Celebrating the Gifts of Women Sunday

“A Forgotten Woman”

            Genesis 16:1-11, 21:8-20

            March 4, 2012/Second Sunday of Lent

The common lectionary, which is the three year cycle of scripture passages assigned for every Sunday and the different holy days, walks us through a large majority of the Bible.  It is designed so we hear from the Old and New Testament, stories, psalms, prophets and epistles.  Each year focuses on one gospel, with a whole lot of the gospel of John thrown into as well.  I use the lectionary for my preaching, but as good as it is in teaching us a large part of the Bible, there are still many stories that don’t find their way into any of the Sunday readings.  For one reason or another, they are left out.  The story of Hagar, Sarai’s Egyptian slave girl, and son, Ishmael, is one of those stories.  Hagar’s story can be found in the chapters before and after this morning’s passage from Genesis, Genesis 16:1-11 and 21:8-20. 

Why the story of Hagar?  Why should she be our focus for this day instead of the lectionary passages we’re already given?  It’s also important to know that our denomination has designated this Sunday as the Sunday to Celebrate the Gifts of Women.  While it is true that the gifts of all people should be celebrated on any given day, the emphasis for this day is women’s gifts, the gift of Hagar’s story in particular.  Both testaments are filled with stories of women whose voices we don’t hear very often.  Hagar’s is one of them.  Hers may not be a familiar story to some.  But her voice, her story should be lifted up.  Too often she is a forgotten woman.  But today, in our midst, she is forgotten no longer.  Today we hear the story of Hagar.   

I am Hagar.  I am one of the forgotten women.  I had no power, no say over what happened to me.  I was a slave in the service of Sarai.  She wasn’t able to have children, so she gave me to her husband Abram.  My son, Ishmael, was Abram’s son.  My son, Ishmael, was Sarai’s son.   

“Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, bore him no children.  She had an Egyptian slave girl whose name was Hagar, and Sarai said to Abram, ‘You see that the Lord has prevented me from bearing children; go in to my slave girl; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.  And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai.  So, after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Caanan, Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her slave girl, and gave her to her husband Abram as a wife.  He went into Hagar, and she conceived;”         

I am Hagar.  I am one of the forgotten women.  I had no power, no say over what happened to me.  But I could give Abram a child and Sarai could not.  I was a woman in a way that Sarai could not be.   Sarai complained to Abram that I showed her contempt, and Abram told Sarai that she could deal with me however she wanted to.  Sarai took him at his word.  She was harsh, unkind and my life was bitter.  I ran away. 

            “And when Hagar saw that she conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress.  Then Sarai said to Abram, ‘May the wrong done to me be on you.  I gave my slave girl to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt.  May the Lord judge between you and me!’  But Abram said to Sarai, ‘Your slave girl is in your power; do to her as you please.’ Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she ran away from her.”

I am Hagar.  I am one of the forgotten women.  I had no power, no say over what happened to me.  I ran away from Sarai and I was never going back to her.  I sat next to a spring there in the wilderness, and that’s where the angel of the Lord found me.  The angel told me to return, to listen to Sarai and do what she said.  Then the angel of the Lord made a promise to me.  The angel of the Lord told me that my offspring would be too many to count.  I was told the child I was carrying was a son and his name would be Ishmael.  It means ‘God hears’ and God did hear me.

            “The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur.  And he said, ‘Hagar, slave girl of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?’ She said, ‘I am running away from my mistress Sarai.’  The angel of the Lord said to her, ‘Return to your mistress, and submit to her.’  The angel of the Lord also said to her, ‘I will so greatly multiply your offspring that they cannot be counted for multitude.’  And the angel of the Lord said to her, ‘Now you have conceived and shall bear a son; you shall call him Ishmael, for the Lord has given heed to your affliction.’”

