Community Church Sermons
February 18, 2007
The Seventh Sunday of the New Year
Luke 9:28-36
Listen To This Sermon!
If I close my eyes and become very still, I can almost recapture many of those moments. I can recall vividly many of the sights, sounds, smells, and significant people associated with the events. I ‘ll bet that you can too. I’m talking about the mountaintop experiences of our lives, called such in our culture because of the story in our New Testament reading this morning. The story conveys much of what we would expect. The sense of exhilaration felt by the disciples. A sense of awe concerning what they had experienced, and a yearning desire that the moment would never end. These are the good things that come from mountaintop experiences. Remember them?
The difficulties that come from mountaintop experiences however must also be acknowledged and confronted. When the sense of exhilaration and awe subside, and we recognize that try as we may, we cannot capture the moment permanently, we are often disheartened, depressed, or just plain bummed out. This is what happened to the disciples in the conclusion of our New Testament reading. They fell from the highest of highs to a jarring encounter with reality. This being true what should we do with the mountaintop experiences of life? We could never seek them, but could you imagine life without such? We could approximate them as closely as possible, and seek to live in the hollow utopia that results, but then that is not really living, is it? We could embrace them for what they are, and learn from them what they offer to teach us! What is to be learned from our mountaintop experiences? We learn at least the following:
I. Mountaintop Experiences Are Unpredictable, Unprogrammable, And Overwhelming: These experiences remind us of our lack of control, and our need for God and each other. I can see these three disciples huddled together, clinging to each other, and fearing that at any moment they may not survive the exhilaration with which they have been gifted. Has this happened to you in your mountaintop experiences? To whom did you cling? With whom did you share the exhilaration? What if it happens again? To whom will you cling? With whom will you share the exhilaration of the experience? The disciples teach us that the mountaintop must be shared with God and with each other. To be on the mountaintop alone, is much too dangerous!
II. Mountaintop Experiences Lift Us Out Of The Mundane And Connect Us To The Larger Purposes Of God: These experiences remind us that we are not alone in the enterprise of life. Confronted with the glory of Moses, Elijah, and Jesus, the disciples recognize their connection to a much larger story. The mountaintop teaches us that we are never alone in our journey of faith, and we could not be, even if we wanted to be alone. It is so easy to get so tied to our own story that we forget there is a larger story of which we are only a part. It is so easy to dismiss our story as insignificant until we see its place in the larger story. Through the glory of Moses, Elijah, and Jesus on the mountaintop, God reminds the disciples that something great is always occurring, even when we cannot see it from our perspective. To be on the mountaintop, is to be connected with the larger purpose of God.
III. Mountaintop Experiences Are Difficult To Articulate And Non – Transferable: Contrary to what we might anticipate, Luke tells us that this experience was not the first thing these guys talked about when they returned from the mountain. Their speechlessness reminds us how in our own mountaintop experiences, the best we can say to others is “You had to be there to understand and appreciate the experience”! Their speechlessness may explain why they wanted to capture the moment with the construction of booths so others could see and hopefully understand what they had experienced. Their speechlessness may stand in contrast to our own blathering to others about our time on the mountaintop, and our disappointed frustration when they do not seem to “get it”! Perhaps like the disciples we would do well not to speak until long after the event has passed. In our time of silence, God may teach us to have patience with others until they “get it”! To be on the mountaintop, is to learn to keep silence, until we can learn to speak carefully with others about the experience.
The goodness and the difficulty of mountaintop experiences, this is what the disciples held in tension from their experience of the Transfiguration. They were never the same afterwards, but they could not quite explain why to others.
This will also be true of our mountaintop encounters with God. May God give us the grace to share the exhilaration, to see the larger story, and to speak with careful patience to others about our encounter!