Down from the Mountain

Scripture Lessons: 2nd Kings 2: 1-12 and Mark 9: 2-9 Sermon title: Down from the Mountain Preached on 2/11/18 As I'm sure you've noticed by now, in addition to being Transfiguration Sunday, today is Scout Sunday. Some of the Scouts who meet here at our church began the service by bringing in the flags, and I am thankful to serve a church where Boy and Girl Scouts are invited to meet, where the Cub Scouts have their Pinewood Derby. It's wonderful. As I've mentioned before, I was once a Cub Scout. Carl Dimare was my Den leader. A few months ago, he gave me a picture of our den that he took during a camp-out at the Woodruff Scout Camp. It's on my desk. Den 11. My Dad and me standing right next to each other, and now I look more like him than the 8-year-old version of me. Participation in scouts was a family tradition of ours. Both my Dad and my younger brother are Eagle Scouts. When they were active here in Troop 252 my brother and several others who are members here today were signed up and ready to go on a big canoe trip up to the Boundary Waters. Those are the lakes that dot the border between Minnesota and Canada, and when my Dad wasn't able to go, I was invited to go in his place. This was a big deal for me. I was excited to go, but you know, the whole ride up there I'm starting to worry. I remember getting nervous about what life in the great outdoors was going to be like for a full 10-day span. And then they showed us what we were going to be eating and I got really nervous. But here's the thing about camping. Here's the thing about big trips in the great outdoors. It takes a little while to get used to it. You have to ease into a trip like this one. But once you're into it, day two or three, you start to forget that civilization even exists, and you say to yourself as you're watching the sun set, "I could just stay right out here for a while." "I could just paddle this canoe with my brother, Hal McClain, and all the others. Live on MRE's and Tang. We'll be just fine," I remember thinking that about day 3 or 4 of that trip watching the sun set. It seems like you hardly ever take the time to watch the sun set until you're camping, and as I did I felt like making a life for myself out there in the woods. Do you know that feeling? Not everyone does. Andrew McIntosh, our Youth Director, nuanced Henry David Thoreau this week. He said, "I went to the woods to live deliberately, and I deliberately went right back home to civilization." But if you know the feeling that I'm talking about then you can start to imagine what is going on in Peter's head, because just as it can be nice to be on a long canoe trip or to spend a week on the beach and away from it all, you can't stay up on top of a mountain. But Peter was ready to stay. I love this about Peter. Of course, everybody loves Peter, because Peter says the dumb thing that everyone else is thinking. "Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." Isn't that surely what they were all thinking. There they were, up on top of this mountain, and at the top they see their teacher, their friend, transfigured before them and his clothes became dazzling white, and there appeared to them Elijah, the Great Prophet, with Moses who led the people out of slavery in Egypt. These heroes of the faith were talking to their Jesus, so of course, why not pitch a tent and stay there for a while? You know what I'm talking about. You have an amazing experience. You escape from the world for a little while and your spirit lifts. The Youth Group goes to Montreat, North Carolina for the big youth conference. It's a week full of these great worship services. Everyone meets in small groups composed of youth from all over, but the others in the small group start to feel like family. Then you go hike to the top of Lookout Mountain and somebody says, "I wish we could just stay here forever." Of course, you do. But you can't. Why? Because real life isn't lived up on a mountain. You have to come down from the mountain to really live. Let me tell you what I mean. Back in Columbia, TN, the night after Dylan Roof walked into Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church for a Bible study, then walked out a murderer, the pastors of the AME churches in Columbia, TN called on every pastor and every elected official to meet for a worship service at St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church. It started about 7:00 in the evening. There were a lot of people there. I remember preaching, then going back to my pew to sing with everyone else. We sang one then another, and it was so hot that I felt like I was sweating through my suit jacket, but the Holy Spirit was in that place and everyone there could feel it. A few more pastors went to preach, then a man named Chris Poynter went to the pulpit. He was the Executive Director of the Boys and Girls Club and he told us that this worship service was a joyous event, that he hadn't felt so inspired since the pep rallies he went to back in High School. "But the game is tomorrow," he said, "it's not tonight that is going to change our community or our world, it's what we do tomorrow when we go back to the real world. How will we live then?" You see, you can't stay on the canoe trip. You can't just have a wonderful worship service and think that the daemon of racism is dead and gone. You