"Up on the Mountain, Down From the Mountain"
First Presbyterian Church
February 18, 2007
Peter S. Buehler
Luke 9:28-43
On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain,
a great crowd met him…
On the one hand, it sounds like the ultimate religious experience, a "mountaintop experience."
Luke's account of the Transfiguration, especially the part about the cloud that came and overshadowed the disciples, brings to mind for me a hike I would take with friends on a mountain in New England, one known for its unpredictable weather.
There would be blue skies at the base but then, a couple of hours into the hike, very suddenly, thick fog would come in from nowhere, you couldn't see more than 50 feet ahead, and you would be forced to rely entirely on cairns -- small mounds of stones placed by other hikers -- to keep to the trail. It was exciting and scary, because it was easy to get lost if you weren't careful; every year people were often lost on this mountain. Yet it was all worth it once you made it to the top; whether there was a view or not, you felt on top of the world, and supremely happy, and at peace, at one with everyone and everything.
Mountaintop experiences occur elsewhere, of course. We've all had them. In public and in private, in nature as well as indoors, on hikes and while driving in the car, also when we're sitting still, when for no particular reason -- perhaps in the midst of personal struggle and discouragement -- suddenly the curtain of doubt is pulled back and we get a glimpse of God's greatness, God's mercy. Like Peter we quickly want to build something to enclose the experience, to keep it from getting away. After all, this is the faith we have always wanted!
Being this sure of God, feeling this peaceful and joyful -- surely this is what it means to be spiritual! Can't it be like this always?
C. S. Lewis tells of giving a talk on theology to the British Royal Air Force, "when an old, hard-bitten officer got up and said, I've no use for all that stuff. But, mind you, I'm a religious man too. I know there's a God. I've felt him: out alone in the desert at night: the tremendous mystery. And that's just why I don't believe all your neat little dogmas and formulas about him. To anyone who's met the real thing they all seem so petty and pedantic and unreal!"
We're sympathetic. The experience of God would seem to make words about God, logic about God, and sermons about God tedious and irrelevant. In contrast, what's authentic and personal, what comes from one's life experience, is profound; anything less sounds like babbling, like Peter on the mountaintop, Master, it is good for us to be here. Gosh, golly, gee whiz. How about we build us some booths? Peter! Hush!!
Yet is the message of the Transfiguration, this glimpse the disciples had of the resurrected Christ, a message that they, and we, should not speak? That the mystery of God trumps the knowledge of God?
That words don't work nearly well enough, and therefore silence is best? Does the Transfiguration lead to the conclusion that everyone's experience of God is their own, that no one can argue with it, that personal experience is at the heart of faith?
There is no discounting the personal experience of God's grace in Jesus Christ, or that the glimpses of God we are given, our mountaintop experiences, are a great gift.
But they are not enough, and they are not the heart of faith.
Christian faith is what happens not just in those moments when we're on the mountain, but in the life we live down here in the world.
Our world.
It's why the scene immediately after the Transfiguration of Jesus mustn't be read separately. If the disciples thought the holiness of the mountaintop would give them a lasting glow, they had another thing coming. In fact they got chewed out pretty quickly by Jesus himself. Coming down from the mountain they were met by a crowd, all needy, all wanting something. The disciples must have felt like doing an about-face and running back up the way they came!
If you've ever come back from a church retreat feeling uplifted and full of faith, and then realized that you had a dozen voicemails and a hundred emails, and a mailbox full of unpaid bills, you know the feeling.
Yet it's why Jesus is so harsh. A man shouts to him and comes to him and pleads on behalf of his son who has been tortured his whole life by an evil spirit. The Lord quickly learns that he went first to the disciples and that their efforts to cast out the demon were unsuccessful. You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you?
Why the anger? Why didn't Jesus credit them for trying? At least they tried! Wasn't that all they could do? Isn't that all any of us can do?
Especially considering the fact that the disciples had just had this mountaintop experience and needed time to adjust back to the real world, the world that lives in the mountain's shadow, this tedious and exhausting place where things are always going wrong and people have needs that exceed everyone's ability to help?
