Nomadic Faith

Genesis 12:1-4

We humans are a nomadic species. Paleontology and archeology tell us of the migrations of the human species early in human history. Humans began in Africa, we are told. Around 60,000 years ago we began to leave the African continent and spread throughout the globe into Europe, Asia and Australia. Humans even reached the Americas. Not far from where we used to live in Western Pennsylvania there is a site called the Meadowcroft Rockshelter, southwest of Pittsburgh. It is a rock ledge overhang, which according to carbon dating, was used as a campsite by prehistoric hunters and gatherers 16,000 years ago. It is the oldest known site of human habitation in North America. We humans are a nomadic species.

Therefore it is fitting that the forefather of our faith in the Biblical tradition was a nomad. His name was Abraham; his wife was Sarah. Together they are the forefather and foremother of the Hebrew people and the Jewish and Christian faiths. The Biblical religion was different than other religions in the Middle East. Other faiths were a product of agricultural societies and their deities reflected the cycles of the growing season. But the God of Abraham was the God of the shepherds. It is no accident that the most beloved chapter in the Bible is the 23^rd psalm, known as the Shepherd’s psalm, which begins, “The Lord is my Shepherd.”

In our OT lesson for today we are introduced to Abraham. The passage is known as the call of Abraham. God calls him to begin a physical and spiritual journey. Abraham’s journey is our journey. It can teach us how God calls us. Let us look at the passage. Genesis 12:1-4 “Now the Lord had said to Abram: “Get out of your country, From your family and from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you; And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” So Abram departed as the Lord had spoken to him, and Lot went with him. And Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.” This passage tells us several things.

1. First, God speaks to us. That is very important. We do not have a silent God, a mute Deity. God not only exists; he communicates. This is essential to having a relationship with God. It is fine to believe in God - to believe that God exists. That is great, but God’s existence does not mean much if there is no communication between the Creator and the creature. The fundamental truth of Scripture is that God speaks. That is what we understand Scripture to be. That is why it is referred to as the Word of God. The prophets preface their utterances with the words, “Thus says the Lord” or “The word of the Lord came to the prophet saying ….” God speaks.

God speaks in many ways. Go speaks through the natural world. That is the way that most people experience God. People who can never bring themselves to worship in a church building experience God in the beauty and grandeur of the natural world. God speaks in other ways. God speaks in our conscience. That is the moral or ethical voice of God. The Ten Commandments were written on the human heart long before they were engraved in tablet of stone. They were just etched in stone so we could not ignore them and pretend they aren’t authoritative.

But this is not how God spoke to Abraham. There were no scriptures for Abraham to turn to. No stone tablets. Abraham was not inspired by nature to leave his homeland. God did not give Abraham a moral command here in this passge. Neither did God speak in a booming voice like in the movies. It was an inner voice that spoke to Abraham. God spoke to Abraham through what we might call intuition. That is how God speaks to us today.

This is not an exact science. We can get it wrong. There are lot of thoughts and feelings going through our hearts and minds all the time. Which one do we listen to? Spiritual direction is the art of sifting through all the inner voices to discern the voice of God. It is an art, not a science. Spiritual discernment takes practice, experience and time. Hearing the voice of God begins with getting to know God. We get to know God by spending time with God. We cannot expect to hear and recognize the voice of God unless we are willing to spend time with God.

When I answer the phone, some voices I recognize instantly – even without caller ID. I have some friends whom I have not seen in years. But I would recognize their voice immediately. That is the way it is with God. God does not have caller ID. The only way to know that it is God speaking to you is by getting to know God well. The only way to get to know God is by spending time with him.

In the gospel of John Jesus uses the metaphor of himself as the Good Shepherd and his followers as sheep. He says, “I am the good shepherd; and I know My sheep, and am known by My own…. My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.” He says later talking about himself in the third person, “The sheep hear his voice; and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out…. He goes before them; and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. Yet they will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.” There is no short cut to the spiritual life. There is only one way to recognize the voice of the Shepherd, and that is by spending time with the Shepherd.

