A Transfigural Update from the Clemmons, on Mission
Shine On, Another One, Vocation Station, Mission On and On and On
Dear friends & family, &c.,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Today is the Feast of the Transfiguration. I’ll be preaching this morning on Luke’s account of the event, focused on the bolstering effect a vision of Christ’s glory gives to us disciples as we head down the mountain to reflect & proclaim that glory to a sindark world.
There’s so much going on in the Transfiguration, I’ve had to cut entire sermons from this sermon. So here’s one illuminating angle I couldn’t fit:
The disciples who get to witness this glorious vision are Peter, James, and John. After they’ve seen the Lord’s glory, and seen Moses and Elijah as no Jews had before (i.e. glorified), Jesus instructs them to tell no one what they've witnessed, until after the resurrection. According to Mark’s account, they’re confused about this last detail, but they seem to keep Jesus’ command.
It’s kind of fun to imagine the conversation when they eventually tell the other disciples about what they had seen on the mountain—“You saw what on that hike?”
But even though they refrained from relating this event until the appointed time, you can see in each of these apostles' written testimony how enduring an impression seeing the glory of their Lord had. The shine never wore off.
Peter's last letter explains that since he heard the "very voice borne from heaven... on the holy mountain," the prophetic word has only grown more confirmed. It's a lamp shining in a dark place, burning stead until "the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts” (2 Pt 1:18-20).
James surely had in mind Jesus gently lifting him from the ground after he fell to the earth in fearful awe when he later wrote: "Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you" (Js 4:10) and when he counseled against partiality by exhorting instead faith in "our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory" (2:1).
And, of course, John’s gospel account is absolutely suffused with the transfigural glory of the “true light that came into the world” (1:9). John gets the privilege of a second unveiling, and he sees again the radiant face of his Lord and Savior: “in the midst of the lampstands [I saw] one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest. The hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire... and his face was like the sun shining in full strength.”
May the Risen Lord grant us all to be so lastingly effected with a sustaining glimpse of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
It's been quite a while since our last update, and there’s much to relate. Read on, dear reader, for our major updates.
Peace of Christ,
Zack
Another One
Let's start with the most significant, world-historical piece of news first: Clemmons Baby #4 is in gestational orbit (this is a bad phrase and I’m sorry). For those of you for whom this is news, I should probably apologize--we've known this for a long time but have been lax in spreading the word beyond our local community. Like, we're in third trimester territory. So, sorry. But we're having another baby!
To answer the follow-up question, I need to tell the story: We borrowed from friends the lovely, pro-natalist idea that the whole family should attend the 20-week ultrasound, where we could find out together whether a baby brother or sister was imminent. On paper, in the imagination--an eminently wholesome idea. In practice...
I will say by way of introduction: Erin has been 3-for-3 in predicting the sex of the baby. She's just known from the beginning of each pregnancy—girl, boy, boy—and this kind of knowledge seems both supra-scientific and thus surer. So when baby #4 was a confirmed reality—we never even bothered with an official pregnancy test, Erin just knew—I was ready to defer to maternal instinct.
And that instinct said: girl. Which is what we were all kinda sorta already rooting for. Such a nice symmetry to it, a chiasm even, even teams, &c. Erin wanted a girl, Eleanor wanted a baby sister, Ames & Virgil were basically indifferent, and I was mentally outfitting to someday pay another dowry. We began revisiting our lengthy list of Beautiful and Fitting and Not-Unique-But-Still-Intriguingly-Obscure girl names, happy that we don’t have to go back to the It’s-Impossible-To-Come-Up-With-Strong-But-Also-Not-Bog-Standard-Boy-Names drawing board.
Then we're in a hospital waiting room, and it is living up to its name. The scheduled appointment time comes and goes, the minutes tick on, the antics kick up, we’re running out of Hans Christian Anderson fairy tales and it’s not extremely clear to me that the other people in the waiting room are cool with these stories being read out loud in their vicinity in the first place (to be fair, The Little Match Girl in an obstetrician's office is maybe the wrong note).
Finally our surname gets half-yelled and we're winding through hallways to a dark room. It's cramped (OB practices seem suspiciously designed without families in mind), but Erin takes her place on the fancy slab and the kids and I crouch in the corner.
