Today we are going to be talking about mountain top experiences – both
literally and figuratively. Some of us
experienced one Friday night when we joined the Women’s evening group and
attended the One Way Café at
Y’all remember how the game works don’t you? The husbands and wives are taken separately
and asked questions on the basis of how they believe their spouse will
respond. Well, our couples were off to a
great start and I was sure they were going to bring the champion trophy home to
Nekoosa UCC. Then came the
question…”If you could give your wife the gift she would most like
to receive, what would it be?”
The husband from CLF said the “gift of God.” The husband from River City Church said,
“Praise,”
Both Rene and Tom answered “jewelry” and they were
right! At that point I told everyone
within earshot that the Sorensons and Schiders really attended Bethlehem Lutheran.
But today we are climbing a mountain with Jesus. I’ve been to a few fine
mountain tops in my lifetime. Every
summer our family raced to the Colorado Rockies to escape the brutal
Mountain tops are important in the Bible, of course. Noah’s ark comes to
rest on
Every spiritual tradition has emphasized the heights as places to draw nearer
to the Divine presence. The ancients – Egyptians, Babylonians, Mayans - even built stair-stepped temples, artificial
mountains they would climb to make sacrifices to their deities. Something about
a mountain top makes us feel closer to God. Perhaps it’s based on the
ancient superstition that heaven was up in the clouds so if you climbed towards
the skies you would be closer to heaven. Or maybe it’s the view, the
godlike vision of the world at your feet. Maybe it’s the rarified air,
the oxygen deprivation that leads to visions some might label hallucinations.
Or maybe it’s the exhaustion you feel by the time you climb to the top.
Of course we hope to have a “mountain top experience” every time we
come to church. We hope to see Christ reveal his glory and to feel inspired
like Peter, saying, “Lord, it’s good for us to be here!” And
like Peter when we get a glimpse of God’s glory we want to hold on to it,
we want to camp out awhile and enjoy the exhilaration, the inspiration, and the
reassurance we don’t feel so often down in the valleys of our everyday
experience. We are tempted to recreate the glory, even by artificial means,
which is why I think worship in so many places has degenerated into hi-tech
entertainment extravaganzas designed to stir our emotions and manipulate our
senses into feeling we have met God. We substitute emotional excitement for
spiritual awe. But you can’t make God appear on demand. You can’t
force the glory of the coming of the Lord. It has to be authentic. It either
happens or it doesn’t. But it’s always up to God.
So let us climb this mountain with Jesus and three of his disciples today and see
what happens. The disciples have been with Jesus on a long journey already.
They have seen his reputation grow. They have seen him heal lepers, cast out
demons, preach in the synagogues, teach on the hillsides, and debate with the
scribes and Pharisees. They have seen Jesus still the storm and feed the
multitude. You would think by now they might have a clue who
he is and trust his direction. But no, they are still slow to believe, hesitant
to trust. They must have been dumb as dirt to miss the point again and
again! Butow
long does it take for us to follow him before we catch on and learn ourselves to trust?
Today we walk with Jesus, and Peter, James, and John, away from the crowd,
apart from the others, and climb to the heights – we aren’t told
why. We get to the top and admire the view as we catch our breath. We turn to
tell Jesus the other disciples look like ants down below, but suddenly his
appearance is transformed – “metamorphosized,”
Mark tells us. His clothes become a dazzling white. Moses and Elijah, the chief
figures of “the law and the prophets” (as the Jews call their
scripture) come beside him to confer. Then a cloud overshadows them, like the
cloud which led
We fight again to catch our breath. We feel like ants before the glory of the
Most High God. Peter, scared witless, tries to take control of the moment and
proposes a building program. He makes some inane remarks instructing Jesus on
what we should do, but then the cloud comes over us and from the cloud the
VOICE speaks: “This is my Son, the beloved; listen to him!” It is
our usual way. We react to fear with useless hyperactivity. We respond to
feeling out of control with empty chatter. We fill our prayers with inane
instructions telling Christ what he needs to do for us when we should be
listening to him, waiting in silence for him to speak to us.
But we can’t hear what God speak to us until we turn off the noise of our
environment without … and the noise of our own demons within, and get
quiet.
What happens on that mountain with Jesus today is not what any of us would
expect, though by now you think we would.
It is simply awesome! If only for a few moments, we
see Jesus revealed, Jesus as he truly is, Jesus, the beloved Son of God, in all
his glory.
The mountain top, the dazzling clothes, Moses and Elijah, the cloud, the VOICE
– so many symbols here, it makes you wonder: are we meant to take this
story literally, historically, or figuratively, metaphorically? And in either
case, are we to understand that Jesus changes before their eyes or is it that
their eyes are finally opened so they see him as he has always been? Surely
they will never look at him the same way after this. Surely they will begin
listening to Jesus with a new concentration. Read the chapters in Mark which
follow. Soon Jesus will teach them with a new urgency about service and sacrifice
and the willingness to suffer for the sake of others. Soon Peter will be the
very first to confess that Jesus is the Messiah we’ve all been waiting
for. I wonder if they don’t begin to see the same glory more often in the
valley that they witnessed this day on the mountain top, not because he has
changed but because their eyes have been opened to see what has been there in
plain sight all along. Yes, mountain top
experiences are often life changing.
But what I want to say today is that the glory God is not just with us on those
mountain tops, or in ecstatic moments of worship, but also on ordinary Sundays
and even gloomy Mondays when we are down in the everyday valleys of life. The
same Jesus who is with us when we feel high and exhilarated in a moment of
inspired worship is with us in our journey every day, leading us, helping us,
surrounding us, calling us. Jesus doesn’t change. It is we who lack
vision to see him. It is we who are too noisy to hear him.
I believe the evidence is all around if we’ll just open our eyes to see.
The glory and goodness of God are not so hard to find. We would see more if we
would only look. So look. Because even in your most unguarded
moments, you may suddenly be surprised by grace. Even in the hardest
struggles, the awesome transforming Christ may suddenly be revealed, and what
happens if you are paying attention.
What is that? Awesome!
My friend Donte Hilliard leads “prayers for
healing from violence” in
You see what I mean? Not just on the mountain top. Not just in our happy days.
Not just in our exuberant triumphal worship. But also in our
sorrows. In our hardest struggles. In our deepest losses. The glory of the Lord is with us. The
grace of Christ guides us. The love of God sustains us. And what we experience
in those moments can only be described by one word. What is that? (Awesome!)
May we pray?
Jesus, Savior, Sovereign, You are always awesome. But we live with our eyes
to the ground, our ears filled with noise, our mouths yammering away with our
fearful and foolish plans. We miss so many signs of your glory. We do not even
see the beauty and majesty you have planted in the people around us or we would
have no trouble loving them. We do not see the glory and the power of your
presence or we would have no trouble trusting you. Open our eyes. Unstop our
ears. Teach us to live everyday by the vision we have from you in those rare
mountain top moments. And we will embrace the way of your cross in the name of
your love, in the name of Jesus, the Christ. Amen.
Mary Anne Biggs, Pastor
Nekoosa United
Nekoosa