This sermon was offered at Grace Memorial Episcopal Church in Wabasha, Minnesota on Feb. 7, 2016. It is Transfiguration Sunday, the Last Sunday of Epiphany. The Gospel text is Luke 9:28-36, [37-43a]. This day also marked my first baptism.
We
call them mountaintop experiences. Those
moments in life when we feel closest to our creator, filled with the abundant,
unconditional love of God. They come at
times in our life when we may not need to be transformed, be renewed, or be
brought back into relationship with God.
They don’t necessarily begin when we are at our lowest. Sometimes we are at the peak of our careers,
of our human relationships, when we feel the most loved by family and
friends. But they can happen when the world
is complicated and ugly and scary, too.
We
call them mountaintop experiences because they transform who we are, changing
us more deeply than we can imagine.
When
I was young I was involved in Teens Encounter Christ, the retreat program for
high school students. In college we had
an extension of that program called Search.
To be immersed in a community of people who were expressing the
unconditional love of God, of finding significant moments in my faith journey,
of being embraced both figuratively and literally with the love of God by
people I knew well and people I didn’t know at all, were some of the most
mountaintop moments of my life.
At
the end of each of these retreat weekends someone would talk about the
spiritual and emotional high we were all experiencing. We were in a safe place where the world had
slipped away when our watches were taken away and we had no concept of time or
of anything else that was happening in our world. It was a long time ago, so we weren’t
connected by cell phones and social networks and so the distractions of those
days, for me, were more about school assignments, family and friends. Maybe it was easier back then to be more
fully immersed in the retreat.
We
call them mountaintop moments. They
happen at pivotal moments in life.
Perhaps when we really hear a call to change the path we are on…a strong
nudging to change careers, go back to school, volunteer after a natural
disaster or to take an unexplainable risk that brings you closer to who you are
and how you live out your call to be an agent of love, a Christ in this world.
There
is something about experiencing a mountaintop moment. There are internal moments of warmth and
inner confidence, of a special glow that buoys our sense of self and our sense
of belonging to Christ. But there can
also be external marks of a change. We
may not glow like Moses did upon spending quality time with God or like Jesus
when he conferred with Elijah and Moses on the mountain, but we can have an
outward and visible difference to others.
A light that sparks in the eyes, a smile that lights up the whole face,
a sense of peace that removed the stress—the furrowed brow, the hunched
shoulders, the exhaustion—that others can not only see, but can sense when they
are with you.
I
remember how I felt at the end of these retreats, how I never wanted these
feelings to end. How I wanted to always
feel the love of God and be surrounded by others who felt that same way. I didn’t want to leave the mountaintop and
return back to the everyday existence, the everyday responsibility, the
everyday bombardment of reality.
No. I wanted to build a house on
that mountaintop and continue to feel like a special, unique creation, cared
for by the community of people I had learned to embrace in return.
It
was an idyllic picture, but totally unrealistic. To live in that community of about 100 people
and always feel the holy glow, always feel like I was lovable and, in turn,
that I could see others as always lovable…well, I’m human. It was fun while it lasted.
Sometimes
it would take hours, other times days to emotionally come back to reality after
one of these mountaintop experiences.
The deep longing for a hug as a reminder that I was loved, to feel close
to God as I was surrounded by candlelight in a darkened sanctuary, to be able
to break out into song, into harmonies on a whim…coming down from the mountain,
alone, meant that it would take my effort, my desire, to work on that
relationship with God. The tools had
been offered, some were taken, and I had to learn how to find that glow in the
everyday of living.
We
call them mountaintop experiences because the mountain was where Moses met
God. It was where Jesus, Elijah and
Moses gathered to talk to God. It was on
the mountain where Peter, James and John were told that Jesus is God’s son and
they were to listen to him. For some, the mountaintop is the closest they can
get to God. For others, it is the
coulees at the bottom of the hills, the springs of water, the sparkling caves
or the placid waters where they feel closest to God, where the warmth of the
glow from the Creator is ignited. It is
in these places where some find it easiest to listen to Jesus.
And
these are great places to be. We are
reminded over and over again to find respite, to experience Sabbath, to be
quiet so we can listen more fully for God.
The
reality is that we have to emerge from these places and live in a noisy,
distracting world. A world where people
crowd around and parents need help with their children and children need help
with their parents. A world that is
filled with good things…sometimes too many good things, and with difficult
things, and the glow of a mountaintop moment fades.
There
has to be a balance, don’t you think?
How can we live like we are still on the mountain? How can we live knowing we are eternally
loved by God and then show it to others?
In
my opinion, we do it in community. Moses
went to the mountaintop alone, but he came back down, glowing, which frightened
the Israelites. He had to hide behind a veil
because people feared that they could die if they looked upon him. They believed that anyone who would see the
face of God would die. And yet, Moses
did not die. Instead of hiding behind
the veil, Moses taught and shared what he learned from God on that
mountain.
Jesus
went to the top of the mountain with three of his disciples. The disciples did not see God, but they
experienced God in a new way. If they
were uncertain before of the divinity of Jesus, they saw the transfiguration of
Jesus, they heard God speak and they were silent as they pondered what they
experienced.
But
none of them stayed on the mountain.
They returned to their communities.
They lived with the knowledge and love of God and they were
changed. They did not hide from their
communities. They had places to go and
people to see and they had to tell others about their relationship with God and
how they were changed.
This
morning we are going to baptize Bryson.
I suspect that this will not be a mountaintop experience for him, but he
will be transformed, nonetheless, by the power of the Holy Spirit. Though he has always been a beloved child of
God, today we will recognize that love with the waters of baptism and the
anointing of oil, marking him as Christ’s own forever.
This
may not be a mountaintop experience for Bryson, but it may be for any one of us
here. When we pass the peace after the
baptism, look into the faces of your friends and family here and see the
transformation that may have taken place.
Look for a light in the eyes or a glow on a face or feel the warmth of a
handshake or hug. These are all signs
that God loves you, and they are what we can hold onto when we go out into the
world later. They are what we can give
the world, too.
Amen.