Broken Bread Restored

Note: The readings and sermon that follow are held in the context of a mid-week Lenten ecumenical worship, the overall theme of which is "Restored in Christ." Catholics, Methodists, AME, Presbyterian, Reform, and other folks have been gathering each week in a different parish location for soup and sandwiches, followed by a service of the Word.

Genesis 3:1-8

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 

1 Corinthians 5:6-8

Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

John 6:48-58

[Jesus said:] I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” The Judeans then disputed among themselves saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”

Sermon

This Gospel reading seems more appropriate for Halloween, or a zombie party, than for worship. Jesus tells us ‘eat my flesh, drink my blood,’ and not politely, either. The language of eating here is likened to the way a dog gnaws on a bone, to work on it, chew it up for all its worth, getting all the flavor possible out of it. And drinking his blood? It’s no wonder early Christians were called cannibals!

This story from John is one of those which demands we don’t just leave our faith in our heads or on the shelf. Jesus has a human body, blood, flesh, and bone, just like ours, and when he talks about the meat and marrow of life he refuses to let us see faith as an escape from reality. “Eat my flesh, drink my blood” = have my life for your life. This is not simply a life of easy discipleship which only offers comfort, but a challenge to grow and to abide with God down to our very bones, in the same way God in Jesus abides with us down to the bones. Once we walked with God in the garden, but ever since we rejected that, God has been haunting us, chasing after us, leading us and dwelling with us in prophets, in history, in a pillar of fire and a pillar of cloud, in the law given to Moses and in the tent of the priests set up among us. God has been abiding with God’s people for a long time.

In our earliest faith history, we have this beautiful, good creation, brought to order out of chaos, raised up from the earth to care for the earth, and creation seems to turn against itself when the crafty serpent tricks humanity into doubting God’s word and taking good and evil into our own hands. Suddenly, in light of this knowing, we discovered shame, invented hiding, covered our bodies and widened the gap between us and God, distrusting both our own goodness and God’s ability or even desire to see us as we are.

It only takes a little question, it seems, to bring down our house of cards. A little hiding, a little secrecy, to take away our sense of security. Like leaven in bread, a pinch is all that is needed to spread throughout the loaf. And the serpent’s distrust snuck into us, infecting our power to live in right relationship, and we felt it, we knew it, in our bodies. As we so often carry our life experience physically, in our shoulders, backs, faces, innards and grey hairs.

It is in this same body that Jesus lives. Muscle and sinew, skin and sweat, blood and tears, given and shed for us. For all of our hiding, Jesus openly gives himself, gives all of himself, for our life. In that gift of himself, these bodies, these histories, that we carry and that we hide, will be restored. 

But for now, in our broken wilderness of Lent, we travel together with Christ as best as we can. In these mid-week gatherings we celebrate our kinship along the journey at the same time that we are met with our historical, human failures. Because even as we gather, even as we are sharing supper fellowship, we are a broken community. The Gospel reading from John for tonight is time and again connected with God’s gift of self in the Eucharist, yet we are not able to celebrate Eucharist together in these mid-week services, because our historic and doctrinal divisions run too deep. 

So we grieve the divisions between us even as we celebrate the ways God brings us together. All of those basic human needs - food, water, shelter - can be met by God in and through our fellowships. In spite of our historical divisions, God continues to free and unite us to serve our neighbors, and one another, in the name of the Christ who abides with us, even down in our bones. Because the love of God among us and for us is not hidden on account of our brokenness, is not weakened, but is glorified as God’s creative spirit again and again brings us new life and bears the fruits of God’s kingdom among us. The love of God runs deeper than our histories. So until that day when he comes again in glory, and we can finally live fully into the reality of our unity in Christ, we work the works of love and of hope, like leaven in bread, infusing the world with the promises of God to make all things new.

Thirsty?

John 4:5-42

Have you ever come to worship, or entered a new community, and tried to hide yourself out in the open? Ever heard the word of forgiveness at the beginning of worship and thought to yourself, “well, maybe, but if you really knew my sins you wouldn’t forgive me.” Or heard “given and shed for you” and doubted it because, you know, if anyone found out that secret you’re carrying you’d never be welcome back?

