Sermon September 18, 2011

Romans 8:18–27

“Celebrating God's Wilderness”

From only my personal experience, I find it hard to imagine what it is like to be in the wilderness beyond contact with human civilization. That's not to say that I haven't spent time in rustic settings, but I've never truly been out in the wilderness without access to vehicles, roads and other human technology or support system.

I've seen wilderness, but I haven't had to live in the wilderness—and while I'm much more comfortable because of it, I would have to say that my life would be richer with more wilderness experiences. Most of the world has had much more experience I have and that many of us have had in direct contact with God's created wilderness—those untamed and uncivilized places where the ecosystems existing above and beyond the physical presence, if not the influence, of human activity.

When we read of the wilderness in the bible, we realize that while wilderness places are seen as dangerous and risky place—they aren't negative or evil places. Biblical wilderness experiences are told in many ways and wilderness places are described in many ways. In the earliest books of the bible, from Abraham and Sarah to Moses the wilderness is a place of maturation, a place of growth and development. Wilderness places where plants and animals live dependent solely upon the abundant interaction of God's creation—and are at the mercy of those systems of interaction, systems that stem from God's genius of community interdependence.

And that's where I hear the voices from Joel and from the psalmist interacting. Joel, as a prophet, gives voices to a people and a world in great distress—the distress of a widespread infestation of locusts and long lasting drought. Human civilization represented by priests, ministers, fields, vineyards and oil production mourn and wail in pain. Living things beyond humanity—seeds or grains and herd animals bellow in hunger and wander in famine. And the devastation of fire and drought cause the wilderness pastures to be destroyed—the waters to dry up—and all food, water and shelter is ruined. While this isn't a pretty picture—the wilderness is not the source of sorrow—the wilderness also cries out to God for protection, for sustenance and for mercy in the face of devastation.

As we contemplate places of wilderness—whether they are distant and untouched or simply unpopulated, yet nearby—we can imagine the voices of those places lifted in pain and loss as the actions of myriads of human beings threaten to overwhelm their lives. Of course, we aren't the only forces acting upon other living things, but our influence can be shockingly destructive to delicate systems of life. We can imagine the voices of the stones and rocks crying out—as Jesus once said they would shout in joy—in this case in sorrow and anger and pain.

Can you imagine the painful witness they could make as they have watched human beings unthinkingly drown the goodness and wealth that God has placed in wild places? When we read of the frontier wilderness of this continent—the dangerous and wild lands that once deterred small groups or single families from living even in this local area—we hear about panthers and other wildcats that saw humans as prey or competitors for food and territory. And so we removed the top predators—which is safer and understandable—and yet has had the long-term effect of an overwhelming population of deer, for one example.

It's not that we can't kill for food or find ways to protect ourselves from more dangerous parts of the wilderness—it's that we cannot do either one without thinking about it. We need to be more rather than less aware of our reliance upon wild things for our own lives—and be aware of the interdependence of all living things. In other words, nothing lives without the death of another living thing. One piece of dialogue from The Lion King reminds me of this.

Mufasa: Everything you see exists together in a delicate balance. As king, you need to understand that balance and respect all the creatures, from the crawling ant to the leaping antelope. Young Simba: But, Dad, don't we eat the antelope? Mufasa: Yes, Simba, but let me explain. When we die, our bodies become the grass, and the antelope eat the grass. And so we are all connected in the great Circle of Life.

While the lion is not actually aware of his or her place in the wildness of God's creation—we can be aware. We can be aware of how God created the wilderness and how God is reflected in the wildness. And we can be aware of the respect that we owe to the wilderness because of this.

This day of considering wilderness is valuable because opens our awareness to systems that stem from God's genius of community interdependence. Despite our desire to control this great, wild world, in our relationship to God's creation, we are called upon to realize that God's image rests in those wild and untamed places of nature—that God's image is beyond our realization and beyond our full understanding and certainly beyond our control.

And in our awareness that God's image and essence exists in the wilderness as well as in the orderliness of God's created world, we can read Paul's letter to the Roman's with our ears tuned in a particular way.

