Lectionary Reflections
by Various Authors

Sermon Starter
Experience the Mountaintop But Don't Forget the Valley Below

Luke 9:28-36

Many of us have had them, those times when we felt like we were on top of the world, 
really happy, confident that we knew all the answers, could solve any problem that came up. 
Or we felt that we were really close to God, really in tune with God’s plan for us. 
In those moments we were excited and alive, and everything seemed new.

The moment might have come at some exciting event in your life: graduation, baptism, 
your first kiss, your first day on your first job, your wedding, the birth of a child, 
even catching your very first fish. It might have been something really spiritual, 
like a week at church camp or a church retreat. Or it might have been something of a smaller, 
quieter nature, like a very intimate conversation with your father or mother 
when you felt that they honestly understood what you were saying and why you felt the way you did.

We call these "mountaintop experiences," and oh how we hate to come down off that mountain! 
We want to hang on to that moment for as long as we can. "Let’s just stay right here 
and let the rest of the world go by for a while." But to freeze that one moment in time 
shuts off the possibility of the next moment.

In the Gospel reading for today we hear the writer of Matthew give his version of the event 
which we call "The Transfiguration of Jesus". Mark and Luke also contain an account 
of this strange occurrence, with some minor variations in the telling. It’s one of those rare moments 
we were just talking about, one of those mountaintop experiences of life, 
which somehow defy adequate description and challenge us to stretch our concept of reality 
to the point that we usually wind up asking the question, "Did this really happen?" 
Events such as the Transfiguration somehow connect us with the mystery of creation and eternity.

For Jesus it was a time of confirmation and affirmation of his ministry. For Peter, James, 
and John it was a brief glimpse of the transcendent, a peek at the reality that lies just beyond everyday life.

But notice that Jesus quickly led the disciples back down off that mountaintop - 
in spite of Peter’s desire to pitch a tent and camp there for a long while. 
Jesus led them back into the daily routine of teaching and preaching and caring for the broken 
and hurting people of the world they lived in, back to the reality of life in the valley.



We are a society of listeners, but we are listening to what one of my colleagues calls, 
'our own personal soundtrack.'   At any given moment in our household, 
Becky is listening to her MP3 player, occasionally singing along out loud to it; 
Dave might have his headphones plugged into his laptop computer and be listening 
to music or else watching and listening to something on YouTube; 
sometimes Kevin has a CD going in the stereo system or else the computer 
he might be working on at the time.  Kevin also has the uncanny ability 
to parrot whatever you say to him, without it actually sinking in to his brain.  
"Kevin," I might say, "It is time for you to get ready for bed."  "It is time for me 
to get ready for bed," he will mimic back, in kind of a monotone, 
without making any effort to go get ready for bed or even acknowledge 
that the suggestion was made and repeated.  
     
When I go to the Y, I take my headphones and listen to the radio; 
it makes it a lot more entertaining to do the workout on the cardio machine, 
and I sometimes even extend my workout if there's something coming up on the radio 
that I want to hear.  Most everyone else there is also listening to little headsets 
– Ipods or radio headphones or headphones plugged into CD players. 
      
Most everywhere we go, we see people talking on a cell phone, 
listening to some unseen person who is talking into their cell phone somewhere else.  
      
We get through life listening to our own personal soundtrack 
– even creating our own personal soundtrack with our favorite tunes and podcasts to listen to.  
      
This is my son the beloved, Listen to him.  
      
Christian Century article:  exodus, death, transfiguration...listen.  Jesus ushers us through it.  
    (Heidi Neumark, Xian Century, Feb 6, 2007:  
      
"Listen to him," we are told.  Listen for dear life. Listen to words of forgiveness and mercy, 
promises of paradise, words from the cross.  Listen without ceasing, on the edge of glory 
and on the brink of death….Listen on this hill and on another where darkness closes in.  
      
When cures and healing are beyond our powers, when the shine on a loved one's face 
comes from tears in the fluorescent lights of intensive care, when the third day seems far off 
– on such days it is good to be in this story, listening to the voice that urges us to follow on, 
for the Word shine sin the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.)
     
If we were listening to Jesus on our own personal soundtrack, what would he be saying?



