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.
[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.
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