¹⁸I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. ¹⁹For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; ²⁰for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope ²¹that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.¹

If the wild and untamed creation expresses suffering—or is incomplete in some way—then that suffering is a desire for completion or a more biblical word, redemption. Creation wants redemption, which in the bible means that creation need to be freed from some bondage. And non-human creation is bound as much by sin as humanity because in human sin, creation suffers, just like innocents often suffer because of the sins of others. When we can recognize that wilderness is not bound by its wildness, but by our attempts to badly control it—redemption takes on a different focus.

The suffering of creation—or the labor as it is named in Paul's letter—also lets us see that difficulty and work and especially labor is done to produce good things. In the case of a pregnant woman and labor, a baby human and in the case of created wilderness and God's own Holy Spirit—the groans of prayer, our identities and lives as God's children and the faithful living of God's will in our lives.

Our identities as God's own children and God's subsequent movement and presence in our lives can be made very real, concrete, and absolutely essential when we look at them in the wilderness setting. In the gospel text from Mark that I read this morning, when Jesus had been baptized and received God's naming and claiming as God's own beloved son—The text say, “And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. ¹³He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.”

While Satan came to him in the wilderness, in temptation, Jesus' communion and presence was with the wild beasts and with the angels who cared for him. The Spirit took Jesus into the isolation of the wilderness—just as the Hebrew people were taken in the wilderness—as a place to find out what it meant to be God's beloved son. Jesus life became more focused on his identity and call in those 40 days with no distraction other than the wild and living things of God's creation.

Though Satan came there, it was not the place of evil and desolation it was a place of care and comfort where the abundance of God could be enjoyed. As it is told in other gospels, we may understand this time as a time of fasting—here in Mark, it is told as a time when Jesus was cared for and surrounded by God's messengers or angels.

Our focus of God's presence in wilderness can make us see the value of the wild places and times in our lives—they are not without God's blessing, instead out of those times, God's blessing may grow. And they are not without pain and suffering—labor and travail, according to Paul—but out of them come the fruits of the Spirit, the hope of faith, which we have yet to see in its fulfillment.

For a time, in this time when we are watching the seasons change, we can focus and realize the value of the wild places. We can for a time, really see the wilderness places of the world and how much they reveal to us about God's being, about our own lives as images of God and about our need to know our own sin and abuse of those wild places. We can see the value of the wilderness times in our lives—that in the pain and the labor, we are stripped down to the essentials and yet at the same time we know the incredible abundance that God has given.

Let us never forget that our God is wild and untamed—that God is God and God's image is in all that God has made.

To God be the glory—in the wilderness and wherever we are. Amen.

1Romans 8:19-21

Sermon September 11, 2011

“God's Body. . . Our Life . . . the Land”

Preparing for this Sunday's sermon, I have been swayed from a couple of different directions:

• “The pain and suffering that we as Americans associate with terrorism began [ten years ago today] and has continued ever since.”¹
• And this month, I've decided to take on the newly suggested Season of Creation and today's theme is Land. So, I am bound by my own choices of lectionary stream and the scriptures there.

But as often happens in my experience, the texts of the lectionary and the movement of human history have much to say to each other, through the wondrous, mysterious sweeping movements of the Holy Spirit.

Hear again these words from Psalm 139:

⁷ Where can I go from your spirit?
   Or where can I flee from your presence? ⁸ If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
   if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. ⁹ If I take the wings of the morning
   and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, ¹⁰ even there your hand shall lead me,
   and your right hand shall hold me fast. ¹¹ If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me,
   and the light around me become night’, ¹² even the darkness is not dark to you;
   the night is as bright as the day,
   for darkness is as light to you. ²

Hear those words as we remember the moments we saw the planes crashing into the World Trade Center Tower; hear them as we recall the last words of the courageous men and women on the plane that crashed in rural Pennsylvania; hear them as we remember the smoke and fire at the Pentagon that day. “If I ascend or decend . . . you are there. If I flee . . . you are there. If I take wing . . . your right hand shall hold me. If I hide in the dark. . . . the darkness is as light to you.”

