La Samaritana

Sermon-3Lent-March 27, 2011 John 4:5-42 So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink." (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water." The woman said to him, "Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?" Jesus said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life." The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water." Jesus said to her, "Go, call your husband, and come back." The woman answered him, "I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You are right in saying, 'I have no husband'; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!" The woman said to him, "Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem." Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." The woman said to him, "I know that Messiah is coming" (who is called Christ). "When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us." Jesus said to her, "I am he, the one who is speaking to you." Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, "What do you want?" or, "Why are you speaking with her?" Then the woman left her water-jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, "Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?" They left the city and were on their way to him. Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, "Rabbi, eat something." But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you do not know about." So the disciples said to one another, "Surely no one has brought him something to eat?" Jesus said to them, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. Do you not say, 'Four months more, then comes the harvest'? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, 'One sows and another reaps.' I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor." Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He told me everything I have ever done." So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there for two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, "It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world." Grant to me, O Lord, an eloquence most gentle and wise, that for Thy good gifts I may not be puffed up and extolled above my brothers. Place in my mouth, I beseech Thee, through Thy Holy Spirit, words of consolation, edification, and exhortation, that I may encourage the good to better things, and by word and example bring back to the threshold of Thy righteousness those who walk apart from Thee. May the words which Thou dost give to Thy servant be as keen darts and as burning arrows to penetrate the minds of those that hear, and inflame them with fear and love of Thee. Amen. Saint Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) In 2004 Frank Warren started a temporary community art project called PostSecret.com. It was a blog where people were invited to mail in postcards that had one of their secrets written on it. You simply sent in a postcard with your secret on it-no name, no return address. Every week Warren would choose 10-20 of the postcards sent in and publish them, anonymously, on his blog. In the original message Warren wrote: “your secret can be regret, fear, betrayal, desire, confession, or childhood humiliation. Reveal anything-as long as it’s true, and you have never shared it with anyone ever before.” 2 rules: it must be true, and you have never shared it with anyone ever before. In high school I was so desperate for a boyfriend I dated a guy who went to Star Wars Conventions . . . and he dumped me. I suffer from an eating disorder and I fear my mother's suffering. I can't stand my stepmother. I was 7 years old the first time I attempted suicide. When things go well for me I have to wreck my life all over again. I watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in a mental hospital. Imagine the woman at the well. How many postcards would she have needed to send? Women went to the well at noon for one reason-to avoid meeting anyone else! Everyone went to the well early in the morning at the cool of the day. There were expectations. The Samaritan woman went there at noon-when no one else would be there. John the gospel writer tells us details, always, to make a point. Point two, Unrelated men and women never ever talked to each other. It wasn’t done in 1st century Israel. “Rabbis forbade rabbis to greet any woman in public, even a wife or a sister. There were, in those days, Pharisees who shut their eyes when they saw any woman on the street. With their eyes shut, they walked into so many walls and tripped over so many cracks in the street that they were called the "bruised and bleeding Pharisees." There were expectations. Point three, Jews and Samaritans never ever talked with each other. It would be the same of Israelis and Palestinians today. You don’t talk to outsiders. There were certain expectations. And yet Jesus, a Jewish man, talks to the Samaritan woman. At noon at Jacob’s well. Last week John tells the story of Nicodemus, a Jewish man of great importance, coming to Jesus by night to find out from Jesus “who are you!” This week, Jesus is in an encounter with a non Jewish woman, at midday, in a strange city. Every story this Lent that we hear will show us a different layer of life, a different secret, a different rule being broken. Every week this Lent, we will hear a story that when opened up we might say, “yes, that is my secret, too, that is me, that could be my postcard.” Nicodemus was confused, uncertain. He wasn’t sure who Jesus was, and he was afraid how Jesus might change his life. The woman at the well, the notorious woman at the well, a woman of shame and guilt. Confusion. Doubt . Shame. Guilt. Embarrassment. Humiliation. Any of these fit somewhere in your journey in faith? Every week John tells us a story about one person’s encounter with Jesus. And in that story we are to see our own stories. In southern Mexico, La Samaritana (the Samaritan woman) is remembered on the fourth Friday in Lent, when water flavored with