Episcopal Church of the Messiah

Worship Service Sermons

February 14, 2010

God, Jesus, heaven have been a source of fascination for my grandson, and, especially when he was younger, he had many "God questions." How can Jesus be the son of God if Joseph was his father? If Jesus was God’s son, why didn’t he live with God? Where was God living that Jesus couldn’t live with him? And, if JESUS has babies, who gets to be the grandpa, God or Joseph?

Even as Trey has struggled to get his mind around Jesus, so, too, the disciples were struggling to get their minds around Jesus – this strange but compelling friend of theirs.

We – and they! – have seen tantalizing "pieces" of who Jesus is over the past several weeks of this Epiphany season: he has fed the five thousand with five loaves an two fishes; he has raised Jairus’ daughter, and healed the woman with a hemorrhage; he has cast our demons and restored sight to the blind; he has walked on water, stilled storms, related his famous, if confusing, parables. He’s equipped the twelve to heal, as well, sending them off two-by-two. And he’s had his share of "face-off’s" with Pharisees, making both friends and enemies as a result.

In the midst of all this activity, always Jesus has prayed, going off like Moses to a mountain top somewhere by himself to talk with God.

Each action of Jesus has opened a door to the greater reality of who Jesus is – and yet the disciples continue to fail to see what lies beyond the particularity of each event.

"Do you still not understand?" Jesus asks them.

Even when Peter acclaims Jesus as "the Messiah of God," the reality of what that means and the nature of Jesus’ ministry is not really understood. Like my grandson’s struggle to understand Jesus, the disciples have no framework or paradigm in which to grasp what Jesus is saying, no category in which to put him.

They are thinking in human terms, their understanding limited by their mortal minds, veiled, as it were, by their fleshly bodies…

Now Jesus, whose stories have never been easily understood, is saying even wilder things: that he must undergo great suffering and be killed, and on the third day raised. Jesus followers must be concerned.

Put yourself back in the first century, a friend, a follower of Jesus.

Why would he be saying such things? What could he possibly mean?

Is there something we don’t know?

Has Jesus gotten himself into some big trouble? He hasn’t even raised an army yet… And if he is indeed the Messiah of God, wouldn’t God keep him safe?

And so we’re concerned.

Maybe we want to take advantage of whatever time we do have with him.

Maybe we are driven by the need to protect him, to make sure he’s safe, that nothing happens to him when he goes off alone.

So today, when Jesus says he is going up the mountain to pray, we decide that perhaps some of us should go with him.

Together this morning we join Peter and James and John, all of us trailing along behind Jesus as he climbs the mountain.

What is our experience?

Jesus doesn’t say much – he seems lost in thought – but at first we banter back and forth with one another as we pass the distance.

But soon we, too, are quiet, concentrating on the climb, on putting one foot in front of the other. The terrain is rough; it’s hot, dusty, and the stones under our feet are troublesome, sometimes causing us to stumble.

Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all…

You and I - we’re urban dwellers – mountain climbing isn’t something that we usually do.

And Peter and the guys are more used to water than mountains – they were fishermen, after all!

This following Jesus is hard work, and it’s quite taken us out of our comfort zone!

Finally we reach the top of the mountain, and Jesus goes off by himself to pray.

We stay apart, at a distance. We’ll keep watch, make sure he’s safe.

Besides, we’re tired. We need to rest a while.

Sometimes we need to change environments in order to see or to understand – get out of our "comfort zone" – alter our routine – put ourselves in a new situation…

Sometimes we just need the journey to prepare us for what comes next.

Fortunately, for all that we’re tired after our struggle up the mountain, we don’t fall asleep! For there, on the top of the mountain, suddenly we see: Jesus, praying, with his face changed, his clothes dazzling white, surrounded by the prophets Moses and Elijah!

It’s as though a door has opened to cast heaven’s light on the deeper reality of Jesus, and we can see him as he really is.

My grandson asked me another question: "Granny, is it light or dark in heaven?" And then, musing, he came up with his own answer: "I think that it would have to be light so that we could see Jesus. But then," he continued thoughtfully, "even if it is dark, Jesus can see us!"

But – even if it is dark, Jesus can see us!

I think of that this morning: we are so often in the dark!

Like the disciples, we can see Jesus – but still we misunderstand: As quickly as we see, and we know, a dark cloud covers us and obscures our vision.

Sometimes I think it is knowing this about ourselves – our tendency to forget so quickly, or to misunderstand, that makes us confuse revelation-as-gift with revelation-as-possession, and we want to hang on to the light, we want to build dwellings that we might keep what we see, as a safeguard for the experience, the insight, the understanding.

For the disciples, it’s yet one more example of how their understanding seems to cycle back on itself, come in layers, deepening but imperfect: they see Jesus as the Messiah of God; they recognize him; they hear God’s voice: this is my Son; listen to him.

And they still don’t "get it." They still have a sense that Jesus is contain-able, that they can house him and keep him; that they can locate him in a time and a place…

They – and we! – don’t trust the experience, and the way it lives in our lives.

Several years ago my mother moved from her home of many years into a retirement community – a move which required condensing to a one-bedroom apartment. My brother, two sisters, and I each took a week to go help her with the moving process, as the task of going through things and packing up seemed daunting. She – and we! – began the packing-up process convinced we would need to rent a storage unit for all those things she couldn’t bear to part with, but which wouldn’t fit in her new home. Instead, what we found, to her – and our! – amazement, was that, having handled each item and told its story: I remember this – we got it in Norway in 1953 – she was able to let go of many things. She had shared the memory, and the story would live on, and it was the story that was important. She no longer needed the thing.

Similarly, Jacques Prevert has a marvelous poem in which he writes of "how to paint the portrait of a bird." "First," he tells us, "paint a cage, with the door opened. Make it inviting. Then, when the bird has entered the cage, instead of closing the door, confining the bird, very carefully, very gently erase one by one the bars of the cage, for only then will the bird sing…"

We do not possess beauty; we experience it; we allow it to enter us.

So, too, with Jesus.

No!

The power of Jesus in our lives is NOT because he is contained in a dwelling place on top of a mountain.

It is not because we have pulled out our camera, asked him to move a little to the left so that we can take advantage of this Kodak moment and snap his photograph with Moses and Elijah on the mountain top.

It’s not in the dwelling place or the shrine, the souvenir stand or the prayer card or the religious trinket.

The power of Jesus in our lives is his story; it is how he has transformed our lives so that when we leave the mountaintop – as we surely do, even as this week we descend into the wilderness of Lent – we will not be leaving him behind in one of those dwelling places, to visit now and again when time permits or the occasion demands.

When we descend that mountaintop, we will be carrying him with us, in our hearts, his story singing in our lives.

And sometimes, just sometimes, that story changes us so profoundly that it shows, and we may be aware that, like Moses, the skin of our face is shining.

Amen.