St. Paul’s United Church Sunday, March 6, 2011

Our View of Jesus – Rev. David Mundy

Exodus 24:12-18 2 Peter 1:16-21 Matthew 17:1-9

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Would it be safe to say that most of us have crossed climbing Mount Everest off our Bucket List. The so-called Bucket List is made up of the experiences we want to have before we die, but we probably decided long ago that it we attempted Everest we might “kick the bucket!”

We may have come to this conclusion – I certainly have – but lots of people do aspire to get to the top of what is surely the most famous mountain in the world. Since 1953 when Sir Edmund Hillary became the first person of European background to make it to the top, there have been about 5,000 summits. That’s still fairly select company, although just over 500 people reached the top in 2010 alone.

A few years ago a 15-year-old Nepalese girl made it to the summit. Last year it was a 13-year-old American boy named Jordan Romero. A seventy-six-year-old woman has reached the top and so has a blind man.

Why do people do this? While the equipment and the infrastructure to do the climb have improved immensely over time, there is still considerable danger. There are approximately 120 corpses on Everest, a grim reminder that not everyone makes it to the top, and last year four people died in the attempt. A British climber, George Mallory, was asked during the 1920's why he wanted to climb Everest and he replied with what are called the three most famous words in a quote, “because it’s there.”

There is something about achieving an arduous undertaking which not only challenges the body but the spirit as well. In an age when self-actualization is almost a religion in itself, setting goals and then fulfilling them is almost the ultimate experience. That “high,” literally and figuratively, can be a deeply spiritual experience and the payoff for climbers is usually a magnificent view, if it isn’t obscured by snow or mist.

In ancient times people didn’t scale mountains just because they were there. Life was too demanding down in the valleys to have time to climb the mountaintops for recreation and self-fulfilment. But they did scale them with the hope of encountering God. We heard about two of these experiences this morning on the Sunday called Transfiguration, the last Sunday before we enter into the season of Lent.

One is from the time of the exodus, which was approximately 1300 to 1500 years before Jesus. According to scripture, after leaving Egypt and slavery the people of Israel kicked around the rugged wilderness of Sinai for decades. Some time in that sojourn their leader, Moses, went up the mountain also called Sinai and there, we are told, he receives the moral and ethical code we know as the Ten Commandments. It sounds as though Moses begins his climb with some of the elders of Israel and his brother Aaron and his assistant Joshua, but in the end he encounters God, one-on-one. This experience isn’t a quick up the hill and back down again. In the course of many days Moses experiences God in a deep, unexplainable, mystical way, and the people of Israel get glimpses of this glory from far below.

The gospel story of the transfiguration of Jesus resonates with the exodus story of Moses. But Jesus is not alone in this experience. He chooses three of the disciples who were probably teenagers or in their early twenties to climb a mountain, perhaps Mt. Hermon in the north of Israel, which is nearly 10,000 feet high. We can imagine them stopping as they climbed, and marvelling at a view they had never seen before.

In all three of the gospels which offer this account Jesus is joined at the summit by two of the great figures of Judaism, Moses and the prophet Elijah. If all of this seems a little puzzling, you’re in good company! The disciples don’t know what to make of what unfolds either. We heard that at first they are excited, saying that it is good to be part of this experience. But then when they sense that this is changing the way they know Jesus it actually frightens and confuses them.

The novelist and Christian writer Fred Buechner says it well:

It was Jesus of Nazareth all right, the man they’d tramped many a dusty mile with,

whose mother and brothers they knew, the one they’d seen as hungry, tired,

footsore as the rest of them. But it was also the Messiah, the Christ, in his glory.

It was the holiness of the man shining through his humanness,

his face so afire with it they were almost blinded.

As challenged as they are, these three disciples enter into a new relationship with Jesus as the fulfilment of God’s promise.

So, what are we supposed to do with these stories as Christians in the 21^st century? And what is our view of Jesus? Are we expected to take these stories literally in a denomination which does not usually follow a literalistic approach to scripture? Obviously the biblical writers are doing their best to explain the unexplainable. In the United Church we tend to be rather skeptical of mystical, unexplainable spiritual experiences, and we are tempted to explain away those parts of our biblical story which stretch our rationalistic approach to faith. But who are we if we no longer have a sense of mystery, of a God who is both “holy other” and profoundly present to us in the person of Christ, fully human and fully God, as the historic creed states?