chilacoyota, tamarindo, jamaice and horchata is given to commemorate her gift of water to Jesus. It is a sweet mixture, and people are supposed to offer it, especially to strangers, on the 4th Friday. It is to remind everyone of this woman. The Orthodox Church knows her as St. Photini, or Svetlana in Russian. Her name means "equal to the apostles," and she is honored as an apostle and martyr. (from sermon by Patricia Farris Unlikely Messenger) What do you struggle with your faith? Doubt, confusion, anger, mistrust, shame? Listen, the woman at the well has long been portrayed as a person of humiliation. She had 5 former husbands, she went out of her way to avoid even her own people. She felt as if she was worthless, and her past made any possible future bleak. She had committed too many sins to ever be redeemed. And yet Jesus talked with her, chose her, listened to her. B.B.Taylor writes: “Jesus talks longer to the woman at the well than he does to anyone else in all the Gospels-longer than he talks to any of his disciples, longer than he talks to any of his accusers, longer than he talks to any of his own family. She is the first person he reveals himself to in the Gospel of John. She is the first outsider to guess who he is and tell others. She is the first evangelist, John tells us, and her testimony brings many (the whole village) to faith. The Messiah is the one who shows you who you are by showing you who he is.” It is as if Jesus reads her postcards, all of them, reads OUR postcards, ALL of them, and says, yup, I understand. You’ve made mistakes. But your life isn’t over. There is still time. There is still hope. It doesn’t matter what has gone before, you can begin again. There were rules back then that kept people in their place. And Jesus swept them all away. Jesus talks to the woman at the well, and helps her understand that she is not worthless, not condemned, not insignificant. Last week Jesus talked to Nicodemus and helped him see that new life was possible. Every week in Lent Jesus will help someone see who they can be. And he does this by listening, understanding, helping them change, begin a new life in him. This is from an old sermon by Kate Huey:“Here a different translation of Jesus' answer, from Eugene Peterson's The Message, is helpful: "…the time is coming," Jesus says, "it has, in fact, come – when what you're called will not matter and where you go to worship will not matter. It's who you are and the way you live that count before God. Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth. That's the kind of people God is out looking for: those who are simply and honestly themselves before God in their worship. God is sheer being itself – Spirit. Those who worship God must do it out of their very being, their spirits, their true selves, in adoration." Whether we are at the well, thirsty and tired, doing our daily tasks, or in the marketplace or the mall, talking politics and religion, or engaged in the countless other pursuits of our lives, we are thirsty for more than water. We thirst for the living water of God's grace, God's voice still speaking words of healing, acceptance, and unconditional love, even if we don't have or understand all the answers. All of us have known, at one time or another, what it means to be alone, or afraid, or discouraged, or rejected. We know what it means to be "the other." And we know that we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Nevertheless. Nevertheless, we turn to God and lift up our faces and feel the living water wash over us, we drink in the cool, clear water of God's grace and God's acceptance, this God who knows us to our very core, the truth of who we are, in spirit and in light. Just accept that God accepts you, and loves you, and calls you, of all people, just like the Samaritan woman, to share this good news wherever you go.” The Brazilian Paulo Coelho's books have sold 100 million copies, been translated into 70 languages, and sold in 150 countries. But life was not always so sweet for Coelho. When he followed his childhood dream of being a writer, his parents twice committed him to a mental institution….. He dropped out of law school, traveled, joined the drug culture, dabbled in journalism and theater, and became a political agitator. After being kidnapped and tortured, he wanted a more "normal" life, and later enjoyed success as a song writer and music executive. Jesus and the woman at the well, 4th century Roman catacomb. But Coelho's soul remained restless. In 1986 he had a vision of a stranger, which stranger he met two months later in a cafe in Amsterdam. The stranger advised him to reconnect with his Catholic roots, and to make the 500-mile medieval pilgrimage to Compostela in Northern Spain (where legend says the bones of Saint James, Santiago, are buried). The pilgrimage convinced Coelho that he was living "only for bread and water." Two years later, he published The Alchemist, a simple fable about a shepherd boy named Santiago. Like the author himself, Santiago vows not to live like his sheep and even his own father, both of whom lived "only for bread and water." Every week in Lent, Jesus will meet another person on a journey. The person will be in a struggle for their soul-and most won’t even know it. Jesus will be their guide at a pivotal point in that journey. He will see so deeply into them that no secret will be concealed, no part of them will be hidden from him. And he will help them see themselves, accept themselves and begin their new life in relationship to him. In today’s story of La Samaritana, a woman who is carrying so many burdens, Jesus offers her living water, a drink that can release her from so much. We hear this story, because we, also, are invited to come to the well. It doesn’t matter what our “regret, fear, betrayal, desire, confession, or childhood humiliation” is. We are known, and set free. Today we are asked to see ourselves at the well, at noon. And we are challenged to come and drink. Amen.

