
And then I was literally sitting up on the ceiling, looking down at myself there and everything going on. And of course, my first thought was, when you spend a lot of time in a career and then you watch other people, the first thing I do is critique it. What's going on? Well, what's this person and that person do? And something's not right. They're yelling and yelling at me because my job is wired shut with wires I carry. I wore a wire cutters around my neck all the time, and I was very aware of it and always had it on. I never took it off. Although in this case I had it clutched in two hands and obviously wasn't giving it up for some reason. And they kept yelling at me. They kept trying to pull my hands away and. I didn't feel any fear. I was just watching this and going, well, that's interesting. What's coming next?
And I know some people who've had near death experiences talk about this light. There was this light and it was more an amazing warmth, not hot, but just. One of those times where maybe in the winter you've been cold and somehow you're sitting by a fire, or you're inside, or you put on the clothes that keep you the warmest and you snuggle up and you just feel amazingly warm. That's what I felt.
And as I watched what was going on, somebody put a hand on my shoulder and said, it's fascinating, isn't it? But I think you need to go back down there. And I said, well, they don't need me. And they go, that's not the point. You have more to do in your life. It's not your time. Now, I couldn't tell you who was the one with the hand on my shoulder. I can only make an assumption that it's time. I really felt that it was Jesus Christ just standing there behind me next to me, saying, you need to go back.
And I did, because the next thing I knew, I woke up and I was clutching the lab coat of. The nurse anesthetist who was trying to intubate me and pulling her arm down and down so she couldn't do any of it. And when I realized, well, you wake up from something like that, you're very confused. I let loose of everything. And, then they went about doing the stuff and hooking me up to a ventilator.
That moment changed my life. Not in huge ways. I'll have to admit it. in small increments. It was then that I started my journey to where I am today. What I do for my vocation. And it took a long time.
But I know after that happened and my wife Heidi was told what had happened to me and, I can't remember. I think some of our college friends came over and watched the kids and she came to the hospital. And I remember her saying, I know you're a Unitarian and I'm Catholic, but you're going to pick one of those, and we're going to start going. You need to go. So I think for the next year we went to a Roman Catholic church. This was back when they had, what do they call them? Folk masses, right? Folk masses, which are great, very wonderful.
And then when we moved, because we moved a lot When you're new in something and your kids are small. Everywhere we went, we'd try something different and we finally found a church where we moved in to a house we were renting the next day. In the morning, someone knocked on the door and said, hi, I'm the local UCC pastor just here to welcome you to town, and she came in and sat with us for a couple hours, and that's where I started to feel at home.
Now, the reason I've always been afraid to share this. Virginia was right. I've shared it with a few people. One of them, clergy who I didn't know well, but. And after I told the story, I just said, don't ever share that with anybody else because they might think you're a little off your rocker. Which to me now looks back and it meant that they did not believe that was possible.
I share that with you today on Transfiguration Sunday, because when I think about it these days and I think of light, and I think of how Jesus was transfigured, and then how afterwards, when they come off the mountain and this dad is calling out to save his child. And the disciples weren't able to do anything. And Jesus even says, oh, you of little faith, and then transfigures his child's life by healing the child, transfigures his family and the community's life by healing an individual.
Last week I asked you at the end of my sermon, what things would we need to break open the roof of our sanctuary for. We talked about the healing of the paralytic. In what ways do we transfigure ourselves and our community here and outside the windows? And in what ways do we think we need to be transfigured? Those are answers for you to come up with.
But having been here thirteen years now, I know that transfiguration within this community of the old sloop and within Cape Ann takes place quite often. Quite often. So that is my story, and I'm sticking with it because it is that. Amen.