Up And Down

Scriptures:     Exodus 34:29-35,  Psalm 99

2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2    Luke 9:28-43

How many of us went to see the new Star Wars movie?  Actually, I got to go with my co-workers; a belated Christmas party had us going to a “Dinner Movie” place where you can order food and eat while watching the movie.  For the three of you who haven’t seen it, you’ll get no plot spoilers from me.  Actually, right now I’m thinking of the first Star Wars movie, made way back in 1977, nearly 40 years ago, and the sequel, The Empire Strikes Back, in 1980, and I’m feeling very old right about now, because it seems like yesterday that I saw them for the first time. What strikes me about these movies is that, when you see a lot of the main characters for the first time, they don’t look very impressive.  The first time Luke Skywalker meets his first mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi, he just looks like an old hermit wandering around in the desert.  The first time Luke meets Yoda, who would train him in the ways of the Force, the tiny Yoda behaves in a playful, bumbling way, greatly annoying Luke.   Neither Obi-Wan nor Yoda look terribly impressive at first glance. It’s only after spending some time with them that Luke Skywalker begins to see the power of the Force that they’re capable of wielding…..and begins to discover his own power as well.

Today is Transfiguration Sunday, when we read the account of Jesus taking Peter, James, and John – the inner circle of the disciples – to a mountaintop to pray.  Up to this point they had listened to Jesus teach; they had seen Jesus do some healings – all cool stuff, but there were plenty of other teachers around who had their own disciples, and there were even some people around who claimed a gift for healing.  But then, on the mountaintop, the three disciples are granted a vision of a radiant Jesus speaking with Moses, the lawgiver, and Elijah, the great prophet, about his upcoming suffering and death in Jerusalem.  Peter offers to build three booths, one each for Moses, Elijah, and Jesus, so that they could preserve and prolong the experience. You might say Peter wanted to savor the moment. But at this point they were overshadowed by a cloud, from which a voice was heard, saying, of Jesus, “This is my Son, the Beloved, listen to him.”  And then the vision ended, and they saw Jesus as before.  The three didn’t tell the others of their vision until much later.

They saw Jesus as before, but they likely never looked at him the same way again.  As they say on Facebook, once they saw something like that, they couldn’t unsee it.  They couldn’t forget it or ignore it. They had seen a vision of Jesus, radiant as they’d never seen him before, conversing with perhaps the two greatest figures in Jewish history.  Peter wanted to build each of them a booth – suggesting that he saw Jesus on the same level as Moses and Elijah – which is a most impressive level – but the cloud and the voice put the focus on Jesus.  This one – and not the other two, great as they were – is my Son, the Chosen.  Listen to him.  Peter, James and John would always have the memory of that vision with them as they followed Jesus through the rest of his earthly ministry.

Jesus granted the inner circle of the disciples a vision of himself as he truly was.  Jesus had heard a voice from heaven at his baptism say the same thing that the disciples heard at the Transfiguration – “This is my Son, this is my chosen, listen to him.”  The voice wasn’t new to Jesus, but it was new to the disciples.  The glory had always been there, but the disciples had not been permitted to see it until then.

The vision passed, and Jesus led  his disciples back down the mountain, down to the valley where there was trouble.  A frantic father had brought his son, who was afflicted with seizures, to the nine disciples who had not accompanied Jesus up to the mountain.  He had hoped that these disciples could heal his son, but they couldn’t do it.   So when Jesus came down the mountain, the father ran up to him and said, “I beg you to look at my son.”  And Jesus gets a little testy:  “You faithless and perverse generation, how longer do I have to be with you and put up with you.  Bring him here.”  We’re told that Jesus rebuked the demon that caused the seizures and cast it out, and returned the boy to his father.    In Mark’s version of this story, the disciples then ask Jesus why they couldn’t cast out the demon, and Jesus replied, “This one can only be cast out by prayer” – and apparently some texts also said – “and fasting.”  Luke concludes this account with the words, “And all were astounded by the greatness of God.”

In our reading, everyone had an experience of God’s greatness.  The three disciples with Jesus on the mountaintop had an experience of God’s greatness in the vision that was granted them.  And back down in the valley, all who watched the healing were amazed at God’s greatness. 