In my mind it was supposed to go like this--the kids ooh-and-aah over the otherworldly images, the ultrasound techs coo over the perfect proportions and pristine development of this child, and we close with the big reveal.
It's maybe two minutes into the session that she announces without any fanfare whatsoever, not even really a lift in the voice—“Looks like we’ve got a boy.” I suspect she suspected we would supply the energetic response—“Woohoo!”—but no. Erin was silently crying, Eleanor was openly weeping, the boys gave a distracted cheer (there was a tv on in front of them, after all), and I was recalculating the groom’s portion of wedding-costs (or monastic donations).
The technician then continued taking her solemn measurements for FIFTEEN MORE MINUTES (how many times can you measure head circumference??). That’s fifteen minutes of trying simultaneous to wrangle squirrely boys and console a despondent girl, respectively.
The only quasi-levity comes when Ames and Virgil point out the red and blue lights every time they click on the oxygenation setting—“the baby has a red belly!” “No blue!” “No red!” &c &c.
Rest assured, expectations have re-calibrated and disappointments have mended, and we're all very excited about meeting Boy #4, whose name we will probably discover in some brown-paged tome before October 20th (the due date).
Vocation Station
With that out of the way, on to other updates from lo these past five months.
Most of you reading this have done so more-or-less faithfully from the beginning of our move to Birmingham while I pursued a Master of Divinity degree from Beeson Divinity School. You'll be pleased to know that I did, in fact, graduate with said degree, on a warm day at the end of April.
You'll also know that I pursued said degree not so I could go on to fabulous wealth & cultural notoriety, but so I could be better equipped to serve the church as an Anglican minister. Many of you will have been praying, per our perpetual request, that God would prepare the way before, and lead me into the right work following seminary.
Again, a brief introduction: our eventual goal has remained steadfast over these three years of intentional preparation: we hope to plant ourselves long-term in a parish and commit our life to the evangelization & flourishing of a particular place.
But that kind of longevity belongs generally to rectors (senior pastors), and I desired at least a couple years of seasoning in full-time ministry before I became "the guy." Which put us in a potential bind: I was hoping for (and in talks regarding) associate positions, but we were loath to uproot our family for the sake of only a few years' assignment before likely uprooting again.
So we began praying for (and scheming towards) a way to stay put for the time being. For a while, it looked dicey, unlikely. But in the end, I am grateful to God & pleased to report that He has made the way for us to linger in Birmingham: I am now the full-time Curate (priest-in-training) at Christ the King Anglican Church, the very church at which I've been serving as a deacon & janitor through my studies.
That this assignment was a divine appointment was confirmed for me, in a less-than-ideal-but-still-assuring way in that, just as my position was being finalized by the vestry, our associate rector quite suddenly resigned. Had I needed to accept another position elsewhere, Christ the King would've lost two-thirds of its clergy in a matter of months. As it God orchestrated it, though, I have been able to step in and fill out my Curate's role by taking on a number of additional responsibilities, not least in leading the ministry to our Youth.
Accordingly, God willing & the people consenting, I will be ordained a priest in just over a month. I covet your prayers as I approach this new crucible with fear & trembling.
Here’s your invitation:
Mission On and On and On
We Clemmons remain on mission, then. Its shape has now changed: I am officially serving as pastor in a church, placing my first duty to this flock. I’m refashioning the I've found in my month-and-a-half as a full-time minister that my opportunities for sharing the gospel with strangers have had an uptick. I suspect I’ll be learning a lot over the course of this two-year curacy.
Our mission of Christian formation abides, for our own family and for others: Erin has been working diligently to set up a homeschool co-op at our church, beginning this September.
Our mission continues, alongside your own, and while we’re beyond the stage of requesting your financial support, we still very much want your prayers. So, I’m planning to keep this newsletter up and running, with about the consistency you’ve come to expect, to keep friends & family updated on what we're up to, and what comes next.
