Last Sunday After the Epiphany
We Have to Come Down from the Mountain, a sermon preached by Michael Giansiracusa at St. Mary’s Church, Ardmore, PA February 10, 2013
Where was your mountaintop experience?
Have you had one?
That place or time when you felt so close to the divine that you just wanted to stay there? That time when you know your face glowed with the glory of God although there may not have been anyone there to tell you.
Like me, I am sure you can name many. I remember being at the tomb of Francis of Assisi –sitting in a pew under the church where his body is laid, there was a low humming sound but I did not know where it emanated from.
Time seemed to have stopped. I don’t remember any specific prayers except the desire not to leave. The presence of God palpable, the spirit surrounding me—then my wife’s voice “oh my God, there you are! The tour bus is leaving!”
These moments were wonderful and glorious—God almost tangible—the connection between flesh and spirit intimate and real.
I know those who garden talk of spending time with God, intimately spending time with God’s physical body of earth.
And then…we must come down from the mountaintop. We must go back to life, to shopping, to our desk or truck or machine at work, to tuition bills, and politics and most deflating of all—to our doubts and fears about ourselves and the people we love.
Our own personal garden needs tending. And sometimes talk about the spirit, God, and how we would like the world to be, gives way to the way the world is. As Voltaire once remarked as some one was droning on about philosophy, “That is all well and good, but I have my garden to tend to.” How big is the garden that we nurture and protect?
I was always taught about Moses’ great leadership and obviouslywith good reason. He gathered the people, articulated a vision of God, drew his movement on the values of freedom and justice under God shared by all the people and then acted on those values.
We know he talked with God, usually going up to a mountain. But I never thought about just how many times he went up to that mountain and how long he stayed.
So what, why is that important you may ask? Well, just as you or I may dread coming down from the mountaintop where we experience the presence of God so fully, I wonder about what happened down below each time Moses went up and away from the people.
Exodus 19-34 indicates that Moses traveled up that mountaintop probably eight times.
It surely must have been tempting to stay.
When Moses delayed coming down after receiving the 10 commandments, he found the people worshipping other gods and living lives not so dedicated to the Lord.
But I don’t blame the people solely, Moses too is at fault because too much time on the mountaintop means not enough time with people, not enough time in dialogue, not enough time articulating and rearticulating the vision that brought the people together under God in the first place.
Moses’ encounter with the presence of God resulted in a real absence of God down below.
And so, we hear about the disciples falling into a trap we know well. Into basking in the glory of seeing the Lord with Moses and Elijah in all their glory and the temptation of institutionalizing the mountaintop glory experience.
Today, we might say, “Let’s build a church on this spot.”
The church has done this and still does. Look at our physical space—God used to be accessed only way up there—through the priest who was the sole minister.
We then brought God down closer, the sacred table now accessed here with the rail to maintain boundaries and now the sacred table is here with no rail and surrounded by ministers along with the priest and any one of them can be be male or female, gay or straight, single, married, or partnered—the priest more facilitator than focus.
I love that the Gospel of Luke, unlike the other Gospels tells us what Moses, Elijah and Jesus talked about—they talked about his departure—his exodus to Jerusalem where we all know he will die.
The Glory of God and sacrifice never too far from each other. The Glory of God on the mountaintop and the abandonment of God who leaves his son on a cross for a time surround our spiritual selves like a cage.
Jesus discourages the tents—the shrines, the imprisonment of God because God is not only the mountaintop but also in the muddy ditch—addiction, poverty, pain, suffering—as Luke reminds us in the Good Samaritan story.
In our lives, the absence of God can be just as palpable as God’s presence. Praying for a cancer cure that does not come. Watching our children struggle with drugs. Looking up to the heavens for God to stop another shooting.
So, how big is our garden that we nurture and protect? Is it just our family or our church? Is it wider, encompassing global outreach or political causes? It can be as great and wide as the neighbor who is the person who happens to be next to us.
As Christians we, like Peter, face the temptation of becoming entrenched in our mountaintop experiences, wanting to live safely apart from the struggle and desperation of those who seek justice in an unjust world.
As tempting as it is, we cannot get comfortable on the mountaintop, for we are just passing through. We may only rest awhile on our journey back down the mountain, to more fully love justice in the day-to-day difficulties of trying to live the gospel in a broken world.
Young people have a lot teach us about enlarging our garden. Moving beyond the church building, seeing God in all things and at all times. Young people are finding God everywhere but the church.
But church folk have a lot to teach young people as well. Religion and spiritually are not mutually exclusive. As Episcopal Bishop Steven Charleston, a member of the Choctaw Nation says, “Religion is spirituality shared.”
And any work we do on our buildings is not for ourselves but to serve God when we come down off the mountaintop.
God’s garden is as big as the universe. A garden to nurture and protect.
As we know, a garden can be a place of growth or a place of betrayal.
Jesus plants a seed in each of us. The seed of love and respect.
May your lives be full of flowers, may the spirit surround you with arms of loving kindness and may your earth be fertile with God’s peace, reconciliation and justice.
Now let us tend our garden universe together.
Amen