What Is Lent Like For You?

Sermon-1 Lent-March 13, 2011
Matthew 4:1-11
4Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. 3The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” 4But he answered, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” 5Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, 6saying 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.’” 7Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” 8Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; 9and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” 10Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’” 11Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

“Lord Jesu! Teach thou me, that I may teach them: Sanctify and enable all my powers; that in their full strength they may deliver thy message reverently , readily, faithfully, and fruitfully. Oh, make thy word a swift word, passing from the ear to the heart, from the heart to the life and conversation: that as the rain returns not empty, so neither may thy word, but accomplish that for which it is given. Oh Lord, hear, Oh Lord, forgive! Oh Lord, hearken, and do so for thy blessed Son’s sake, in whose sweet name we pray. — George Herbert, 1593-1633
Each Sunday in lent I will use a different prayer to begin my sermon. This one was the prayer George Herbert, a Welsh born English poet, orator and Anglican priest. began his sermons with in the 1600s.
by Kate Huey
In "Lenten Discipline," her sermon on Luke's version of the temptation of Jesus in the desert, Barbara Brown Taylor gives a wonderful description of how Lent came to be (after all, it's not in the Bible). Many years after Jesus had not returned as quickly as expected, church folks "decided there was no contradiction between being comfortable and being Christian. And before long it was hard to pick them (Christians) out from among the population at large. They no longer distinguished themselves by their bold love for one another. They did not get arrested for championing the poor. They blended in. They avoided extremes. They decided to be nice instead of holy and God moaned out loud" (Home by Another Way).
and so we began the season of Lent.
We hear today’s story every year on the first Sunday in Lent. Jesus has just been baptized. He hears God tell him that he is “God’s son, the beloved”. And in the next scene Jesus goes and fasts 40 days in the wilderness. And then the tempter comes to him and makes 3 “offers”.. The temptations are in a different order that they are in Luke.
What is Lent like for you? Is it usually a time of failure or success? Do you get stronger or weaker in Lent? Does your faith grow or lessen? This is a season of preparation, a season of “training” if you will. So, do you usually get better or worse in Lent? Is this season of Lent, “working” for you?
For years every Lent I gave up smoking. Never made it. Couldn’t stop. Maybe a day, sometimes two. Couldn’t do it. Prayed, struggled, did everything. Couldn’t do it. Arrived at Easter every year for years feeling weak and rotten about myself. People would come up to me and say, “well, don’t worry about it, you’re only human.” After several years I started hating that phrase, “you’re only human.” It reminded me of failure, weakness, disappointment. No one ever says, “you’re only human” when you succeed, when you accomplish something, when you succeed-only when you fail. And usually fail badly. It’s used especially when we give in, or fall short in temptation. Listen for the next time somebody around you says , “well, you’re only human.”