I wonder about this woman of Samaria - she’s pretty clear about who’s allowed to talk to whom and why. Jesus asks her for a drink and she says, “you’re talking to me? You’re a man. A Jewish man. I’m a woman. A Samaritan woman. This conversation should not be happening.” But Jesus is thirsty. God in the flesh experiencing basic human need, Jesus simply asks the woman for a drink. And it seems the woman is thirsty, too. Experiencing a basic human need, a need for connection, for community and conversation and welcome. Which Jesus offers her when he begins the conversation.

It sets up that way, at least. First this random Jewish man asks this solitary Samaritan woman for a drink, then he tells her he can give her living water. The kind that never runs out, that springs up from within and lasts forever. Clearly he’s crazy for even presenting the idea, and this woman has had five husbands, so she knows from crazy. She’s not lived a typical life. We don’t know why she’s had five husbands - was she sold into marriage young and then widowed? Purchased out of prostitution? Abandoned by a man or two? We don’t get the details, or the reasons, but a woman in Jesus’ time being married more than once was far from ordinary. And this woman is offered an end to her thirst. By the very God who knows every thing she is thirsty for.

Jesus offers this woman living water, and she takes him up on it. Because who isn’t tired of being thirsty? It’s a constant struggle in the desert, for sure, but even with tap water available, and bottled water, and sodas and juices and coffees and teas, we have some pretty deep thirst, too. Which is different from being hungry. We can last a lot longer without food than we can without water. We say we can fight for whatever we’re hungry for. Athletes are encouraged by coaches to be hungry to win. Activists often speak of being hungry for justice.

But thirst? Thirst is hard to ignore. Our brains sometimes confuse thirst with hunger, so we eat when we’re thirsty and then just end up more thirsty, as well as full of food we didn’t need. Sort of like when we want to feel secure in a relationship so we buy stuff we can’t afford, to prove ourselves worthy, only then we end up with more anxiety about money, but still haven’t talked about it, so we do more or buy more to avoid facing our anxiety. It’s not difficult to mask the real questions with lighthearted trivia. But thirst - thirst is a great and powerful image for what’s really going on in our depths. It’s like how Saint Augustine described our condition: “God, you have made us for yourself. And our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” Restless. Thirsting. Behind all of the distractions, underneath every layer of struggle, remains this constant thirst we cannot seem to put our finger on. What is it for you? Where does your thirst lie? What happens when you sit in your thirst and just get to know it for awhile?

When the woman hears of a way to get away from her thirst, this living water which will never run dry, she asks for it, and Jesus gets to the heart of the matter in a bit of a sneaky request: “Go, call your husband and come back.” He knows she has no husband, knows she has had five husbands, he knows what a life of close relationships grown and lost is like. 

And in his seeing her, she sees him as a prophet. But he is more than a prophet, so much more. She just hasn’t seen him that way, not yet. So he has patience with her, and engages her in the conversation as she continues. He does not chastise or berate her for her life, but meets her where she is and welcomes her questions. He does not take back his offer once she admits to living with a man not her husband. He does not shun her for her race or her gender, but shares of himself freely with her. She may greet him only as a foreign man, not knowing from the start that he is the Messiah - after all, the disciples barely get it even after the Resurrection - but Jesus, he knows her, and her history, and with that knowledge he finds a way to create community with her.

And there’s an amazing thing. This God who seeks to be known, who created the world and walked in it and blows through it, knows every bit of us. Every last secret we keep. Every label and status we carry. Each embarrassment and shame and anxiety and struggle. Before we know who this God is, God claims us. We proclaim this when we baptize infants who are still figuring out their own fingers and toes, much less who anybody is. Before we know Jesus, Jesus knows and loves us. Before we even have the desire to have faith, the Spirit breathes into our thirst a refreshment, a new thirst, a desire as deep as any well; to know the One who knew us before we were born.

