Sermons from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church

Last Sunday of Epiphany, Year B
Deacon Richard Buhrer

Mountaintops play an important role in human experience. The psalmist says: I lift my eyes to the mountains, where will my salvation come from? I remember when I first went to Chicago for seminary after living in Seattle; the thing I missed most was being able to see real mountains. But mountaintops can be seductive experiences for us human beings. I remember catching a snippet of a TV show about rock climbing showing these three climbers resting on the summit of this sheer rock face relishing their accomplishment. The though struck me: How do they get down? That for me would be even more frightening than climbing up. Of course, any right thinking person wants to stay on the mountaintop.

Mountaintops have played an important part in the history of God’s people:

It was on the slopes of Mount Horeb that Moses encountered the bush burning yet not burnt and received his call to liberate his people from slavery in Egypt. Coming full circle in his mission, he returned to Horeb with the newly liberated people of Israel. There Moses received the Torah for his people directly from the hands of God and the people encountered the fearful power of the Most.

Forty years later, forbidden to enter the Promised Land, Moses climbed into the hills of the Transjordan to catch a glimpse of the land flowing with milk and honey before he died and his grave was forever lost to the knowledge of his people.

Elijah through the strength of two meals of bread and water delivered to him by angels traveled forty days and forty nights to return to Mount Horeb in his turn to meet the Lord. And on the mountain, Elijah met God not in fire, not in earthquake or great wind but in the whispering stillness. And he fell down and worshiped.

The prophet Isaiah predicted the final fulfillment on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem with redemption not only for Israel but also for all the nations of the earth:

⁶On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. ⁷And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever. ⁸Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken….¹⁰For the hand of the Lord will rest on this mountain.

And in the prophet Zechariah:

¹⁶Then all who survive of the nations that have come against Jerusalem shall go up year after year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the festival of booths. ¹⁷If any of the families of the earth do not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, there will be no rain upon them….  ²⁰On that day there shall be inscribed on the bells of the horses, “Holy to the Lord.” And the cooking pots in the house of the Lord shall be as holy as the bowls in front of the altar; ²¹and every cooking pot in Jerusalem and Judah shall be sacred to the Lord of hosts, so that all who sacrifice may come and use them to boil the flesh of the sacrifice. And there shall no longer be traders in the house of the Lord of hosts on that day.

Today Jesus takes Peter, James and John to a mountaintop. There (as the Prayer Book puts it) the Father “on the holy mount revealed to chosen witnesses (His) well‑beloved Son, wonderfully transfigured, in raiment white and glistening.” To our eyes clumsily, Peter offers to build three dwellings because he wants to stay there on the mountain with Moses and Elijah and Jesus. But the cloud, the glory of God, the Shekinah that led the people in the desert, overshadows them and they hear the Father testify to the Son and when they see again, Moses and Elijah are gone—the Gospel of Jesus has supplanted the Law and the Prophets. And to make matters worse, they are told to tell no one. One preacher I read referred to this as “a downer of a mountaintop experience.

But an even greater downer is the painful fact that the real mountain top experience for Christ and for Christians occurrs on Golgotha, the Place of the Skull, in the death on a cross.

Martin Luther King understood the mountaintop. He also was no stranger to the Cross. On the night before he died (where have we heard that phrase before?) in one of his most famous speeches, almost as though he knew he was about to die, he shared his vision. We remember this speech by its final paragraph, which begin ”I have been to the mountaintop.” In it he says:

If I were standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of general and panoramic view of the whole human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, "Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?" — I would take my mental flight by Egypt through, or rather across the Red Sea, through the wilderness on toward the promised land. And in spite of its magnificence, I wouldn't stop there. I would move on by Greece, and take my mind to Mount Olympus. And I would see Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Euripides and Aristophanes assembled around the Parthenon as they discussed the great and eternal issues of reality. But I wouldn't stop there.

He goes on to describe the sweep of history through which he would have traveled until he shares:

Strangely enough, I would turn to the Almighty, and say, "If you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the twentieth century, I will be happy." Now that's a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land. Confusion all around. That's a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a away that men, in some strange way, are responding — something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee — the cry is always the same — "We want to be free."

And another reason that I'm happy to live in this period is that we have been forced to a point where we're going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demand didn't force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them. Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence.

So like Jesus with his face turned to Jerusalem where in his heart of hearts he knew he would die and did not want to die, Dr. King says:

And then I got to Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers? Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

So here we are at the gateway to Lent, that wonderful, spare, bracing and focused season. What are we to do now, in this time, with the whole world seemingly raging around us? In the words of Dr. King, “Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness.” Let us affirm our family bonds with all humankind, with all our struggling, alienated, suffering and sinning sisters and brothers. Let us plead with them and plead for them with God. Let us embrace the transfiguration of the Lord as a means of promoting our own transfiguration into his likeness not so much in words as in action and in deed. In the words of today’s collect: May the father Grant to us that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory;