Where Jesus Is

 

Mark 9:2-9

It’s so cold out there that one of our church families froze clothing into statues in their yard, and someone in my facebook feed froze an egg half cracked open, balanced in the air on a frozen puddle of egg white on the sidewalk like a pedestal. It’s so cold you can hammer a nail into wood with a frozen banana, and throw boiling water in the air to make a puff of cloud that doesn't fall back down.  Maybe those are the ways to celebrate what has come to be called The Transfiguration, because words can’t do it justice.
 
Jesus knew words couldn’t work here. He tells them not to talk about this moment till after he’s risen from the dead, when they’ll recognize that the laws of physics, and life and death, and time and space don’t always apply, and it will be fun to recall that one time on the mountain when Jesus all glowey and the mvps of the faith were back from the dead chatting him up.  
Still, they whispered to each other all the way back down the mountain, “What does he mean by risen from the dead?” 
Because, whattity what??
 
So maybe next year on Transfiguration Sunday we’ll just listen to ethereal music, or watch amazing colors, or contemplate some unfathomable intricacy of nature or boundless mystery of space instead of turning to words to try to understand what’s happening here. 
 
But perhaps the gift of this scene –for us today but for the disciples there on the mountain and for Jesus himself – is the mystery of it. The inexplicableness of the encounter.   
 
Peter at least has his wits about him enough to recognize that whatever this is, it’s important, so he jumps in with a strategy, Let’s just stay here never leave; we’ll make each of you a dwelling.  But he’s quickly shushed by an almighty cloud, and by the words of the gospel writer apologizing for him – he didn’t know what he was saying, you guys, because they all were terrified.
 
This captures it all! Peter thought. The glory of Jesus revealed! Here is where we should stay. Here is where the truth is, the way is, the life is. Right here. 
 
But the moments of mystery and wonder are not where Jesus remains.  As soon as they get back down the mountain they are confronted by the utterly anguished father of a child tormented by illness and demons, whom their prayers couldn’t heal. And in Matthew, Mark and Luke, these two scenes come back to back, like a boxed set, like they belong together: the mountaintop glory and the valley despair.  You can’t have the one without the other. 

Who is Jesus? Both of these. We see him revealed in the limitlessness of the inexplicable mystery and wonder on top of the mountain AND in the heartbreaking barriers of impossibility below. Both are where Jesus is, and both are part of the disciples’ experience of following him. 
 
Jesus says to the boy’s dad, “How long has he been like this?” And he invites the father to tell his story of pain, to speak of the affliction his son has experienced his whole life. How long have you suffered? And Jesus listens and receives him. Then he heals the boy, and blesses the father, and calls the disciples again to follow.
 
The voice on the mountain said, This is my son, the beloved, the embodiment of my love, listen to him. The same voice said at his baptism, This is my son the beloved, in whom I delight. Then immediately Jesus was sent into the wilderness where he was tempted to use his power to protect and save himself, tempted to get the recognition he deserves. Hungry, tired, weak and emotionally spent, he was tempted to claim and stay in the glory. But instead, he chose to claim and dwell in his humanity and weakness. And there is where God’s angels were able to minister to him, and restore his strength. And he was sent to minister from that place of being met by God in his weakness and need. 
 
Why can’t we just live up on the mountain in touch with the transcendence all the time? Peter thought, What else matters when there is this? 
 
And yet, there is also that. And Jesus came for that, not for this. Jesus came for the broken children and the anguished fathers and the temptations we all face. 
We swing between the mountains and the valleys, the transcendent glimpses that there is something more, tastes of joy or terror, moments where we feel absolutely alert and awake to the deeper, where words don’t make sense and can’t contain it, and the complications, temptations, stuckness, brokenness, sorrow, desperation, impossibility.
 
The world the needs redeeming; we need ministering to. And while the inexplicable glimpses of glory feed us, God’s redemption ultimately doesn’t come through these mysterious, unexplainable moments of transcendence.  It comes through the transcendent one taking on our humanity and letting what breaks us break him too. It comes when Jesus dies, just like every one of us and all those we have loved and will love will die. It comes when Jesus goes through death and comes out the other side and death no longer has the power to define or determine reality, and the glory and the brokenness come together in the person of the risen Christ.  
 
And so much of life is lived not even purely on the mountains or in the valleys or even in the wild swings between, but in the midst, the both/and – where in the midst of the sorrow we have a flash of joy, in the midst of the tension, a feeling of letting go, in the midst of fear, a moment of trust and absolute love. And very often we don’t have words for these glimpses of glory; they are not experiences that make clear, logical sense.
 
So we are asked to live in the paradox. Always. In the tension and the honesty of it –that the complications and temptations and divisions and weakness are real and they feel insurmountable. But also that we are held in a reality that transcends all the limits and boundaries of this world and calls us to something deeper, and wider, and eternal, that holds us all together in love. Both are true at the same time. Just like Jesus was both fully God and fully human. 
 
We exist inside the constraints of this world in all our messy, broken, impossible situations, but also inside a bigger story of love so powerful it transcends all limits of space and time. We live in the paradox of the piercing division in our families, communities and country, and also connection and belonging so deep we are joined not only with those around us but also with those gone before and those to come.
  
