Changed by the Experience

February 27, 2022
St. John’s United Church of Christ, Union, Illinois

Ezekiel 17:22-24; Luke 9:28-36[1]

How many of you have ever climbed a mountain? Did you make it all the way to the top? How tall was it? Now, I’m from Colorado, so anything less than 14,000 feet is just a foothill. I have made it to the top of Pike’s Peak, and I almost made it up Long’s Peak when I was twelve. It gets really cold up there, and after a long morning of hiking, crossing meadows and streams and boulder fields, I had just had it. My father had mercy on me, and we turned around short of the summit.

There is a feeling you get when you summit. It’s called a “mountaintop experience.” It is a mix of exhilaration, exhausted gratitude, and powerful wonder at the immensity of creation. It is a rare experience, and doesn’t last long, but in that moment, you feel much closer to God that at any other time. Fortunately, you don’t have to climb a mountain to have a mountaintop experience.

A mountain-top experience can be described as a temporary, uncommon encounter with God that gives us a fresh awareness of God’s reality and nearness. It can happen at Veteran Acres, in Glacial Park, or at the Coral Woods Conservation Area. It can happen at the museum, the theater, or at church. It can happen floating over a coral reef or on the International Space Station. What makes the experience exceptional is the feeling of deep connection to God.

For me, that connection happens most often in nature. When I was growing up, we travelled to California each summer. Several times, we spent a week backpacking in the Sierras. Away from television, electric lights, and the sounds of the city, I encountered a peace that defies explanation. John Muir spent more time in the Sierras than anyone, I believe, and he wrote beautifully about those experiences. “Climb the mountains and get their good tidings,” he wrote in 1901. “Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.”[2]

This is what happened to Peter, James, and John as they went on this hike with Jesus. They went up the mountain to pray, and they received this vision of two great leaders of their faith, Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus. Moses reminds us of the exodus from Egypt and the laws and commandments that would order the lives of the Hebrew people. Elijah reminds us of the prophets who call the people to keep the covenant, to keep their hearts and minds focused on God.

In this vision Jesus himself was transfigured, meaning his face and clothes looked different, as if they were somehow filled with light. Maybe he seemed more real, more divine, or godlike, than ever before. And if that weren’t enough, they heard a voice saying, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”[3] It was a mountaintop experience that gave them peace and energy, and a closeness with God that changed their lives.

If you have ever had an experience like this, you know what it means to be transformed and changed through an encounter with God. Do you know someone who has had a life-changing encounter with the holy? Has anyone ever told you about an experience like this? The question I have for you, then, is how is life different after you’ve had the mountaintop experience?

When we’re having the experience, we never want it to end. We can easily identify with Peter when he said to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings…”[4] We might wish that this religious experience would somehow free us from our responsibilities in the world. We want to hold on to the good feeling and have God take away our uncertainty, our pain, questions, doubts, and needs. We might want to seek shelter from the chaotic world, and hold on to this moment of clarity. We try to build a retreat center on the mountain so it can be just you and me and Jesus, and we can stay here forever.

From time to time, we need to retreat from the world. Even Jesus tried to find time alone to pray, to re-energize, and to drink deeply from the living water of God’s Holy Spirit. Jesus, in this moment of Transfiguration, received the encouragement he needed from Moses and Elijah to return to the needs of the world with a deep sense of compassion and love for the people he ministered to. As he prepared to turn his face to Jerusalem and face the powers that sought to destroy him, he received the freshness of the winds and the energy of the storms.

Nothing lasts forever, at least not while we’re alive in this world, so we have to come down from the mountain. The hard part is that what we find when we come down from the mountaintop is precisely what we left behind when we went up there. That’s what happened to the disciples, to Peter, James, and John. As the story continues in Luke’s Gospel, they come down the mountain to find a great crowd, an anxious father, and a child possessed by a demon that the other disciples can’t cast out. Jesus comes down the mountain, aglow with the light of God’s glory, and has to get right back to work.

Now, if the point of this experience was only a personal feeling of peace, beauty, and love, then there is nothing really holy about it at all. I had this amazing experience and I feel great, but nothing really changed. And that is the difference between what the disciples saw on that mountain and what Jesus saw.

For Peter, James, and John, the view from the mountaintop was of the Son of God in all his glory, with Moses and Elijah representing the Law and the Prophets, symbolizing the fulfillment of God’s plans for the world. The disciples had an extraordinary experience, one that they would not be able to even talk about until after the resurrection, but it seems to have been too much for them. They come down from the mountain focused on themselves, which may be why they could not cast out the demon from the child. Maybe they were overwhelmed with the glory of God, and felt tiny and powerless in comparison. We can feel that way too, overcome with awe for the vastness of the world and our small place in it.