I am Hagar.  I am one of the forgotten women.  I had no power, no say over what happened to me.   Sarai gave me away, then abused me when I fulfilled her purposes. And Abram did not stand up for me against her.  But the Lord made promises to them too.  Sarai became Sarah.  Abram became Abraham.  And just as the Lord promised, Sarah gave birth to a son.  Isaac.  Child of laughter.  Sarah gave Abraham laughter in his old age.  When Isaac was weaned, Abraham called for a great feast to celebrate.  But Sarah saw Ishmael playing with Isaac.  Something happened when she saw that, because Sarah told Abraham to throw us out.  He did. 

            “The child grew and was weaned; and Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned.  But Sarah saw the son of Hagar, the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac.  So, she said to Abraham, ‘Cast out this slave woman with her son; for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac.’  The matter was very distressing to Abraham on account of his son.  But God said to Abraham, ‘Do not be distressed because of the boy and because of your slave woman; whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be named for you.  As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a nation of him also, because he is your offspring.  So Abraham rose early in the morning, and took bread and a skin of water, and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, along with the child, and sent her away.  And she departed and wandered about in the wilderness of Beersheba. 

            I am Hagar.  I am one of the forgotten women.  I had no power, no say over what happened to me.  Abraham gave me some bread and some water and sent Ishmael and I out into the wilderness.  They didn’t last long.  When the water was gone, I put Ishmael under a bush.  I couldn’t bear to watch my child die.  I sat away from him and waited for the end.  Ishmael was crying.  I was crying.  God heard Ishmael.  And the angel of the Lord called down to me.  The angel of the Lord told me that Ishmael’s voice had been heard, and he told me to go back over to Ishmael, pick him up, hold on tightly to him.  He will be a great nation.  My eyes flew open and I saw a well of water.  I drew from it and gave Ishmael a long, cold drink.  God was with my child.  I was not forgotten.

            “When the water in the skin was gone, Hagar cast the child under one of the bushes.  Then she went and sat down opposite him a good way off, about the distance of a bowshot; for she said, ‘Do not let me look on the death of the child.’  And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept.  And God heard the voice of the boy; and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, and said to her, ‘What troubles you, Hagar?  Do not be afraid, for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is.  Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with our hand, for I will make a great nation of him.  Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water.  She went, and filled the skin with water, and gave the boy a drink.”

            I am Hagar.  I was not forgotten.

            Hagar’s story is a remarkable one.  It is both ancient and contemporary.  Phyllis Trible writes that “all sorts of rejected women find their stories in her.  She is the faithful maid exploited, the black woman used by the male and abused by the female of the ruling class, the surrogate mother, the resident alien without legal recourse, the other woman, the runaway youth, the religious fleeing from affliction, the pregnant young woman alone, the expelled wife, the divorced mother with child, the shopping bag lady carrying bread and water, the homeless woman, the indigent relying upon handouts from the power structures, the welfare mother, and the self-effacing female whose own identity shrinks in service to others.” 

            In this season of Lent, as we make more time for personal repentance, I suggest that in light of Hagar’s story we also strive to be more intentional in our corporate repentance.  Wittingly or unwittingly, we buy into and support structures and systems that are unjust.  We may not be the hands that directly harm and oppress the contemporary Hagars of the world, but that doesn’t’ necessarily mean our hands are clean either.  We must wrestle with the reality that our great forefather and foremother were the ruling class that exploited Hagar. 

            In spite of her powerlessness, Hagar was a woman of courage.  She too trusted enough in God’s promises to listen, to believe and do what was asked of her.  Hagar is also our foremother.  In her, in Sarah, in Abraham, Judaism, Christianity and Islam find their origin.  Hagar’s is a voice that must be heard.  Hers is a story that must not be forgotten.