I learned a lot every year in lent by failing. I knew a lot about temptation. Here is one thing I learned -a lot of times it’s about taking shortcuts. It’s about trying to get to the finish line too quickly. 1)The first temptation for Jesus is to feed himself after fasting for 40 days. Katerina Whitley writes, “It is significant that this particular temptation comes when Jesus is famished and physically at his weakest. ….What makes it temptation is the shortcut to the miraculous: “Use your powers as the Son of God to change these stones into bread.” “Take the quick way, you must be famished” the tempter says. Isn’t this what we hear every time we want something, really really want something? “who does it hurt? It’s a victimless crime?” Take the shortcut. Jesus does eventually turn bread into more bread-but not for himself, not for his own hunger. Not to show off, or to convince, never to prove who he is, or how much God loves him,-only when there was human need. Shortcuts. The first temptation.
No. 2-The easy fix. Listen again to Katerina Whitley: The answer that Jesus gives, He who could have thrown himself from the pinnacle and survived, is that even when we ask for things using the words of scripture, putting God to the test is yielding to the temptation of the easy fix without considering the consequences.
How many ways do you think there are to help people lose weight? To get stronger? TO STOP SMOKING? How many times do you bargain with God, make deals, ask God to help-just this once? We asked Rae Thom once to come over and teach the youth group some basic maintenance skills before we went to repair homes in Appalachia. He told the group, “okay, you can do things the right way, or the slow way-because if you get hurt, have to do it over, or don’t do it right, it will take a lot longer.” 5Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, 6saying 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.’” 7Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
The third temptation, now you’re on top-you’ve done well, you’ve fought the devil and won. The third temptation, for me, has always been when I was successful. I can’t count the number of times I stopped smoking, for awhile, and thought to myself, “well, I can handle it now-one won’t bother me, I am in control.” You know when I am at my weakest? When I have just had a success. The tempter takes Jesus to the top of “a very high mountain” (remember last week I told you that Matthew always has Jesus’ holiest moments on mountaintops?). Satan shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and asks if Jesus wants them. Power. Money. Control. How can you say no to this? What do we say, “I can handle it”, what do we say, “I can do a lot of good with this”, what do we say, “if things don’t go well I can always get out, I’m strong enough to quit.”
Do you know how you are with temptation? Do you know how you are with shortcuts? with easy fixes? with success? I know how I am-and it’s not always pretty. I struggle. But after all, I’m only human, right?
David Lose, a preacher I like a lot, points this out about the first reading about Adam and Eve: “Might it be that a part of being human is being aware that we are insufficient, that we are not complete in and of ourselves, that lack is a permanent part of our condition? To be human, in other words, is to be aware that we carry inside ourselves a hole, an emptiness that we will always be restless to fill. Adam and Eve behold the fruit and conclude in a heartbeat that their hole is shaped just like that fruit. Yet after they eat, the emptiness remains. Today we might imagine that hole to be shaped just like a new car, or computer, or better house, or the perfect spouse. But after laboring and sacrificing and obtaining these things, the emptiness remains. Blaise Pascal once described this essential condition of humanity as having a "God-shaped hole," and this is what Jesus demonstrates. There is no filling of that gap, no permanent erasing that hole, except in and through our relationship with God. Yet that, also, isn't quite the full picture. To be Christian is not to have that hole, that need, that awareness of finitude erased once and for all. Rather, to be human is to accept that we are, finally, created for relationship with God and with each other. Perhaps the goal of the life of faith isn't to escape limitation[s] but to discover God amid[st] our needs.”
Every time the tempter speaks to Jesus, he offers Jesus something that isn’t bad-food, faith, power. But the offer is always about Jesus giving up a part of himself to get those things. In other words, he has to become weaker to have what is offered. Do the right thing-for the wrong reason. I have told you before what that old Bishop of mine I used to say, “it’s funny how the Holy Spirit always called me to a better paying church.”