Ted Wardlaw, President of Austin Seminary,
said this in his charge to the class of 2004:
"Meryl Streep, one of my all-time favorite actresses,
gave the baccalaureate address a few years ago at Vassar,
and in it she said, 'You're going out into the real world.
Do not expect the real world to be like college.'
She paused for a moment, and then went on to say:
'It's more like high school.'
I believe she's right." Ted says.
He goes on to comment about our "high school culture" saying
"There is senseless competition,
and conspicuous consumption,
and acquisitiveness that doesn't satisfy,
and a certain self-absorbed swagger
as we stomp around the rest of the world,
and a whole lot of what I like to call "cultural adolescence."
I think Streep is right, and I think Ted is right, too.

I had occasion last week to join a
Sunday School class of middle school girls.
They were discussing what "inner beauty" really is,
And, as girls that age do, they began to talk about the cliques at their school.
It's the same groups we had when we were their age,
but they have different names.
Cholas, preppies, jocks, cool girls, geeks
I asked them how they thought they, as followers of Christ,
Could let God shine forth from them.
Their answers were quick and clear:
In their compassion
In not judging others by their appearance,
Being kind to everyone,
Trying to understand what other's lives are like, what wounds they suffer,
Praying for them.
"It doesn't change them," the girls said
"But it changes you."
And that's where God shines forth.

One girl said, "Well, I'm nice to everybody.
Any everyone says I'm a pushover."
Another girl leaned over to me and said,
"A 'pushover' is the LAST word I'd use to describe her!"
But it feels risky, this business of being transformed.
We don't want to be called "A pushover." 



Transfiguration is living by vision: standing foursquare in the midst of a broken, 
tortured, oppressed, starving, dehumanizing reality, yet seeing the invisible, 
calling to it to come, behav­ing as if it is on the way, sustained by elements of it 
that have come already, within and among us. In those moments when people are healed, 
transformed, freed from addictions, obsessions, destructiveness, self-worship 
or when groups or communities or even, rarely, whole nations glimpse the light 
of the transcendent in their midst, there the New Creation has come upon us. 
The world for one brief moment is transfigured. The beyond shines in our midst—
on the way to the cross.

(by Walter Wink)



Even the Darkness Can Dazzle 

To lead our exodus, Jesus had to die like we do: alone, with no particular glory. 
Otherwise he would have been an anomaly instead of a messiah, and it would have been hard for us 
to see what he had in common with the rest of us.

As it was, he died very much like those who died on either side of him, 
one of them begging to be saved from what was coming, the other asking to be remembered 
when Jesus got where he was going. Jesus could not do anything for the one who wanted to be spared, 
but he did a great favor for the other. He told him that the darkness was a dazzling one, 
with paradise in it for both of them.

I think it was something he learned on the mountain, when light burst through all his seams 
and showed him what he was made of. It was something he never forgot. 
If we have been allowed to intrude on that moment, it is because someone thought 
we might need a dose of glory too, to get us through the night. Some people are lucky enough 
to witness it for themselves, although like Peter, James and John, very few of them will talk about it later.

What the rest of us have are stories like this one, and the chance to decide for ourselves 
whether we will believe what they tell us. It is a lot to believe: that God's lit-up life includes death, 
that there is no way around it but only through, that even the darkness can dazzle.

(by Barbara Brown Taylor from Dazzling Darkness, article in the Christian Century, 
February 4-11, 1998, page 1-5)



You Can't Stay on the Mountain Top

A little boy was out in his front yard, throwing a ball up in the air. An elderly passerby asked the boy 
what he was doing. He replied, "I am playing a game of catch with God. 
I throw the ball up in the air and he throws it back."

I am in no position to comment on God's ability to play ball, but I do know that whatever goes up must come down. 
There may be exceptions, such as Charlie Brown's kite! But as a rule, whatever goes up must come down. 
The process is so predictable that you could refer to it as a scientific law. 

The same process applies to our religious lives. It is a good thing to "go up" to a great experience with God, 
but we will become greatly disillusioned if we do not remember that eventually we have to "come down" again.

(by John Thomas Randolph from The Best Gift, CSS Publishing Company, Inc.) 



