Fairhaven Sermon 3-2-2025

So I think there is something like deep in my genes that makes me want to just be on top of a hill, looking outward. Maybe it's some kind of primal animal instinct. I want to be able to spot wolves or a tiger approaching from as much of a distance as possible. But I just feel really anxious.

In a valley at the bottom of a mountain, unable to see out far around me. There's just something that I find so disconcerting about, for example, you drive out in the middle of Pennsylvania in fall or winter. You wind along the flatlands between the ridges, you know, and you pass these farms and these fields that are already in the twilight at like 1pm. I hate that.

I can't imagine living in that environment. My grandmother lived up on top of a small hill in Portersville in Butler County. She had a line of tall pines that were lined up in front of the house on that hill. And every spring, she would have my uncle trim those trees.

She'd have him remove all the branches up 10 feet or so to ensure that she had a clean line of sight to the road, beyond that, including to her arch enemies who lived on the opposite slope. She wanted to be able to see. That's what she always said. I want to be able to see.

And I completely get that now. I want to be able to see, and I cannot stand when that's not possible. Mountaintops on the other hand, on like the bottom of a hill, are an almost mystical kind of place for me every time I'm on one. And that's obviously not just me.

That's like, that's a human thing. Throughout scripture, God is worshipped and encountered on mountaintops. We heard about two of them in our scripture readings today. You have Mount Sinai, you have Mount Carmel where Elijah calls the power of God down.

You have Mount Zion, also known as Jerusalem. One of the first people to try to climb Mount Everest, named George Mallory, was memorably asked why he wanted to climb the mountain. And his response was famously, Because it's there. They call out to us somehow.

I myself have had so-called mountaintop experiences. A sunset on a ridge in Guatemala probably marked the moment that I felt God called me into ministry. That's a long story for some other time. But that was a mountaintop experience.

Four years or so after that, probably almost exactly, I found myself having reached the summit of Snake Mountain, a piece of the border between North Carolina and Tennessee, shortly before another sunset, completely by myself. Snake Mountain is located maybe a mile past a popular state park in North Carolina, Elk Knob. Elk Knob has this well-kept gravel path to the top. It's complete with a nice observation deck up there, a good wooden deck.

There's a good parking lot at the bottom. There's no parking lot or gravel path on Snake Mountain. It's almost entirely someone's privately owned land that they choose to leave open to hikers. The trail entrance is tucked at the end of a cow pasture on the road up to Tennessee.

And you have to know what you're looking for if you're going there. There's not some big state park sign or something. And so I parked my car at about two or three in the afternoon. I spontaneously had decided to give the hike a try after someone at church had recommended it.

And then I saw no one for hours. I passed one couple coming out as I began to climb, and then I saw nobody else on the whole mountain. I pushed it a little bit too hard for the first half. I almost passed out about a third of the way up the mountain in the darkest, deepest part of the forest by myself, which would have ruined the day.

But I did end up just lying flat on the path and got up and made it the rest of the way. And I made it in about two hours or so. And the woods at the top of the mountain opened up to this wide grassland as I got above the tree line. And I walked in the sun towards the rock faces at the very top.

It was a pointed, like, rocky mountain at the top. And as I made it to the base of these rocks that crowned the mountain, I found myself standing in this thicket of blueberry bushes that encircled almost the entire peak. And I just, I was surprised. I was delighted at that.

I picked and I ate more blueberries than I could count. And there was just such a sense of wonder in that for me. I made it all this way and not only got this incredible view, this accomplishment, but was also met with an unexpected snack. It was like, it reminded me of manna, you know? God had just given something.

And I scaled the rock all the way up to the top. I found the summit marker, you know, those little copper things that the USGS nails in. And then I sat for quite some time. I looked in every direction.

And there's nothing quite like that feeling of having made it to the top of a mountain, whether that's Mount Everest or a mountain like this one that's like a fifth of that height max. And then after a long while, I noticed the sky was starting to get that evening gold to it. It's going to get dark. I made my way down.

