Luke 9:28-43a
February 27, 2022
When you hear the phrase “mountain
top experience,” what do you think of? What comes to your mind? Have you had a
mountain top experience? How would you describe that moment or that time? Was
it a time when you felt closer to God, closer to humanity, closer to more
clearly seeing your purpose in the world?
I often tell people that my first
mountain top experience took place on an actual mountain, when I was a youth
advisor during a youth conference at Montreat. There on that mountain, I
worshipped, prayed, played, learned, and fellowshipped with adults and youth
from all over. It was there on that mountain that I found out I had been
accepted into seminary. It was there on that mountain that I thought,
“So,
this is what a mountain top experience must be like.”
I
was wrong. I mean, it was a powerful and memorable experience. I loved that
week in Montreat, and I wanted to capture all the feelings and understandings that
I had on that mountain and bring them back down into the valley with me. I
wanted to take my mountain top experience with me for the rest of my life. I
didn’t. I carry the wonderful memories with me, but I’m not sure I’ve carried
those feelings of being close to God and close to others with me.
That time on the mountain was powerful. And I have
had other even more powerful, more memorable times on mountains since. I have
shared communion on top of Mount Nebo. I have hiked on the hills of the
Appalachian Trail and some of the smaller peaks in Yellowstone. I’ve seen the
top of Denali clearly through a remarkable break in the constant clouds that
surround its peak. I live, like all we do, amid the rolling hills of Tennessee.
But I still think that my mountain top experiences were not really mountain top
experiences – not in the way that I have formerly believed them to be.
Why? Because if we base our mountain
top experiences on this passage in scripture, then there is no way I have had
one. I haven’t gone up a mountain with Jesus and seen his face and clothes
become dazzling white. I have not seen Jesus talking to Moses and Elijah. I
have not seen the kind of glory that the gospel writers try to convey. I have
not been covered in a cloud and heard the voice of God telling me, “This is my
Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”
I have had profound experiences on
mountain tops, but I have not had this. This story, on which we base our
understanding of a mountain top experience, is strange and unfathomable. In my
years of preaching, I have yet to find the right way to dig into this story, to
make even a semi-adequate analogy between what happened on that mountain and
our lives.
And the truth is, I don’t think it’s
possible. I think we look for glimpses of glory in all the wrong ways. And it’s
not that glory is not to be found, it’s not that glimpses of glory don’t
happen. They do happen on top of mountains and in other places as well. But I
think we also imagine that these glimpses of glory are either otherworldly,
spectacular, unbelievable, and strange, or that they always leave us filled
with joy and exuberance. But I’m not convinced that is always the case.
The thing about mountain top
experiences, what I learned and maybe what Peter learned, is that you cannot,
in the words of Debie Thomas, “hoard them.” You cannot build dwelling places
and make those moments stay. The reality about the mountain is that eventually
you must go back down into the valley.
Scripture is filled with references
to mountains and valleys. Moses went up the mountain to speak with God but came
back down to the valley where the people had grown tired of waiting and created
a new god for themselves. In Isaiah the prophet speaks of one day all peoples,
all nations, streaming to God’s high and holy mountain, where they will feast
on good food and drink good wine and they shall know God, and they shall find
peace. But there are references to valleys too. Ezekiel is taken to a valley of
dry bones, and asked, “Can these bones live?”
Psalm
23 reminds us that we walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Valleys
are beautiful places, just as mountains are, but it seems that the analogies of
mountains and valleys is that on the mountain you have some time to see
clearly, you have a moment to be closer to God, but you can’t avoid the reality
that the valley brings. But don’t we also see God in the reality of the valley?
Isn’t God there as well as on that mountain?
Jesus went up to the mountain to
pray, to call all the disciples, to teach particular lessons, but he always
came back down to the valley. In our story today, he comes back down the
mountain to the valley where the people – hungry, harassed, hurting people –
waited for him. A man in the crowd shouted out to him for help for his son, his
only child. A spirit would seize the child, convulse him, maul him. The father
had asked the disciples to heal him, but they could not do it. And Jesus,
frustrated with the fact that the disciples, much less the crowds, could not
seem to grasp all that he had been saying, cries out,
” You faithless and perverse
generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you?”