But what did Jesus see? The Gospel According to Luke doesn’t say. But here’s what I think he saw up there. Jesus looked out across the land and saw a world filled with needs and hurts. He saw a world filled with people who, for many different reasons, struggle to make it through life. What Jesus received on the mountaintop was the encouragement of his ancestors, a word of praise and confidence from his Father, and the strength he needed to see his mission of love and compassion through to the end.

For Jesus, the mission was crystal clear, and there was much work to be done. Shortly after this experience, Jesus and the disciples would make their way to Jerusalem where the events that led to the cross would unfold.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all of life could be a mountaintop experience? The thing is people can’t survive for long on the tops of mountains. The view is tremendous, but nothing much grows up there. People need the valleys and the plains, where things grow and life is found. From time to time, we all need the mountaintop experience to fill us up with God’s peace and power, to refocus our lives on the mission of sharing God’s love and compassion with the world. In the words of John Muir, “Come to the woods, for here is rest. There is no repose like that of the green deep woods… Of all the upness accessible to mortals, there is no upness comparable to the mountains.”[5] God will, however, always send us back down the mountain, changed by the experience, back into the world where people need us.

So, if you fill up your spiritual reservoir with the Holy Spirit here at church, come to the table! If you fill up best in the wilderness, come to the woods. Seek out a deeper connection with God, however you find the mountain top. Then let’s get to work bringing hope and healing to God’s people.  Amen.

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[1] The scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.  Used by permission.  All rights reserved.

[2] John Muir, Our National Parks, 1901, page 56.

[3] Luke 9:35, NRSV.

[4] Luke 9:33.

[5] John Muir, John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir, 1938, page 235.

Have Mercy

February 20, 2022
St. John’s United Church of Christ, Union, Illinois

Luke 6:27-38[1]

The Golden Rule is a pretty easy rule to follow. It just makes sense: Do to others as you would have them do to you. Show respect, be kind, smile. We can all do that. Jesus knows that. It’s when we’re responding to what someone else has done to us that it breaks down.

How can you love someone who doesn’t love you? How can you do good when someone has done you wrong? Would you lend to someone who is ungrateful? Can you be compassionate if the other person is wicked? We are much more likely to react to how we’re treated than respond with kindness. But Jesus asks us to be merciful.

Mercy is a gift. It can’t be demanded; it can’t be earned. If you have to earn it, it’s not mercy. If you have to pay back a kindness, it’s not mercy. In fact, mercy means compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one’s power to punish or harm. What was earned was punishment, yet what was given was forgiveness. That’s mercy.

Mercy is not the opposite of justice. Mercy recognizes that justice is not met when further injustice is done. Mercy is the understanding that punishment won’t undo the harm, won’t bring back the lost, won’t repair the damage done. Mercy shows that sometimes wrongs can be made right with generosity and love rather than retribution. Mercy is much harder to give than punishment. Compassion is much harder to show than anger.

To live a faithful life is to journey in faith, toward faith. On our journey of faith, not everything will be worked out in this life. Faith is knowing that there will be justice, and it doesn’t always have to come from us. This is not an easy way to live.

Rationally, we can make sense of the words of Jesus, rejecting reciprocity. Emotional, irrational people, many of us are more transactional in our relationships. We treat others the way that we are treated. We react to the way we are spoken to, and respond by meeting the emotional level of the other. Our history with another person affects how we feel, and if we’re used to defending ourselves, our defenses are always up. To respond without reacting, to seek reconciliation rather than reciprocity requires a deliberate reorientation of our thoughts and actions.

Of course, that is what Jesus does, changing our hearts and minds. This passage may be the most challenging message that Jesus brings. From beings who fight fire with fire, we are to become beings who fight fire with water, who respond to anger with compassion. This is hard. It takes real effort grounded in faith to stay calm in the storm. And this is why following Jesus means taking up our cross. The cross that most of us carry isn’t suffering and persecution; rather, it is doing the hard thing, the necessary thing to show love, peace, and mercy.

In a commentary on this passage, the Rev. Dr. Cheryl Lindsay writes:[2]

Mercy is essential to the character and nature of the Living God. God’s mercy is dependable, available, and abundant. Jesus embodied mercy in the same way that his physical being took on flesh. His life manifested mercy, and following The Way compels us to manifest mercy as well. Jesus’ message paints a vivid picture of a merciful life.