These words were the words we used in a community service of mourning that week in Cuba where I was serving. We didn't and couldn't understand, and yet we needed to know that we were accompanied through the pain and suffering. God's presence was there in each particle of soil upon which we stood around this nation and around the world and in the particles that showered from the sky with each one who lost loved ones and each one who was lost to death. The Land—the earth itself—was wounded and the land itself absorbed the losses that day. And the land—the earth itself—allowed us to understand in some way that God was ever present, that day and always.

The grace of God and the life that God wants for all humanity was a source of comfort and gratitude in those days, of this I am sure. And yet in those days, we were also sorely wounded by violence brought to the shores of this country. It wasn't a new kind of violence, though we felt it in this nation as if it was new. “. . . it is important to note that for others around the world, that day is the day we experienced the degree of pain other nations and peoples have experienced far longer. September 11^th was a day the tragedies of the world came to our shores.”³

Yet we can still look at that day and at that place as a symbol of the futility of violence and the fruitlessness of vengeance. We can see it, too, as an ongoing symbol of how we have not yet learned to live in peace with one another as individuals, nations and peoples of faith.

We know that we are never alone in our lives—that we are accompanied by God always and that is a comfort. We also know that we are never alone and sometimes that makes us more aware of how we have fallen short of God's intentions for us sometimes as individuals and as all of humanity. And we know that the very land we live on bears much of the burden of our sinfulness and our social and individual responsibilities for our own actions and the actions of those who represent us.

In Genesis 3 and 4 that we read this morning, we hear the biblical account about the entrance of sin and violent murder into the world. We read of God holding all parties as accountable for disobedience in Eden. The serpent, after its actions, consequently was a perpetual enemy of humanity. The woman, after her actions, consequently suffered pain in the birth and growth of children. The man, after his actions, consequently toiled with difficulty to produce food from the land. And Cain and Abel's story tells us that the land itself cried out to God in protest to the blood and murder of Abel by Cain. And Cain consequently lost his home, the land of his birth, because of his actions.

In this stories, we hear that the land itself is impacted by the entrance of sin into the world. In this stories, we hear that humanity was changed, too, by the actions of a few and the reaction of the land to that action. The consequence of unrighteousness, injustice and violence are unavoidable because they reverberate from the choices we make as individuals and the actions we take together as church, community, nation and humanity as a whole.

A simple, or perhaps just common, example of this social and individual responsibility comes from my ambiguous feelings about the oil industry. I know I say this in a place, a land if you will, that has depended upon oil for economic health and structure. And I come from Oklahoma, another land that depends upon oil as well.

My personal confusion comes from life experience. I am, as many of us are, dependent on the oil industry; I have been supported, fed clothed and sheltered by it, too; and I am, as many of us are, aware of the problems that industry can cause.

When I was a child, my father worked for several very small oil companies as a pumper. At the height of his work he had between 40 and 60 wells, and over time lost due to economic changes and as the production of those wells slowed. I watched him in my ignorance as well as his, do things that poisoned the ground around those wells. As a child I was probably exposed to way too much crude oil for my health, I have no idea. When I got older I began to learn about the impact of petroleum and carbon fuels on the environment. I know that the full extent of those impacts are controversial—what damage is actually done or if any damage is permanent or if the earth can heal with time and assistance.

Individually I know I bear some responsibility for the impact my fossil fuel use has one the environment, to a greater or lesser extent. I can choose to use less or more fuel in my driving, in my home as heat and cooling and so many other choices that make smaller and larger differences daily.

Within this society, nation and culture, I know I also bear responsibilities as a part of this body of people. I have to ask question from my own conscious: Do we use more than we need? Could we change our lives to be more responsible as a whole? Can I do more to encourage and rally for this kind of responsibility?