There is no religious trick to doing this. Spending time each day in prayer and communion with God is essential. Reading Scripture is helpful. We call it the Word of God because Scripture speaks with the voice of God. Scripture speaks in human voices as well. Moses sounds different than Jesus. The prophet Jeremiah sounds different than the apostle Paul. But beneath the human differences one can recognize the divine voice. And it is not just about words. On Wednesdays at noon some of us are reading and discussing the Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence. He talked with God but mostly he just lived in the presence of God without words. We are not expected to keep up a continual verbal monologue to God. That would be exhausting. All we need to do is walk with God in everything that we do. We get to know God by being his constant companion. In fact that is what Jesus’ term for the Holy Spirit means: One who stands beside us. When we know God, then we will recognize his voice when he speaks to us with that inner voice of intuition.

2. Now let’s move on to what God says.  What did God say to Abraham? Our passage says, “Now the Lord had said to Abram: “Get out of your country, From your family and from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you.” There are two aspects here: go from and go toward. We have to leave something behind and we have to move toward something which is ahead. Our relationship with God is a journey. Like Abraham, Christians are, in a sense, spiritual nomads. We do not sit still in the spiritual life; we are moving.

God told Abraham to leave behind his country, his family, and his father’s house. He was expected to do that literally and physically. What about us? Jesus put it this way, “37 He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. 38 And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. 39 He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it.” I think God is asking us to put God above all other loyalties. Martin Luther wrote in A Mighty Fortress is Our God, “Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also.” This is radical stuff. It is radical to put God above country and above family. And it can be badly misunderstood as well. This is not anti-country or anti-family. It is looking for something higher and greater than earthly loyalties.

God also calls us toward something. In this passage God tells Abraham to set his face toward a land that he would show him. The Letter to the Hebrews describes what this means.

8 By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. 9 By faith he dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise; 10 for he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God…. 13 These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. 14 For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland. 15 And truly if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.

In short God was calling Abraham and is calling us to put heavenly concerns above worldly concerns, to put the spiritual above the earthly. This is very practical. We can easily get caught up in worldly matters. We can get preoccupied with all sorts of things. Caught up in family dramas, with all their emotions and complex relationships. We can get caught up in political matters so much so that we sell our soul to a political party or a political ideology. We can get caught up in our own mesh of emotional problems and issues and concerns, enslaved to our own minds, being tossed to and fro by feelings and thoughts. God calls us to something more. God calls us to liberty – to liberation and freedom. He calls us to a spiritual life in the Kingdom of God.

That is what God was really calling Abraham to. Not just to leave Mesopotamia for Canaan. That was certainly true in a literal sense. But the passage in Hebrews makes it clear that God was calling him also to a heavenly country. Jesus called that heavenly country the Kingdom of Heaven or the Kingdom of God. That is what God is calling us to. We are to be in this world – in this country, in our families, and our social networks – in the world, but not of the world.

I saw an old film recently. I wrote a blog about it, so those of you who read my blog will recognize the title. It is the 1941 film One Foot in Heaven, starring Fredric March and Martha Scott. It was the story of an ordinary Methodist minister and his family in the early decades of the twentieth century. I wrote about it because I found it very realistic. It is unusual to find clergy portrayed accurately in films. The title of the film comes a line in the movie where he talks about the spiritual life as being like walking ”a sort of tightrope. Balancing with one foot on earth and one foot already in heaven.” The spiritual life is having a foot in two different worlds. We cannot be as absorbed in this world as many people are because we know there is more than this world. There is more than this life. It is not that we do not take the very real social problems of this world seriously. We certainly do. But we know that this is only half the story. We see the problems of this world from a wider perspective.

3. I want to move on now to the rest of God’s call to Abraham. Verses 2 and 3 talk about blessing. It uses the word bless or blessing four times in two verses: “I will make you a great nation; I will bless you And make your name great; And you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you; And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

Normally this is taken to apply to Abraham’s physical descendants. Usually that is understood to be the Jews, even though in Genesis the Arabs are also descendants of Abraham, which complicates matters, especially when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict and the fight over the land of Palestine and the State of Israel.  But I am more concerned with the spiritual matters than real estate. That is how the NT interprets this text. The apostle Paul makes it clear that not all who have the blood of Abraham flowing through their veins are children of Abraham. Both John the Baptist and Jesus said that to the Pharisees who were proud of their ancestry. Paul said that it is those who have the faith of Abraham who are the true children of Abraham. He writes: “Therefore know that only those who are of faith are children of Abraham.” He goes on to say, “For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. … There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” Therefore the promise to Abraham applies to us. We are blessed by God through Christ to be a blessing of God to others.

