Sermon at The Church of the Holy Apostles, New York City,
February 26, 2006, The Last Sunday after Epiphany: Year B
by Elizabeth Masterson

1 Kings 19:9-18
Psalm 27
2 Peter 1:16-21
Mark 9:2-9

            Two of the scriptures we heard today depict human beings encountering the divine.  From the First Book of the Kings we find that Elijah is has fled to the wilderness and is hiding out in a mountain cave.  He is fearful for his life, probably depressed, and angry with God.  He feels abandoned, in serious trouble for doing what he believes God wanted him to do.

            For Peter, James and John the situation is less fraught with immediate danger. Yet just before the passage we heard this morning the writer of the Gospel of Mark tells us that Jesus has just spoken to the disciples about the suffering he will endure.  And he has told “the crowd” and the disciples they will need to bear their own crosses if they want to follow him.  Jesus adds, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake and the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

            Right now let’s live for a moment in the danger Elijah feels and suffering that Jesus predicts not only for himself, but also for those who follow him.  Have we been where Elijah was—fearful, depressed and angry—maybe angry with God?  Have we felt the anxiety of some impending difficulty or suffering?  Knowing perhaps there is no escape from it?  Wondering how we would bear up?  Perhaps like Peter did when he rebuked Jesus for predicting his suffering, we may deny our situation.  Perhaps like Elijah, we may decide to run from what is scary and what we cannot control.

            In these moments do we expect to encounter the divine?  Will God come to help us understand our situation?  Will God help us deal with our distress?  What do we REALLY believe about that?

            For me, perhaps for you, too, those are tough questions.  Many of us came here this morning, because we want to make room in our hearts and in our lives for God’s grace and God’s love.  But do we trust that God will stand by each of us—as a human being whom God loves— and not abandon us in our pain, our difficulties and our suffering?

            What does the story of Jesus’ transfiguration of the mountaintop tell us about God’s caring for us?  Its importance for the early Christian communities can be seen in the fact that it appears in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, as well as in Mark.  Even today, despite our scientific wariness about what the transfiguration really was, we read it with wonder. Perhaps we feel the awe that Peter tried to express when he asked if he should build holy dwelling places on the mountain for Jesus, Moses and Elijah.  This week a person described his understanding of this story to me as God “really being God” — the manifestation of God’s power and God’s glory so clear that the three human witnesses were filled with wonder and awe. As they confronted the troubles that Jesus had said would come to them, this experience of wonder and awe would become a “well” from which they could draw strength.

            When the Gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke were written for the earliest followers of Christ, we know they were facing difficulties and danger.  They were being rejected by members of their faith communities who thought Jesus was a blasphemer.  They were distressed that the return of Christ to establish God’s kingdom had not happened.  But Peter, James and John could not forget this experience of Jesus’ transfiguration and told it to others.  Then the Gospel writers recorded it as a sign of God’s reaching out to humanity.  The Transfiguration revealed Jesus as God’s incarnation, the fulfillment of God’s covenant with first Israel and then with all of creation.

            The power of wonder and awe for the listeners or readers of Mark’s gospel story can be found in three stories where Jesus is revealed as the Incarnation of God. First, there is Jesus’ baptism by John in the Jordan River.  Jesus saw the Holy Spirit descend like a dove and heard a voice from heaven say, “Your are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.”  Then, at Jesus’ transfiguration God’s voice came from a cloud saying, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”  Finally, at the moment of Jesus’ death on the cross he gave a loud cry and breathed his last.  Standing at the foot of the cross as he looked at Jesus, a Roman centurion uttered, “Truly this man was God’s Son.” 

            Yet awe at the manifestation of God’s glory and power was not only a New Testament theme.  Awe in God’s presence can be seen clearly and strongly in the Hebrew Scriptures which were Jesus’ Bible.  When Moses spent time with God at the top of Mount Sinai and received the Law, he had to veil his face; because it shown so brightly from being in the glory of God’s presence.  Elijah’s experience which we heard about this morning in the reading from I Kings was at the other end of the scale of “awe- producing” events—God’s presence in “the sound of sheer silence.” Translators have difficulty with that phrase; I grew up hearing it called, “a still small voice.”  But whatever that moment was like, Elijah appeared to feel awe, because he covered his face in his mantle.

            It’s tempting long for time on the mountaintop.  Being amazed, being in awe—although we may be afraid, our fear can be tinged with a desire to hang on to this experience, because it is so powerful. Peter’s offer to build dwellings on the mountain seems to reflect the human urge to hold onto such an experience.  The times of wonder and awe in the presence of “God being God” can strength us for the struggles that we encounter during our Christian journey.  For many of us these times have come during what we often call “mountaintop experiences:”  the moment of conversion,  the encounter with God during a retreat, the experience of the divine in what Celtic Christians called a “thin place,” where the barrier between heaven and earth appears to dissolve, or what T. S. Eliot identified as “moments out of time.”  Yet are these “mountaintop experiences” the only place we really can encounter the divine?

            Before Elijah encountered God on the mountaintop, he was fleeing from a death threat by Queen Jezebel.  He had incurred her anger, because he had defeated the prophets of Baal, the god whom she worshiped. Having fled to the wilderness, he felt depressed and abandoned by God.  In the depths of this depression he was not expecting God to come to him. He longed for death. But while he was asleep under a broom tree, an angel came to him and offered him a cake baked on hot stone and a jar of water.  God—in cake and water; God—in bread and wine; God—in soup and a friendly smile.

            Of all places in the Body of Christ, we at Holy Apostles really can understand that how being on the mountaintop is not essential to experiencing the presence of God.  This morning as our eyes rest on the beauty of this worship space, our ears hear the glorious music of our choir and organ, as our bodies receive the grace-filled bread and wine of Holy Communion, we may well be on a “mountaintop.”  But tomorrow morning, God will be here in this very same space, in much the same way God was present for Elijah under that broom tree: in “a cake,” in a tray piled with warm, nutritious food, in a glass of water, in a cup of hot tea, in the smile of a volunteer.  This moment of grace for our guests and those who serve them can be “a well,” not only of physical sustenance—and also of spiritual wonder and awe—from which all present can draw strength for whatever difficulties lie ahead.  And for that I say, “Thanks be to God!”

              Amen.
 

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