It is good for us to be here

Matthew 17: 1-9, page 18

Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him.
Then 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.” While 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!”
When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.” And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus alone.
As 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.”
Sermon
Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here.”
Peter made that statement just after seeing, what I’m going to assume was, up to this point in his life, the most incredible thing he had ever seen – and I say it is good for us to be here today as this is one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen.
It’s not every 30 year old preacher who gets to preach at a church’s 200th anniversary to a standing room only crowd – and to tell you the truth I think that I feel something like Collin Firth must have felt as he accepted the Oscar for best actor last Sunday saying, “I have a feeling my career just peaked.”
It is good to be here – it is good for us to be here – because not many churches make it this far. It’s something we’ve got to really soak in, enjoy, remember. And it’s not just the anniversary that is worth celebrating. In addition to having something worth celebrating, we’re surrounded by people worth celebrating – we’ve got relationships worth celebrating.
Here today are folks who haven’t been to church in a long time, folks we haven’t seen in a long time who have made a difference to us, who inspired us to believe, who strengthened us in the faith.
It’s days like today that we don’t want to ever end – so while it sounded funny coming out of Peter’s mouth, “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,” on a day like today we can all understand why he wanted to build those dwellings up on the mount of transfiguration – he didn’t want the moment to end.
A poem published in the Herald this past week by Joyce Sutphen of Minnesota sums this feeling up well. “The Aunts,” inspired by her own aunts, I assume, are the kind of people who couldn’t let a visit with one another come to an end:

I like it when they get together
and talk in voices that sound
like apple trees and grape vines,

and some of them wear hats
and go to Arizona in the winter,
and they all like to play cards.

They will always be the ones
who say “It is time to go now,”
even as we linger at the door,

or stand by the waiting cars, they
remember someone—an uncle we
never knew—and sigh, all

of them together, like wind
in the oak trees behind the farm
where they grew up—a place

I remember—especially
the hen house and the soft
clucking that filled the sunlit yard.

This is a day worth savoring, the kind of day we don’t want to end so we will be prolonging our goodbyes, standing in doorways or waiting by cars.
David Lock, longtime member here, was telling me about another many of you may know well, Paul Fulton, who used to say, “The good Lord only made so many good days, and this must be one of them.”
We celebrate the past today – we celebrate the legacy of those who, through hard work, dedication, and faith in God gave us what we now enjoy – but we also look around realizing that many of them are no longer here with us.
And while we celebrate the past today we also look towards the future, not knowing what it might hold.
Our passage in Matthew begins with, “six days later.” It’s six days later from Christ foretelling his death – in chapter 16 we read that “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.”
So Peter wants to build three dwellings up on the mount of transfiguration because he knows exactly what awaits them down in the valley, once they come down from the mountain.
Those of us who can identify with Peter and his fear hear in the words that decorate the face of our church, “Celebrating the past, embracing the future,” a statement of profound faith as embracing the future is no simple thing.
It’s an amazing thing, a day like today – we celebrate the faithful of the past – but for us to join their ranks we must learn to deal with the uncertainty of the future.
Bob Duncan told me about one such faithful person. I was given a great gift last week by Bob, our county’s own historian and member of this church – he took the time to give me a tour of the surrounding area, and during that tour he told me stories, some of which I am quite confident might just be true. One of our first stops was Lasting Hope Presbyterian Church. The church began not too long after ours with a woman named Nancy Lockridge who lived up that way and desperately prayed for a minister to come out to Carter’s Creek to reform the heathen who surrounded her. A minister did come, and knowing well the character of the people there he gathered up everybody, stood up on a stump with a gun holstered to his belt and a Bible in his hand, and announced, “I’m either here to preach or to fight, you pick.” He preached, and the more he preached the more people changed, and before anybody knew it Nancy Lockridge’s prayers, her hopes that things would get better, had turned into a fine country church that the people named Lasting Hope.
Bob pulled the truck up to the top of the hill and he said, “This is it.” This is where the church used to be. Today all that’s left is the cemetery.
Our world is changing, the future is uncertain, and as we celebrate the past, 200 years of worship, Sunday School, baptisms, music that lifts the soul, the breaking of bread and drinking of the cup, it is all too easy to be afraid for fear that this is as good as it’s going to get.
This fear is nothing new.
“When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.”
To be touched by Jesus is no simple thing. He touched the blind and they were given sight, the hemorrhaging woman reached out to just touch the hem of his garment and she was made well – and he touched the disciples as they came face to face with the future and found themselves petrified by it. But when he touched them, like a blind man, for the first time they could see, like a hemorrhaging woman, for the first time they had reason to hope, for beyond the valley is a mountain top far greater than any they could have ever imagined.
This is our hope, our lasting hope, that beyond this day, down through the valley whatever it holds, whether great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, even suffering unto death, on the third day he rose. And by this testimony I assure you that beyond this great day is one so great you may not even be able to imagine it – for he walked through the valley of the shadow of death that like him you might also rise.
It is so easy to give up, to look back without going forward, to assume that the best days are long gone – but our lasting hope is that there is no mountain top higher than that which is yet to come.
As people of such hope we cannot look out unto the future without embracing it – for whatever glory days we remember today we see an even brighter tomorrow.
While we remember Sunday school rooms full of kids, we hear the laughter of well over twenty children filling up our brand new nursery and we know that still greater days are to come.
We look back on days when this sanctuary was full of loved ones and today, by the testimony of this packed sanctuary, we may be bold enough to believe that by our 300th, our 400th, our 500th still there will be singing to fill this room, still there will be faithful gathered here.
Let us hear those words from Christ himself, “Get up and do not be afraid,” for there is work to be done, we have the gospel to proclaim, and we have a future to embrace.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.