ON A HIGH AND WINDY HILL

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1 ON A HIGH AND WINDY HILL Unedited manuscript prepared by Rev. Aaron Billard for Feb. 19, 2012 at St. John s United Church, Moncton, NB Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus, Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah. He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him! Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them anymore, but only Jesus. As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead. Mark 9:2-9 (NRSV) In the facts and arguments section of last Monday s Globe and Mail, Rosemary Leckie asked the question, Does anyone go to church anymore? She spoke about the things you are supposed to get in church, such as belonging and becoming. And she talks about the drive to church as a prelude to the worship service: It is hard not to feel that this drive is a prelude, an overture to church, she writes. I carry the city scene with me, its beauty, history, sorrows and struggles. Quick, right off the top of your head, tell me your favourite transfiguration sermon. In the church we celebrate the Transfiguration every year. I don't know that I remember any particular service or any particular sermon on the transfiguration, but the most common sermon on this passage goes something like this: Peter didn't understand

2 what was going on and he was frightened. (Both of those seem legitimate to me.) The sermon continues he wanted to build the dwellings to gain some measure of control in the situation and then the pastor goes on to reprimand Peter and the congregation for trying to box God in and contain the Holy. I understand that message because I think we often do try to box in the Holy But as I read this passage over and over this week I just kept thinking that's not quite right, that's not the whole story. Mountain top experiences are a part of our life of faith. They're the times we feel taken up, part of something bigger than ourselves, a little closer to God and a little closer to God's glory. Of all the things I've been a part of since I started doing ministry ten years ago, The transfiguration happens right in the middle of the gospel of Mark. As people who read the beginning of the gospel, or heard it read, we don't get very much new information. We were already told way back in the first chapter that Jesus is God's son. We have been able to look at the miracles, the healings, and the exorcisms as evidence of that declaration from the baptism story. But for the disciples, the people who were in the gospel, the transfiguration is very new info. They weren't there to hear that Jesus was the son of God. They knew he was a healer because they had seen him heal. They knew he was a teacher because they had heard him teach. They knew he cast out unclean spirits because they had seen him do it. But here on the mountaintop is the first time in Mark's gospel that the disciples see the nature of Jesus, the first time they get to see the fullness of who Jesus is. It's the first time his identity as the Son of God was revealed to them. They saw God in an entirely new way. And it scared them. So Peter wanted to build something and maybe Peter was right. What was going on was bigger than him; that was bigger than all of them. He may not have understood it, but he understood that it had significance. Maybe his idea to build dwellings wasn't about making a box to understand and contain the holy as much 2

3 as it was trying to honor and respect the moment to create something to remember, to build a sort of monument. But we are busy are we not? Henry Nouwen once wrote of that strange sense of hurry that has entered so many people s lives. A strange sense of hurry that causes us to wonder who or what is pushing me? Life becomes so full and so busy that we have no time left to live. Is there room in our lives for visions we cannot explain? Have we closed our minds to truth that doesn't fit our rational categories? In her book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard shares stories of doctors who performed early cataract surgery in Europe. When a doctor removed bandages from one girl's eyes, she saw "the tree with the lights in it." Those words sent Dillard on her own journey. "It was for this tree I searched through the peach orchards of summer, in the forests of fall and down winter and spring for years. Then one day I was walking along Tinker Creek thinking of nothing at all, and I saw the tree with the lights in it. I saw the backyard cedar where the mourning doves roost charged and transfigured...i stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed. It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance...the vision comes and goes, mostly goes, but I live for it." (Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, 33-34) We could give explanations for what happened to her. Or we could remember a time when we sensed the presence of the Holy in our own lives. Perhaps we've never told anybody about it - "it was less like seeing than being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance." Some of us have had mountaintop experiences or experiences in other places where we have sensed being much closer to God. To the 5 th century Celtic Christians these special places where the veil between God and man was very thin were called thin places. Thin places, thus, are where the interface between earth and heaven is more transparent or thinner. For the Celtic 3