Now some Christians are gifted with visions and mystical experiences in which they feel God’s presence in a very strong way.  St. Paul, at his conversion, had the vision of Christ on the Damascus road.  St. Francis, praying to God in a crumbling church, had a vision in which the crucified Christ told him “Restore my church” – a vision which Francis initially interpreted as rebuilding the crumbling church in which he had been praying, but later came to realize was a call to restore integrity to the entire church.   I have to say that I am not among them; for whatever reason – maybe my constricted range of emotional responses; I have to say that even when it’s sunny and warm outside, inside my head the weather is usually overcast and chilly and drizzling – I haven’t had experiences where I’ve felt God’s presence in the sense of tingling or goosebumps or being flooded with feelings of warm fuzzies. My emotions are pretty much flat, pretty much all of the time. From time to time I do get little moments of intuition…..a sense that I should take this road and not that one; a thought popping up in my head seemingly randomly that I haven’t talked to this or that person for a while and maybe I ought to give them a call or send them a text to check in and see if they’re ok; a mental nudge that I’d promised to help this or that person or be at this or that meeting, and I need to get moving.  And, yes, I do, when I remember, say quick “thank you” prayers to God for these moments. But for me, that’s about as mystical as my experience gets; there are no particular emotional highs or lows associated with any of it.   I’ve often expressed to my spiritual director, when I’m struggling with a difficult decision, that I wish God would do with me what he did with St. Paul and give me a vision that knocks me to the ground and makes it unmistakably clear what I’m supposed to do – but it hasn’t happened, and so I pray, in the words of the old hymn,

               “Teach me to feel that thou art always nigh/Teach me the struggles of the soul to bear

               To check the rising doubt, the rebel sigh/Teach me the patience of unanswered prayer.”

For those gifted with them, mountaintop experiences can be life-changing, can set peoples’ lives in new directions.  But for those, like me, who rarely if ever are gifted with mountaintop experiences, God’s greatness can be experienced down the valley as well – down in the valley, where people need healing and hope and we might be just the people God sent to deal with the situation – down in the valley where our lives may be instruments of God’s grace, and those around us may be “astounded at God’s greatness”, even though they may not put their amazement in exactly those words.

We’re not to judge our walk of Christian faith based on whether we’ve had mystical visions or emotional mountaintop moments – it seems they’re granted to some, but not all.  Rather, we can take direction from the voice heard from the cloud on the mountaintop – “This is my Son, the Beloved, listen to Him.”  “Listen.”  We can’t listen if we’re always running our mouths – as the old saying goes, there’s a reason we’ve been given two ears and but only one mouth. Instead of speaking, try to be calm and centered, and listen.  At any given moment, we can listen, and ask, “What is Jesus saying to us? What is God trying to tell us?”  We can set aside our preconceived notions and agendas and listen to Jesus – through the teachings of Scripture, through the traditions of the church and the words of fellow believers, through our own life experience – listen.  Like Luke Skywalker as he was being instructed by Yoda, we may have to unlearn much of what we’ve been taught in order to learn what God is trying to tell us.  And above all, we have to listen.

“Listen – to him.”  Even with a vision of Moses and Elijah conversing with Jesus, the three disciples on the mountaintop were told, “This is my Son, the Beloved, listen to him.” Listen – to him.  Ours is a very noisy culture, and we’ve got voices blaring at us all the time – from our TV’s, from our car radios, from our I-phones and Androids, from social media – all telling us to buy this or go here or do this or be that. Political leaders and news commentators may even quote snippets of Scripture out of context to try to get our support for their agendas, and we need to have a sense of the overarching messages of Scripture not to be misled. As followers of the Risen Christ we need to be able to cut through all the noise around us and the noise inside our heads to listen to the one voice that really matters, the voice of Jesus.

“This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him.”  “And all were astounded by the power of God.”  Whether we’re on the mountaintop of joy or the valley of despair, may our ears and our minds be opened to listen to Jesus, and may God surprise us with joy wherever we may be – and may those around us be astounded by God’s power in our lives as we follow God’s call. Amen.