One last observation about our passage. That is the final verse. “So Abram departed as the Lord had spoken to him.” A call expects a response. The call of God expects a response from us. The spiritual journey begins with an act of obedience, stepping out in faith. Abraham had a choice to make – to follow God’s call or not. He chose to take the road less traveled. Normally it is the faith of Abraham which is extolled. But it is important to note that faith always involve action. When God spoke to him, Abraham obeyed. Faith is not just believing things. It is acting on faith. When called Abraham to a higher calling, he went. In this way he is an example for all of us who are spiritual nomads, who see ourselves as pilgrims on this earth, seeking a heavenly country.

Spiritual Amnesia

Matthew 4:1-11

This is the first Sunday in Lent, and each year the gospel reading is on the temptation of Christ in the wilderness. The forty days of Jesus’ temptation is the pattern for our forty days of Lent. Lent is the time to be a bit more introspective. It is a time to examine our lives. That is what Jesus was doing in the wilderness during those forty days before the temptations began. If we read the story carefully we see that it was not until after Jesus had been fasting for forty days alone in the wilderness that the devil showed up to make trouble for him. “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came….”  What was Jesus doing during those forty days beforehand the tempter came tempting? It doesn’t say, but that does not stop me from speculating. I think he was trying to integrate the experience that he had immediately beforehand, which we find in the final verses of chapter 3, which was his baptism.

Jesus’ baptism was the most important event in his life up to that point. I think it was the moment when it all came together for him. Up until that point I don’t think Jesus fully understood who he was. It is clear that he had some idea of his true nature from the time he was twelve years old. His bar mitzvah and his discussion with the spiritual teachers in the temple courts revealed that he was no ordinary 12 year old. It says that the spiritual teachers were amazed at his answers. He called God his Father at that time, which was a very controversial statement to make in that religious setting, especially for a twelve year old. It goes on to say that he not only grew physically, but that “he grew in wisdom as well as stature” from that day on. I take that to mean that he did not have a full mature spiritual understanding yet.

I think there was a gradual unfolding and realization of his self-understanding over time up until he was thirty years old. Then something dramatically shifted for him. One day he heard his cousin John the Baptist preach and went into the Jordan River to be baptized by John. At the moment of baptism it says that the heavens were opened and Jesus heard the voice of God declaring him to be God’s Beloved Son. Here are the exact words that come immediately before our text today: “When He had been baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting upon Him. And suddenly a voice came from heaven, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” That was the defining moment of Jesus’ life. Immediately after his baptism Jesus went off by himself into the wilderness to fast and pray for forty days. I think that during those six weeks, he was trying to figure things out – to integrate into his life that experience and knowledge of who he truly was. That is how I see the forty days of the wilderness.

I see our forty days of Lent in that same light. I think it should be a time of integration for us. There was a pastor in a church who started each service with passing of the peace, similar to what we do at our time of Christian greeting. He would say, "The peace of Christ be with you," and the people would all respond, "and also with you.” But, one Sunday the sound system wasn’t working. He got to the pulpit and the spoke, but no one heard him. He said a little louder, "There’s something wrong with this microphone." And the people (not hearing him clearly) responded, "and also with you." Lent is not a time to try to figure out what is wrong with us. That is the way Lent is often portrayed. I would like to suggest a different approach based on this temptation scene in the wilderness. I think it is a time to get in touch with our true nature and integrate that wisdom into our lives

1. The temptation of Jesus was a time for Jesus to affirm that he was the Son of God. Listen to the first temptation of Christ, “4:3 The tempter came and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread." Let’s not focus on the bread too quickly. Look at the first words of the temptation: “If you are the Son of God…” That is what this temptation is about. The second temptation has the same focus. It says, “4:5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, 4:6 saying to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, 'He will command his angels concerning you,' and 'On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.'" Once again the opening words of the tempter are, "If you are the Son of God.”

For forty days Jesus had been trying to get his head around the idea that he was the Son of God! He was trying to emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually come to grips with his true nature. I think the same sort of self-inquiry should be at the root of our Lenten experience. The root of all spiritual problems is misunderstanding who we are. Once we have self-knowledge clearly in place at the center of our thinking, then everything else falls into place. Then temptations to act out of character with who we truly are are defeated. For Jesus it meant being grounded in the realization that he was the Son of God. For us the temptation is similar but not exactly the same. From a Christian perspective we are not the Son of God in the same sense that we call Jesus the only Begotten Son of God. The NT calls us children of God, sons and daughters of God, and I will get to that in a moment. But Jesus was the only begotten Son of God, meaning that he was a special kind of fellow from his birth.