I'm not just picking on oil, it's just familiar—there are many issues and problems just as complicated. It helps to reveal our particular downfalls—as individuals and as a body: culture, nation or even as a religion or a church. It helps to look inside and outside at those problems, complications and fallenness because it helps us realize how it is that God wishes us to live in this imperfect, yet beloved world. It helps us understand more fully how it is that we can care more fully for the land we live on and for the lands around the world that may need us to be more responsible, as well.

The stories from Genesis, in many ways, make me more aware, on this day especially, that my actions have impacts on the people closest to me and upon people that I don't realize I affect. Though I can't change all that I am and do, I can depend upon God—as Paul emphasized in his letter to the Romans—to give me the grace to act without being bogged down by the sin of all humanity. Paul's good news is that we can act within God's grace to be the human beings, societally and individually, that Jesus revealed in himself. We don't avoid the consequence of the evil that we do—or the evil of the people whose lives surround our own—in grace, we can leave behind choices like vengeance. In grace, we can be moved by the Holy Spirit to see life through the eyes of Jesus—not responding to violence with violence, but with love. In grace, in my oil industry example perhaps, we can be led to see the abundance that responsible living can produce, instead of only seeing the limitations of giving up a few miles of driving and living only for comfort and pleasure.

As we focus on how the land—how the abode of God—how our own place of living is impacted by our living and moving and being—we are made aware of how our actions not only affect earth beneath our feet—the effects are multitude. They are environmental, emotional, economic, cultural, physical and they are spiritual.

Poet Wendell Berry writes,

“Creation is thus God’s presence in creatures. …our destruction of nature is not just bad stewardship, or stupid economics, or a betrayal of family responsibility; it is the most horrid blasphemy.”⁴

Despite the feelings of some, I don't believe that effective sermons are meant to cause guilt among us—but to move us to desire transformation by God's Holy Spirit. In this time and in this place, on this land and on this particular day, we can realize that when we are unthinking in our use of the land and its resources, we may be attempting to flee from God. And in our attempts to be responsible and thoughtful in our lives and consider the impacts of the choices that we make, we are acknowledging God as creator of the land and all that it supports and contains.

Most importantly, I want us to be aware and be thoughtful about the constancy of God's presence through and with the earth that God created as a support system for living things. I want us to realize that God's presence is a reminder of God's love as well as God's continuous pursuit of the choices that we make in life—to love God our creator and to love our neighbor creatures and created matter as we love ourselves.

This is a complicated day to preach—it is a day to remember and it is a day to be moved to serve. It is a day to know that God wants us to live in grace and as every day God wants us to be the best human beings and human communities that we can be. In God's land—in the midst of God's existence—we bring God glory, this day and always. Amen.

1http://www.ucc.org/news/pastoral-letter-from-gmp.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A%20UnitedChurchOfChrist%20%28United%20Church%20of%20Christ%29

2Psalm 139:7–12

3http://www.ucc.org/news/pastoral-letter-from-gmp.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A%20UnitedChurchOfChrist%20%28United%20Church%20of%20Christ%29

4By Wendell Berry from Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community, © 1994 Wendell Berry, Pantheon Press.

Sermon September 4, 2011

“The Forests of the World”

This morning we read two scriptures in dialogue with one another—speaking the words of creation and Paul's realization of God's hand in the formation and growth of the whole world, even when that action and hand was not particularly recognized. What I mean is that the Greek people realized entities or gods beyond themselves, but didn't know that God is one and all creation speaks of the one God.

Today's creation theme of Forest isn't about making the forest or the tree an idol, like replacing God—in fact, it's more about seeing the whole of the life—flora and fauna—in all the places on earth as co-worshipers of God along with humanity.

We look at the gospel of Jesus Christ as it applies to the living things of this created world. We look at how they mesh together in webs of living; we will listen to the needs that the living things of creation express; and we will explore how we can engage as a congregation to be apply our vision and purpose to our interaction with all living things.

Paul preached to the people of Athens, “²⁶From one ancestor [God] made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, ²⁷so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. ²⁸For 'In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your own poets have said,
'For we too are his offspring.'¹

Though we may not have seen this text in this light before, we can read Paul's interpretation of God's creation of the universe with the realization that God's hand was in the making of every thing—living and non-living. And the realization that it was from the hand and voice and person of one God that all things had been made—the more pleasant and beautiful and the things that some may consider ugly, creepy or dangerous.