Our faith exists in tension, the paradox that runs deeper than logic.  
So we watch for the glimpses of beyond while we live utterly here.
 
Can we entrust ourselves to the one who embodies absolute love and walks this earth as the great paradox of God’s unlimited otherness and also persistent nearness?  The father of the boy trapped in seizures says it best, I believe, help my unbelief. I trust, help my untrusting heart. 
 
Jesus will soon say again to Peter, James and John, “Come with me” and they’ll follow him to the garden, where he will pray with so much fear and intensity that he sweats blood, begging God not to have to face death. I can’t help but think these three needed thismoment to get them through that moment.  But maybe so did Jesus.  Unspeakable glory and wonder exist alongside unspeakable horror and suffering.  Jesus takes on our horror to bring us into his glory.
 
There is one command in this text: Listen to him. Listen to Jesus. And sure, you could go back and read the things in the bible that he said and let those in. That would be a lovely way to listen to him.  See who Jesus is, what he says, what he does, let that speak to you. 
 
But also, just listen. Maybe we can cultivate a posture of openness to Jesus. In his humanity, in his divinity, in his risenness and presence with us even now. 
 
Jesus, help us listen to you.  

You who were tempted and afraid, who cried and died, you who sits at the right hand of God far above all powers, through whom the whole earth had its life spoken into being. You who listen and receive the whole of us and our stories when you set us free and bring us healing. 
 
We’re tired, Jesus. We’re despairing. We’re divided and in pain. We’re struggling. Some of us are sick. Some of us are angry. Some of us are lost, or hopeless, or afraid.  
 
Help us listen to you. We want to see you and what you are doing. We want to live guided by your love—nothing less, nothing else. 
 
So help us to follow you where you lead, and seek you where dwell – right alongside one another in our weakness and our need – where you minister to us as we minister to each other. There is the way, the truth and the life, there you are.  

And from time to time, to help us through the valleys, please give us the mountaintop moments of mystery and wonder too. Thank you.  

Amen.

Mountaintops and Messiness

"Thin Place" by Roger Hutchinson

Matthew 17:1-9

(Exodus 24:12-18)

The disciples follow Jesus to the mountaintop to pray. All of a sudden, Peter, James and John are stunned to see Jesus standing with Elijah and Moses - the key figures of their faith, all glowing and shiny, and chatting like old friends.  In an instant they see all of history standing before them represented in these figures, the unfolding of God’s story – the people of God led out of Egypt, called and guided by God, restored by God, and the Messiah, the future, standing there with the past - together, like a complete picture, a glorious glimpse of timeless wonder.

Peter, not knowing what he is saying, all swept up in the moment, suggests they freeze the moment, capture and honor it and stay right there in the awe and mystery and the thrill of witnessing eternity, and he is still speechifying when he is interrupted by a bright and terrifying cloud encircling them and a booming voice proclaiming “This is my Son! For the love of God, listen to him!” – and they open their eyes and everything is gone, just them and Jesus, and Jesus tells them not to tell anyone and then leads them right back down the mountain. 

And to make matters worse, as soon as they set foot back on flat ground, here comes the distraught father with the demon possessed son, the one they had tried to heal but couldn’t, the one that reminds them that the world is full of desperate fathers and ill sons. 

Life has transcendent moments – glimpses of glory.  Times where we experience something out of the ordinary, encounters with the supernatural that you can’t explain. I have had them.  

Have you?

It could be a moment alone where the beauty and stillness of nature takes your breath away, and you feel yourself connected to everything around you,

or perhaps it is the witnessing of an actual miracle – when fervent prayers are answered and someone is healed right before your eyes. Or a clear answer from God -  a door opening and sure direction on path you are to take or choice you are to make, or perhaps it is a particularly exquisite moment in worship, where you sense God’s presence and hear God speaking directly to you. 

A supernatural vision, a powerful dream, even a near death experience.

On occasion, human beings have these experiences that seem to pull us completely out of ordinary life into something holy, divine, mysterious, maybe frightening, maybe thrilling, maybe both.   

And we long for these – as human beings we crave these tastes of the beyond. Moments where the space between what is and what will be thins out, when the gap between earth and heaven, natural and supernatural, ordinary and extraordinary becomes narrow - the thin places where God feels close.

There is more to reality than we can see or understand; God is able to break through time and space surprise us with things that flip the universe on end. And we long for these glimpses.

So, then when they do happen, what do we do with these experiences?  How do we understand them?  Maybe we try to stay there, to recreate them, to grasp onto them and make them our focus, to shape our lives around them. That is what Peter tried to do. 

Or maybe these moments are simply baffling. They can’t be incorporated into what we know to be true. They feel so removed from what we see around us on a daily basis that we simply trudge back down the mountain and breathe not a word of them because they don’t make sense. And we need things to make sense.

So if we don’t try to spend our lives trying to live in them then often we discredit the supernatural experiences, or at the very least marginalize them because we have no idea how to integrate them into our lives. 