But let’s talk about us – our true nature, our true identity. Who are we? There are two basic answers to that question given by Scripture. The first is in the OT in the Book of Genesis and repeated elsewhere. First, we are created in the image of God. I have talked about this before, but I keep coming back to it because I think it is absolutely essential that we get this self-identity through our heads. Genesis says “1:27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” There are many interpretations of what that means. I think it means that we are the reflection of God. That is what an image is. An image is not the thing imaged. It is a representation or a reflection of the thing imaged. I think the metaphor of a mirror catches the idea best. When you look into a mirror, we see our image reflected. I look into the mirror and I see the image of Marshall. That is not me in there in the looking glass; it is a reflection of me. Our little one year old granddaughter Vera is at the age when she is fascinated by her own reflection in the mirror. She sees her image and laughs and keeps saying, “Hi, hi!” It is not real clear to her yet whose image that is.

We are the image of God. We are not God. Jesus was God. We are the image of God. That is an important distinction to make. It is the difference between dogs and cats. If you own a dog, you pat the dog and the dog wags its tail and thinks, “My Master is God.” But if you own a cat, like we do, it is different story. I pet our cat, and the cat purrs, shuts its eyes and thinks to itself, “I am the Master. I am God.” Don’t make the mistake that the cat does. We are not God. We are the image of God.

We are a mirror created to reflect God. That is what it means to be a human being. When God looks at us, he sees his own image reflected. When other people look at us, they see the reflection – the reflected image – of God. At least that is the way it is supposed to work. But the scripture says that something went wrong. Different theologians describe it differently. Some say that the image was lost. Some say the image was marred or corrupted, that the mirror that reflected the image was cracked or destroyed. But nowhere does the scripture use terms like that. It never says that we have ceased to be the image of God. So we are still the image of God. But for some reason we do not see it. We do not experience it as true in our lives. So what is wrong?

Many people never knew they were made in the image of God. It is simply a matter of ignorance. They were never told. They never had a spiritual or religious upbringing. The good news of our true nature and identity was never communicated to them. This is where the proclamation of the gospel is so important. It is important that we proclaim the gospel so that people know who they really are, what their true nature and identity is.

Some people have been told their true nature, but they have forgotten it. You could say that they have a case of spiritual amnesia. I read a story about some newlyweds. One day a few weeks after their wedding, the young man after work absentmindedly forgot to go home where his bride had dinner waiting for him. Instead he drove to his parents’ house. He was not thinking. It was simply a matter of habit. It was not until he walked in the door and his parents asked him what he was doing there, that he remembered that he was now married. That is not amnesia; that is a case of temporary forgetfulness.

Jude and I just finished reading Dan Brown’s newest novel entitled Inferno. Very exciting novel, which seems to have been written to be made into a movie. The main character of the book is a man named Robert Langdon, who has amnesia. Much of the book is the reader trying to figure out along with Robert Langdon what really happened to him during those days that he cannot remember. It is a common plotline in books and movies.

One of the best films based on amnesia is The Bourne Identity.  Matt Damon plays Jason Bourne — a CIA agent who has suffered amnesia and is trying to figure out who he is. There is a scene early in the film where Jason has hitched a ride from Switzerland to Germany with a young woman named Marie. He's running from the police — but he's not even sure why. He tries to keep his amnesia a secret from Marie, who is driving. But she keeps asking questions about him. Finally, in response to her asking a simple question about him, he turns to her and says desperately, "I don't know who I am or where I am going." A little later they stop to eat a truck stop along a snowy highway. Bourne starts to share what little he knows about himself, looking for clues to who he is. He had recently found a safety deposit box belonging to him. Bourne asks, "Who has a safety deposit box full of…money and six passports and a gun? I come in here, and the first thing I'm doing is I'm looking for an exit." "I see the exit sign, too, but I'm not worried," says Marie. Bourne replies with increased desperation. "I can tell you the license plate numbers of all six cars outside. I can tell you that our waitress is left-handed and the guy sitting up at the counter weighs 215 pounds and knows how to handle himself. I know the best place to look for a gun is the cab of the gray truck outside, and at this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Now why would I know that? How can I know that and not know who I am?”