But because the whole of creation came from the genius and being of one God—as Paul proposes—it all works together for the continuation of life. Now, much of this working together involves the passing of energy from one being to the next—plants absorb the energy of the sun, animals eat the plants and other animals eat those animals and other plants and some animals just eat other animals. Even though there is competition to glean the energy from God's creation—it is an amazing miracle of cooperation and co-development as microscopic living things and plants and animals live and move and exist within the incredible web of life. This is the tree of life through which God continues to nurture and grow through God's own action and through the hands and feet of humanity—the ones that God gave the responsibility for nurture and tending, what we might call stewardship in the church.

This isn't the first or only place where God's blessing and nurture of all created things was revealed even within the book of Acts. In Chapter 10 of Acts, Peter's eyes had been opened about God's blessing and nurture through a dream where God revealed that all animals that God had made were clean or edible to the newly growing and thriving movement that followed Jesus' teaching. We often see this as God's blessing of the church's newly found evangelism of the Gentiles, but it is also a literal broadening of how God's people were to see the whole of creation.

In our realization that the web of life is a genius of God's creation—that all of God's creation works together to nurture and prosper all living things, including humanity—then we are called upon to realize that not only is humanity the offspring of God, but that all beings and things of creation are God's offspring, God's own children.

The forest represents how all things live and work and thrive together and how all living things will die if we are not responsible for the life and health and care of life everywhere. It reminds us that we are a part of all that God has done—not the purpose, but a part of the whole.

I was very happy to know that when I moved to Robinson, Carl and I could recycle with ease. Before, we saved and saved our recyclables and looked for places we could take them. Here we know that most of what we have will be recycled, what we throw away is much less than what we recycle. I believe that we are called upon as responsible people of faith to do as much as we can to care for the places where we live—and to understand how what we buy and use effects systems of life around the world.

As Paul preached, “In God, we live and move and have our being.” Isn't it basic to our faith to do as much as we can to care for the world where God lives along side of us, in spirit and in truth?

According to Paul's sermon to the Athenians, “The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands.” God lives, according to this, in the universe that God's own hands have made. If we respect the sanctuary where we worship because we believe God to meet us here, we are called upon to respect the world that God has created as a place of being for God's creatures.

In the dialogue reading, we heard that Paul commented on the creation story—lifting the faith in the God he had followed all of his life. He spoke his message to a people who created another deity each time that they encounter another mystery within the world. He truly did understand, but he also knew that the function of Israel's faith and the faith of the followers of Jesus was to open the eyes of the nations to the wonders of one God over all the mysteries of the world and the universe.

In another place in first testament scriptures Psalm 148, we hear:

Praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord from the heavens;Praise him, sun and moon;
   praise him, all you shining stars!
Praise him, you highest heavens,
   and you waters above the heavens!

Praise the Lord from the earth,
   you sea monsters and all deeps,
fire and hail, snow and frost,
   stormy wind fulfilling his command!

Mountains and all hills,
   fruit trees and all cedars!
Wild animals and all cattle,
   creeping things and flying birds!

Kings of the earth and all peoples,
   princes and all rulers of the earth!
Young men and women alike,
   old and young together!

Let them praise the name of the Lord,
   for his name alone is exalted;
   his glory is above earth and heaven.
Praise the Lord!

I've heard stories of how families have had what might be called miraculous experiences as they entered natural settings together. They connected their and share their most treasured memories of those times. Being taught to hunt with responsibility and respect for how we fit into the system of life and how we are not to abuse our power and ability to kill for food or trophies. Tent-camping responsibly can help children of all ages to respect the natural places where people spend time outside of populated areas. Gardening with a mind to the local plants and animals that live in a place can help children and other adults see how we can take care of what is around us. And reminding ourselves that God moves and lives and breathes among us—as Paul reminds us—may help us smile at the beauty and mystery of all that God has given us.