It’s Lent, the season the church created because we are “only human”- we get comfortable, we take shortcuts, we rationalize what we do, and we believe we are in control of our lives and so much stronger than we truly are. Lent isn’t supposed to be a season of failure-or victory. It’s supposed to be 40 days of being honest with ourselves. About seeing the God shaped hole in our lives. To see, clearly, how we are made for God. It is not easy. There are lots of temptations, shortcuts, lies we tell ourselves, false victories, and easy ways out.
This Lent, try to be a little more honest with yourself, a little more sincere, a little more truthful. Try to fill the God shaped hole in yourselves with God this year. That would be a great way to be “only human”. Amen.

We May Be Dust, But...

Sermon-Ash Wednesday-March 9, 2011
Every week in Lent I’m going to open with a different prayer before the sermon. I am going to use the prayer that I have been using the last few years from the Cloud of Unknowing.
The Cloud of Unknowing, "O God, our great companion, lead us ever more deeply into the mystery of your life and ours, that we may be faithful interpreters of that Life to each other, through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
The Cloud of Unknowing (Middle English: The Cloude of Unknowyng) is an anonymous work of Christian mysticism written in Middle English in the latter half of the 14th century. The text is a spiritual guide on contemplative prayer and the esoteric techniques and meanings of late medieval monasticism. The book counsels a young student to seek God, not through knowledge and intellect, but through intense contemplation, motivated by love, and stripped of all thought. This is brought about by putting all thoughts, except the love of God, under a "cloud of forgetting", and thereby piercing God's cloud of unknowing with a "dart of longing love" from the heart. This form of contemplation is not directed by the intellect, but involves spiritual union with God through the heart:
I remember in 10th grade seeing my good friend Amy Otis in school one February day, I rushed over to her and said, “Amy, you better get into the bathroom quick and wash up, you’ve got dirt all over your forehead.” And she turned to me, very kindly and said, “it’s not dirt, you dummy, it’s Ash Wednesday!”
Today we smear ashes on our foreheads. We do it to remind ourselves that life is short and that everything-rocks, buildings, pyramids, and even humans, will one day be ashes. It’s supposed to make us humble, to help us remember that life is short, and that one day we will be ashes. It is supposed to sober us, to “bring us up short” as we say in EfM. It comes from Genesis 3.19 God speaking to Adam:”you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
We say this at funerals-ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Life was created from earth, we say, and one day we will go back to the earth that birthed us.. There are many references to ashes as penitence in the Bible: Jonah goes to the Ninevites and calls them to wear sackcloth and to sit in ashes for their sins-AND THEY DO. Job after losing everything puts on dust and ashes as a sign of repentance. Jeremiah the prophet calls Israel to repent by wearing sackcloth and rolling around in ashes! And Jesus calls on whole cities to repent by putting on ashes and turning to God. When people in the Bible wanted to show that they were sorry for their sins and intended to lead a new life-they put on ashes. It was their way of saying, we are human, we make mistakes. And we will change. We are dust, we will return to dust, but we will change.
I was watching the movie The Bucket List (again) the other night, the story of 2 men who had cancer and both were given a short time to live. So they came up with a list of all the things they wanted to do, before they “kicked the bucket”. The thing is, everybody understands this even if they haven’t seen the movie-everyone knows what a “bucket list” is, as soon as you say the phrase. What would we do, if we were doing our end of life list? ( from a Sermon by written by Lee A. Koontz in 2006)
There’s an episode of The Simpsons in which Homer is told by his doctor that he has only a few days to live. He is understandably frightened, but very soon after this dire pronouncement, he shows remarkable fortitude. Homer makes a list of all the things that he would like to do before he dies, and the list is full of things like ride in a blimp and tell off his boss. But the list also contains items like making amends with the neighbor who he’s always borrowing things from but never returning. Homer also realizes that not only has he not been a model neighbor, but also not the best father to his children. So, he spends quality time with his son, and listens to his daughter play the saxophone one last time instead of telling her to stop with all that racket.” Wearing ashes is our way of saying that we have a spiritual bucket list. It’s our way of saying, I know I won’t live forever, and this is what I want to do before I return to ashes.