And when I'd just about gotten to where I almost passed out a few hours earlier, now really dim amidst the trees, I heard loud and clear a pack of coyotes yipping and howling and very obviously getting closer. I found myself basically running that last third of the journey down the mountain, burning through all those mountain blueberry calories. I made it back to the car, got home before dark. And that sense of real victory and experience that I still feel about that day, I still carry it with me.

That was a big, important achievement. Not really, but it felt like it. In Celtic societies, Ireland, Scotland, Northern France, there's this traditional notion of thin places. If you've ever heard that before.

And that's a geographical location where the barrier between earth and heaven, the everyday and the supernatural, seems to be almost transparent. You're just closer to it. And almost every mountaintop, I think, is one of those. We feel in those places like we're closer to God.

Not just because we're higher up, obviously, but there's something spiritually about it. And so it's no surprise that in today's gospel reading from Luke, what's known as the transfiguration happens at the top of a mountain, as Jesus is transformed before the eyes of three of his closest disciples. And we think about this as a moment where Jesus just starts to glow and all his clothes turn white or something like that. But the way that it's expressed in Luke, this word for transfiguration, is the same word that is used for a caterpillar that goes into a cocoon and comes out a butterfly.

It's a complete transformation. So the disciples with Jesus have gone seeking the face of God at the top of that mountain. Luke, more than all the other gospel writers, draws our attention to that, to why they're going up there. Luke, unlike Matthew and Mark, points out that the four men are going up there specifically to pray.

That's why they're going. It's not Jesus taking them on a mysterious trip. They're going to pray. All of them, Jesus included, are tapping into this notion that there are places where God can be met in a special way.

And so together they climb this peak. We don't know which mountain it is. This unnamed peak. What they're not expecting is just how powerful and head-on this vision, this approach to God is going to be.

As he kneels in prayer, Jesus' face is transformed. His clothes flash like lightning, Luke says. And suddenly he's with two men who are so visibly holy that they can only be Moses and Elijah. They, like Jesus, are clothed in heavenly splendor.

And we're not given any details about what they talk about. But they talk to Jesus about his coming departure from Jerusalem. The literal translation for departure there is Exodus, which I think is really interesting. Jesus is leading in Exodus.

And so it's funny. Luke tells us that Peter and James and John are about to doze off when all of this happens. Though they manage to stay awake, Luke says, to see it happen. But it's as if, despite their mountaintop destination and Peter's very recent declaration that Jesus is the Messiah, that's the story that happens right before this.

Peter's the first one to say it. Jesus, I believe that you are the Messiah. Even though that just happened, even though they're going to the top of the mountain to seek God, it doesn't seem like they're really expecting God to show up if they're falling asleep. It's kind of relatable, I think.

How often do you and I really expect God to show up? Even right here. Even whenever we affirm in a couple minutes that the bread and the wine are Christ's body and blood, right here. When do we expect it? But heaven rips through into our world right before their eyes. And they have no idea what to do.

They went up there to seek God. Here he is. What now? They have no idea. James and John presumably just stand there with their jaws on the ground.

And Peter, who's always desperate to do something, which you've got to admire, proposes constructing three shrines at the top of the mountain to memorialize the moment. One for Moses, one for Elijah, one for Jesus. Memorialize this moment. Build something here to show what happened.

And we can assume that Jesus shakes his head and the disciples are immediately engulfed in this cloud of the Lord's presence that once surrounded Moses on Sinai as he spoke to God. Whenever God is there, there's this tangible kind of atmospheric change. And they're overtaken with awe. Whatever Peter was saying, he's not saying anything anymore.

And at that moment, we see what is called a theophany. This is one of the theophanies of the Bible. And a theophany just means a direct appearance of God to human beings. And God speaks to them and says, This is my son, my chosen one.

Listen to him. And with that, that's the finale, everything returns to the way it was moments before as they stand on the heights of that quiet mountain. They went up to pray and they have received the answer to their prayer, regardless of what they asked for, they got an answer. This is my son, the chosen one, the Father says to them.

Listen to him. That's it. And what comes next, and I think this is fair to say, is evidence that this theophany failed to catch. The very next day, down from the mountain, Jesus and his disciples meet a large crowd as they often do.

