Sunday's Sermon Draft UPDATED

Hello all,

So I did it again this week. i wrote my sermon on Friday. (Thanks, Mark, for the pep talk to get it done.) Again this is a draft that I'll work on for Sunday. I'm really hoping it holds together. I think it does. Although, I think I'm stretching a bit to explain why we try and hold on to the dark moments as well as the light moments. I think it is true I just don't know that I'm fully saying why we do it. Anyway here it is. Enjoy. (This is now the actual version that I preached on Sunday. I changed a few things and also corrected the dessert to desert. Although I can imagine that it would be difficult to walk through the dessert.)

As most of you know I’m a member of a group of young clergy that were brought together as the result of the First Parish Project. Now we are able to continue meeting at least once a year through a grant from the Lilly Foundation. This past year we met at Westminster Woods up near Occidental. I love these people, we love one another. When we are together we share our struggles, we share our joys, we worship together, we cook together, we play together, we pray together. I have never felt more connected to any group of people than I do to these folks. It was a connection I felt from the very beginning of our relationship—I remember it distinctly. We first met in the food court of the Atlanta Airport and then rode about 3 hours in a van headed for North Carolina. I knew these people were kindred souls. And the delight I take in them has only grown over these 4 years or so. And inevitably the same thing is said at least once during our time together and that is this: so when are we going to build our little commune and all of us live and worship together forever? We want to hold onto the experience, we want to hold on to one another and stay there. Stay there in the midst of this joy and wonder and love. But inevitably we come down from the mountain and reenter our daily lives. Some would suggest that we are coming back to the real world, but I would disagree because it suggests that what we had up on that mountain wasn’t real. It was instead a mere figment of our imagination. But no the experience we had was real, it was as real as anything that any of us have ever known, perhaps more real. What it was though is only a moment, only one experience, and while it was profound and life changing it was only one moment among many.
That is the kind of experience that Peter, James and John had on that mountain with Jesus. It was an experience unlike any of them had ever had before. I must confess I don’t really understand what happened. Moses and Elijah appeared. Then a big cloud that they heard God’s voice echo out of “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him am I well pleased; listen to him.” Then Moses and Elijah disappeared and the cloud disappeared and everyone went down the mountain and Jesus said don’t talk about this until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead. Which you know the disciples had to be thinking “you’ve got to be freakin’ kidding me, we can’t talk about this?” But those are the facts. I can’t tell you any more than that. Well I can tell you about the one thing I do understand and that is after Moses and Elijah appeared Peter said, let’s stay here on this mountain. I’ll build you a house and Moses a house and Elijah a house and we’ll just stay here forever. Peter wants to stay here and bask in this experience. So that means whatever is going on here has to be more than can be expressed in words. It would have to be felt. And that I can’t explain—I think whatever it was that Peter, James and John experienced here is more than words can describe. Because this was clearly a vision and visions involve more than just facts. Visions are about seeing what is not there as well, they involve a little divine imagination. They saw something in that cloud that was so spectacular that they wanted to preserve it forever. There was a Peanuts cartoon: Linus and Charlie Brown are lying on their backs on the pitcher’s mound, staring up at the clouds in the sky. 

Charlie Brown says, Linus, do you ever see anything in the clouds?”

Linus: Well, yes Charlie Brown, I do. For instance, that one over there bears a striking resemblance to Michelangelo’s depiction of the Creation on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. 

And that one, there over the school, looks like a map of Scandinavia, see; there’s Denmark and Sweden. 

And that one there looks like a helix. Do you ever see anything Charlie Brown?