4 Christians thin places often were found at physical interfaces such as a mountain top or a shore line at the sea or lake. You might say thin places are Close encounters with God. A thin place is a place where it is possible to touch and be touched by God. Thin Spaces are the moments when we experience a deep sense of God s presence in our everyday world. They may occur on a mountain top or at a shore line. But they also can occur in church, in your home or in any place where you find yourself closer to God, where the veil between the spiritual and the natural world is thinner, where God breaks through to you. It has been said that, Thin places are ports in the storm of life, where the pilgrims can move closer to the God they seek, where one leaves that which is familiar and journeys into the Divine presence. They are stopping places where men and women are given pause to wonder about what lies beyond the mundane rituals, the grief, trials and boredom of our day-to-day life. They probe to the core of the human heart and open the pathway that leads to satisfying the familiar hunger and yearnings common to finding peace. The transfiguration story from Mark 9 is a story we often try to explain. What happened on that mountain when Jesus went to pray with Peter, James and John? Why did Jesus' clothing become dazzling white? How could Moses and Elijah be there when they lived so long ago? Was this a dream? How could all three disciples have the same dream? If you go to church, you hear this story every year on Transfiguration Sunday. This year it happens to fall on President's weekend, the political and the visionary coming together. (Hopefully the two might come together more often.) Glory is a slippery word - especially when you re talking about glory that has to do with Jesus, because Jesus won t let us get away with talking about glory if we don t talk about suffering at the same time. This transfiguration story tells us that Jesus glory only makes sense when we see it in light of his suffering. Immediately 4

5 before this scene, Jesus asks his disciples who he is; and Peter says You re the Messiah - a word, a name dripping with expectations of power and glory. In response, Jesus tells his disciples that he must suffer and die. Immediately after the transfiguration, on the way down the mountain as the disciples are scratching their heads trying to figure it all out, Jesus reminds them that the Son of Man will die, and will be raised again. In between these tales of suffering and death, a dazzling display of his glory. It s confusing. Look at what Peter does in his fear and confusion: first of all, he denies Jesus need to suffer (8:31-33); and then he offers to enshrine Jesus along with Moses and Elijah. In both cases, Peter gets it wrong. He misunderstands both the suffering and the glory, because in his mind he can t put them together! Neither can the rest of us, most of the time. For us, glory and suffering seem to be polar opposites; but in his life and ministry, Jesus draws them together. Who among us doesn t fall into the trap of bigger is better at some point? In the church, we all want to be as big and successful as First Bippity Bop up the street. Who isn t seduced by glory? We come out of the sanctuary glowing when we ve had a full Sunday - big crowd, wonderful singing of hymns; but when the congregation s a bit thinner, we wonder what s wrong. Members whose lives are together cast a shadow over those whose lives are a mess. In these days of deep financial insecurity, we are surrounded by folks who are clinging to jobs, or are clamoring to find jobs, whose calm exterior belies an inner anxiousness. Too often we fail to make a place in the church for the real suffering, the real hurt, the real disappointment that people go through. We seem to have a sense that here in the sanctuary everything is supposed to be OK. You see, we re like the disciples, you and I. We re looking for glory, for good times, free of worry and pain and suffering and doubt. And when suffering comes, too often we don t know what to do. But the good news here is that what we get is God s 5