 That is the human situation. People know a lot of things and can do a lot of things. They have a lot of information, but they don’t know who they are. The Scriptures tell us who we are. They say that we are the image of God. We come from God, created by God, to reflect God. But people do not know that. They have someone forgotten that innate knowledge. That is what it means to be spiritually lost. ABC News had a story in 2010 about Scott Bolzan has no memory of any part of his life story. It's all been erased. It was called, "The Man Who Forgot Everything." Bolzan has an extreme case of severe retrograde amnesia. The 47 year old man slipped in the men's restroom of his office building and hit his head on the ground. He forgot his whole life. His wife, his children. His friends. Everyone and everything. Bolzan said "The best word I can use to describe it is just being lost, because I lost who I am." Many people are spiritually lost like this. They wander their whole lives without knowing who they really are, where they have come from, or where they are going. The gospel of Christ reminds us who we are.

We are made in the image of God.  We are also children of God. The much misinterpreted idea of being born again, born of the Spirit, or born from above, is one way Jesus used to communicate this truth of becoming children of God. In one sense we are always children of God. Paul tells the philosophers in Athens that they are all God’s offspring. But in another sense we aren’t really children of God until we believe it. That is where faith comes in – faith in Christ and what he says. Through faith we accept that we are children of God. The apostle Paul uses the metaphor of being adopted into the family of God instead of being born of God. He makes a distinction between Jesus who was born as God’s Son, and we who are adopted by God into his family as sons and daughters of God. It doesn’t matter which metaphor or language we use. It comes down to the same – by faith be come to know and experience ourselves as children of God.

As children of God the spiritual is more important than the physical. In the temptation scene, the devil tempts Jesus with bread – making stones into bread. Jesus responds, “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'" Spiritual bread is more important than the physical insofar as knowing who we really are. Sure we are physical beings who need food to survive, but more importantly we are spiritual beings who need the Word of God to inform our existence.

In the second temptation the devil tempts Jesus to throw himself off the pinnacle of the temple to test God whether or not God will protect him physically from harm. Jesus says, “No. Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'" It is not about the physical; it is about the spiritual. Of course you are going to die if you jump off a building. That does not mean God does not love you or that we are not children of God. In the third temptation Jesus was no longer doubting who he was but rather was tempted not to act in accordance with his self-knowledge. He was tempted to live as if he was not the Son of God, to live as if all that mattered was worldly power and glory. Jesus responds to the temptation saying, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.'" That is how we live as sons and daughters of God.

In the temptation scene Jesus was affirming who he really was. The tempter was trying to get him to deny that.  He was trying to get Jesus to think he was just physical and not spiritual. Jesus refused to forget who he was as the Son of God. And he refused to live as if he were not the Son of God. He would worship and serve God alone. Likewise, we are to remember who we are as humans created in the divine image. Through faith we are sons and daughters of God, meant to worship and serve God. Let us not forget who we are. 

A Mountaintop Experience

Matthew 17:1-9

Spiritual experiences are common in religion. In fact one of the earliest books on the scientific study of religion was “The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature” written over a hundred years ago by Harvard University psychologist and philosopher William James. People in all religions have religious experiences. In fact a lot of times the religion is founded on such an experience. Famous examples are the Buddha’s enlightenment experience and Muhammad’s experience of having the Quran revealed to him. Our Bible is filled with religious experiences in both the OT and NT.

The history of Christianity is also filled with spiritual experiences, from the Pentecostal experience of speaking in tongues, to the mystics’ experience of union with God, to the evangelical experience of being born again. Some people seem to be experience junkies, always looking for the newest fad, the next powerful spiritual encounter. There was an item in the news recently about a snake handing Christian preacher in Kentucky named Jamie Coots, who is the star of the reality TV show “Snake Salvation" on the National Geographic channel. He died recently of a snake bite received during a worship service. Snake handling churches base their practice on a verse in the gospels, but I think the real allure is the thrill of risking your life. It is like the thrill people get from extreme sports. We might call Snake Handling extreme religion. Part of the allure of religion is the experience.