So when you have those thoughts of “I’d never be welcome,” or, “I can’t let anyone see that side of me,” know that you are already known in your fullness, and the One who knows more about you than you know about yourself is the One who offers you living water, who not only welcomes you but claims you, who has poured out his own life for your thirst, that you may trust his forgiveness, grace, and love. That you may have his life, as a deep well springing up within you, cleansing, purifying, refreshing you. The human body is over three quarters made of water, it is inside of us even as it is poured over our heads in blessing at our baptism. The living water is the resurrected Christ whose love - for you! - will never run dry. Not now, not ever, no matter what. 

God's not finished with us

Genesis 12:1-4a

Romans 4:1-5, 13-17

John 3:1-17

Has anyone yet seen the film “Twelve Years a Slave”? It won some well-deserved awards at the Oscars, and tells a true story of a free man from New York being kidnapped and sold into slavery in the south, where he had to hide his true free and educated identity to stay alive under the abuse of his slavers. The film follows him to the point where he is reunited with his family, and the endnotes tell us that he spent the rest of his life working in the abolitionist movement.

Why do I bring this up? Well, tomorrow is Saint Patrick’s day, and Patrick was also taken from his homeland and sold into slavery. Imagine then, what it meant for him to escape that slavery, return home to Britain, and then, once he became a public leader in the church, he returned to the country that had kept him as a slave. Patrick was a Bishop and saint to the very people who had taken away his freedom by force. Talk about love. Talk about mystery. This is the sort of hero whose power came from beyond himself. And now, centuries later, we celebrate a day with his name on it and make it a bit more glamorous than it probably was in reality. As we tend to do with saints.

Take Abram, for example. In the Genesis reading this morning we have a very unglamorous call story. He lived a good life, he and his wife had no children, they presumably were getting ready to retire, and God uprooted them to send them on the first bits of a road trip, without a clear map, without any clear plans or certain expectations, but with a very vague sort of promise: “I will bless you so that you will be a blessing.” Sort of like what Patrick must have felt when he went back to Ireland after escaping slavery. 

Sometimes God tells us what to do and our first response can only be either to laugh or to be very confused. Yet for some reason we keep asking God for advice and direction. 

We have wide open pasture in this wilderness of Lent. Plenty of space to explore, from worship spaces in our mid-week services, to spiritual practices for the season, to driver’s education for some of our young people, to navigating new relationships and new jobs, to figuring out the way this particular parish might meet the needs of this particular neighborhood in our own particular way. It would sure be nice to have a direct word from God, wouldn’t it? To know for certain that what we’re doing is what God wants us to do, that these plans and works of ours line up with God’s desire for us and for this area.

So we get that word from God and it’s just as clear to us as it was to Abram, or to Patrick: “I will bless you to be a blessing.” And we thank God for that good word and still wonder at what it means, how to live it out.

What it means is that God has not forgotten us in this wilderness. Abram and Sarai were childless and their only security was in staying connected to their ancestral home - so God took them from that home, uprooted them from that land, and God was their security. Far more fertile, that chasing after God’s voice, than it would have been had they dug in their heels and refused to budge.

What it means, that we are blessed to be a blessing, is that God is not done with us. Abram and Sarai were childless and wandering and living on a promise they did not see come to fruition for many many years. Their names had to be changed. Their wanderings took them through uncertain times and potentially dangerous neighborhoods. But God was not finished with them just because they appeared to be barren.

God blessed us to be a blessing, too. It’s the real trickle-down effect, the way the cycles of nature feed each other, and our faith has sprung forth from Abram and Sarai to feed generations before us just as this love of God will, through us, continue to feed generations to come.

It’s miraculous. It’s mysterious. It’s a little bit crazy, to think of a people born out of such wandering in their golden years. But it’s a promise made by a God who is faithful. A promise made and kept by a God who came in person to see to it. It’s a promise we still carry, and we carry it in faith that God is faithful. We do not wander in the wilderness chasing after our own plans and desires for success, for success as the world measures it changes more quickly than technology. We wander in the wilderness chasing after our God who goes before us, following wherever faith calls us, even when it seems pretty crazy, and we have known the blessings of these leaps of faith.

Patrick could well have escaped slavery in Ireland and been done with the place, never returned, and with good reason. But in Christ he was always living in freedom, just as each and all of us live in freedom through Christ. Secure in his freedom he was able to follow God’s call to be a blessing to Ireland and the generations who followed after him. 