            The Word of the Lord.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

A Poem for Lent

Wilderness

Manna, day by day

was not enough to cease

their murmuring

the Israelites dissent against

apparent abandonment

Driven out, a test, a trial

Jesus endured praying

hungry, weak, still

he confounded the tempter

until the arrival of angels

Following fire

certain of path and plan

I did not see the

sand erasing my tracks

Which is worse?

being lost

or

being found

Finding Ourselves in the Wilderness

“Into the Wild”

Mark 1:9-15

February 26, 2012

First Sunday of Lent

            Word of advice.  If you’re about to go camping in Yellowstone National Park, do not read a book called “Death in Yellowstone.” 

            When I was expecting Phoebe, Matt and I went on a three week trip out west from our home in Albany, New York.  I had never been to Yellowstone or the Tetons, and Matt, who is a national park enthusiast to put it mildly, wanted me to see them. 

            We made it to Yellowstone, our first and primary destination, and were staying with some good friends of his, both Yellowstone employees, who were living in an employee trailer.  The plan was to stay one night with Mike and Christine and the next night we would spend in our tent at one of the many campsites in Yellowstone.  And we almost did just that.

            While we were at Mike and Christine’s, she showed me the book “Death in Yellowstone.”  I skimmed the table of contents and decided to read the death by bear chapter.  Grizzly bears that is.  To this day I don’t know what possessed me to do that because I am scared to death of grizzlies.  They rate right along with snakes in my list of creatures I don’t want to meet – ever. 

            Still I read all about death by bears.    

            The second night arrived.  Mike and Christine followed us to the campsite Matt reserved.  I found out as we made our way to the campground that this particular camping destination is the last to open to the public because the grizzly bears feed there the longest when they come out of hibernation in the spring.  The nice man who checked us in to the campground gave us a long list of bear not-to-do’s, and it seemed that everywhere we looked there were signs up about bear safety.  Bear safety is what you practice if you don’t want to wake up in the morning and engage in pillow talk with a hungry grizzly.

            So I’m taking all this in while still processing the chapter on bear related deaths that I’d just read.  And I’m getting a little nervous.  But I persevere.  We set up camp.  Mike and Christine help us put up our tent.  We build a campfire.  We cook dinner over the campfire.  We make smores, sing some campfire tunes and then it is time to say goodnight.  As Mike and Christine are saying their goodbyes and preparing to leave, I look at the tent, look at the campground, think about the bear chapter and say, “I can’t stay here.” 

            Not only was I freaked out about bears in general, I was pretty sure that since I was expecting a baby, I would be a doubly delicious treat for any bear who wandered by.  I convinced myself that a bear would be able to sense me over and above other human treats, so I just couldn’t do it.  I was pretty sure that me in a tent equaled a grizzly bear goody bag, so I could not tent camp in bear country.

            Being the expectant momma does carry some weight, no pun intended.  I was to be appeased, so when I said I couldn’t sleep in that tent, they took me seriously.  We packed up and headed back to Mike and Christine’s where I spent another peaceful bear free evening. 

            I’m sure you’ll be glad to know that since that time I have managed to tent camp in Yellowstone with no bears involved.  That trip yields its own set of stories, but those will be for other sermons. 

            In spite of the bears and other wild beasts, I am grateful that I’ve gotten to experience some of the wilderness places still left in our country.  I’m grateful that some visionary, far-thinking people over the course of our nation’s history realized that those wilderness places needed to be saved, conserved, left wild.  That’s why national parks came to be, to keep the wilderness wild. 

            It’s funny how on one hand I can laud our country’s national parks, while on the other hand I come to this day – the first Sunday of Lent, the day when the lectionary turns to Jesus’ time in the wilderness – and the wilderness takes on very different meaning. 

            When Jesus goes into the wild, he’s not going on vacation is he?  This isn’t just a camping trip with friends and a time to check out his working knowledge of bear safety.  Jesus goes into the wilderness and is tested.  He is tempted.  In some ways, he relives in 40 days and nights what the Israelites endured for forty years. 

            As we should expect at this point in our year with Mark’s gospel, Mark’s version of the temptation story is much sparser, much sparer than the other gospel accounts.  I’ve said before that Mark’s gospel is an urgent one.  He doesn’t have time to waste on a lot of detail.  It’s as though Mark’s saying, “Look folks, here’s the deal.  This is the gospel of Jesus the Christ, the Son of God.  So we need to get moving because Jesus is moving.” 

