Listen!

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Episcopal Church
February 7, 2016

Last Epiphany

Camp Mitchell sits on the side of a cliff on Petit Jean Mountain in the Diocese of Arkansas.  The cliff offers a spectacular view of the valley below and I often imagined that standing on the cliff we could see the valley much the way God sees, taking in the entire scene at once.  On the one hand, Camp Mitchell was a safe place for children and youth to come for retreats and camp.  We were miles away from the cares and concerns of our young lives, both literally and figuratively and had a safe place to wrestle with whatever life had thrown us.  On the other hand, the mountain was a place where we were often confronted with the truth about our young selves.  On the mountain, we faced both our accomplishments and our failures, our greatest hopes and our deepest fears.  I experienced God on that mountain in many ways, but especially in the friendships I formed there and in the music we sang in worship.  Camp Mitchell was, and I assume still is, a very special place for many people.  But Camp Mitchell was never a place intended for people to live.  The old World War 2 army barracks that were our cabins make that perfectly clear!  We always had to go back down the mountain, into the valley, and back to our regular lives.  But we always went home changed by our experience.  Sometimes I went home just plain tired.  But usually I went home having tasted the glory of God and ready to live my normal life again.

This morning, Moses, and Peter, James, and John all get a mountain top taste of the glory of God.  Moses has already been up the mountain once, received the 10 commandments, come down the mountain, found the people worshiping a golden calf, smashed the tablets with the 10 commandments, and had words with God about the people God led out of Egypt.  Now Moses returns to the mountain for a new set of 10 commandment tablets. At this point, given his recent experience with the golden calf, I imagine Moses would just as soon stay up on the mountain with God indefinitely.  But the point of the 10 commandments is to take them to the people so the people have something to live by.  Living by the 10 commandments will show the world what it means to be God's chosen people.  But when Moses comes down from the mountain his face is shining so brightly that his brother Aaron and the rest of the people are afraid to come near him.  In response to the people's fear, Moses would veil his face when he talked with them, then would remove the veil when he went up on the mountain to talk with God.  While our reading from 2 Corinthians gives a most unfortunate account of that veiling that has more to do with the 1st century tensions between Jews and Christians than with the glory of God, the writer does remind us of the transformative power of the glory of God. In the Exodus story, Moses experiences that power and that power sends him back down the mountain to the people God has called him to lead.

Also this morning, Jesus takes Peter and James and John and goes up on the mountain to pray.  And while Jesus is praying, the appearance of his face changes, his clothes become dazzling white, and Moses and Elijah appear with Jesus and speak of Jesus' departure which he is about to accomplish at Jerusalem.  Peter is ready to make this mountain his permanent address and he offers to build three booths, one for Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.  Confusion turns to terror as a cloud overshadows all of them and the voice from the cloud says "This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him."  Peter, James, and John have beheld the glory of God and what the glory of God says is "This is my Son, my Chosen, listen to him."

What are we to hear?  Just a few paragraphs before Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up on the mountain to pray, Jesus says to his disciples "The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised."  Then Jesus goes on to say to them "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.  For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it."   No wonder Peter wants to build booths on the mountain for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah and stay there  permanently.  The disciples may not have understood what was happening on that mountain, or the reference to Jerusalem, but being in the presence of Jesus, Moses, and Elijah is certainly preferable to listening to Jesus talk about the Son of Man undergoing suffering, rejection and death.  However, God commands the disciples to listen to Jesus, and Jesus has told them that he is headed to Jerusalem and the cross.  So Jesus and the disciples come down from the mountain, back to the valley, where they immediately encounter a child in need of healing.

Today, we sing the great alleluia hymns and bury the alleluias as our way of experiencing something of the glory of God before we, too, move down the mountain toward Jerusalem and Jesus' departure.  Every year, I too, would like to build a booth and dwell right here and keep singing these hymns rather than head down the mountain to Lent.  But the mountain is not a permanent address and God calls us to come off the mountain and follow Jesus.  A few verses after today's reading from 2 Corinthians, the writer says "For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God's glory displayed in the face of Christ."  God sends us down the mountain to follow Jesus where ever Jesus leads, not alone, but equipped with each other to walk with, with the glory of God to sustain us, and with Jesus to guide us.  

Amen.