Coming Down From the Mountain

A Sermon for the Last Sunday of Epiphany, Transfiguration Sunday given at the United Church of Acworth, Acworth, NH on February 19, 2012.

2 Kings 2:1-12

Psalm 50:1-6

2 Corinthians 4:3-6

Mark 9:2-9

It’s like when good friends visit from far away.

It’s like when you catch a sunrise unlike any other.

It’s the moment of a first kiss, or a hug after a long time of loneliness.

It’s like a good conversation with a friend, an authentic, honest, refreshingly truthful time.

It’s like the moment when you feel like life actually is going to work out for the good.

It’s like when suddenly the world for a moment appears more glorious than it has -- like some underlying dimension, some beautiful coherence peeks its head out for a moment and gives you a feeling that all is right in the world. Feelings of hope, of joy, of peace.

It’s a revelation. An epiphany.

Today is the last Sunday of Epiphany and today we go to the mountaintop with Jesus.

We travel the long trail with Peter, James, and John to behold the revealing of the Messiah.

Jesus changes before their eyes -- “his clothes became shining white—whiter than anyone in the world could wash them. Then the three disciples saw Elijah and Moses talking with Jesus.”

This was a glorious appearing, an epiphany of epiphanies.

We read that Peter “and the others were so frightened that he did not know what to say.”

We hear him perhaps stammering: “Teacher, how good it is that we are here! We will make three tents, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”

Peter and the others were frightened. They were filled with awe. They were seeing something they had never imagined seeing before. They were seeing a revelation of God’s glorious hope, God’s past, present, and future in the figures of Moses, Elijah, and Jesus.

It’s good to have some context for this story.

Six days before Jesus, Peter, James, and John hiked up Mt. Hermon, Jesus was with his disciples and he asked Peter, “Who do you say I am?”

Peter’s response: “You are the Messiah.”

Jesus told him to not tell anyone what he just said and then goes on to tell them about what’s in store for him and for them if they continue to follow him:

“The Son of Man must suffer much and be rejected.... He will be put to death, but three days later he will rise to life.... If anyone wants to come with me...he must forget himself, carry his cross, and follow me. For whoever wants to save his own life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. Does a person gain anything if he wins the whole world but loses his life?”

Here in chapter 8 we have a conversation where Peter’s words shine out as an epiphany, a revelation of God’s Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth. But quickly what follows is the seriousness of the implications of such a revelation, of such a remark.

If we see the Messiah, we have two choices to-- follow or to stay.

On the mountain Jesus’ teaching is made real by a revelation of his glory as the chosen one, the Messiah who would fulfill God’s promises. He is revealed with Moses and Elijah and for a moment Peter, John, and James are thinking -- Yes! I knew it. Jesus IS the Messiah.

It’s as if Peter’s announcement of Jesus as Messiah is now being enacted. There is in my opinion certainly a parallel between the conversation in chapter 8 and the event in chapter 9.

Jesus is revealed by Peter’s words, Jesus is revealed in brightness on the mountaintop.

And the event continues with God’s own voice coming out of the cloud -- “‘This is my own dear son -- listen to him!’ They took a quick look around but did not see anyone else; only Jesus was with them.”

“Listen to him!” -- I don’t know what Peter thought when he heard these words, but we as readers of Mark’s gospel can’t help but think of the words that Jesus spoke to the disciples six days earlier.

“Listen to him” when he says: “If anyone wants to come with me...he must forget himself, carry his cross, and follow me. For whoever wants to save his own life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.”

Not if anyone wants to come with me he must make some nice tents to dwell with me in happy, exciting, good times.

Not if anyone wants to come with me he will have constant enjoyment of life, peace, and non-stop smiles and good feelings.

But the person who comes after Jesus will need to forget himself and follow Jesus down a road that’s difficult, certainly a road less traveled, a narrow way.

But the mountaintop experience is so nice. I want to stay there. I want to stay in the moment of revealed beauty where everything makes sense. Where life seems to be free of care.

I want to stay in my personal experience of God and of the beauty of the world and God’s mysterious activity in the world.

I want to stay in the moments where I feel God’s peace and presence, where I feel the joy of life, the joy of love, the inspiration of hope.

For some of us, maybe that is a Sunday morning. For some maybe it’s the time of prayer in the week. For some maybe it’s when you are out in nature, or reading a good book, or hanging out with a good friend or loved one.

We want to stay where life is easy and happy, we want to stay where it is comfortable and where we feel serene. Many of us strive for that above all.

But let us remember that when Jesus took time for prayer early in the morning, he spent the rest of the day attending to the sick.

Jesus and the disciples share in the mountaintop experience, the disciples revel in awe at the sight of the heroes of the past and a transfigured glorified revelation of Jesus Messiah.

But they don’t stay there. They’re told “listen to him” and they followed him down the mountain.

We can’t stay there, we weren’t meant to stay there.

Those times are necessary, those moments are important.

But those moments are not the substance of life. Those moments are not true health and wholeness.

Abundant life consists in giving of oneself. Whoever loses his life will gain it.

We are called to mission -- that is our purpose -- that is what will truly fulfill us.

to listen to the one who calls us outside ourselves, to lose our lives in order to truly live.

to come down from the mountain to follow Jesus.

So I want to call everyone here to remember that we come together for the sake of something more. I love Rev. Jim Brown’s picture of how we often treat faith.

We walk in the doors of the church put on our Jesus-coat and diligently put that coat back on a coat rack before we leave the door and enter the “real world.”

We must “come and see” the living God revealed to us in Jesus, the hope, the grace, the love of God and we are to experience that in worship, praising God and remembering the good things, the blessings of the new life we have received.

This, for us can become that moment when the picture of our life can make sense again, we remember the story of faith, of grace, and of God’s presence and we are renewed in hope.

In a moment we will sing:

Lord, lift me up and let me stand, By faith, on Heaven’s table land,

A higher plane than I have found; Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.

How we need to go with Jesus to the mountain -- for renewed faith and hope and love.

But rather than pitch our tent right there and stay, we walk with Jesus down the mountain, “where cross the crowded ways of life.”

Plant my feet on higher ground. For my sake? For my own inner-peace? For own self-satisfaction?

Plant my feet on higher ground for the sake of the good news. For the sake of the peace of the world, the comforting of those who dwell in the valley of the shadow of death and darkness.

We may see much on the mountain, but we can only experience the goodness of God’s new life as we come down from the mountain and follow Jesus in giving to a world in need of God’s love.

The paradox of Jesus is that the way up is the way down, whoever loses her life will find it.

It is not for us to stay up on the mountaintop, we would become stagnant pools -- we are channels not reservoirs of God’s grace.

And as we follow in Jesus’ self-giving work, we will find true his words that to do the work of the Father is as life-giving as food.

For the sake of your own health as a human being and for the sake of the world who needs to know and experience grace, go to the mountain, revel in the glory of God’s goodness, God’s grace, God’s abundant provision and blessing, and then let us come down from the mountain and find with St. Francis that “it is in giving that we receive.”