Charlie Brown: Well, I was going to say a Ducky and a horsey but I changed my mind. Peter, James and John saw things in that cloud that were dazzling and amazing. And they wanted to preserve that. They wanted to preserve it because they were afraid that it might not compare to anything else that they would ever experience. Have you ever had one of those experiences? An experience where you said, I could die now. Not because you are necessarily ready to die but instead because you can’t imagine it getting any better. That is how the disciples felt. They couldn’t imagine it getting any better than this. And then it got better after they saw Moses and Elijah they heard God’s voice. Now they really were afraid. Hearing God’s voice is awe inspiring. It comes with such weight. It also forever changes how you view the world. They will remember that day forever. They know that it will be a permanent marker. That was the day we heard the voice of God. This the first day after the day we heard the voice of God. This is the day after the day after we heard the voice of God. This is the first meal since we heard the voice of God. Well you get the picture. But they also want to hold on to it. They want to hold this closeness that they feel tight. They don’t want it to fade away.
It’s like the end of every youth camp. We would have to physically drag the youth onto the vans to leave camp. The experience was so great, so beautiful that they wanted to hold on to it. The world at the bottom of the mountain was so much harder than this experience in the cloud. And the disciples had already been told that Jesus must go to Jerusalem to die. Just one chapter before Peter tries to tell Jesus to stop talking about it and is reprimanded. So they are beginning to get that their friend, this Messiah is going to have to be killed. Life on the mountain is a lot better than it is going to be. So let’s just hold on to this experience. Let’s freeze it in time and just bask in its glow forever. But they couldn’t. When they looked up again it was all gone, Moses, Elijah, the cloud, and they had to go back down the mountain.
I’ve been thinking though this week that we don’t just try and hold onto the mountain top experiences. Sometimes we want to linger too long in the negative ones too. The painful moments that also completely altar how we see the world. We got some more bad news about my brother this week. And so while we still have a little bit of hope, it is looking more and more likely that he might die soon. And so I’ve really been thinking about how this is going to forever reframe the moments of my life. This is the first Christmas since my brother died, or this is the first birthday since my brother died. And I think that is only natural, but Jesus is saying we can’t get stuck there. And I think often we get stuck in the darkness for the same reason that we get stuck in the light. We want to hold on to it because we are afraid. We are afraid that if we let go we’ll forget. Or we are afraid that it will only get worse, so we’ll stay here because it is better than it could be. Or we stay here because we think this is probably as good as it will get. I will never get over this loss—I’m afraid to go on. The future is too dark.
But the truth is we can’t hold on to this either. Today is the end of Epiphany. So it is appropriate that this Transfiguration story appears the week before Lent begins. We have been spending these weeks talking about Jesus’ birth, the magi following a star, the glory and splendor of Jesus and next week we begin the march to the cross. We journey through the desert of Lent. And to all of this Jesus says do not fear. Jesus says stand up Peter, lets go down the mountain. You can do it. Do not fear. Nothing will be too great that you will not be able to handle because I am going with you. As we look to the desert, as we look to the foot of the mountain, as we look to Jerusalem I will go with you. And then he says what as I pointed out earlier must have completely mystified the disciples but I think it is so important to remember as we set out for the desert. As we try and hold on to the moments of our lives that we think can’t get any better or any worse. And that is don’t tell anyone until after the Son of Man has been resurrected. Essentially what he is saying is this moment, no matter how beautiful, it pales in comparison to what is to come. I think he is trying to say you’ll understand this experience more clearly after the resurrection. And I think that might be true. But I also think it says don’t hold on to any moment out of fear—while you will be changed from this moment on, while the world will look completely different, you need not fear because I am going to go with you forever. All the death that you are so afraid for me to experience, all the death and darkness that you are afraid of, do not fear. Because there is light on the other side, beautiful glorious light. You may not be able to see it yet, but it is there. Just come down from the mountain and keep walking.
And so I’ll end Epiphany with this poem. A poem that I think serves us well as we come down from the mountain, as we let go of our fear.

"Grounds for Hope" by Gerhard Frost

If I am asked
what are my grounds for hope,
this is my answer:
Light is lord over darkness,
truth is lord over falsehood,
life is lord over death.

Of all the facts I daily live with,
there's none more comforting
than this: If I have two rooms,
one dark, the other light,
and I open the door between them,
the dark room becomes lighter
without the light one
becoming darker. I know
that is no headline,
but it's a marvelous footnote;
and God comforts me in that.

Amen.