Asbury First United
Text: Matthew 17:1-9
It is in fact a cold mountain which we ascend today in the passage before us. With the disciples of old we climb, step by step, up a craggy path, into an uncertain future, toward the summit of life, who is the Christ. Cold is the mountain we climb today.
This passage obscures more than it clarifies. Are we to understand this as something which in fact happened, on Mt Tabor, in 30ad? Or was it, as Matthew interprets, a ‘vision’? It is like nothing we actually experience, on this or any other cold mountain. It is like nothing that precedes or follows it in Matthew. It carries the burden of material Matthew with some diffidence has inherited from Mark. To this Matthew has added his own lengthening touches. Stories grow as they age. One dinner table remark heard recently was this one: “Dad, your stories get longer as you get older”. One did not intuit in this sentence any manner of compliment. Matthew adds in raiment and light and talk and volume. But did this happen in Jesus life? Or was it meant as a resurrection account that somehow got misplaced? Here Jesus is not the teacher on the lake, not the prophet in the temple, not the healer in the house, not the brother and friend of Galilee. He is—the object of worship. All the gospels have this except John, who either does not know it, or omits it. Why would John omit something so profoundly Johannine? This is John hiding out in Matthew. John’s whole Gospel is one long transfiguration. And where is Andrew? And why this odd material about booths? And what has this to do with loving the neighbor? All very enervating. You see. Cold is this mountain of transfiguration, for those who would ascend it. Yet, we do benefit from the struggles of faith, and we do oddly benefit from the more obscure passages of Scripture, like this one.
We perhaps may be permitted this summary. At a minimum, the reading is about worship. The disciples, out of experience or vision, or something else, are set to worship, to go about the arrangement of worship. Worship in an exalted space. Worship in the presence. Worship with law and prophets. Worship with reverence for Jesus the Christ. Worship with all the human chaos and divine pathos of every hour of devotion. Mess and Messiah both. So let us receive the Gospel of Cold Mountain as a word about worship. We take several steps up a high and holy mountain when we assemble for worship.
We take a step toward God walking through thickets of personal need. Sometimes a particular need will bring us to worship. In this one particular we may sense again that ‘feeling of absolute dependence’. In the northeast, in this time, when someone under forty comes to church for the first time in a long time, there is epiphany, transfiguration, apocalypse. Something has drawn one here, often a need both personal and particular. A need for healing. A need for solace. A need for work. A need for relationship. A need for hope. A need for forgiveness. One step up the mountain cuts through the thicket of personal need. You know, we recognize this thicket every Sunday, at the outset of our worship, in the time of greeting.
We take a second step toward God in crossing the river of shared hurt. Tsunami stunned us, hurt us, angered us, chastened us, and, finally, in the voice of a tiny person, inspired us. This is a great step into worship, to recognize, really see, another’s need. To place ourselves in the hearts and hearths of others. Like the Prince and the Pauper, or Lazarus and Dives. It helps if prayerfully we can use our imaginations to cut across power divides. So that majorities listen to minorities, men to women, richer to poorer. This makes of us one people, a common people, a community, a book of common prayer. You know, we recognize this river every Sunday as we sing hymns, together, to recognize that we are all in this together.
We take a third step toward God in scaling up the cliffs of reason. We are to love God with all our mind, as well as heart, soul, and strength. We are to reason together, as the Psalmist says. We are to learn the arts of disagreement, and to be reasonable in doing so. We remember the 10 commandments, for example, some about the love of God and some about the love of neighbor. Then we think about the commandments, as Marilynne Robinson does in her novel Gilead, as a preparation for worship: There’s a pattern in these Commandments of setting things apart so that there holiness will be perceived. Every day is holy, but the Sabbath is set apart so that the holiness of time can be experienced. Every human being is worthy of honor, but the conscious discipline of honor is learned from this setting apart of mother and father,; who usually labor and are heavy laden, and may be cranky or stingy or ignorant or overbearing…you see (them) as God sees (them) and that is an instruction in the nature of God and humankind and Being itself. That is why the Fifth Commandment belongs on the first table (139). The mind can bring us closer to God. You know, we recognize this cliff every Sunday in the sermon, a word of interpretation spoken.
And a fourth step toward God comes when we jump over the gorge of the will. This is a rugged mountain all along the trail. Our choices define us, as Frankl and others taught. We become ourselves by deciding, by choosing, even, or especially, when we choose wrongly. By choosing you grow, you learn, you improve, you develop. Faith is feeling and soul and heart and intellect, but first faith is a choice, a decision, a jump. Either God has a claim on your life, or not. Either every day is a chance for love, or not. Either life is a joyfully serious business, or not. Either the way of love means particular consequent acts regarding time, money, body, community, or not. Decide! Choose! Jump! You know, we recognize this gorge every Sunday, in a moment of invitation, to devotion, to discipline, to dedication.
Now here we are, at the summit. It is cold at the top of this mountain. Brr… You can see your breath. We might listen again to the advice of Scripture and speaking about the divine: ‘let your words be few’. Cold, cold mountain…
The ancients, like Dionysius the Aeropagite, assembled their thoughts about the divine largely in negative terms. God is not. God is not. Their way, the via negativa, has its strength. One set of warnings may help us in this time.
We pray to the triune God. Yet each person, each of face of God to whom we turn can be distorted, and dangerously so. We are awash in a sea of a sour kind of outsized understanding of the divine. Here are three examples.
