The (final) product--more or less of what will be preached tomorrow. The ending never gelled.
I did give it a try to aim at 1,000 words. It ended up around 1,600 which ended up to be about one page (or perhaps 300 words) shorter than my normal sermons appear. In the end I think I needed less words in some spots and more in others.
Blogging this week helped me break a few preaching habits/crutches, but it certainly didn't make for interesting reading. -grin-
I did give it a try to aim at 1,000 words. It ended up around 1,600 which ended up to be about one page (or perhaps 300 words) shorter than my normal sermons appear. In the end I think I needed less words in some spots and more in others.
Blogging this week helped me break a few preaching habits/crutches, but it certainly didn't make for interesting reading. -grin-
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I remember many years ago while on internship I sat with a young girl just starting out in kindergarten. We were sharing potato chips at a potluck and she had a level one reading book with her. I asked her how it was going… “Not good, Vicar, not so good.” “Why?” I asked. “This reading thing isn’t working for me…” “Yeah, it takes lots of practice doesn’t it?” “That’s the thing….remember when I was really little, like when I was four? I looked at all those six year olds and they made it look really easy.”
Remember that feeling? Way back when you were younger…yesterday, last year, last decade…when you thought today would feel different? Driving looks easy, until you do it. Your 20’s look like fun, until you are in the midst of them. A job and work seems so glamorous and exciting. I remember thinking that to have a phone with multiple lines at my desk to be such a sign of accomplishment.
Perhaps in the middle of our life it is all the paths we didn’t try that come to us as we lay in bed, exhausted by a day we never dreamed of. We ask ourselves, “How’d I get here again?”
Adulthood doesn’t turn out to feel the same we imagined it would. For some of us that might be due to a delusional childhood and adolescent imagination, for others it is because life took some harsh or dramatic turns. The parts we thought we’d love are torture and we are surprised by the places we find joy.
Some stages look unequivocally challenging…aging for instance, but I imagine no amount of explaining or empathy can really prepare you for the last decades of your life. And what you think you of 70 is different when you are 50 than what you’ll think of it when you reach 80.
For each of our lives there are probably some clear bench marks of our growth and development as Child of God and as human beings. We might call these moments our Mountaintop places—the holy days—not all joyous or celebratory, but holy. These are the days, where God’s presence is most felt—where perhaps the voice and hands of God comes most fully to us.
The Book of Mark is punctuated by a trinity of events that could be described as mountain tops moments, two even took place on mountains-each pivotal to the direction of the story, each hallmarked by a voice from the Creator.
At Jesus’ Baptism, a voice from God comes, “You are my son, the Beloved with you I am well pleased.” And with this proclamation, Jesus’ ministry begins…the unclean are made whole, paralyzed people can walk, storms are stilled, demons are cast out, thousands are fed, Jesus walks on water the blind can see…this vibrant ministry could have gone on for a very long time. Jesus had plenty of work left to do. But instead of keeping on, Jesus introduces a new and confusing teaching—that the son of Man must undergo great suffering and rejection. He will be killed and will rise again.
Like the disciples, we spend our faith life figuring out what this will mean. And you can’t fault them for not fully understanding what was happening.
They were still scratching their heads all the way to the top of the mountain in today’s Gospel lesson. The church marks this Sunday as Transfiguration Sunday, it becomes the second bench mark in Mark’s gospel…
As if the experience of following Jesus could get more thrilling and euphoric, Elijah and Moses show up and we are told Jesus’ is transfigured. He takes on a different appearance and his clothing appears to glow. And before Peter can interrupt in yet another way, a voice speaks…this time God gives a new command, speaking not to Jesus but to the disciples, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him.”
And suddenly they are alone with Jesus-whom they recognize again as the one they have been following…their eyes and ears are burning with the instructions. Jesus takes them back down the mountain side. In between stumbling over rocks and watching for solid footing, they argue over what this event means….over what rising from the dead would mean. Because while Peter gets a lot wrong, he understood God was working in a big, big way…and they realized they were to be a part of it….what part would they play, they wondered? Who would take the lead? How would it happen? When?
They came down the mountain and Mark uses this moment to pivot the Gospel narrative. And so does the church calendar…we find ourselves nearing Lent. We leave behind the stories of great power and healing that hallmark Epiphany…God in Jesus will continue to reveal God’s self to us, but now the focus shifts…
We look towards the final mountain top where a Centurion will call out, “Truly, this man was God’s Son.”
Many times in the few weeks, as we enter into prayer and devotions, we will imagine what the disciples felt. During the Wednesday worship services you will see photos from Israel and Palestine and you will stories from Pr. X’s travels. It is overwhelming at times to think of the journey these men and women took along side Jesus. It may seem as if our faith life bears little resemblance to the sacrifice and struggle they went through. Our call to discipleship may seem remarkably tame and safe…but if there is nothing else to bind our experience, I like to imagine that we are united in the human truth that life is often nothing like we thought it would be. You have to see each of them wondering how on earth this became their life.
Jesus showed the disciples, the leaders, and ultimately the world that God was nothing like we thought God would be either.
Just as our lives grow and take on new and seemingly more complex duties and responsibilities, so our faith life is meant to. It is easy to hear this gospel lesson—as a simple image of how we follow Jesus and have wondrous spiritual experiences. Or perhaps to find solace in the day to day life lived in the valley—in the places between the mountain top experiences…both are valid and perhaps helpful ways to read the gospel. Helpful that is if we were the focal point of the story.
It’s a story about God, of course, but we want to be more of a reflection of our own faith life as well. We like this shiny, glowing Jesus.
We like this Jesus just as we like these moments in our life. Somehow we believe the happy, shiny, glowing moments of our lives are what we are meant to strive for. The times when we are happy. But happiness isn’t the same as holy. That the real goal of life is to recreate reflections of God’s glory-those moments when God’s voice can be heard speaking into our lives.
We try to forget the bitterness, the broken, hard parts of our story. We introduce ourselves to one another, careful to carve out the rotten sections.
It’s an easy guess that we’d rather have the Jesus who came in glory as well. We’d like to forget the uglier parts of Jesus’ life.
A part of us wonder why Jesus ever left the mountain top…part of us has an impulse to keep trying to reach God by climbing and climbing and climbing the ladder of perfection. If I could just be a little bit more like Jesus, God will notice me.
It is a lifelong lesson that coming off the mountain top is what changed the world. It is the defining part of God in Jesus Christ—that God came down to us. That God’s glory is entangled with the cross at Calvary. There is no way to have one without the other.
It is never a story about how we get up to God or even about how perfectly we follow Jesus down the mountain…it is that in Jesus, God came to us, all the way down into our brokenness, fear, disappointment, and loss. To us, where we are at whatever part of life we find ourselves.
Our lives may not look like we thought they might. Some days we may not even recognize ourselves. The one constant that we trust in is that God is with us. Along side you, at whatever point you are at, God is leading you towards something new…
We are where we are because God has gone with us. God has come to us. God has come for us. The future may not look anything like we expected it to, but trust God will bring life to wherever you find yourself..today and forevermore.
Amen.
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