            But even with as few details as Mark provides, there is still much to learn, much to ponder about Jesus’ wilderness experience.  According to the Greek, what is translated as driven by the Spirit is better read as picked up and thrown.  Jesus is tossed into the wilderness.  Immediately.  Immediately upon Jesus being baptized and hearing God’s confirmation from the heavens, he is thrown into the wilderness for 40 days.  He is tempted by Satan.  He’s there with the wild beasts and angels wait on him. 

            Those are the extent of our details.  But even in this brief description, we can come up with one picture of the wilderness that is terrifying.  Just the thought of Satan sounds scary.  Wild beasts?!  Yikes!  I couldn’t tent camp one night at the mere thought of a bear, Jesus was with wild animals for over a month. 

            One of the theological conclusions that we draw from the wilderness stories is that Jesus was tempted just like us, but he doesn’t sin in response to temptation.  This helps us establish him as both human and divine.  He faced temptations.  They were real.  In his humanness he may have wanted to give in, but his divine nature resisted.  He overcame. 

            This is a stark contrast to what we think of when the Israelites are wandering around the wilderness.  The surface conclusion to their time in the wilderness is that God left them out there because they wouldn’t learn to listen to God.  They were rebellious and difficult and murmured against God all the time.  Thinking about it in parental terms, God grounded them to the wilderness until they could come out with a better attitude.  It’s just that the attitude adjustment took 40 years.

            It seems logical then that we speak of our wilderness times as the times we’ve had to endure – hardships, sacrifice, temptation, struggles.  Endure seems to be the key word here.  We have to endure the wilderness.  We have to go into those wilderness places because Jesus went there.  We’re like the Israelites, always complaining, never fully grateful for what we have, for what God has done for us, so we are sent into the wilderness, whether it’s spiritual, physical, emotional or all three and more.  We endure the wilderness until finally we can work our way out breathing a sigh of relief that we survived.  The grizzlies were fended off, the rain flap held, the tent didn’t collapse in the night, we survived. 

            Yet as we make our way into this new Lenten season, I wonder if this is just one side of the wilderness.  Maybe this is too one dimensional of an understanding of what the wilderness is and what happens to us while we’re in it. 

            Think again about the wild places in our country, national parks or otherwise.  Why have people raised their voices over the years to preserve them, to keep them?  I think in particular of John Muir, who so passionately worked for the conservation of Yosemite.  Why did he dedicate his life to activism on behalf of a wild place?  What I know of Muir is this – he understood that in nature, in the wild, he was able to come back to himself.  The wild helped form his identity. It taught him about who he was in relation to God’s creation. Being in the wild shaped him.  And when Muir was too long gone from the wilderness, he would sense a need to return, because in the wild he found a restfulness, a peace, a sense of identity that he did not find anywhere else.

            Muir understood who he was in the context of the wild.  Maybe that’s the other side of the wilderness that we overlook.  The Israelites became the Israelites in the wilderness.  That time shaped their identity as a nation, as the people of God.  They didn’t go through it gracefully, far from it, but that didn’t take away the power that the wilderness had in their formation. 

            Maybe Jesus is thrown into the wild for the same reason.  It is there, in the wilderness, in the midst of the wild beasts, the temptations, the struggle that he comes fully into himself as God’s Son, the Beloved.  Perhaps going into the wild was the true confirmation of his baptism.  Jesus came into himself in the wild.  When he emerged on the other side, the course of his ministry was set, and he did not veer from that path. 