Abram followed that ridiculous, unwise, wasteful call to leave behind his homeland, too. And his offspring outnumbered the stars of heaven. The whole of the cosmos, even. That great expansive cosmos that God loves enough to live in and to die in and to be resurrected in. Brothers and sisters, we are blessed to be a blessing, as Abram and Sarai were, as Patrick was. Which means God has not forgotten us. God is not finished with us. God is still loving us in and through the wilderness. In and through the cosmos. In and through the mundane bits of bread and wine offered at this and, yes, every, table. Nothing much special, it seems. Yet when God gets involved, speaks a word, makes a promise, it’s miraculous. It’s mysterious. It’s love poured out for the whole of the world.

Lent 1 - Jesus wouldn't 'Man Up'

Genesis 2:15-3:21

Romans 5:12-21

Matthew 4:1-11

A friend of mine posted on Facebook this week: “Okay, fine, be a man. Don’t want your friends to judge you.” It was one of those status updates that was just vague enough for folks to ask her questions about it, but what I suppose happened is that her boyfriend made a crude joke or acted somehow more macho than usual and hurt her feelings in the process. Because, you know, there’s only one way to ‘be a man,’ and it’s not cool to miss the mark on that. Not cool at all, because other guys might see you less than strong, less than powerful, and there will be no end to the teasing.

Where do we get this idea, that there is one perfect man, one perfect woman? Adam and Eve are only two characters in the Bible, and there are so many ways to be human that aren’t covered. But somehow we figure it’s the man’s job to be stoic and provider, and woman’s place to be homemaker and always in need of rescuing. I mean, look at Eve’s first action in Scripture - she misquotes God, who never said not to even touch that fruit, and then decides she knows better and follows the snake’s suggestion to eat for her ethics.

This is a dangerous text in many ways. Most obviously because for centuries folks have been saying it’s Eve’s fault we’re not in the garden any more. One of our confirmation kids, though, blames God. He says God wants us to be dumb and that to stay in the garden we’d have to remain ignorant. So for him the science versus religion fight started early.

But Paul in his letter to the Romans says pretty clearly that through one man sin came into the world, you know, to set Adam up as a story type so that Jesus can be the hero whose opposite energy saves the day. The one man was disobedient, so there had to be one man to be completely obedient, in order to fix what got broken back in the garden.

What was it that got broken? We lived in a garden, to till it and keep it. Adam named all the animals and Eve was crafted from his rib to be an equal partner in garden stewardship. They were naked and not ashamed. Probably it wasn’t twenty degrees and snowing, so it didn’t hurt them to be naked, either. They weren’t dumb, they had to know how to work the land and care for the animals. And placing blame on them for the brokenness won’t help much of anything, because we’re all guilty and equally stuck because sin is now in our DNA. But the trust between us and God was broken when we decided we knew better than God. When being something we’re not was more important to us than being who we are, we broke faith, and so, to be like God, we ate the thing that was promised to kill us. And we have been fighting against God and against ourselves ever since.

It is the same lie that’s thrown at Jesus, the same temptation to be what somebody else thinks he should be. After forty days and nights out in the wild open wilderness, without food, his body ravenous for something to sustain it, Jesus is given this option: turn this stone into bread. Or, rather, the option he’s given is: prove you’re the Son of God. Meaning: we expect the Son of God to provide for his own needs first and foremost, to make himself comfortable, to use his power for his own benefit, so go ahead, man, and order yourself a supreme pizza out of this gravel. Don’t bother to be grateful or patient, you of all people are entitled to it. Get a side of hot wings out of this cactus while you’re at it.

But Jesus knows who he is, and what is his purpose, and so the accuser has to try another tactic.

Up to the pinnacle of the temple they go. The high place of all high places. The closest to God a living person could get. So prove yourself, Jesus. Prove your God is the best there is. Man up and jump already. It says in your very own Scriptures you’ll be just fine. God will grab you like a momma cat and you’ll not even scuff your sandals. C’mon, dude. You chicken or something? Where’s your faith?