Most of us have had some type of spiritual experience. Though I suspect not the snake handling, but perhaps one of the other Christian experienced I just mentioned. It may be more subtle sense of the presence or guidance of God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit in our lives. It might be an intuition of the reality of God. Or perhaps it is quite dramatic, perhaps even a Near Death Experience or an experience of miraculous healing. Sometimes powerful experiences of God are called mountaintop experiences. Psychologist Abraham Maslow calls them peak experiences.  Skeptics would reduce spiritual experiences to its psychological components. But I see such experiences as possibly – but not always - a real connection to the spiritual dimension of life. Experiences are not necessary to the Christian faith. Some people’s belief in God is much more rational. We can be Christians without having a dramatic religious experience. But we should not dismiss spiritual experiences either.

1. Our gospel lesson for today is about a dramatic spiritual experience had by Jesus and three of his disciples. It was literally mountaintop experience because it took place on the top of a real mountain. Our gospel lesson says that Peter, James and John accompanied Jesus on a hike up a high mountain one day. The text does not identify the name of the mountain, but if you visit the Holy Land today, the tour guides will take you up Mount Tabor, which tradition says is the mountain. There is a nice Franciscan chapel on top commemorating the event. But I don’t think it happened there, because that mountain is not very high. It is more like a round hill rising from the plain. I think the Mount of Transfiguration is Mount Hermon, because in the gospel it is mentioned as being close to Caesarea Philippi, which is situated at the base of Mount Hermon. That is a high mountain.

2. There is something about a mountain view which is by itself a spiritual experience for me. I just love the view from a mountaintop. There is something about the vast openness of a mountain vista that connects me to the Creator. But the experience that the three disciples had with Jesus on the mountaintop was not just a nature experience. Our passage says in verses 1-2, “Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, led them up on a high mountain by themselves; and He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the light.” This was an experience of Jesus Christ. And here Jesus is more than a Galilean carpenter. This was a glimpse into the divine nature of this man that we know as Jesus of Nazareth. This points us to the central truth of Christianity. We do not just have a generic nature spirituality. Our faith is focused on Christ. We say that something unique in the history of the world happened in Jesus Christ. We say that God became flesh in a unique way in Jesus. Jesus Christ is a window to God. Jesus himself said, “When you have seen me you have seen the Father.”

On that mountaintop Jesus’ three closest friends got glimpse of God in the person of Jesus Christ. The light of God and the glory of God shone from the physical form of Jesus. What does this mean for us today? I think it directs our attention toward Jesus, both theologically and experientially. Some people prefer what theologians call a low Christology, Jesus as simply a man – a Palestinian prophet and nothing more. Others have a high Christology where the humanness of Jesus tends to get lost in his Divinity. What we have here in his passage is both the human and the divine. Jesus was a real human being who in some way communicated the presence of God in his very person. That was the power of Christ. When people were in his presence, they experienced God. That is still true today. Even though Jesus is not physically present with us in a body, we still experience God through Jesus 2000 year after he physically left this earth. When we read the stories of Jesus in Scripture, we sense his presence through the written word. When we hear his teachings we sense his presence.  When we worship Christ, we sense the presence of God.

We can experientially know the reality of God through Jesus Christ – both the historical Jesus that we can glimpse in the gospels and more directly the Spirit of Jesus. This is what makes me a Christian and not just a theist. I don’t just believe in God; I believe in Christ. It is great to believe in God, but there is more. There is the experience of God in Jesus Christ. Through Christian worship, like we are doing today, and through individual Christian devotion, we know God in Christ. We experience Jesus as the Son of God. We experience God in Jesus.

I experience God the Creator through his Creation. I experience the presence of God in Nature, in the mountains, lakes and desert, and in the stars. Lots of people experience, that even if they are not Christians. Even if they cannot bring themselves to identify that sense of awe and beauty and majesty as God, they are still experiencing God. I think even atheists experience God, though they would not call it God. I have that same sense of awe, and wonder, and majesty in Jesus Christ – in the gospels and in the Spirit of Christ. That is a mountain top experience, which is akin to what the disciples experienced.

3. Then something more happened to the disciples. Our gospel lesson says in verse 3-4 “And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with Him. Then Peter answered and said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if You wish, let us make here three tabernacles: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” I want to share something with you about Fern Tilton, an 89 year old member of our congregation who passed away on February 7. This is something that the family shared with me and gave me permission to share with you. When I got to Dartmouth Hitchcock hospital the morning that Fern died, she had just passed away. But her family was still there gathered around her bed in ICU. As we gathered around Fern there, we shared stories of Fern and also of Howard, her husband, who I knew from before. Then the family mentioned to me something I would call a spiritual experience that Fern had shortly before she died.

