Mountain Top Experiences
John Wilkinson Third
Presbyterian Church
February 26, 2006
Mark 9:2-13
Earlier this morning, our group of Hurricane Katrina volunteers
left for New Orleans. They will be our ambassadors as they work
hard to rebuild homes. You can track their progress on our website.
You can support this trip and future trips by making a gift
to the special offering we are receiving. And you can, perhaps
most importantly, sustain this effort with your prayers of support,
this morning and this week, for safe travels, a positive working
experience, patience and humor and stamina, and a sense of God’s
abiding presence for those who give and those who receive, and
no overly distinct boundaries in that equation.
As Deborah Hughes has indicated, the season of Lent is upon
us. We will be sharing a number of experiences to deepen our
faith in this holy season. It all begins this Wednesday. Worship
with communion and the imposition of ashes will be held in the
Chapel at 7:00 p.m. That service will be preceded by a simple
meal of soup and bread at 6:00 p.m. Come for dinner and then
stay for worship as a way to begin your Lenten observance.
And finally, please do note that next Sunday following the
second service of worship we will hold our annual meeting, which
this year will both consider financial and programmatic matters
as well as elect a new slate of officers. Annual reports are
now available for your consideration, and we hope that many
church members will participate in this important meeting.
***
Taking advantage of a school break, the four people who live
in our house traveled this past week and visited Washington,
D.C. I have not been to our nation’s capital in a very
long time, and I must admit that I became re-converted to that
extraordinary town and all that it represents.
We hustled to a number of historic sites that are steeped with
the history of this nation. Monuments – Washington, Jefferson,
Lincoln. Museums – history, art, air and space. Memorials
to war – World War II, Korea, Vietnam – all of them
poignant reminders of the complexity and tragedy of war –
any war. Governmental buildings – Supreme Court, Library
of Congress, the Capitol.
It is easy to be cynical about government these days, regardless
of your party. It is less easy to be cynical when you see it
happening.
American history is an important pastime for me, and the more
I read, the more I appreciate those who made it – not
that they were so heroic, but that they were so human. The more
we know about Washington or Lincoln or F.D.R. or J.F.K. or Susan
B. Anthony or Martin Luther King, Jr., the more we realize their
frailty and fragility – but also their great ability to
persevere in the face of difficult circumstance, to make the
best decisions possible when no decision seems the right one.
To be a politician was once thought to be a noble calling –
that does not seem to be the case so much these days, and I
regret that. Clearly, some decisions are wrong, or made wrongly,
and some governmental leaders fall prey to the lure of power.
But every so often, they do not.
Lincoln – facing melancholy and a difficult marriage
and a political establishment that offered him little respect
or support – crafted a brilliant political strategy and
undergirded it with deep eloquence. Some of you heard historian
Doris Kearns Goodwin in Rochester the other day; her new work
on Lincoln called Team of Rivals considers Lincoln’s political
genius and his collaborative approach to governing. Those who
were once his rivals became his Cabinet colleagues and eventually
his respected friends – and led this nation through its
most difficult domestic hours.
We once visited Lincoln’s gravesite in Springfield, Illinois,
and walked the streets where he walked, a gangly, unimpressive
self-taught lawyer. I could sit at the Lincoln Memorial for
hours.
But what struck me this past week, about Lincoln and so many
others, and what may have a tenuous linkage to why we gather
this morning, was not the gravesite, nor the memorial, nor the
museums and statues and portraits. What struck me was the spirit
holding all of it together, the sheer and delicate humanity
of it all.
Certainly there are great women and men – we know their
names and read books about them. But their greatness often occurs
in the face of their own humanity. And it is not just those
great people. This is not to be a civics lesson, but it seems
to me that why this all works at all when it does is because
of all of us, all of us, and not just the ones we read about
in Time and see on C.N.N. or through whom we live vicariously
in the latest episode of The West Wing.
We should remember that, and we should connect that remembrance
to what I read this past week on the walls of those memorials
– the tension and balance of Jefferson insisting on the
separation of religion and politics and Lincoln insisting on
the workings of the Creator’s hand in the workings of
government and more so, of public life.
And we should remember that that plays itself out in the real
world, with real people, people whom we elect and send off,
to be sure, but people like you and me. Greatness may be reflected
not in the monuments that we build, but goodness is reflected
in the lives we lead, the justice we seek, the peace we make,
the reconciliation we pursue.
That’s where the disciples of Jesus got it wrong, from
time to time, and perhaps this morning.
The word itself, “transfiguration,” means something
like “changed appearance.” It is Transfiguration
Sunday, the Sunday prior to the commencement of the Lenten season.