And Jesus knows who he is, who God is, and what is his purpose, so the accuser has to try another tactic.

So this time it’s an appeal to his leadership. Why not make your work easy? Why not have all of the kingdoms of the world at your feet, bowing and scraping and living according to your law without argument? Wouldn’t it be better that way? To have world peace, everyone loving their neighbor, everyone turned to you as their head CEO? Clearly they’re a mess, since they all belong to Satan so he can offer them in the first place. Clearly they’d be better off if Jesus would just have them automated and turn their default mode to unwavering faith. That would totally be worth getting Satan’s endorsement on all his merchandise. Small price to pay to have every nation assimilated.

And Jesus knows who he is, who God is, who we are, and what is his purpose, so the accuser is out of ammunition for awhile.

But ever since God spoke at Jesus’ baptism, ever since it was said that this is God’s Son, folks have been assuming we know what that means. Power and prestige. Always on my side. Might makes right. Backing the current religious powers that be. We assume Jesus would use all that power the same way we would. But Jesus doesn’t ‘man up,’ and fall prey to our expectations. Jesus doesn’t use his power to force us into repentance. Jesus isn’t what we expect or deserve. He’s the kid who gets bullied on the school playground even though his Mom is the principal. He’s the little boy with pink fingernails, the girl who buys lunch for that kid who’s always hungry, that football player who sings in the show choir.

But he’s more than that. If Jesus were just a good example to follow, we’d be lost, done for, roadkill on that highway to heaven. 

So what Jesus does is to live our story before God. To step into our shoes and face our failures head-on, to walk the way that has been prepared, the way we have tried and failed to follow, the way that leads to his death and resurrection, through the wilderness and on to the promised land. He completes our story for us when we’re too distracted and tired and broken to try. We ate from a tree of misguided ethics in the garden, and were kicked out before we could get to the tree of life. Jesus IS the tree of life, come to restore us, come to feed us, come to be everything we need in this wilderness. He knows who he is, who God is, who we are, and in his blood, sweat, and tears, he gives us back to ourselves, back to God, back to life. Thanks be to God.

Ash Wednesday - Body of Christ: Dying and yet alive

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.... And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourself treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. 

Sermon:

The Body of Christ has an eating disorder. Lately, every Lent we joke about giving up chocolate, but for some it’s another good excuse to explain why they aren’t eating. Can’t have chocolate, gave it up for Lent. Can’t have carbs, gave them up for Lent. Nope, no sugar, no dairy, no soy, no... Now, I’m not saying there aren’t legitimate allergies folks have to cope with and eat around, but if one part of the Body suffers, all suffer with it, and I know there are beloved children of God who have learned to hate their own bodies, to starve themselves to reach some false level of perfection, who take this season of historical fasting as permission and even blessing to disappear from the world. 

I have a friend from college who for a long time would wonder about how many calories were in the Body of Christ, even when we used wafers at communion, because she was diligent about counting those monsters, and sometimes after communion she would instantly feel fat and out of control and run to the bathroom to purge. But even though she was seriously ill, people around her kept telling her how beautiful she looked, how slim, how amazed they were, and jealous, at how much weight she had lost. She was making herself disappear, and she’s just one I know of who is healing and talking about her slow resurrection process.

But this season of Lent is not about hating ourselves. It is not about beating ourselves up for not being perfect. It is not a diet plan or forty days of the second coming of our new years resolutions. We enter the days ahead with ash on our foreheads as a mark of grace, not condemnation. We receive the burned palms of last year mixed with the oil of blessing, not to say we are all terrible sinners who deserve to die, but that we are mortals whose lives are wrapped up in the cycle of life and death, and we receive those ashes in the shape of a cross because even death is not the final word for us.

It is an outward sign of our shared humanity, our common need for air, water, food, and forgiveness. A sign also of shelter, welcome, and purpose. There are ways we have learned to hide behind our religion, but they are not hidden from God. We can complain that life is so hard and make jokes about it while struggling inside in ways we do not feel we can share. We can mouth the words of confession and make a big deal about carrying our cross in a way that glosses over the reality of our questions, and journeys, and vulnerabilities. But those things that we hide? That no one sees? That we think will stay forever in the dark? Those pains and sorrows, the reality of mortality, is not hidden from or invisible to God. In fact, God voluntarily joins us in them, taking on the same carbon-based body common to all that lives and dies.