When asked by the Pharisees and scribes “‘Why do you eat and drink with tax-collectors and sinners?” Jesus answered, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance.”[3] Jesus came to seek out those who need a merciful God.

Most of us have probably internalized the idea that sinners deserve to be punished for their sins. God is seen as the divine judge, a God to be feared. But isn’t God also the source of love? Yes, those who have turned away from God, those who sin, deserve what’s coming to them. That is perhaps why God’s mercy is so transformative. Rather than rain down destruction, God continues to love, to have compassion, and to show mercy to those who have fallen away. Our divine Parent continues to seek for us when we’re lost, to keep the door open to us should we return home. What is asked of us is to love in that same way, to be merciful as God is merciful.

It is wise for us to remember that none of us is perfect. As Paul wrote in the letter to the Romans, “There is no one who is righteous, not even one… all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”[4] The promise of mercy is the gift that allows us to be reconciled to God. As Dr. Lindsay writes: “We can be hurt and wounded…and overcome the harm. We can be betrayed and be broken…and made whole. We can be thrown away and left for dead in a pit…but we can be elevated to heights we didn’t even seek.”[5]

We have been shown mercy. So let us show mercy. We are called to be merciful to our neighbors and even our enemies. We are called to forgive and not to judge, to give and not to condemn. It is in showing mercy that we receive mercy. It is in giving love and compassion that we receive love and compassion. “The measure you give will be the measure you get back.”[6] Therefore, have mercy.  Amen.

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[1] The scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.  Used by permission.  All rights reserved.

[2] The Rev. Dr. Cheryl A. Lindsay, reflection on Luke 6:27-38 for Sunday, February 20, 2022 on https://www.ucc.org/sermon-seeds/sermon-seeds-merciful/.

[3] Luke 5:30-32.

[4] Romans 3:10, 23.

[5] Lindsay.

[6] Luke 6:38.

By the Authority Vested in Me

February 13, 2022
St. John’s United Church of Christ, Union, Illinois

Luke 5:17-26[1]

We’re going to take someone to the hospital. There is a famous doctor there who can heal anyone. The problem is, we only have this blanket to help us move them. Do you think you can do it? Now imagine if, when we got there, there was a big line of people waiting to get in. What would you do? How about climbing up on the roof and making a hole so we could lower our friend down through it? Can you imagine the noise and the mess of stuff falling down from the ceiling onto the floor and the people below? That’s what happened in our bible story from Luke.

What was it about those friends that made them do it? They had loyalty. They would do whatever it took to help their friend, even if it was hard, even if they might get into trouble. They also had faith. They believed, they knew in their hearts, that Jesus could heal their friend. And their faith was so strong that they did something so outrageous, so crazy, that people are still talking about it two-thousand years later!

The man who had been paralyzed got up and he walked right out the door. “Immediately he stood up before them, took what he had been lying on, and went to his home, glorifying God” (v. 25). Can you imagine being there? Quite a show, right?

Close your eyes for a moment and visualize the scene with me. See the crowd packed into the room, spilling out the doorway. Feel the heat as they press against each other. Smell the hot, dry air and the warm bodies. Listen to the whispers and the scuffling of feet. Hear the voice of Jesus as he speaks to them. Feel the strain of lifting the pallet to the roof, the heavy breathing as they dig through the roof. Hear the crash and see the ceiling cascading down. Look at the anxious but determined face of the paralytic as he is lowered down in front of the crowd. See the scowling scribes, the amazement on the faces of the crowd, and watch them part in stunned silence as the forgiven and healed man walks out of the house with the mat tucked under his arm. You may open your eyes.

Jesus speaks: “I say to you, stand up and take your bed and go to your home” (v. 24). How much time passed as the crowd waited to see what he would do? What did the paralytic feel as he stood up to walk? What was he thinking? What did he say to his family and friends? We don’t get an answer to these questions. All we know is: “Immediately he stood up before them, took what he had been lying on, and went to his home, glorifying God” (v. 25).  Amazing! “We have seen strange things today” (v. 26) But if that is all you saw, you missed something rather important.

Why does Jesus tell the paralytic to stand? It is so that the scribes may know that “the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins (v. 24). This was a big deal, a challenge and a threat to the authority of the religious and political elite. It might even have been heard as blasphemy, as only God is supposed to have that kind of authority. This was also a challenge to the system that exerted control over the poor.

A professor at Pomona College, Jerry Irish, writes about the relationship between sickness and sin in Galilee at that time. “Apparently, Jesus’ healing ministry challenged the system in Galilee whereby the urban secular and religious powers exploited the rural poor. The sick among the peasantry, often in such a state because of excessive taxation or the expropriation of their land, were said to be so because they had sinned.”[2] They must have done something that got them sick, right? Germ theory was not understood before modern times… how else could they have become sick? They must have broken one of God’s laws.

If your sickness is sin-based, then the cure must be also. There weren’t, however, any clinics or pharmacies around. As Professor Irish explains: “Their only recourse was the temple, where they could remedy their sin, but only by giving up more of their meager resources, thereby increasing their poverty and the likelihood of further sickness.”[3] Even then healthcare was expensive.

So, Jesus comes along and cures the sick. That takes money out of the pockets of the temple priests. Plus, if sickness is divine punishment for sin, and Jesus can forgive sins as well, there goes the corner on the market for sin-forgiveness too. Oh, no. We can’t have that.

“From the scribes’ point of view, the forgiveness of sins is possible by God alone, through appropriate ritual ceremonies administered by authoritative, professionally trained priests, following the instructions in the Torah, in the holy temple.”[4] You can’t have just anybody healing people and forgiving sins willy-nilly. Where’s the accountability? Where’s the respect for authority? Where’s the profit to be made? (Oops, did I say the quiet part out loud?)

By healing and forgiving sins, Jesus reveals that God is not contained in a box. God’s power is not limited to the temple, or the priests, or even to the regular church attendees. Jesus challenges the social and religious structure of that time and place by demonstrating that God is not contained or constrained by human institutions. No longer do people need to go somewhere special or perform some sacred ritual to connect with God. God is here, now, in Jesus, in the paralytic, and in this gathered community.

If Jesus has the authority to forgive sin, then he speaks with the authority of God. He doesn’t say: By the power vested in me by the State of Illinois (or the State of Israel). Instead, he simply says “stand up and take your bed and go to your home” (v. 24). The power and authority of God is revealed in the new life of the paralytic, healed outside of the traditional procedures, forgiven directly by God, who stands up and walks out. And through that act, God challenges us to reexamine our thinking.

Luke asks us, is the paralytic a sinner who has forsaken his God-given duty to work the land, too lazy to work, or is he a reflection of a social system that offers him only poverty for his labor, if it offers him a job at all? If every advertisement promises the good life if you just buy their product, if every TV show has a happy ending, if hard work is not always rewarded with anything other than more hard work, is it a sin to be tired and sick? Can a person be broken down and burned out without being seen as lazy, unproductive, or useless?

The interplay between individual and society is complex. But a society where so many are one illness or one injury away from homelessness is not a healthy society. There are no simple solutions, and we disagree about the difficult solutions. But Jesus challenges us to seek solutions, not only for the individual who suffers, but for the brokenness of our society as well. Jesus walked through Galilee healing and teaching the peasants, and he engaged the powerful and the wise in considering a better way.

God knows who we are. God knows what we’re going through. God knows what we’ve done, who we have hurt, and who we have healed, because God has lived among us as a human being, in the person of Jesus, and God’s Spirit inhabits all of our hearts. God knows us and loves us. The psalmist says, “As a father has compassion for his children, so the Lord has compassion” (Ps 103:13)“He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities” (Ps 103:10). God offers us forgiveness, healing, and a life set free from all that paralyses us.

What if we repent of our sins? Can we receive the healing and forgiveness of God? Are we lying on the pallet hearing the words “stand up?” And if we do stand up, and walk out that door, as healed and forgiven people, what change do we bring? What people will know the love of God because of us? What broken systems will we put right? How will God’s justice and mercy be seen in who we are and what we do?

“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless God’s holy name” (Ps. 103:1).  Amen.

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[1] The scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.  Used by permission.  All rights reserved.

[2] Jerry Irish, “Theological Perspective on Mark 2:1-12” in Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, General Editors (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 382. Luke 5:17-26 is a parallel story with only slight differences, which I don’t discuss here.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Eunjoo Mary Kim, “Homiletical Perspective on Mark 2:1-12” in Feasting, 383.

Casting Nets

February 6, 2022
St. John’s United Church of Christ, Union, Illinois

Luke 5:1-11[1]

Simon and the others had caught nothing. After a disappointing night of fishing, they were cleaning their nets. There is a crowd gathering, and the focus of their attention, Jesus, hops in Simon’s boat and asks him to push off so he can speak from out on the water. As his voiced carried across the water to the folk gathered on shore, Simon had a front-row seat.