But Jesus still heals the boy. He
cast out the demon that had so tormented the child. He came back down to the
valley where sickness and confusion and misunderstanding reigned. He came back
down to the valley. It was not only on the mountain where God’s glory through
Jesus could be seen. It happened in the valley too, but the people could not
see it for what it was. They could not see Jesus for who he was. Not really.
Not yet.
And as many years as I have preached
this passage, I have also thought that Jesus took the disciples up to that
mountain for their sakes. Teacher and preacher, Anna Carter Florence, once said
in a conference that I attended, that we think Jesus took Peter, John, and
James up that mountain because they were the ones closest to Jesus’ heart. But
maybe, she said, they were really the remedial group. Maybe they were the ones
who most needed the lesson. Yet what if Jesus took them with him not only for
their sake, but for his own. Jesus knew what waited for him in the valley. He
knew that he would meet violence and death in the valley. Maybe he needed that time
on the mountain to help him, strengthen him, encourage him.
Perhaps Jesus asked the disciples to
come along to keep him company, to wait with him, just as he would ask them to
wait with him in the garden. Jesus talks with Moses and Elijah about departure,
his departure. He knew his departure was coming, and he knew that it would not
be peaceful. Maybe Jesus needed this time on the mountain for himself as well
as for the disciples. He went up the mountain because he knew that most of his
life, his ministry, his teaching, his healing, and his suffering would take
place in the valley.
So, perhaps that is what we need to
hold onto as well. We long for the mountaintop experiences. We long for those
moments when we think we might have glimpsed glory, but we live the majority of
our lives in the valleys, don’t we? And if God makes himself known on the
mountaintop, then surely God is also known, glimpsed, recognized in the valleys
as well.
Like people around the globe, I have
been following the news of the war in Ukraine with great intensity. It is hard
not to be scared and troubled and worried about what this means for all of us.
It is hard not to be caught up in emotion as we watch the Ukrainian people
fight back, protect their country, their culture, with everything that they
have. But don’t you think that the citizens of Ukraine want to live their
lives, take care of their children, drink coffee with friends, go to work, and
live in peace? Don’t you think this is true for the people of Russia and Poland
and America and Mexico and South Africa and India and every other place on the
globe as well. Don’t you think that all people just want to put their children
to bed at night, and to trust that they will wake in the morning? Don’t you
think that people everywhere just want to have peace in the valley?
That’s what I want. It is in the
valley where we have to learn what peace is, where we must learn how to get
along with one another, when we have to learn what Jesus knew, that peace is
not just the time between wars, but that it is true shalom. It is the fullness
of life lived without fear and violence. It is the kingdom of God. It is the
kindom of God. Jesus went back down from that mountain into the valley because
that is where we live most of our lives. It is in the valley where we eat and
sleep and love and hate. It is in the valleys where we hope and dream. It is in
the valleys where we wait and watch. It is in the valleys where God meets us,
in our suffering and in our joy, in our living and in our dying.
Even though I walk through the valley
of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for you are with me. We long for the
mountaintop, but we live in the valleys, and God is with us in both places. I
said I was wrong in thinking that my mountain top experiences were actually
mountain top experiences. I was and I wasn’t. Yes, there were profound times in
my life when I felt God’s abiding presence. But I have also felt God’s abiding
presence in the valley. But it took hindsight to understand that. It took looking
back at the valley to see that God was there all along.
We
may go up to the mountaintop for a time, but we are called back down to the
valleys, back to the people, back to the brokenness. Jesus went back to the
valley knowing what waited for him there. He went back to the valley, not to
meet evil with evil, violence with violence, but to give of himself, to
sacrifice himself, to be a servant to others, so that finally, one day peace,
real peace, might reign in the valley. May we do so as well. May this be our
solemn vow, our fervent prayer, our deepest hope. We are called to live and
love and work for the kingdom of God in the valley. May there be peace in the
valley, now and forever.
Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.”
Amen.
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