Be careful with a suggestion that the first person of the trinity is heavily providential. Providence has its place. But in our time there seems to have emerged a gigantic providence that is not Biblical. That is, what does God directly do in the world? Is everything that happens directly attributable to God? What about tsunami and other natural disasters? One cottage was struck by lightening on our lake this summer, owned by the most Christian couple in the community. God is not cruel, and does not intentionally take 200,000 lives in a wave. God is not absent, careless and unperturbed about tragedy. Yet you can hear televised and other statements about a great wave of warning to those who do not confess Christ. Who would worship a God like that? Not everything that happens is the direct action of God. Ultimately, yes, we affirm that God is sovereign. But up this path there are some kinds of providence that are more blasphemy than beauty. God is hidden, and there are numberless things that we do not understand. Now we see in a glass, darkly. Faith is the power to withstand, not understand. If we understood everything, we would have less need of faith. Beware an outsized providence.
Be careful, too, with the second Person. We also will want to be a little careful about passion. Soon we enter Lent, and the way of the cross. Our culture is drenched with violence. We are at many points seeing an apotheosis of violence, and we thus are numbed, to some degree. The Christian story of Jesus involves both Easter and Christmas, both cross and manger, both Gethsemane and Nativity. We need both, because we need both the faith to grow up and the faith to grow old; both the faith to leave and the faith to come home; both the faith to do and the faith to be; both faith in the travails of birth and faith in the trials of death. The Biblical account of the passion, however, is not about violence. When an outsized sense of the passion allows suffering to be eclipsed by violence, we need to be cautious. Remember the parsimony of the creedal words: suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified dead, and buried. In other words, we need to get the emphasis on the right syllable, not on the wrong syllable. It is not the suffering that carries the meaning; it is meaning that carries suffering. It is not the cross the bears the Love, it is Love that bears the cross. It is not the crucifixion that captures salvation; it is salvation that captures crucifixion. A small distinction, you may say, but it is a whisker on which the whole gospel hangs. Beware of outsized passion.
Most especially, be careful with the third Person, Spirit, Presence, Life. Be careful about predestination. Our popular non-theological word is purpose, here. Purpose. Purpose is very important, but as with all things, one can suppose too much of a good thing. One church lawn sports a banner: “WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF YOUR LIFE?” There is a place for such a question, and its answer, “to glorify God and enjoy God forever”, or something similar. But be careful. THE purpose? THE ONE purpose? God has a purpose for your life? One? Just one? Think what that might mean, if taken too far. Husband, but not father. Child, but not parent. Employee, but not citizen. And think practically of what that might cause you to fear. Was I to have arisen on the right side of the bed and not the left? I missed the purpose. Was I to have eaten corn flakes not rice crispies? Married Jeff not Steve? Entered law not the ministry? Retired last year not next year? Backed the Eagles not the Patriots? (The answer here is yes!) You can take this too far. Here is a cautionary slogan. Continue to seek purpose, but hear the gospel, too. The good news is not so much that God has a purpose for your life, but that GOD HAS LIFE FOR YOUR PURPOSES. Not that God has one purpose for your selection, but that God has one life for your election. There is more freedom in life and more grace in the divine than this truncated notion allows. You may have more than one calling, and more than career, and more than one conviction, and more than one direction. All in a lifetime. What did Shakespeare say? ‘All the world is a stage, and in the course of his life a man plays many parts’. God has a life, the true life of Jesus Christ, through which to ennoble, guide, use, invigorate and support your purposes. Go ahead and jump. We will be here to catch you if you fall.
This congregation knows in your own experience about such freedom and grace that temper disproportionate providence, passion, and predestination. You know the gentle laughter of free and loving saints. You know the kind loving example of laity and ministers who lived in God. You know it when you see it.
Two Saturdays ago some of us attended the funeral for our former pastor and friend Robert Sapp. Here was a man who knew the daily worship of God, who had climbed the cold mountain, who was transfigured by the transfiguration of existence, and came out kind and loving and good.
He was remembered: “loving and loveable, kind and one of a kind”. His creative ministry was fondly recalled: pretzel Sunday, devotional leadership, special needs Sunday school. His collegial presence was humorously remembered: in the covenant of the clergy, upstairs in the offices, in 19 years of ministry in Greece. Most exceptionally, his laugh, his laughter was remembered, with a reverent mirth and a holy gaiety that were just wonderful. Perhaps heaven is more about voice than vision. My friend had a portrait of Jesus with the children, and underneath this caption: “Where are the gentle people?” Bob was one. He lived with grace and freedom, a grace and freedom to temper inordinate providence, to temper inordinate passion, to temper inordinate predestination. Being summoned to chase a dog away from the office, Bob replied, “I wasn’t brought up here from New Jersey to be a dog catcher”. No, but his life did shepherd and temper some of our sharper edges. I only regret he had such a short retirement, during which he took a part-time church. In his laughter and his voice we may still hear: many things are hidden, it is love that bears suffering, there is life for many purposes.
Look out from the top of the mountain.Let us worship God together. As you are doing, do so more and more.
Let us make it our earnest desire to worship God each Lord’s Day.
Let us make preparation for our ordered worship in daily prayer and reading.
Let us sing lustily, as Wesley taught, and pray with energy, and listen with care.
Let us do as OW Holmes regularly did with every sermon, ill or well though the sermon was: “I applied it to myself”.
Let us shake off our timidity and seize every opportunity to include others, friend and neighbor and relative in worship.
Let us savor the memory of Sunday all week long—humming familiar verses, reciting familiar phrases, chewing on various themes.
Let us expect and experience of love, of presence, of God.
Let us enter silence with grace and song with freedom.
Let us climb the cold mountain of life, aided and abetted by the things that make for peace in the worship of God.
Let us prepare to worship…
To Quicken the Conscience by the Holiness of God
To Illumine the Imagination by the Beauty of God
To Open the Heart to the Love of God
To Devote the Will to the Purposes of God
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