Even in the gospels, we are made aware that God has not rejected the created world that God made. In John's gospel, we are told, “God so loved the world that God gave his only Son, . . . in order that the world might be saved through him.”

We've sometimes gotten the idea that this world is nothing, a shadow of things to come and that we are simply in a time of limbo, waiting to pass on to the other side, through death and into the life that God promises. While we can believe in the promise of eternal life, we don't have to let go of the glorious and miraculous, the mystery and the wonder that surrounds us in the living systems that God has created. We can glory in the systems of life that we understand more and more each day—following the scientist and doctors into the deepest depths of the cells of living things and into the atoms that make up all that surrounds us.

Though we might find out that today's miracles are tomorrow's discoveries—each step can draw us farther and farther into the universe that God creates around us each and every moment of every day.

By spending time recognizing God's care for us in all of creation and our care and love for God as we care for what God makes, we participate and co-create the relationship and community and love where God can reach into the lives of all people. We can recognize that only respect and love for all ecosystems will allow us to speak and act with respect with all creation, with humanity and with all living things.

To the glory of God, in a sense of wonder and love. Amen.

1Acts 17:26-28

Sermon March 6, 2011

Exodus 24:12-18

Psalm 2

2 Peter 1:16-21

Matthew 17:1-9

“Dazzled by the Reign”

What’s the holiest place you can imagine? Where have you experienced the most sacred moments in your life? When have the insignificant details been swept away and you’ve been left with the kernel of hope that is everything to you? Each one of us probably has a different picture in mind as we imagine, remember and re-experience those moments of rapture, crisis, serenity, fear, hope, anxiety, love or whatever those moments brought us.

Each text read this morning describes the experiences of our ancestors in faith as they encountered holiness and God’s presence—and they, too, experienced a broad spectrum of responses through those encounters.

When Moses was called up on the mountain by God to receive God’s law and experience God’s presence intimately, he prepared himself and the Hebrew people for his absence. He took his assistant Joshua—and he told the elders what to do in while he was gone. And he entrusted the people to his brother Aaron. Only when he was prepared, did he go to encounter God’s presence and receive God’s word of law. This story is one of the crucial stories of the Jewish people—this story of Moses’ encounter with God’s holy presence. Not only did Moses receive the law from God’s own hand, but he experienced God’s presence and an unprecedented way and he lived to survive it.

Knowing the story of Moses on the mountain—experiencing God in the fire and cloud that covered the mountaintop—we can then listen to the story of Jesus and his disciples more clearly and hear it in the way that Matthew intends for us to hear it.

We also need to set this story within its own set of circumstances. Matthew 17:1-9 follows Peter's declaration of Jesus as the Messiah (16:13-20); Jesus' prediction of his death in 16:21-23; and Jesus telling the disciples that those who wanted to follow him would need to deny themselves. Following this, the text says Jesus took Peter, John, and James up to the mountain where Divine encounter and Divine revelation ensue. The text does not say why Jesus decided to go to the mountain on that occasion, nor does it speak to why those three disciples were asked to accompany him. There are no stated expectations for the trip to what was considered a holy place where God was encountered. Instead, we learn that Jesus took the disciples up to the mountain.[1]

So we are meant to know that Jesus has been proclaimed as Messiah or Christ, the anointed one of God, even as we are told that he will be rejected and killed for that identity and that his disciples would have to deny themselves to follow him. God’s chosen one was following a road that led to death for himself and denial of those who would follow. Could that be right?

But Jesus led some notable disciples up some mountain in the area where they were. Peter, James and John (presumably the two brothers and the sons of Zebedee) were prominent in the gospel story of Jesus’ life—though they were not the most prominent preachers after the resurrection. For some reason, Jesus chose them to see this moment in his life, what we’ve come to call Jesus’ transfiguration.