Humor: It'll Come Back to You

This preacher moved to a new Church. This particular church didn't have a lawn mower 
so he was looking for someone to either mow the lawn or sell him a used lawnmower. 
One day he saw a young man going by pushing a lawnmower. So the preacher asked him, 
"Hey, looking for a job?" The young man said, "Sure." It turned out that he was mowing yards 
and trying to earn enough money to buy a bicycle. This preacher was kind of young 
and didn't mind mowing the yard so he told the young man, "Look, I've got a 10 speed bicycle 
that I never ride any more. What do you say we trade the bicycle for the lawnmower."

Well, the young man was ecstatic. They swapped and the young man took off on the bicycle. 
He rode around the block and came back to see the preacher standing in the same place wiping sweat off his brow. 
The preacher waved the boy over and said, "Hey, I've pulled on the rope a half a dozen times 
and this lawn mower just won't start."

The young man said, "Preacher, I hate to tell you this but it's a special kind of lawnmower. 
You have to cuss it to get it to start."

The preacher looked at him and said, "Well, I've been in the ministry so long I don't think I can remember how to cuss."

The young man grinned and said, "Pull on the rope some more and it'll come back to you."

The point is this, we ought not stay on the mountain top so long that we forget what it is like to be in the crowd. 
Like Peter, we shouldn't forget that our work is in the crowds.

(Traditional) 



A Haunting Moment

John Killinger tells this story about a haunting moment: "Somewhere in my journals there is an entry 
about how strongly it hit me one day as I was sitting in the chancel of a church, waiting to deliver the guest sermon. 
A beautiful woman was playing a violin solo. Her lovely hands worked continuously at the frets and the bow, 
evoking the most soulful music I thought I had ever heard. There was a rose pinned in her exquisitely coiffed hair. 
I was transported.

"Then a dark thought crossed my mind, as if it had been a cloud passing between me and the sun. 
In a few years the woman would become old. The rose in her hair would die. 
Her soft hands would be gnarled and wrinkled by age. She would stop playing the instrument. 
She would be confined to a bed or a wheelchair. Then she, too, would die.

"The music brought me back again to a realization of how beautiful it was. 
But I did not recover from the image of the violinist as an old woman. It haunted me for days."

(by John Killinger from Letting God Bless You, Nashville, Abingdon, 1992. 
Quoted in sermon by William Willimon.)



Slow Down and Listen

Writer Charles Swindoll once found himself with too many commitments in too few days. 
He got nervous and tense about it. He was snapping at his wife and children, 
choking down his food at mealtimes, and feeling irritated every time there was an unexpected interruption 
in his day. He recalls in his book "Stress Fractures" that before long, things around their home 
started reflecting the pattern of his hurry-up life style. He said the situation was becoming unbearable. 
Then it happened.

After supper one evening his younger daughter, Colleen wanted to tell him something important 
that had happened to her at school that day. She began hurriedly, "Daddy, I wanna tell you somethin' 
and I'll tell you really fast."

Suddenly realizing her frustration, Swindoll answered, "Honey, you can tell me -- 
and you don't have to tell me really fast. Say it slowly." He has never forgotten her answer: "Then listen slowly."

I can hear God's voice saying to Peter, James, and John: "This is my Son, listen to him! Slow down. 
Don't be so quick to move things your way, to shape the world as you see it Peter. 
Don't be so quick to climb the corporate ladder, to join the rat pack and be number one John. 
Don't try to beat your colleagues to the first position James. Slow down. My Son is trying to show you another way, 
another world, another kingdom. If you will listen slowly.

(by Brett Blair, www.Sermons.com)



Figuring Out The Transfiguration

Madeleine L'Engle, the great Christian writer, said we tend to avoid this story for the following reason, in her words:

"The Christian holiday which is easiest for us is Christmas, because it touches on what is familiar. 
The story of the young man and woman who were turned away from the inn, and had a baby in a stable, 
surrounded by gentle animals, is one we have known always. I doubt if many two or three-year-olds are told 
at their mother's knee about the Transfiguration ... And so, because the story of Christmas is part of our folklore, 
we pay more attention to its recognizableness than to the fact that the tiny baby in the manger 
contained the power which created galaxies and set the stars in their courses."

She concludes by saying:

"We are not taught much about the wilder aspects of Christianity. But these are what artists 
have wrestled with throughout the years."

(by William G. Carter from Praying for a Whole New World, CSS Publishing Company)