have to come down from the mountain and back to the real world, because it's in the valley that life is lived. So, Peter, he can't make three dwellings. They can't just stay up there. No, they had to go down the mountain and as they were "coming down the mountain, [Jesus] ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead." Now this isn't the first time Jesus told them that he would die. In fact, Jesus had been telling them about how he would have to undergo great suffering and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes. He had even told them before that he would be killed, and after three days rise again, but I bet you that this is the first time they believed him, because it's one thing for your friend to mention something of that gravity in conversation and it's another thing to see your friend transfigured before your eyes as he talks with Elijah and Moses. I believe the real reason Peter wanted to stay up on that mountain is because Peter now knew as Elisha the Prophet knew, that he would soon lose his friend whom he loved. Peter knew Jesus would go down that mountain and if he kept preaching and healing the way he had been preaching and healing, then he would be on his way to the Cross. You know this scared Peter, so he wanted to stay up on that mountain, and you know that's what Peter wanted because that's what we all want. To avoid the pain. To reduce the risk. To never lose the people we love. But Jesus knew that you can't live life on the mountain. Life is lived down in the valley, and so he goes down, because you can't be the Savior of the World if you're hiding from the world. You can't be the King of Kings if you never face your people. You can't live your life's purpose if you're afraid to live. Life is lived in the valley, and so we must take those mountain top experiences, those lessons that we learn from the woods, and we take all that back to our life in the valley because if we don't then we can't be a blessing to the world. And maybe it's hard. Risky. It's like the difference between singing in the shower and singing in front of people like all these good choir members do week after week. Or how well I preach my sermons when I'm practicing in my office. I have this lectern set up in front of a mirror, and man - you should hear me preach when there's no one there to listen. That's because everything is easier if it doesn't count, but if you want to make an impact on this world. If you want to live out your purpose on this earth. If you have a gift that you just have to share you have to come down from the mountain top to sing your song in the valley. That's life. So, that's what Jesus did. And that is what leads to his death. This reality is sobering, isn't it? And as it was true for him, so it's true for us. You can't just stay up on the mountain top. You can't live out in the woods no more than your four years of college should stretch out into 5 or 6. The point is to prepare you for life in the real world, not to avoid it. But the real world can kill you. You know what I'm talking about. Valentine's Day is this week. Wednesday. And Valentine's Day is risky. Say you pine for some young lady or young man. You dream about him or you imagine the day when she'll finally notice you, but do you say anything? No - if you say something she might reject you. But if you don't try you never know. The same is true of writing. Who knows how many great writers are out there who have yet to sit down and write a book. Who knows how many people have a story to tell but are afraid to tell it, because writing hurts. Many writers have offered some version of the great quote: "writing is easy, you just open a vein and bleed." Which is to say that you can't do it if you are unwilling to come down from the mountain where life is all possibility, and no one has to get hurt. To write you have to go down to the place where rejection and pain are both possible - but this is where life is lived. Life is lived in the valley - where there is risk. I learned earlier this week, that just before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I have a dream" speech, a white Presbyterian, Rev. Eugene Carson Blake spoke. He told the crowd assembled, "We Presbyterians have come to this Civil Rights Movement late, but we are here." And why were we late? Because walking into the valley, stepping away from what is and towards what could be, challenging the status quo, worrying our parents, speaking out on difficult issues - all of that is a risk that few people take because most of us are just fine building our tents up on the mountain top. But you know what Dr. King said. Not so long after he spoke in Washington DC with Rev. Blake, he said, "Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will." We Christians - we can't just be mountain top Christians. We can't just be Sunday Morning Christians. We must take the lessons that we learn here, the feelings that fill our souls here, the new life that we hope for here - and walk down the mountain side, out into Kennesaw Avenue and Church Street and our work place and our neighborhoods so that the Gospel of Jesus Christ be proclaimed. And yes, there's a risk. For when it comes to what matters, there is always risk. Then the question becomes, would you rather just play at being a Christian, or are you ready to follow him where he leads? Amen.