Each gospel tells it a bit differently. We have heard Mark’s
version this morning. Jesus takes a select group of disciples
off to a mountain. His appearance changes. His clothes become
dazzling white. Two figures appear – Moses and Elijah.
Peter is overwhelmed and suggests that buildings should be built
to house the three. A voice booms out. The figures disappear.
Everything returns to normal. Jesus swears them to secrecy.
We are perplexed by the supernatural quality of the story,
but to unpack it just a little bit is to draw just a bit closer
to some very important truths. The rhythm is intriguing –
from an identification of who Jesus is to charting our understanding
of who he is. It is a kind of dance: the physical change of
appearance followed by the arrival of two key figures in the
tradition. Moses is the great lawgiver and Elijah is the great
prophet. Jesus stands clearly and firmly in their traditions.
The voice declares his identity just in case we were not clear,
an echo of the voice that boomed out at his baptism.
There are many entry points, and one fascinating dynamic is
around the response of the disciples. They want to capture the
moment for all time by building something, some monument. I
am sure that the Trustees present this morning, and particularly
those serving on the Property Committee, appreciate the instinct
to build, as do I. Peter really didn’t know what he was
talking about, it is suggested. That is probably the case, but
it is a very human response. Here we have a spectacular, inexplicable,
deeply spiritual experience and those present want to capture
it for all time, to perpetuate it, to cast it perfectly in their
memory in order to be able to access it in the future.
Have you ever been to a conference, or a retreat, and been
so affected that you wish you could bottle that moment and drink
from it from time to time? A few days ago, Peter DuBois reviewed
with the Calvin Guild highlights of the Chancel Choir’s
U.K. trip last summer, which included the glorious experience
of singing at St. Paul’s Cathedral. Third Church is not
St. Paul’s, and St. Paul’s is not Third Church.
A week of singing choral evensong in such a place is a privilege
and treat, and a memory that should be cherished. But to seek
to replicate that experience would be to miss out on the deeply
spiritual experience that happens here, week after week, musically
and liturgically.
As I’ve itinerated from presbytery to presbytery reporting
on the work of the Theological Task Force, I’ve often
run into the comment that says something to the effect that
“the 20 of you have had such a deeply powerful, profoundly
spiritual experience – how could we hope to replicate
it.” And so I’ve now worked into my stump speech
the notion that not only can it not be replicated, that it should
not be, but that each group of 2 or 3, each Session, each congregation,
each presbytery, should seek its own powerful Spirit-led experience.
We should not seek to memorialize or capture, but rather to
create our own.
The point of faith is not what happens when we are at the top
of the hill, but rather what happens when we come down the hill,
to live life moment-by-moment and day-by-day.
For Jesus, the moment-to-moment and day-to-day will not be
such mountain top experiences but the step-by-step journey to
Jerusalem, to his destiny, to his suffering. New Testament scholar
Pheme Perkins writes that the paradox of the cross is never
more clear than at this moment. (New Interpreter’s Bible
Commentary, Volume VIII, page 631-632)
The one who has been so grandly exalted will suffer a humiliating
death, and we who are called to follow will journey through
that same paradox.
As lovely as our Chapel and Sanctuary are, the real acts of
worship will come as we depart from this place to serve God,
to serve those in need, to meet human hurt and to make a difference
in the life of the world.
Perkins writes that “…(f)aith grasps hold of a
different reality. Dramatic miracles and heavenly visions do
not create faith. Christians know that the crucified Jesus is
now risen and is exalted with God. Jesus Christ is present to
believers without signs and wonders.”
Sitting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, in the massive
shadow of the great emancipator, I could not help but remember
other events that had taken place on those steps: Marian Andersen
singing and Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream
Speech.” Later we learned that in the great hall of statues
in the Capitol, only one African-American figure is included
– that of King. Rosa Parks will appear in 2007.
Our inclination is to make memorials, to capture the great
moments. But it would seem to me that the strongest testimony
of our commitments to justice and reconciliation will come as
the vision of reconciliation and the dream of justice plays
itself out in real, flesh and blood lives.
And so it would be ever more true with our faith, which is
never cut off from such visions, but no longer depends on them.
We meet Jesus on a hill, and like his earlier followers we want
to memorialize the moment, capture it for posterity. And then
we come down off the mountain. That is when the real journey
begins.
It took Jesus to surprising, difficult places. It will do the
same for us. But it will take us also to a deepened sense of
who God is and who God is calling us to be. Thanks be to God
for these mountain top experiences, and thanks be to God as
well, for every moment in between, where life is lived and where
Jesus calls us to be – with him and for him, day by day.
Amen.