When my friend who was starving herself finally got help, and I don’t remember how she did, she talked often of this hyper-awareness of herself, anxiety about how much space she took up, a strictness about measuring every last scrap of food even as she was getting healthy again. But she could not hide her sickness forever, no matter how much she fought it and tried to make it normal. 

The Body of Christ has an eating disorder. We try to save ourselves and fail. We try to be perfect and kill ourselves in the process. This is not the fast that God chooses. If we fast, it is to make ourselves aware of our place in the world, our need for food and our connection with others who have no choice about their hunger. If we fast, it is to joyfully center our prayer on the God who always provides, always forgives, always brings life.

The point of Lent is not to make ourselves suffer. The point of Lent is to prepare for Easter. To consider who Jesus is and what he has endured out of love for us and for the whole of the cosmos. The point is to revel in our Baptism, or for some, to prepare for Baptism. To look into our mortality and take it seriously and find Jesus, and the whole of the Body of Christ, there beside us all the way through the end and out the other side.

We do not wear these crosses of ash on our faces to prove ourselves good Christians. You can wash it off before you leave if you like. But you are marked with it, and can’t get away from it. We all die. We all belong to God. Some of us seem to suffer more than others, but we are in this together, not solitary. We cannot escape the love of God any more than we can escape death. In fact, death’s hold on us is far more slippery than it would like it to be. Because God’s purpose for us is life, no matter what else may kill us. Paul said it well, and it bears repeating: “We are treated as impostors and yet are true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as perishing, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything.”

Mountains Breaking Open

Exodus 24:12-18

Matthew 17:1-9

When I first traveled through the Pacific Northwest in college, I was stunned by the mountains. Growing up, the Poconos in PA were all the mountains I knew, beautiful sloping things covered in forest, where I spent my summers in the shade at my grandparents’ retirement home, watching the deer and birds from their back porch in the woods. But the west coast mountains? Totally, strikingly, different. On rainy days they could have just been distant clouds, but when the mountains were out, they were bold, sharp, giants, visible for miles, used to navigate the points of the compass when we got lost. As the Alleghennys of Pennsylvania had become comfortable old sleepy friends, the west coast mountains were stern, imposing, living and sometimes active things, still in formation, still with all of their rough edges. To build a house on a Pennsylvania mountain meant a beautiful, rustic view. To build a house on Mount St Helens... the whole landscape of the valley was reshaped when that mountain exploded northward in an eruption no one could have predicted, and gardens across the state and beyond still have inches of ash just below their surface, remnants of a history no one can recreate or return to. The landscape is still rebuilding itself, renewing and resurrecting in a beautiful new way.

So when we have these two stories this morning about mountain-top experiences, even though I have also seen in person the mountain Moses climbed, I can not help but think of how I want those childhood summers of Pennsylvania to return, but how an experience of God can also transform us as completely and totally as an eruption like that of St Helens.

Have you ever had a mountaintop experience that changed the way you walk through life? A bit of clarity - or terror - that completely altered your experience of the day-to-day? Not everybody gets one of those moments. Not everybody who has had one has wanted one. And unless you count the final passage into life eternal as a mountaintop, nobody gets to stay there.

Jesus did a lot of teaching from mountains. Great armies built their fortresses on top of mountains. High places are good for communication, for security, for cell phone towers... When people are asked where heaven is, most point to the sky, and what’s closer to the sky than a mountain? Or an airplane, but in the days before airplanes and spaceships, the closest thing to heaven was a mountain, so mountains were where people made special trips to meet with God. Sometimes those trips ended well, with prayers answered and plentiful harvest, and sometimes those trips ended badly, with gods getting jealous and competing for followers. It seemed everybody’s gods could be accessed from the mountains. 