We, (as Presbyterians especially), are not afraid to talk about the real “stuff” of life, we’ll talk about sex trafficking and famine and politics, we’ll lament injustice all week long, but we get all stuttery and bashful to discuss the moments when God is right there in our face, when we taste transcendence.  

Or we think others wouldn’t understand – and why would they? We have trouble understanding them ourselves.  We want to be able to explain them, to find what the meaning is, and why they happen and how they happen and what they are telling us to DO.

When Moses saw God on a mountain he brought back down the Ten Commandments – he brought specific words and instructions of what to do, how to live, what the people were supposed to take with them from supernatural encounter with God into their ordinary lives.  God told them what to do, God told them what it means. 

But when the disciples see God on a mountain the only instruction they have from God, the only words God gives to them up there come in a brilliant frightening cloud, and echo the words God said when God claimed and pointed out Jesus for the first time – at his baptism – This is my Son, my Beloved.  And then the only thing God tells them to do is: LISTEN TO HIM.  Listen to him.

So we come to this text at the end of Epiphany every year – the very last text we use in the season of talking about God being revealed in Christ.  The story that comes just before we begin Lent is this story, of the disciple’s witnessing Jesus’ strange and momentary transformation, and then going right back down to face the father of the tortured kid they couldn’t heal – it comes up this way, these two parts of the story, back to back, in Matthew, Mark and Luke, like they belong together.

The disciples go from this terrifying exhilarating experience immediately back to this troubling, frustrating and humiliating experience.  They swung from great confidence and sureness, absolute faith and a sense that it all makes sense, immediately to impotence and impossibility, confronted by the ministry they could not do and tagging along after a Messiah who is headed for a cross. No wonder they never talked about what happened up there.

So what is the point? What are they supposed to learn, or do, what does it mean?  We don’t know. Maybe they don’t know. It never says. It doesn’t interpret for us what God is up to by showing them this.

Except, EXCEPT that when Jesus calls them back down the mountain and heads off towards Calvary, they follow now as people who have been up the mountain. They follow as those who have glimpsed glory, who have tasted transcendence.

 

Maybe that makes his suffering and death that much harder for them –they have seen who he really is and this feels so utterly in contrast. Maybe it makes their despair deeper, their sense of all things being turned on end nearly debilitating, because they know they way things really ARE, and they carry this secret inside of them of what they witnessed and can’t even begin to describe or explain. And it leaves them with nothing but agonizing questions, Why God? Why don’t you stop it? Why are you letting this happen?

Or maybe it gives them confidence, trust. The deep awareness that in everything there is more going on than they can see in the moment. Maybe it makes them strong enough to keep following when all looks lost and Jesus is put to death.

Who knows what it did to them? 

And what do they actually take down the mountain with them? Not power. Not commandments. Not even something they understand. They take an inexplicable experience which they can’t really rationalize but they can’t ever shake either. It has happened to them.

And we are never told how it does impact them – maybe each one differently.  There is no clear message or implication – only that God wanted them to have this experience.  And that God wants them to listen to Jesus.

How are we supposed to take extraordinary experiences with us into the ordinary?  How do they shape us? What does God intend with them?

Perhaps the goal is not to understand, to grasp, to keep or to do, but to follow. To watch, to listen. We follow him up the mountain into the unknown, let ourselves be open to meeting God in ways we could never predict or even desire.

And we follow him back down the mountain, into suffering, into confusion, into a world with sick sons and desperate fathers and our own inability to do anything about any of it.  We follow him there too.

Jesus goes both places with his followers, God is there in both realities, in the extraordinary glory and in the ordinary pain.  In the moments of transcendent mystery, and in the times of terrible struggle and suffering.   

So great is God’s glory that it encompasses past present and future and doesn’t hesitate to speak in a booming voice from a cloud with no explanation whatsoever. So great is God’s love that God comes back down from the mountain and dies among and for the people.

How do we follow?  How can we be open? How can we see God who both meets us in mystery, and comes near in the messiness? 

As we walk into Lent, as we enter a time of deliberate pause, recognition of the world’s desperate need for God, we take these questions with us.  We follow the God of all eternity on his road to death. We let ourselves speak out the contradictions, hold up the confusion, pause to sit in the soup of God’s mysterious presence and painful absence, and then continue to follow where Jesus goes.  And however the journey shapes us, we walk it as people who have been up the mountain.

Communion Liturgy

Come to the table of God.

The mountaintop is here, where earth touches heaven,

the place of meeting,

the place of mystery,

the place of epiphany,

the place where the glory of God is revealed.

The valley is here as well, where heaven invades earth,

the place of suffering,

the place of shadows,

the place of sorrow,

the place where the humanity of Christ is made known.

When we gather at this table,

we both proclaim mystery,

and embrace reality.

we recount what God has done

and proclaim what God will do.

When we gather at this table,

we both speak words of promise,

foreshadowing eternity.

and remember words of pain,

recounting the past.

and God meets us here.

In this bread and this wine,

In this gathering and this breaking,

In this sharing and this eating,

We declare again, that

Truly great is the mystery of our faith:

Christ has come,

Christ has died,

Christ has risen,

Christ will come again.


(copyright Kara K Root, liturgy may be used with permission).