I’m going to give you 2 simple things for your bucket today, 2 very small, very simple things for Lent. First, inside your bulletin is a 3x5 card in an envelope, and a pencil. I’d like you to think of one thing you will pray for every day in Lent. Think of one person, or one issue, one concern that so needs God’s attention and your prayer, that you will pray for it every day for 40 days. Then write it on this card, and write your name on the envelope-first and last. We’ll give these back unopened to you on Easter weekend in 7 weeks.
The second thing is in the parish hall. This Lent, I want you to watch for an act of love that is done for you, to you each day or each week this Lent. And then write it briefly on the sheets in the parish hall-not an act of love done BY you-but to or for you. I am challenging you to be aware of the love that is permeating, saturating, infusing, coming into your world-and to remember it on the walls in the hall.
Listen, today we wear ashes. It is a symbol of humility, a symbol of the shortness, and transience of life. More from the sermon by Lee Koontz:
We think of our sinfulness, and we know immediately that we have work to do before we die. So, how would you live if you knew that your days were numbered? Would you be more kind? More loving? Would you treat your friends differently? Your enemies? Would you make more time for family? Would you say, “I’m sorry” to the people that you’ve hurt? Would you be more mindful of suffering in the world? Would you want to share a little bit more of what you have with those who have nothing? What would you do? How would you live? What kinds of things would be on your list?
Death, sinfulness, repentance… these are the things that these ashes symbolize for us. Ash Wednesday reminds us first that we are dust, and to dust we will return. Life is fleeting. Time is short. And the ashes remind us that we are fallen, and we can’t get up on our own. We need God’s help. We need God’s forgiveness and God’s grace. We need God’s love.
And that, brothers and sisters, is the hope that is smeared in ash on our foreheads, that God’s love has reached through our sinfulness, through the grim shadow of death, to the dust and the ashes of human life. We may be dust, but dust that we are, we are loved. As Paul writes, “we are accounted dead… and yet we are so very much alive.”
So take a moment to think of a concern, an issue, a person, something that needs your prayer over the next 40 days-and write it on this card. Then, over the next 6 ½ weeks-go into the parish hall and write down a moment, an instance, an event that you are feeling loved, that you see love, that you notice love. Let others know that it is there.
So that even when people come up to you and say, you need to wash your forehead, you’re really dirty”, you can answer, “yeah, but I am so very much alive/loved.”

Not Every Mountaintop Is A Peak Experience

Sermon-Last Epiphany March 6, 2011
The Cloud of Unknowing, "O God, our great companion, lead us ever more deeply into the mystery of your life and ours, that we may be faithful interpreters of that Life to each other, through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Matthew 17:1-9
17Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. 2And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. 3Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. 4Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” 5While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” 6When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. 7But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.” 8And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone. 9As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, “Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”
In 1981 I climbed (walked up) my first mountain. I was in charge of the youth group at Trinity Wheaton, Illinois. The previous year the kids in the group had gone to North Carolina to climb Mt. Mitchell, in the Black Mountains of the Appalachian Mountain Chain , the highest peak east of the Mississippi-but they never got there. So this was my first journey with them. We drove from Chicago to North Carolina, spent the night, and the next day we started driving to the base of Mt. Mitchell. We had an accident. No one was hurt, but it was clearly my fault. So we went back to the cabin where we were staying, talked and talked and talked, and then the next day we drove back to Mt. Mitchell. We made it to the top of the 6700 foot mountain and all the time I was walking up the mountain all I could think was, “my career is over”. We got to the top and it was beautiful, and after an hour on the summit we started back down. It was my first youth group trip, it was my first summit-we had an accident, and we got to the mountaintop. It was scary, painful, and glorious. And I thought to myself, “well, this has to be the lowest and highest moments I will ever have in my ministry.”