            Perhaps rather than seeing Lent as a season to endure until we arrive at last at the bright colored eggs of Easter, we should see this time as a call.  It’s a call to go into the wild and embrace it.  Let it test us.  Let it shape us and form us.  Our mettle will be tested and temptation is everywhere, in Lent and out, it’s true.  But I don’t see going into the wild as a test to see if we will break or not.  I don’t think God is trying to break us down by calling us into the wilderness.  I see the wilderness as the place where we come into ourselves, the true fullness of our identity as the children of God.  Let us go into the wild.  Amen.

How Do We Worship?

“Going Through the Motions”

Isaiah 58:1-12

Ash Wednesday/February 22, 2012

            High school was a time of going through the motions for me.  With the exception of my eternal struggle to understand math, I didn’t find it very challenging.  I had one thing that kept me going, and that was Varsity Choir – and boys.  Okay, that's two things.  But Varsity Choir was my true love and my saving grace, and I focused on that, and stuck it out in everything else because I had to.  The understanding in my family was that getting an education was not optional.  College was a given, and in order to get to college, I had to be in high school.  I had to get through it, so I went through the motions.  

            High school is not the only time in my life where I’ve felt as though I’m only going through the motions.  I’ve had jobs that have been the same way.  You just try to make it through every day, look like you are into what you’re doing and go through the motions.  As my friend Chris says, “You fake it till you make it.”

            Every aspect of life can feel this way at times.  Even things you used to do with great passion and energy become rote.  I notice this at times in our worship.  Usually with the things we say or do every week – like the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostle’s Creed.  In the Apostle’s Creed we are confessing what we believe, and we may believe passionately in the words that we utter.  But think about how it sounds when we say it. 

            Hear the most monotone voice you can imagine in your head, then these words …

            “I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth …”

            Perhaps we are just going through the motions.

            For the Israelites, fasting, religious ritual and their other religious observations had become times of going through the motions.  They participated in the rituals and kept the observances, but their heart wasn’t in it. 

            In the particular context in which Isaiah wrote, fasting was not the devotional practice that it is today.  At that time fasting was done during a time of mourning or as a response to a crisis.  And the Israelites have certainly reached a crisis.  Commentators and biblical scholars refer to these last chapters of Isaiah as Third Isaiah.  Although this is controversial, it is speculated that a third person writing in Isaiah’s name was continuing on with the prophetic tradition.  And in these last chapters of Isaiah, third or otherwise, the Israelites have returned to their homeland.  They have been rescued out of exile in Babylon – they have been redeemed from their time of banishment.  They have come home. 

Even though this particular homecoming has been years in coming, the novelty has now worn off.  The hard work has begun.  The returning Israelites are faced with the enormous task of rebuilding, and they are starting to despair.  They are starting to lose hope.  Yet they continue to worship, they continue to practice fasting, but their heart is not really in it.  It’s almost as if they no longer believe in the promises of God and in his words spoken by the prophets.

Because the Israelites were going through the motions of worship, their fasting was not so much a way of practicing righteousness as it was a way to manipulate God. It’s as if they were declaring to God, “Look God, if we fast then you will see our devotion to you and our righteousness, then you will have to do what we want you to do.”

Yet God does not answer to this kind of false worship.  This is why at the beginning of chapter 58 the Israelites complain that they are not being heard by God. Their fasting is not being noticed.

God has noticed.  And God reminds them that true worship, true fasting is loosing the bonds of injustice, undoing the thongs of the yoke to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke, it is sharing your bread with the hungry and bringing the homeless poor into your house.  It is covering the naked and not hiding yourself from your own kin.  It is letting your light break forth like the dawn.

This is the worship we are called to offer to God – worship with our whole being, heart, soul and mind.  It is not taking the grace we are given for granted.  It is active, not passive.  It is manifesting God’s love in the very real, very broken world.  Worship is more than just going through the motions.  Amen.

Transfigured

“Jesus Came Down”

Mark 9:2-9

February 19, 2012

Professor McGonagall is the transfiguration teacher at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.  For those of you who are Harry Potter fans like me, you already know this.  But whether you are a Potter fan or not, this may be one of the few references we find to transfiguration outside of this particular story in the gospels. 