In the last time that she was conscious enough to communicate verbally, the family was gathered around the bed. Then she started saying, “Hi! Hi! Hi!” but she was not talking to her family around the bed. She was talking to people in heaven. She was talking to her mom and her Aunt Paulie. And she talked about Dad,” not her own dad but her kid’s dad - her husband Howard. She said, “You’re Dad!” She apparently was seeing those who had died before her. She was calling out their names and reaching out to them. They were as real and as close to her as the family members gathered around her bed. It was a wonderful confirmation of the reality of heaven and eternal life. You have probably also read or heard of other people who have reported that same type of experience. The veil between heaven and earth becomes thin enough that those people approaching death can see through it.

I think that was the experience that Jesus and the disciples had on that mountaintop. Elijah and Moses had already gone to heaven centuries before. But Jesus was so close to heaven at that moment, and the doors to heaven were open on that mountaintop, and Moses and Elijah came to the door to greet Jesus. Peter, James, and John were witnesses to that heavenly encounter. I read this story of the Transfiguration as confirmation of heaven, just like I interpret Fern’s experience as a confirmation of heaven for her family.

People have different ideas about what happens to us after death. No one knows for sure. Near Death Experiences, and even experiences like Fern had are often written off by people as the hallucinations of a dying brain. There is no way of proving that this is not the case. But I believe in heaven. I don’t know exactly what I will experience after my body dies. But I believe that the death f the body will not be the end of consciousness in some form. I think that the descriptions of heaven in scripture are attempts to describe it in human images and ideas that we are familiar with. I think it will be far greater than anything we know now or can even imagine. But I also believe that we can get glimpses of that spiritual reality now. That is what Jesus and the disciples received on that mountaintop – a glimpse of the Kingdom of Heaven while still on earth.

That glimpse of heaven was so wonderful that the disciples wanted to never end. Peter wanted to set up camp and stay there. He said, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if You wish, let us make here three tabernacles: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” He wanted to set up a shrine for each of them. You go to the Holy Land today there is a shrine or church on every mountaintop and holy place. There is a church on the spot where Jesus died and where Jesus rose, and where Jesus was born, and where Jesus ascended into heaven, and where Jesus wept in the Garden of Gethsemane, and where Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount and where Jesus multiplied the loaves and the fishes. There is a chapel or church or something on every spot associated with Jesus and the disciples. So even if Peter did not get to build the three tabernacles, his spiritual descendants certainly did.

It is our nature to want to keep ahold of those wonderful spiritual experiences in our lives. To memorialize those moments. Some people will look back and recount with nostalgia the wonderful spiritual experiences they have had. And that is alright to a certain extent. But I think this story is trying to push us beyond that type of mentality. Jesus did not let Peter build his tabernacles and stay there. In fact Jesus would not even let Peter and the other disciples even tell anyone about what happened on that mountaintop. It says in verse 9 “Now as they came down from the mountain, Jesus commanded them, saying, “Tell the vision to no one until the Son of Man is risen from the dead.”  That must have been very difficult for the disciples to keep their mouths shut about this great experience. Why did Jesus command them not to tell anyone? He probably had a number of reasons, but one is so that the focus would not be on the experience.

We can make religion all about experiences, but that is not what it is supposed to be about. That can be just another form of self-centeredness. It makes it all about us. I have known people who talk about their dramatic spiritual experiences, and it is all about them. The whole purpose of this little passage of scripture is to make it not about the disciples’ experience, but about Christ. It says in verses 5-8 “While he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them; and suddenly a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear Him!” And when the disciples heard it, they fell on their faces and were greatly afraid. But Jesus came and touched them and said, “Arise, and do not be afraid.” When they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only.”

The purpose of this story in the gospels is clearly to focus our attention on Christ. Religion and spirituality is not about experience.  It is about God, and specifically God in Christ. It is so easy for us to get wrapped up in ourselves and make everything about us. It is not about us. We are not the center of the universe. When we are children we think we are, and some adults still think they are. But we aren’t. The world will go on without us. Even our lives are not really about us. Our lives are about God – glorifying God, loving God, embodying God’s love and grace and forgiveness in our lives. Jesus’ life was not about himself. He constantly was saying that he said or did nothing but what the Father said or did. God was living Jesus’ life. God desires to live our lives. When we are able to be that transparent to God’s Spirit and Power, so that God shines through us, then that is a mountaintop experience.