Sunday, February 06, 2005

Sunday, Feb 6, 2005 - What Goes Up Must Come Down

Tranfiguration Sunday

Exodus 24:12-18
http://bible.oremus.org/browser.cgi?passage=exodus+24%3A12-18

2 Peter 1:16-21
http://bible.oremus.org/browser.cgi?passage=2+peter+1%3A16-21

Matthew 17:1-9
http://bible.oremus.org/browser.cgi?passage=matthew+17%3A1-9

"When you’re up, it’s hard to come down." I think that phrase would be a good description of our two stories today - Moses on the mountaintop with God, and Peter, James, and John up on their mountaintop with Jesus. Mountains actually play a special role in the Bible; the major events that happen in our Scriptures take place on mountains. Noah’s ark landed on Mount Ararat. Abraham brought Isaac to be sacrificed, and was saved from doing it, on a mountain in the land of Moriah. Moses was given the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, or Mount Horeb, as it’s sometimes called. King David built the holy city of Jerusalem on Mount Zion. Jesus went up into the mountains to talk to God, and - in our gospel reading - to be filled with the light of God in front of the disciples. Mountains were places where God was revealed because they were the places closest to heaven, which was literally believed to be just beyond the sky. People went up to be with God, and they came back down to earth. In our modern understanding of the world, we know that heaven isn’t literally up there - that’s just outer space. But we still talk about being lifted up, feeling high, being on cloud nine when we want to convey a special experience, and about being brought back to earth, coming down, feeling low when that experience is over. And we would all agree that when you’re up, it’s hard to come down.

Moses and the disciples would probably both have agreed with that statement. Moses’ experience on the mountaintop was truly an incredible thing. His experience with God was so powerful that it couldn’t be described in any direct way. Instead, the writers of the story said that it was like there was a vague, fiery cloud on the mountain. We can imagine something like rainclouds that have lightening going off inside them. And in that cloud, Moses and God talked. Well, God talked, and Moses listened, but it was enough for Moses. For forty days and forty nights, in other words, for a very long time, God talked to Moses, telling him about how the new tabernacle was to be built, and the ark of the covenant, and what the vestments for the priests should look like, and how to make offerings, and of course, about how God was sealing the covenant with Israel, to be their God. It was, no doubt, a glorious experience for Moses, and there’s no doubt that he was overwhelmed by it.

Peter, James, and John were also overwhelmed by their mountaintop experience with Jesus. They didn’t see God quite the way Moses did, but their experience also had to be described in an indirect way. Jesus called their experience a vision, and the words we are given talk about Moses and Elijah being there, and Jesus shining like the sun, in dazzling white clothes, and a bright cloud hanging over everything, out of which God’s voice came. It was such a tremendous experience that the disciples all dropped to the ground, completely awestruck. And yet they didn’t want to leave. "It is good for us to be here;" said Peter to Jesus. "If you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." Peter wanted to stay up on the mountain for a long time, to be in the very real presence of God for as long as he could. Now that he’d seen what he saw up on the mountain, he didn’t want to come back down.

But he had to. As did Jesus, and James, and John, and even Moses - the first Moses. Even though none of them wanted to end their experience with God on top of the mountain, they all had to leave. They had to go back down and deal with the realities that lay at the bottom. Which, incidentally, weren’t very pretty. Moses had to go back down the mountain in order to stop the Israelites from worshipping the golden calf. He had to lead the complaining, ungrateful Israelites through the wilderness for forty years, all the while teaching them about Torah and God’s covenant with them. He would probably have preferred to stay listening to God than going back down and ordering the deaths of those who worshipped the calf (yeah - we don’t get that story in the lectionary), but that’s what he had to go back down to do.

The disciples would rather have stayed up on the mountain with Jesus and Moses and Elijah, but they, too, couldn’t do that. They had to go back down, to be with Jesus as he healed an epileptic boy, and then to follow him down the miserable road to Jerusalem, to his arrest, and to his crucifixion, and even beyond that to the exhausting work of bringing the good news to the world. Once they left that high mountain, they would have a lot of pain and frustration and persecution to deal with. But they had to go back down. What goes up, must come down.

We have our mountaintop experiences, too. We have those all-too-short moments in time when we feel God so overwhelmingly that it is as if God is right there in front of us. Some people have this experience alone while praying, some while gathered with a large group to worship, some in church on Sunday. Some people have these experiences regularly, some people have it only once in their entire lifetime. But when we have them, they’re wonderful. They inspire us, and fill us, and move us to want to be closer to God. They make us feel good - peaceful, whole, loved. They make our lives in that period of time so perfect that we want to stay there. We want to remain in the heights of those ecstatic moments, and never come back down. And when they’re over, we want them back. We seek them out, we try and replicate the circumstances under which they happened, we try new spiritual activities, we even try more of the same things we’re doing, as if that might make a difference. We resent going back to work on Monday after Sunday is over. We get frustrated that the feelings of peacefulness and bliss that we had are so easily replaced with impatience and anger. We might even wish that we had no other responsibilities so that we could go off and do nothing but experience that spiritual high. We want to be back up there, back up with Moses and Elijah and Jesus, and we want to stay there.

But, like Moses and the disciples, we have to come down. As much as we’d like to, we can’t live on the mountain. We’re not supposed to live on the mountain. You see, those moving, spiritual, intimate connections with God aren’t the goal of our life; the Sunday mornings in church aren’t the endpoint of our Christian life. They’re not what we’re supposed to be working towards. It’s the work down here that we’re meant to focus on - the Mondays to Saturdays of living. The work of Jesus - being with the sick, feeding the poor, standing up for the oppressed, proclaiming the good news of forgiveness and salvation - that’s the point of our lives, that’s the ultimate goal we’re working towards. And we can’t do that when we’re up there in the clouds, or searching out the next spiritual encounter, or sitting in the pews of the church engaged in Sunday worship. We have to leave the mountain, go out those doors, and into the dirty, dusty world so that we can continue the disciples’ exhausting work of bringing the good news to the world. There’s a lot of pain and frustration and persecution to deal with. But in order to bring Jesus’ healing to those in need, we have to go back down. What goes up, must come down.

Renita Weems, http://aol.beliefnet.com/author/author_149.html a Methodist minister and professor at Vanderbilt University in the States wrote, "Faith is what you do between the last time you experienced God and the next time you experience God." The spiritual mountaintop experiences we have are meant to inspire us, and give us what we need to keep going, but they’re not dwelling places. We can’t stay there - that’s not what a life of faith is all about. But God doesn’t send us off empty-handed, just like God didn’t send off Moses and the disciples without anything. To Moses, God gave the gift of Torah to show him the path of God. When he was wandering through the desert for forty years, he had what we call the Bible to keep his spirits up. To the disciples, God gave the gift of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, to sustain them through their difficult journeys. When they were being persecuted and tortured, or even just ignored, they were encouraged and edified by God’s presence in Spirit. And we, too, are given both Torah and the Holy Spirit, to show us the path of God, to strengthen us and to keep us going, to sustain us between the last time we experienced God and the next time we experience God. We, too, are given faith. So, as you rest in this mountaintop place, may you be sustained by your time here, strengthened by the Holy Spirit to go back down, and inspired to continue the work of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

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