6 glory standing right in the middle of suffering, refusing to be disconnected from it. Not that suffering is a good thing. We aren t led to believe here that somehow suffering is what God desires for us, or for any of God s people. Not at all. What we can say is that when suffering comes, we can expect that God will be at work in it and through it for good. God s redemptive power will be at work in every situation. Until we see that Jesus understanding of glory is defined by a cross, there s no way we can understand him. Our sense of glory is an illusion, if we think that God s presence is only discernible in times of tranquility and ease, up on the mountain with the glowing sunset, and not in the valley when the clouds are dark and heavy, and pain is all around. But such is love, that Jesus doesn t stay on that mountain. Jesus turns from the glory of that moment to head back into the world of suffering and pain and death so that he can be who he is the Son of man who will suffer that the suffering world can know God s undying love. And maybe that is his real glory after all. Pay attention to the dramatic movement of the story, for while Jesus takes his disciples with him up the mountain, after the period of revelation, transformation, and transfiguration, they come back down again. Down, down into the mundane nature of everyday life. Down into the nitty-gritty details of misunderstanding, squabbling, and disbelieving disciples. Down into the religious and political quarrels of the day. Down into the jealousies and rivals both petty and gigantic that color our relationships. Down into the poverty and pain that are part and parcel of our life in this world. Down. Jesus came down. Jesus sense of glory defies our expectations, my friends. We want him to turn this world upside down, to confront evil and crush it in a dazzling display of God s brilliant light. We want him to right what is wrong, to fix what is broken. And we want him to bless us when we think that that s what we re doing. But that s not his way - it s an illusion. Jesus confronts the sin and brokenness of this world with the glory of suffering love, 6

7 and if that disillusions us, then maybe that s not such a bad thing. Barbara Brown Taylor reminds us that Disillusionment is, literally, the loss of an illusion - about ourselves, about the world, about God - and while it is almost always a painful thing, it is never a bad thing, to lose the lies we have mistaken for the truth. But with the loss of that glorious illusion, we are free to expect that the Jesus on that mountain is also the Jesus who will be with us in the valley, too. As good as that mountaintop is, and as much as we need those times, we needn t wait for times to be good to find God at work. In the midst of family turmoil, Jesus is there. When work is uncertain and the economy wreaks havoc on us and on our neighbors, Jesus is there. When illness strikes, when depression lingers, Jesus is there; just as Jesus is there when we struggle alongside of our sisters and brothers in Christ who are pushed aside because of their nationality, or their sexual orientation, or their race. The suffering that comes in such situations isn t a sign that we are God-forsaken! This strange, slippery glory of God means that any moment, any circumstance, can be a place or a time where God works wondrously and powerfully, for good. Did any of you watch Whitney Houston s funeral yesterday? One person said that for the first time in a long time, the world went to church yesterday. I felt so much joy in that service, but it was a joy that was poured out of broken hearts. Remember, glory and suffering. But I remember watching the brilliant Stevie Wonder singing, Love s In Need of Love Today. These are the words: Love's in need of love today Don't delay Send yours in right away Hate's goin' round Breaking many hearts Stop it please Before it's gone too far 7

8 Friends, as we approach the season of Lent we are reminded that the glory of our Lord is made known most clearly in his suffering, death, and resurrection: for us, and for the world that God loves to death. May it ever be that we find our Lord present in every place of pain and suffering, and of struggle for justice and for peace, that we may we be overwhelmed by the power of his glorious, suffering presence with us; and that we would know and remember that with his risen life and presence that there is nothing that can ever separate us from God s love. At the end of her article in the Globe and Mail, Rosemary Leckie said, Church buildings may be changing but church services are changing, too. We still learn from the ancient texts but also from the wisdom of modern writers and poets and musicians. We ask questions and sometimes have no answers. Our church competes with the malls, arenas and rinks, but it offers stillness, a place apart where we can try to discover our best selves and leave a little lighter for the week ahead. So I m here to remind you today to remember, remember those mountain top experiences. But don't rush to find the mortar and stones, because a monument to commemorate the glory of the living god can't be made out of stones. The students who went on the Mexico mission may look at the houses they built as monuments, but a monument to commemorate the glory of the living God can't be made out of wood. In fact the only monument Peter ever did build was the life he led. And that's exactly how it should be. The lives we lead, the relationships we build, the people we serve, and the people we love... It's who we are and what we do in the everyday walk on the level ground. That's what makes us part of something bigger than ourselves, that's what connects us to the glory of the mountaintop, that's what allows the glory to shine through us. Our lives become the medium of construction. Now with that in mind, go build a monument. Amen. 8