“He was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him.”[2] The word used to describe Jesus’ change of appearance, his transfiguration is metamorphosis in the Greek—he is changed before their eyes. One commentary argued that this was not change, but a revelation of what was already there, but the word used implies that he was changed—this was a moment where his life turned a corner and he, perhaps, embraced the next phase of his life where he turned toward the events that would occur in Jerusalem. And in that moment, his companions—the first disciples Jesus called in Matthew—saw him differently, perhaps saw him as he would appear to them after his crucifixion. Whatever it was, it was different than ever before.

Sister Joan Chittister notes that "Mountains…in Greek, Hebrew, Roman and Asian religious literature, were always places where the human could touch the divine"[3]. The mountaintop experience was known to first century followers of Jesus and the significance of this mountaintop experience would be evident to all who heard the story. The Synoptic Gospels connect with this ancient understanding of the importance of the mountaintop as a place where the Divine could be seen and encountered in tangible life-changing ways. As soon as Jesus and the three disciples arrive on the high unnamed mountain, Jesus is transformed before them.

The mountaintop as the location for the events to come sets the stage for the possibilities of the moment. The mountain or high places were understood by the ancients as places where Divine encounter took place. [4] When would Jesus need the light of the divine more—the comfort of God’s call, presence and encouragement—than at this moment when his life took the irrevocable turn toward the cross? This is one of the reasons why we visit this text of transfiguration is read the Sunday before we begin our 40 day Lenten journey toward the cross.

This encounter with God, as our encounters with God often do, is meant to carry us forward into times when we wonder where it is that God has gone—when we feel abandoned or as Jesus said on the cross, forsaken.

In the transfiguration, we see a glimpse of where Jesus is headed, though the disciples at the time didn’t know where that was, exactly and how Jesus’ rejection and death would lead them there. But in the light and bedazzlement of the moment they could continue on. Just as we are intended to do, carrying with us a vision of where we are meant to be, acting toward those godly intentions for us.

The reign of God is a dazzling vision—sometimes seen only as an existence beyond death—but in this vision of the first of Jesus’ disciples, as an ever-present reality in Jesus’ being and life.

The temptation of a mountaintop experience, however, is to remain there—as Peter’s excited exclamation revealed. “Let’s build a tabernacle, a shrine, for each of you to show others what we have seen and we will stay here with all of you in glory!” But God put a stop to that, “This is my beloved, Son, hear what he has to say!” and when they were through cowering in fear, Jesus called them to continue in their discipleship—without fear. Jesus’ appearance with the iconic, Moses and Elijah, sign and symbol of the Jewish faith, the law and the prophets set him firmly within their expectations of God’s presence. Yet because he told them he would be rejected, I imagine they still wondered where this journey to Jerusalem could possibly lead.

And Jesus continued to lead them into the dazzling reign of God—even though he led them down the mountain, away from that vision of holiness and into the needy crowds of people. Because that’s where the reign of God dwells—not in a building that tries to preserve a moment of time, but in the lives of all the people that God has touched and moved as they move together toward the world that God has envisioned in all of us together.

Our responses to God’s vision for us are as varied as we are—we are dazzled and inspired and we are anxious and fearful—sometimes all at the same time. Sometimes we have to sit with God’s vision for us before we can follow it and sometimes we can step out immediately from the dazzling moment we experience. Fred Craddock states, "There is value in referring to this story as one about Jesus' mountaintop experience, which is followed by his return to the valley where he ministered to human need. To such a presentation we can add recitations of mountaintop experiences we have known, followed by exhortations to return to the valley ready to serve.[5]

The moment of transformation is one that invites us to new and meaningful encounters with God, places where we serve and welcome all those we meet to a life of faith and worship. We can live and move into God’s reign—knowing that it’s not all done, but that we get to help in its fulfillment every day.

To God’s glory, on the mountain, in the valley and in every place and time. Amen.

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[1] http://www.ucc.org/worship/samuel/march-6-2011-last-sunday-1-1-1.html

[2] Matthew 17:3-4

[3]("The Role of Religion in Today's Society,") http://www.csec.org/csec/sermon/chittister_3508.htm

[4] http://www.ucc.org/worship/samuel/march-6-2011-last-sunday-1-1-1.html

[5] (The Christian Century, February 21, 1990).