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Eighth Sunday after Epiphany

March 6, 2011 (Year A)

Preached at St. Paul’s Brookline

Brookline, MA

The Reverend Jeffrey W. Mello

Exodus 24:12-18

2 Peter 1:16-21

Mathew 17:1-9

What brought you to St. Paul’s for the first time?  What brought you back?

Yesterday, the vestry had their annual retreat.  We spent the day thinking about our visions for St. Paul’s and how we will work together over the next year to help our vision for St. Paul’s become a reality.  It was an incredible day for which I am truly grateful.

We started our day together with these questions:  What brought you to St. Paul’s, and what brought you back.  The answers were breathtaking.  I won’t repeat them here, as I didn’t ask permission, but it was unbelievable to hear these stories of your fellow parishioners.  As I listened to them, one after the other, I became deeply aware that I was having a mountain top experience.

I knew that I was having one of those experiences when the presence of God was made absolutely clear; when the presence of God felt as close to me as ever; a moment when I thought, “yes, this is why it’s all worth it.”

And as I listened, I started to feel that the stories I was hearing were, in themselves, mountaintop experiences.  I heard stories about moments when being part of a community, this community, made sense because it made something of the presence of God seem more real, or closer, or less of an elusive mystery.

It was a great way to start the hard work of being vestry because it connected each one of us with the moment our hearts led us to a place we might not have been expecting to end up.

Mountaintop experiences are critical.  They are critical because they are sustaining.  That is what the vestry reminded me yesterday and that is the witness Jesus gives us with the disciples in today’s Gospel reading.  Mountain top experiences help us make it through the tough times.  These experiences of heightened reality help sustain us when reality isn’t heightened at all.  Times when reality is all too real.

That’s what the disciples are facing.  After this time on the mountaintop with Jesus, the hard days toward the cross await them.  It’s going to get hard, really hard.  The disciples will doubt that what they are going through is worth it.  They will question where they are headed and wonder what they are working for.

And it will be this moment, on the mountain, when Jesus’ face appeared to shine like the sun and his robes became dazzling white – it will be that moment which will sustain them.  It will be this moment that will quiet their doubts and ease their uncertainty.

To make it from the mountain to the cross, they will hold on to this mountain-top experience as their hope and their vision.

So, too, do we stand in that place.  On Wednesday, we begin a forty day journey into the wilderness.  Luckily, we know Easter is at the other end.  We know that however solemn this Lent might get, there is resurrection waiting for us at the empty tomb.  But Peter and James and John – they didn’t know that yet, so this was all they had.

I said yesterday with the vestry that this space we’re entering, between Transfiguration and Easter, this time between the mountain-top and the resurrection is the place most of us spend most of our time.

Mountain-top experiences are few and far between.  They are so wonderfully special, that we can name them when asked.

Experiences of resurrection are equally memorable because they, too, don’t happen every day.  When they do happen, when new life does manage to sprout from death, it is amazing.  This is our hope as Christians, that resurrection is always possible.  But it is, all too often, a hope we spend a lot of time waiting and praying for.

So it’s the time between the mountain top and the empty tomb where we live out most of our days.  It’s not an easy place to be, always, but it is where we are called go.  We are called to go back down the mountain to bring the hope, the joy, the peace that we experienced there to a world that needs it.

We can’t live our lives on the mountain top – that was Peter’s mistake.  Peter sees the Glory of God in that moment -- Jesus’ transfiguration, standing there with Moses and Elijah  -- and Peter wants to build booths.  Peter wants to contain this moment in time and place and to stay there forever.  Why wouldn’t he?   But that not where the work is.  We long to live in the mountaintop experiences too.  Sometimes we think back to those experiences in our lives that are our own mountain top experiences and we long for life to be like that again. We want everyday at St. Paul’s to be like our first day at St. Paul’s.

But it’s a little like expecting every day of a marriage to be like the wedding day.  The wedding day is great to look back on, to remember when everything seemed clear, when everything looked perfect.  It is great to have that to hold on to, especially when things aren’t, well, so pretty, when they aren’t so perfect.

But as great as those mountain-top experiences are, we must, if we are to do the work of God, come down from the mountain and live out our lives as God calls us to.

And sometimes these mountain top experiences terrify us.  Sometimes we are caught off guard by these times when God manages to come close to us and we are surprised and more than a little scared.  Rather than building booths in hopes of staying there forever, we shrink away from these experiences.  We minimalize them, or ignore them or we run away to avoid feeling that vulnerable, that open to God, ever again.

This is usually my reaction.  When I had left the church in my 20’s and found myself aching for some connection to God, I would attend a church here and there.  But if the service spoke to me, if I felt the presence of God again, if I thought there was the possibility of a relationship with God again in this new place, it was a sure bet that I’d never return to that church again.

The disciples hear the voice of God and they fall to the ground overwhelmed by fear.

Our impulse, when God is near to us, is to try to stay in that moment forever and avoid returning to the “real world”, or it is to let fear get the best of us and avoid the possibility of such moments in our future.

But neither is an option.  Not if we expect anything to change in the world.

God calls us to the mountain top.

We need these experiences because everyday life is confusing.  Every day faith is a challenge. We need these moments to sustain us in the wilderness in which we live out the majority of our days.

What are your mountaintop experiences?  Think on those moments.  Pray on those moments. Let these moments sustain you.

Now let’s go down the mountain.  Together.

© 2011 The Reverend Jeffrey W. Mello