A recent issue of the United Church Observer had a feature article on what they call post-theistic congregations, which strikes me as a fancy way of saying that they are gatherings of people who have decided to “fire” God and see how they do on their own. For those who are part of these congregations, there seems to be a sense that they view themselves as progressive, as “evolved” from those who are dependent on Christian faith. For me it seems rather pathetic. As I have mentioned before, it appears to be what someone has called “Cheshire Cat” faith, a reference to the disappearing feline in Alice in Wonderland which slowly fades away until all that is left is the grin.

In both of these stories of Moses and Jesus there is mention of the cloud and a radiance which reflects the glory of God present in that experience of revelation. There is a difference between a cloud of glory which invited us into God’s holy presence and the fog of confusion which leads us away from the God who is greater than anything or anyone we can create of ourselves.

Even for those of us who still identify ourselves as Christians there can be the temptation to become so familiar with the words about Jesus that we are no longer stretched to consider whether we have a living active relationship with the God who is made known in Christ. We tend to “tame” and minimize Jesus so that he no longer has a central place in our lives as individuals and as a community. Many of us have had powerful experiences of God and of Christ along the way in our faith journey, but something happens and somehow we lose that sense of stepping into the glory.

The other reading we heard today is from a New Testament letter which is attributed to the disciple Peter, although there is disagreement among scholars about authorship. The readers or hearers of this letter are encouraged not be become misled by the clever fables which might lead away from Jesus, the Christ:

For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the

power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we have become eyewitnesses of

his majesty . . . So we have the prophetic message more fully confirmed . You will

do well to be attentive to this as a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day

dawns and the morning star rises in your heart.

What a wonderful image this is of Christ as the dawning day and the morning star rising in our hearts. Actually, there is an ancient Christian monastery called St. Catherine’s on Mount Sinai in what is now the wilderness of Egypt. Ambitious pilgrims get up in the early hours, well before dawn, and climb to the summit so they can watch the dawning of the new day. Not only do they sense the glory of creation, for many there is a spiritual “high” as Christ dawns in their lives once again.

Is it possible for us to be renewed in Christ, to find our way into a rich and exciting faith? I think this is exactly what is necessary for our United Church which has become a little too conventional and “clubby” and Jesus-optional. How can there be a Christian church without a Christ who is alive in our midst?

We want this for our children and young people who so often crave a sense of adventure and challenge. Like the teens who climbed Everest, or even those young men who scaled the mountain of transfiguration with Jesus, there is that desire to push the limits and enter into something new.

A recent episode of the hit television show The Good Wife had a confrontation between the central figure and her teenage daughter. It was a strange role-reversal that may be a statement about the time we live in. The daughter is upset because she wants to follow Jesus as part of a dynamic and disturbing internet movement called The Mustard Seed. The daughter wants to know what her mother has against Jesus. The mom insists that she doesn’t have anything Jesus, she just sees him as a man who lived two thousand years ago. The daughter exclaims “that’s the problem with your generation!” In the end they agree to find a church together.

But experiences of transformation and renewal are not just for the young. The other morning at our bible study, which includes a number of senior citizens, I asked what words we might use for our mountaintop experiences. They included:

Life-changing	humbling	exhilarating
Evaluative	disturbing	peaceful
Insightful	bringing us closer to God

This Wednesday is the beginning of the season of Lent, a time of preparation and reflection leading to the most powerful event in our Christian faith, the resurrection. So, I invite you to allow these weeks to be a time of renewal and awakening, a time when you bring Jesus back into focus in your life.

I’ll finish up today with a Transfiguration poem by Thomas Troeger:

God, transfigure our perception

With the purest light that shines,

And recast our life’s intentions

To the shape of Your designs,

Till we seek no other glory

Than what lies past Calvary’s hill

And our living and our dying

And our rising by your will.

Amen!