We like to think that if we profess faith in Jesus, the Son of God who died on the cross to set humanity free from sin, the One who reigns as Lord over all the earth, and that if we follow Him, if we are reasonably faithful and obedient, he will be gentle toward us and forgiving of our lapses and limitations. And he is; he is indeed. We know Jesus by his gentleness. Yet he is not a one-dimensional Savior. Jesus is also capable of anger, and there are times we need to hear it. Times when we need correction; times when we use faith as a shield and a protection from people and from hardship, instead of a call to care, an urging to meet people as Jesus does and engage ourselves in his world, the world of human need.
Sometimes what seems like faith is not. If what we want most is a sense of closeness to God, the feeling of faith, rather than the obedience of faith -- the strength to meet Jesus in our needy neighbors -- then perhaps the Lord is speaking to us as strongly as he did to his disciples.
I came back from a retreat recently. The experience was wonderful.
I felt rested and recharged. The world looked good. But I got home and immediately noticed that gophers had located and burrowed through a section of our yard I thought I had made gopher-proof.
I was more than irritated. A sinkhole in another section of the yard had gotten worse from the rains, which I also thought had been repaired. More irritation. Other issues cropped up and my Spirituality Index plummeted; a lot of good that retreat did, my self-pity said.
I imagined someone coming up to me begging me to do an updated version of casting out an evil spirit, and I know what I would have said: Talk to Jesus about it. Don't bother me. I'm in no mood.
The next time I hear myself saying that, either silently or out loud, I trust I will also hear Jesus upbraiding me for getting faith in him wrong. For if faith is wanting to feel strong and spiritual at the expense of those who are needy and weak, then harsh words from Jesus are not wrong but right. In fact, they are a sign of his love.
Because sometimes we are proved by being reproved, for the Lord disciplines those he loves. And later, as we reflect, and let go of our pride, we realize that the valley is not so different from the mountaintop, that the Lord is present either way -- Jesus' anger is also his presence. If we listen to him we are guided and we are blessed.
So we hold the two parts of the story together, the otherworldly encounter on the mountaintop and the very human scene down below. Maybe what happened when the disciples came down from the mountain refocused them on what had occurred at the top. They saw it with their own eyes: Jesus was not just another prophet, as great as the prophets were. He was God's own Son, glorious and powerful, God's Chosen; and so God's command was simple: Listen to him!
Listen to him. Are we listening? We read the story of the Transfiguration and find ourselves thinking, If only we had regular mountaintop experiences with Jesus as the disciples did, then we'd be a strong believers with no doubts, with faith that could move mountains. But in fact that wasn't that way for the disciples either; it wasn't about the experience at all. The message wasn't and isn't about experiencing, the message is about listening and obeying.
How do we do that?
You may have seen a letter to the editor earlier in the week; the heading caught my eye: "What's God got to do with it?" The letter took issue with a man's faith testimony. Joe Bieger had had a severe and sudden unexplained memory lapse, wandering the streets of Dallas for 25 days, not knowing where he was. He lost 25 pounds; somehow he survived. In his words, "Everyone believes God brought me back for a reason."
The writer of the letter took exception; God had nothing to do with it, he protested. He went further, Why did God allow Joe to lose his mind in the first place? Why did God not give Joe a cell phone so his wife could call and ask where he was? The omniscient god was absent, or worse, nonexistent, the writer concluded.
How our world clamors for proof of God's presence and power!
It makes us sad, especially when we hear from someone who was literally lost and found, who believed his friends who thanked God for finding him. We have our own stories of being lost and found, do we not -- and no one can talk us out of crediting God and praising God.
Yet many are unconvinced, wondering out loud why God's power and love are not obvious to everyone as they were to a few at the Transfiguration. Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people, and good things to bad people? Why are there valley experiences at all, suffering and heartache in our world, and not always for everyone inspiration and certainty, as there was on the mountaintop?
Is it because we gain it as we go? Is it because we, like the people of Israel in the desert, gain the knowledge and the faith we need on the journey, as we go one step at a time, one day at a time? The message of our scripture, the scene on the mountain and the scene with the crowd, is a word about listening. Listening to God's glorious and risen Son, whom God loves, the One we glimpse on occasions of beauty, and joy, and grace, and healing, and mercy -- times when we are astounded to discover that we too have been found, loved, and filled with the miracle of new life.