A brief account of the past few months:
I graduated from Beeson Divinity School, and smoked a mean brisket for the occasion
I traveled up to Jackson, TN to see my brother Jonathan graduate from Union University
Erin & I were able to take a celebratory graduation trip to California. We flew into San Francisco, spent a day there, then drove north up Highway 1 (which may be humanity's greatest achievement), all the way to the Redwood National Forest(s), then back down through wine country (the Real Wine county of Sonoma, not the fake plastic ultra-wealthy Napa). I've long carried an anti-California prejudice in my bosom, and hoped it would abide, but I am sorry to report that California is indeed a paradise. The otherwordly grandeur of the sequoias, the splendor of the rocky Pacific coast cliffs, the gobsmacking Art Deco scale of the fog-bedecked Golden Gate, the apotheosis of fast food that is In-N-Out. I know, I know, actually living there is a different story, but I've begun my phase of California dreamin...
Eleanor completed her first Ballet Camp
We redesigned my office at the church, included a heavenly paint job and the installation of some standard-and-bracket shelves which turned out great
I took a group of 15 youth to Six Flags Over Georgia & lived to tell the tale
I attended the Theopolis Ministry Conference here in Birmingham, and got to interact with several of my living theological heroes
I got a haircut
Our homesteading intensified: We put in a real garden & inherited chickens (named, respectively by each child, Basil & Rosemary (Eleanor), Tank & Charlie Red (Ames), Chicken Licken (Virgil))
SummerScenes
photos from Birmingham, AL | Mentone, AL | San Francisco, CA | Redwood National Park, CA | april-august 2023
Status Board
Reading: Summers are for reading kicks, and I’ve been on a Gerald Murnane one of late. He’s this obscure and crotchety Australian writer of fictions, whose writing traces the contours of the mind’s associative patterns with perspicacious attention and patience. And then you find out all kinds of bizarre-but-in-retrospect-perfectly-predictable details about the man himself—how he was born without a sense of smell, how he's never been in an airplane, his lifelong obsession with horse-racing... Anyway, start with Border Districts for his fiction.
Listening: I somehow missed its release last year, but I found Bonny Light Horseman’s new LP, Rolling Golden Holy, just in time for it to become the pristine soundtrack for Erin and I’s California trip. It’s not too late to make the southern-lush “Summer Dream” the definitive track of your Summer 2023.
Viewing: I, too, succumbed to the marketing hype and had my own Barbenheimer experience. Barbie was an inconsistent but interesting journey-to-utopia which just misses a recognition of the complementarity necessary for relations between the sexes, opting instead for a hopeful-but-doomed existentiali
sm. My favorite (incomplete) interpretation of the film is here. Oppenheimer was a well-structured meditation on the most consequential technological achievement of humanity since Babel (using "achievement" here absent its positive connotation) and the inhumanity. A real-world illustration of Pascal's statement: “What sort of freak then is man! How novel, how monstruous, how chaotic, how paradoxical, how prodigious! Judge of all things, feeble earth-worm, repository of truth, sink of doubt and error, glory and refuse of the universe…” My favorite meme which came out of the phenomenon:
Food & Drink: Got a few here:
My first experience with In-N-Out absolutely lived up to the hype. I am absolutely ruined for all other fast food. Which is not a bad situation.
Our breakfast at the Pinschower Inn in Cloverdale, CA was an excellent apple dutch baby, one consequence of which is that Erin now bakes approximately three dutch babies a week.
We had an excellent “wine-sensing” experience at BobDog winery at the top of a Sonoma county mountain. Whatever the opposite of pretentious is, that’s what Tim is. Cabernet Franc is my new favorite varietal.
Erin & I had an anniversary dinner at Gianmarco's in Homewood, AL. The food was excellent (pan-seared duck & day-braised lamb), but what was truly remarkable was our waiter, who had the best tableside manner I’ve encountered (and I say this as a fairly accomplished Olive Garden waiter myself)
Prayer Requests
The best way to support us is to join with the Son in remembering us before the Father. If you’d like to pray with and for us, here are some things you can remember:
join us in praising God for providing work for Zack and an income for our family
that Zack would trust God and obey His call as his ordination approaches
that Erin’s work towards a homeschool co-op would bear fruit
for the health & safety of both Erin and our unborn son through the due date
that our children would come to love the Word of God, and that we would be faithful and diligent to teach it to them
We’d also like to pray with and for you! If you’re reading this, you’re probably already in our prayers, but we’d love to know more specifically what we can pray for. You can text us, of course, or you can email us prayer requests at clemmonsonmission@gmail.com
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