They're out on the road and people find them, they've heard that Jesus is a healer, is a teacher. And in that crowd, another father, interesting, right, introduces his son, who is possessed by an unclean spirit that torments him. And here the disciples, who have just been on the mountain heights, seen the face of God, encounter the face of the demonic, of darkness. But it seems like they have completely lost touch with what they witnessed and heard on the mountaintop.

They have been entirely unable, the guy has been begging them before he comes to Jesus, the disciples have been entirely unable to do anything about this demon, even though their faces, if Moses' example holds, they're probably still literally glowing from having encountered the power of God. That is how real God is to them right now. And yet, when the rubber hits the road, they don't listen to him. They don't go out and minister in his power, the power that they have just seen.

They're helpless, or at least they think they're helpless, which makes them helpless. But the God that they met up there in the cloud is also the God who ends up looking that demon in the eye and cast it out. And so Jesus heals the boy himself because the disciples didn't know they could. The God who is high and lifted up, the God on the mountaintop in the cloud is also the God who's down in the dirt with the poor, the oppressed, those stricken by demons.

That's always been true. It's still true. Listen to him and take his power seriously, the Father says. Whatever so-called mountaintop experiences we've had with God, whether on a literal mountaintop, in a pew, alone on your couch, we have to treasure those things, and not just in the moment.

We have to carry them down the mountain with us, cornerstones of our faith, as fuel for the journey into the dark valleys that we'll all walk into. That's why they're given to us. That sweetness, that great gift of God that nourishes our souls on top of the mountain is what keeps us energized and carrying on when the coyotes come on the descent. And this is what Lent's supposed to be about, by the way.

Lent is practice. Lent's conditioning for the spiritual trials that we face in the world. Lent is an annual journey when we, disciples of Jesus, like James and Peter and John, symbolically join him on his descent from the mountain. This is the high point of the book.

As we go into Luke, it is from the transfiguration on that he turns his face towards Jerusalem, towards the cross, towards the suffering and the death that he faced for us and with us. This is the fuel for what is to come. And so our constant challenge of faith is bridging the distance between the mountain peaks and the deepest valleys as we meet God in those thin places, which are, as we all know, far rarer than the darker places. And then we do our best to hold on to something that is impossible to contain.

And the reality is that, of course, we, like James and Peter and John, encounter God far more readily on the mountaintop. And we want to see, we want to be able to see. We commune with God in those moments of glory. We feel the radiant light on our skin.

We taste that sweet sustenance that's provided to us there. But it takes a commitment to growth in the spirit, to constantly seeking God in prayer, to really be pushing in on our own whenever we're not up there, to really come to know that God is just as present, just as powerful in polar opposite moments. So look, notice here in our Luke passage that we just went through, that we see only one life-changing miracle of salvation happen. Just one.

Notice that it's not on the mountaintop. As wonderful as all that was, as impactful as all that was, as moving, no, salvation breaks through at the foot of the mountain. In the depths of the darkness, Jesus looks at the devil in the eye, tells him to get out. He saves that young boy from the torment that has long afflicted him.

That is where salvation is. And the demons, this is interesting too, the demons sure listen to Jesus. They understand what it means that he's the son of God. Even if the disciples don't, they've been told, This is my son, the chosen one.

Listen to him. They can't, but the demons can. And again, just as the disciples were filled with awe on the mountaintop, here in this site of pain and struggle in the midst of everyday life, Luke says, Everyone was overwhelmed by God's greatness, even though they didn't see this majestic cloud, they didn't see Jesus' robes flash like lightning, they didn't see Moses and Elijah, but there when that boy was saved, everyone was overwhelmed by God's greatness. The voice of God has spoken to us too, the same thing.

This is my son, my chosen one. Listen to him. You and I know who he is. We've committed our lives to him.

Wherever we are, at the highest heights or the lowest depths, that command remains the same. Listen to him. The Jesus who was up there, well, he's also down here. He's still clothed in the same power.

He's still transforming lives and breaking chains and working liberation in ways that we'll never see if we only meet him on the mountaintop. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.