Transfiguration in the Harry Potter stories means changing one thing into something else.  So the students practice turning one object into another.  I believe in the movie, they try to turn rats into teacups.  It’s not an easy magical skill to master as you can imagine. 

According to J.K. Rowling’s understanding of the word, transfiguration means to change from one thing into something totally different.  But is that what’s going on in our scripture passage?  Let’s hold on to that question.

The Greek word that is translated as transfiguration is metamorpho.  Our word metamorphosis also comes from this.  I learned the word metamorphosis when I was a sophomore in high school.  My German teacher talked about it in class one day and suggested a book called The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka.  It tells the story of a man, Gregor Samsa, who goes to sleep one night as a man and wakes up the next morning as a large insect.  He is still Gregor.  He know who he is, has the same awareness he did the night before, but he is completely different.  He is metamorphosed into an entirely new creature. 

Is that what happens in Mark’s telling of the transfiguration of Jesus?

Does the human Jesus change into an entirely different creation when he goes up on that mountaintop?  Or is just that his true nature shines forth in that moment?  Mark’s text is not exactly overflowing with details that help us understand what happens.

“Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, 3 and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. 4 And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus.”

Jesus goes up the mountain with Peter, James and John.  Every biblical scholar I’ve read refers to these disciples as the inner circle of Jesus’ disciples.  They were the ones who were closest to Jesus.  However last summer at the Synod of Lakes and Prairies Synod School, Anna Carter Florence, the  keynote speaker for the week and an amazing preacher and teacher of preaching, made the comment that perhaps they weren’t the inner circle as much as they were the remedial group. 

Maybe they weren’t so much favored by Jesus as they were in need of some extra help, some extra understanding.  And this makes sense to some degree because our text starts off with the words “six days later.”  Six days later from what?  What happened six days earlier?  Six days earlier Jesus had begun to teach the disciples that being the Messiah, the Son of Man wasn’t what any of them expected it to be.  It meant that the Messiah would suffer.  It meant that the Son of Man would be rejected by all the religious authorities.  It meant that the Messiah would die and after three days of really being dead, would rise again.  According to Mark, Jesus tells them this quite openly. 

Jesus tells them all this because of an answer Peter gave to Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am.” 

Six days before our text today Peter confessed that Jesus was the Messiah, but the minute he heard the rest of it, the cost of it, he told Jesus to stop talking such nonsense. 

Now, six days later, Jesus brings Peter, James and John up a mountain.  And there he is transfigured before them.  Mark gives us no other explanation as to what that means other than Jesus’ clothes turn a dazzling white, whiter than any human made bleach could make them.  In other gospel accounts, Jesus’ face shines.  There are a few more clues as to the transfiguration of his countenance as well as his clothes.  But this is what we have in Mark.  Jesus is transfigured before them.  And while he is transfigured, he is joined by Elijah and Moses.  The disciples see these two great figures of their faith, their history, talking with them. 

They are terrified, which I think is a reasonable response.  I probably would have been terrified too.  Peter, out of his terror, wants to respond somehow, so he offers to build booths for them to stay in.  Just as he makes this offer to Jesus they are overshadowed by a great cloud.  And out of that cloud a voice speaks.

“This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him.” 

The voice that only Jesus heard at his baptism is now audible to these three disciples as well.  Although I’m sure the numinous atmosphere must have felt dreamlike to the bewildered, terrified disciples, it wasn’t a dream.  It was real.  They witnessed, at least for a moment, the human Jesus that they knew transfigured into the divine Jesus that was also his true nature.  For just a moment they witnessed glory.

I realize that this doesn’t bring us any closer to understanding exactly what happened in that transfiguration.  But I’m not sure that it serves our purposes to know.  Maybe it doesn’t matter that we don’t understand it.  We just have to trust that something happened to Jesus on that mountaintop that gave the disciples, inner circle or remedial group, a glimpse of the fullness of who Jesus was – his humanity and his divinity all together, all at once. 