The season of Epiphany always ends with the telling of the story of Jesus on top of the mountain-the event called, the Transfiguration. Transfiguration Sunday is usually just about halfway between Jesus’ baptism (Jan. 9) and Jesus’ crucifixion (April 22). That’s not by accident.
Alyce M. McKenzie sums up today’s reading this way:“In the preceding chapter Peter has confessed his faith in Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God (16:16) and Jesus has offered some sober teaching about the cost of following him. Then he goes up on a Mountain with three of his disciples Peter, James and John. Before their eyes, Jesus' clothes and garment shine like the sun. He experiences the presence of Moses and Elijah, two peerless prophets who had shaped the Hebrews' view of what Messiah would be like when he came. As he has just predicted his own suffering and death (Mt. 17: 21-23), now God previews his post-resurrection glory. Peter begins babbling about setting up permanent dwellings for the heavenly visitors, to prolong the glorious experience. As at Jesus' baptism in Matthew 3:17, the disciples now hear a voice from heaven saying "This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!" Then it is time to come down the mountain and heal and teach and suffer.” And head towards Jerusalem.
In 2008 I went on sabbatical. Kyle, our son, and I flew into western Ireland, and that first night we drove to Westport, a beautiful town. Westport is at the foot of a holy mountain, Croagh Patrick, where, legend has it, Patrick prayed and fasted for 40 days. It is a very popular mountain to be climbed. It was supposed to be an easy 2 hour climb. It wasn’t-at least not for me. It took almost 4 hours, a very rocky, difficult path, and it was a dense fog all the way up. And everyone from a 9 year old little boy to a man in his 70s working off a hangover passed me by. Very embarrassing. But we got to the chapel at the top, said our prayers, and talked to the people there. And the fog lifted and the clouds cleared and we could see all the way to Clew Bay 2508 feet below. It was an overwhelming sight. I thought my heart had stopped-either because I was breathing so hard or because it was so beautiful. It was the second day of my sabbatical, and I had climbed a mountain! I fell four times coming back down and was a mass of bruises and scrapes and exhausted when I reached the bottom.
The Rev. Dr. Timothy Smith, senior pastor at the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer in Atlanta writes: [an] “important allusion to the Hebrew Bible is in the explicit appearance of Moses and Elijah in Jesus’ Transfiguration. At the broadest level of comparison, both Moses and Elijah transformatively experience God’s presence on a mountaintop. Also, in Exodus, after the Golden Calf incident when Moses breaks the Ten Commandments tablets, Moses must re-ascend the mountain. When Moses comes back down after his mountaintop experience with God, “the skin of his face was shining” (Exodus 34:30) — just as Jesus’ face shone after the Transfiguration. When you lay the full context of the Hebrew Bible and Gospel lessons side by side, it quickly becomes obvious that the basic template from the Moses story in Exodus was recapitulated in Transfiguration accounts. Both mention “six days,” have three named companions in addition to the central figure, both happen on a mountaintop, both result in shining figures, and both have God speaking from a cloud.”
So when Matthew the gospel writer recounts this story, he wants us to see Jesus as the new Moses. Matthew loves to have Jesus on mountaintops. Only in Matthew do we have the Sermon on the __________. And next Sunday we’re going to hear another story about Jesus told by Matthew where Jesus goes to a mountaintop.
But there’s something we have to remember-Jesus never stays on top of the mountain-he always comes down. No matter how good-or how bad the experience is-he comes down. And the peak, for Jesus, usually is reached after a fair amount of disappointment, and struggle, and is always followed by a great trial. Today for instance-this story follows Peter saying that Jesus has got his ministry all wrong that Jesus doesn’t understand who he is or what he’s about -and then Jesus takes him up the mountain. And what happens after today’s gospel? Jesus heads for Jerusalem-and we head for Lent.