This was probably not the first travelling preacher Simon had heard. There had been others. Some, like John had called people to repentance. Others tried to gather an army to take on the Romans. This one was different. He wasn’t trying to get people to go somewhere in particular, or do something for him; rather, he spoke about becoming closer to God, cleaning up their hearts and souls, and caring as much for others as they did for themselves. He may have even used the cleaning of the nets as a metaphor for washing away sins and becoming like new again.

What he did next was also different. He said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.”[2] In practical terms, this was a big ask. First of all, they mostly fished in the shallows, closer to shore. That’s where the fish were more likely to be searching for food, and would be an easier catch. Then, knowing they had worked all night and caught nothing, Jesus asks them to go out to fish again. Then again, Jesus seemed so confident that they would catch something. “If you say so, I will let down the nets.”[3]

Doesn’t it seem as though it’s when were at the end of our rope, we’ve tried and tried without success, that God steps in, Jesus reaches out to us, not knowing whether we’ll even answer. In this moment with Simon, Jesus takes the risk, choosing this fisherman out of all the others, asking him to do what seems impossible. Neither of them could know there would be fish to catch out there, but Jesus asks him to trust, and try anyway.

People like the predictable, the routine. It is scary to take a risk on something new. Yet that is what Jesus is asking, of Simon, and of us, to put out into the deep, unfamiliar waters, to break with our routine and allow the extraordinary to become possible. Keeping to the safe and familiar, to the shallows, keeps us from experiencing the wider, deeper world out there. The most profound and significant experiences of God and life are found in the unknown, the unfamiliar, the moments when we’re asked to stretch beyond what we know to something more.

For Simon, there was something about this man that compelled him to leave the shore, and the shallows, and cast his nets in the deep water. Maybe it was that no one had ever asked him to trust in that way, by someone who risked looking the fool if this didn’t work. If there were no fish out there, Simon would not be surprised, and there would be no loss except for the need to clean the nets again. The worst that could happen is we don’t catch anything, again.

When the nets began to strain with the catch, Simon knew this was no simple preacher. He becomes aware that he is in the presence of the divine. He also recognizes that he is unworthy of such holy recognition, a sinful man who would rightly fear the power of God. What happens next is the real moment of transformation. What happens next is why we all respond to Jesus with trust, gratitude, and hope.

Jesus, the Son of God, mediator of the divine in human form, does not strike down Simon for his sin, his doubt, nor for any of his failings. Instead, Jesus casts a net to bring him in. Jesus casts a net to pull in James and John too, to capture their hearts and invite them into the relationship which will change their lives. “Do not be afraid,” he says, I’m not here to punish sinners, but to change you into saints. I am here to call you to the work of casting nets to catch people.

The thing about the net that Jesus is casting is that it is not the kind of net that turns animals into food. This is not a net that imprisons, but a net that frees. This is a net that pulls people from danger and death into safety, life, and love. “From now on you will be catching people.”[4] Not to make them captive, but to save them and set them free.

Simon and the others have been caught in the net of Jesus. Their lives transformed by this experience, these fishermen become disciples. In a commentary on this passage, Howard Gregory captures the change in Simon. “Having hauled in this huge catch of fish, having been given the opportunity to make a good return, thus reversing the earlier fruitless expedition, Simon now does the strangest thing. He pulls ashore his boat, with the catch, and walks away from it, livelihood and all.”[5]

Many of us recognize this moment of transformation. Something changes, perhaps our circumstances, perhaps something inside, and we make a vocational change. We may be forced out into the open water, or choose to walk away from what is not working for us anymore. For some, like me, it is a call to service in the ministry. Perhaps, like me, you have also made a life change. I used to work at a bank, and I made pretty good money. I walked away, and it cost me. It meant putting God at the center of my life, changing my focus from my self toward others. It has meant hard work, sometimes after a long night when no fish were caught. But following the Master has its rewards.

Not everyone in the crowd on the shore was convinced to follow Jesus. We only know that Simon, James and John went with him that day. But the net that is cast by the Lord is a big net, and we are still being caught in it today. I am grateful for the change it brought about in my life. I am blessed to have made a positive difference in the lives of people I have served. And I pray that you, too, may feel that net holding you close to the One who transforms hearts and sets spirits free.  Amen.

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[1] The scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.  Used by permission.  All rights reserved.

[2] Luke 5:4.

[3] Luke 5:5.

[4] Luke 5:10.

[5] Howard K. Gregory, Pastoral Perspective on Luke 5:1-11 in Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year C, Vol. 1, David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, General Editors (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), p 336.