But none of the other gods came down the mountains like Jesus did. Sure, there were messages sent with servants down the mountain. Moses came down the mountain with ten commandments straight from the horse’s mouth, as it were. And he did so after a pretty scary thunderstorm that the people thought might have killed him. But forty days of one-on-one time with God, and when the man himself who was there comes down with direct communication, with verbatim here’s-what-God-expects of us, which is what we keep asking for, we still don’t get it right. After generations of prophets, yelling at us to get our act together already, to take care of the poor and feed the hungry and welcome the stranger, when God finally does come down the mountain, we might expect an angry parental figure, the sort who hollers down the stairs “don’t make me come down there!”

But when God comes down the mountain, it is unlike anything expected of the gods. When God comes down the mountain, it is messy for sure, but it is just as messy for God as it is for us. Because at the bottom of the mountain are some pretty rocky roads, some serious wilderness territory, and who in their right mind would voluntarily go through the struggle if they could take easy street and ride above it?  Who would walk with us through the mess when God could certainly get away with throttling us all and just starting over? 

Who is this God we are following through the next 40 days of Lent? Who it is we’re giving up chocolate for, or coming to extra mid-week worship for, or having fish on Fridays for? Who is it we’ve been worshiping all Epiphany, story by story, week by week? Who is it we’ll return to this Lent to learn from and experience life and struggle with? The disciples heard the voice of God from a blindingly-white cloud on a mountain, in the sort of holy place where heaven comes dangerously close to earth, and even they didn’t seem to grasp who their Rabbi was, what it meant that the voice of God thundered out of the cloud and told them to listen to Jesus. How could they have understood if they scattered when Jesus was arrested, saving their own skin while their Rabbi was flogged.

And all of that reflection on this bright and shining day when the church celebrates the holy divinity of Jesus. We are about to climb back down the mountain into the shadow and mess of daily life, and we are given here a picture of Jesus which is so holy and bright and beyond our expectations of humankind that it must be a revelation of God. And this revelation of God, thunderous and terrifying, reshapes the wilderness like the St Helens explosion over thirty years ago. Valleys are raised and mountains are brought low, the earth turns inside out and it is devastating at first. But not only does the earth turn inside out, heaven also has turned itself inside out, spilling over on that mountaintop where Moses and Elijah appear to talk with Jesus. Heaven has turned inside out like St Helens, with a rupture too big to leave us and this world unscathed, even if it looks on the ground like nothing has changed.

With Jesus Christ on the earth, up on the mountain with the bright shining clouds, we get a picture of majesty that would terrify anyone. But God does not stay up on the mountain in the bright shining clouds. When we are terrified, when the disciples find their faces on the ground in fear, Jesus touches them, touches us, and calls us to rise. When the power and glory of God, the potential for judgment, the uncontrollable nature of life, scare us senseless and leave us speechless, Jesus in the flesh does just what Riley does every time we share the peace here. Jesus touches us. Simple. Basic. Comfort and connection and, in that, also some piece of new creation which wasn’t there before.

Jesus touches the disciples and says ‘do not be afraid.’ God steps down out of the clouds and walks with us down off the mountain, into our shadows, into our day-to-day, because God is not above living with us, God is about living with us. In the mess, with the sick kids and the snow days and the propane shortages and the job insecurities. Yes, God is holy, yes, Jesus is all glorious and powerful, yes the Spirit blows in ways we cannot begin to comprehend, but God does not kick us down the mountain to see what we can do on our own while God sits in heaven and knits another scarf. God raises us up from our fear and walks down the mountain with us, into all of the less-than-glamorous bits of life that we would rather not talk about. 

We are entering Lent this week, entering the shadow of ash left by a St Helens-esque eruption. And on Wednesday we will smear our foreheads with ash, the basic carbon element that unites all matter, from the center of the earth to the farthest star. We will remember how earth breaks open underneath us in death, and how heaven breaks open upon us in resurrection life. Most of all, we will name God in our midst, in that ash, in our lives and in our deaths and in each and every resurrection. Because the God of the mountains is also God in the valleys, God of lush forests is also God in the wilderness, God of majesty and terrifying glory is also God among us, saying to us, ‘do not be afraid. Get up, let us walk together.’

Thanks be to God. Amen.