And while they were in the power of that moment Peter expressed what I suspect all of them were feeling, the desire to stay there, to stay in that moment.  Which isn’t surprising either.   When it came to Jesus, the moments when the disciples “got it" were few and far between.  Actually, in Mark’s gospel, they never really get it.  They never  fully understand who Jesus is and what he came to do and fulfill.  So it makes sense to me that when they are confronted with his glory, when they have his Sonship confirmed by a terrible, wonderful voice from a cloud, it was natural that they want to stick around.  Staying on the mountain keeps what they’ve seen and heard real.  When they go back down the mountain, the glory is going to fade, the voice is going to become distant, the edges of the moment will start to dull and blur.

Because that’s what happens, isn’t it?  We have what is referred to as a mountaintop experience, and we want to stay in it.  When I was a young Senior High youth advisor, I went with my youth group to the Montreat Conference Center outside of Asheville, North Carolina.  Every summer Montreat hosts several weeks of youth events for Senior Highs.  It is a life changing experience for everyone who has the opportunity to go.  The conference itself is amazing.  Friends are made, bonds are formed.  It’s incredible for youth and adults alike.  And you are actually on top of a mountain.  So when I say it was a mountaintop experience for me, I mean that literally and figuratively. 

Yet once the week was over, we had to go back down the mountain.  We had to go home, back to the daily grind of our lives.  We had to go back down and reenter reality once more.  I remember feeling so joyous while I was on the mountain, so alive and ready to be a better disciple, a better person, but once I left the mountain that feeling of joy, of zeal was hard to sustain. 

Maybe the disciples suspected this would be true as well.  Maybe they didn’t.  But either way, they went back down.  More importantly, I think, Jesus went back down.  We never think about what it may have meant to Jesus to be transfigured.  Did he know exactly what would happen to him when he took the disciples up the mountain?  Did he discern a call from God to climb that peak that day?  Or did he just have a gut sense that going up the mountain was the right thing to do, for the disciples and for him? 

Regardless, Jesus went up.  And Jesus came down. 

I wonder if going down the mountain was even harder for Jesus than it was for the disciples.  I wonder that because Jesus had to have known what he was he was descending to.  He went back down to so much pain, so much need.  Yet Jesus came down.

Jesus came down.

He came down because staying on the mountain was not what he was there to do.  He was called to a broken world, and that broken world was in the valley below.  There he was called to be, to preach, to teach, to heal, to proclaim the kingdom of heaven. 

Staying on the mountaintop, basking in God’s glory is a wonderful thing.  And we are indeed called to glorify God.  But if there is a danger in descending because we may forget our moment with God, then there is an equal danger in staying because we forget the world that needs our witness. 

Staying on the mountaintop is equivalent for me to the many contemporary praise songs I hear.  It’s not that there is anything inherently wrong with contemporary praise music, nor the need to praise and glorify.  But what bothers me about these kinds of songs is that often they become more about the person doing the praise, then about the One who is praised.  They become, as my friend Kristen memorably put it, “Jesus is my boyfriend” kind of songs.  Or maybe for some of you, they become Jesus is my buddy songs.  Jesus is not my best bud.  Jesus is the One who came down.  Who went willingly into darkness to bring about the Light with a capital L. Jesus crossed that threshold from the mountain to the valley because he was faithful to God and the narrow way he was called to travel.  Jesus crossed that threshold.  Jesus came down.

Transfiguration Sunday is our threshold.  It is the threshold between Ordinary Time and Lent.  It is a glimpse of glory before we cross into the darkest time the world has ever known.  So just like Jesus and the disciples, we are called to come down from the mountain and to walk through the valley that awaits us.  But even as we walk that valley, let us cling to the memory of the mountain, the memory of God that lives in us.  Jesus came back down and so do we, to bear witness to the glory of God that illumines not just a mountain but the whole world, whether we can see it or not.  Alleluia.  Amen.