Do we want mountaintop experiences if they are so hard to get to, and can be so difficult afterwards? A lot of people don’t. Either the climbing is too high, the experience too painful, journey too demanding. The Transfiguration, the name for today’s event, is about Jesus’ appearance being changed in front of his friends. But there is another way to look at it-the transfiguration of Peter, James, and John. They see Jesus in a new way-and they are changed. They are told not to tell this story until after Jesus’ death, because no one will understand it til then.
This is one of the things I have learned-no one experiences a mountaintop-from hearing about it. My summit moments only mean something to me-they are almost impossible to make sense to someone else. All I can do is talk about the mountains I’ve climbed, the journeys I’ve taken-and how I am different because of them. Every time Jesus is on a mountaintop in the gospel of Matthew-he comes down as a different person. There is something about climbing a mountain that always changes him.
This is from Fr. Rick Morley who writes a column called, The Garden Path: After a person is baptized in an Episcopal Church, there is a prayer said for the newly baptized, which concludes like this:"Sustain them, O Lord, in your Holy Spirit. Give them an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works. Amen." The gift of joy and wonder in all your works. I've had too many experiences of taking youth into a grand nave of a wondrous, storied, cathedral or abbey... only to find them more interested in (looking at their shoes and) incoming text messages. Those moments hurt my heart. We had a clergy day a few weeks back with Mike Gecan, the author of "Going Public." He talked about going into his child's Kindergarten class and seeing a bulletin board illustrating what the students wanted to learn in school that year. Most of the statements were like, "behave," "learn to sit still," "follow the rules," "listen to the teacher better."One child (said) wrote "I want to know why the ocean shines like fire."There's a kid who has the gift of joy and wonder in all God's works.”
We have all climbed a lot of mountains, the question really becomes, when did going up the mountain change us-when were we different when we came down? How often are we altered? When are we changed? When does the journey up to the hardclimbed summit actually make us different people? When was the last time that you went to the mountaintop, and were transformed?
This is the last Sunday in the season of Epiphany, the season where we have listened over and over to “ sudden realizations: sudden intuitive leaps of understanding, especially through an ordinary but striking occurrence”.
The story of the Transfiguration is the last “sudden realization” that we will have for a while. Jesus climbed a mountain, and his appearance changed. But epiphany season and especially this last story of Jesus’ transfiguration, has to be about us-you and I, and when we suddenly breakthrough and see ourselves, our faith, our world in a new light, in a new way.
This is the last Sunday after the Epiphany, the season that started with the wise men going on a great journey, following a star-only to find a child at the end of it. What do you think they understood after all of that, what was their “sudden realization”? You know how their story ended? The gospel says that “They went home by a different way”. That’s how this season is supposed to affect us. That’s how we are supposed to be after 8 weeks or epiphanies. That’s what we realize when we come down the mountain after being to the top-that it is time to go home a different way. Amen.
Gladys Milton said, "Whether life grinds you or polishes you depends on the material you're made of." It's an old saying that we can't always choose what is going to happen to us in life, but we can always choose how we're going to respond to what has happened.
The dazzling reign of Jesus is one we can not afford to leave in residence on the mountaintop or be placed in a booth on display. The moment of transformation is one that invites us to new and meaningful encounters with God. How can Jesus be revealed in our time? When we have been to the mountaintop, how do we come down to ministry in the valleys as Jesus did, healing and teaching beyond the moment of change?

Epiphany is the season of revelation. We have seen Jesus revealed, now what? What is there for us to do with what we have seen and heard? Jesus is not new to us; neither is the nature and presence of the Divine? Can we make room for change in our lives and for divine revelation to impact the world through us?
The Reverend Karen Georgia Thompson serves as Minister for Ecumenical Relations in the Office of General Ministries of the United Church of Christ.
13 Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’ 14And they said, ‘Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’ 15He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ 16Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Messiah,* the Son of the living God.’ 17And Jesus answered him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. 18And I tell you, you are Peter,* and on this rock* I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. 19I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.’ 20Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was* the Messiah.*

21 From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. 22And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, ‘God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.’ 23But he turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling-block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’

24 Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. 26For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?
27 ‘For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. 28Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.’