(Ir)religiosity

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Below is the manuscript — more or less, I tend to deviate quite a bit — of the sermon I will be preaching this morning, Transfiguration Sunday, at Quincy Community UMC.  It is based on the gospel text for this week (Luke 9:28-43).

In 1993, Greg Mortensen attempted to climb K2, the second highest mountain in the world.  For Greg, the way up was literally the way up the mountain, to the summit.  But Greg never made it to the top of K2.  There were problems with his crew and on the way back down the mountain Greg was separated from the rest of the group and wandered into a remote village in Pakistan called Korphe.  The people of the village cared for Greg and after spending time with them, Greg realized that the village had no school and no system of education for the children.  Once he returned to the States Greg decided to raise enough money to build a school for the children of Korphe.  This endeavor eventually grew into the Central Asia Institute, a non-profit organization which builds schools for remote villages in north-eastern Pakistan.  Greg recounts his journey in the best-selling book Three Cups of Tea which the Sunday School class has been reading over the past several months.  But these schools are only being built because Greg wasn’t able to reach the top of the mountain.  Three Cups of Tea was written because, in a sense, Greg failed.  Or did he succeed?  It seems that in the end Greg discovered that the way up, the real way up, was the way down — down into the village in Pakistan, down into a world were children had no access to education.  Down into the problems of the world where he could make a difference.

The way up is down.

We see a similar story in our text today.  In Luke’s gospel, Jesus takes three of his disciples — Peter, James, and John — to the top of a mountain to pray.  Now, I doubt that this mountain was as massive as K2 but it was high enough that Jesus felt he could be alone to pray.  This is something that Jesus does many times.  According to the Scriptures, Jesus would go alone, or sometimes with a few disciples, to a mountain or some other secluded place, to pray and mediate often.

But this time it was different, at least that is Luke’s version of the story.  According to Luke, while he is praying Jesus’ face begins to glow and his clothes begin to dazzle.  Then, suddenly, Moses and the prophet Elijah appear next to Jesus and Luke tells us that they begin to talk to Jesus about what he is to “accomplish in Jerusalem,” an obvious reference to Jesus’ passion and crucifixion.

Now, we have all been to the movies with all the new special effects, so let’s image what this scene might look like.  Jesus is on a mountain, his face and clothes are dazzling, and Moses and Elijah appear and start talking to him about his future trip to Jerusalem, the capital city.  Not exactly a calm, still event, right?  It seems to be pretty spectacular.  I mean, Steven Spielberg or Peter Jackson could probably do quite a bit with that on the big screen and I imagine it would be pretty true to the story, at least that seems to be Luke’s version of the story.  But where are the disciples during all this?  Luke tells us that they are so weighed down with sleep that they can barely stay awake!  Really?  Barely stay awake?  How could they miss this?  Moses, one the great heroes of their history who led their ancestors out of slavery in Egypt, has just appeared and Elijah, one of the great prophets is with him.  I mean, these are famous people that Peter, James, and John would have heard about growing up.  And to top it all off Jesus’ clothes are dazzling.  But yet the disciples can barely stay awake.  I mean, imagine it — what would it be like if Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy suddenly appeared right now, right here in this church?  And what if Pastor Susan’s clothes started dazzling?  I think most of us would be wide awake.  But Luke tells us the disciples can barely stay awake.  In fact, they don’t even say anything until it is time to go back down the mountain and then Peter says something like, “Oh, but this is such a great experience, let’s stay.  And we’ll build a church here, in fact, we’ll build three churches, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”  It’s almost like Peter has woke up and realized what’s going on and he doesn’t want the experience to end.  We all know what that’s like don’t we?  Have you ever been part of an experience that you didn’t want to end?  Something that you wanted to prolong as long as you could?  Almost as soon as Peter says this a cloud appears and a voice says, “This is my Son, my Chosen, listen to him!”  And then, just as fast as they appeared, Moses and Elijah are gone and Jesus heads back down the mountain.

For Jesus, the way up is down.

Luke makes this point very clear because the very next thing that happens in the story is a healing.  In verse 38 of today’s reading Luke tells us that a man whose son has been possessed confronts Jesus and asks him to heal his son.  What’s even more interesting is that the text says the man asked the disciples first, but they were unable to do it.  I wonder why.  Could it be that they were too preoccupied with the scene from the mountaintop?  Were they still caught up in going up that they forgot to come down?  Jesus ultimately heals the man’s son, but not before he chastises his disciples for being, in Luke’s words, “faithless” and “perverse.”

So where are we at?   The movement of the entire passage would be something like this:  Jesus and the disciples go up the mountain to pray, Moses and Elijah appear, the voice from the cloud identifies Jesus as the Son of God, and then they go back down the mountain.  And as soon as they go back down, as soon as this experience that Peter and the other disciples want to prolong is over, they are confronted with the reality of a finite and imperfect world.  They are confronted with the reality of sickness, brokenness, and oppression.  And Jesus, without hesitation, heals those who need it the most.  In other words, Jesus comes down the mountain and is completely invested in the world, completely invested in alleviating the suffering of those around him, completely invested in not just proclaiming but performing the good news of the kingdom of God.

Again, for Jesus, the way up is down.  The way to God is not staying on the mountain and building monuments like the disciples want, the way to God involves a downward movement toward those on the bottom of society, to come down the mountain and participate in God’s work — God peaceable reign — through the liberation and salvation of the least among us.  For Jesus, this downward movement toward those that are suffering would eventually lead him to the cross, not exactly a glorifying event, at least not by the standards of the Roman Empire.  And for those that follow Jesus, the movement is equally demanding — to renounce the upward movement, toward success, mobility, consumption and largesse, and to take up the downward movement toward those that are repressed and invisible in our society, to be in intentional solidarity with them.  This is the movement of true love.

The way up is down.

You know, when you think about it, this movement, this downward logic, is indicative of the very of nature of God.  It is the essence of the incarnation.  That God did not remain distant and detached but became one of us, that the Word became flesh and moved into the neighborhood — and not just any neighborhood either, but the most vulnerable, dangerous, and despised neighborhood of all.  According to the Scriptures, Nazareth, Jesus’ hometown, had a pretty bad reputation.  And what’s more, Jesus had a reputation for hanging out with pretty questionable people:  tax collectors, prostitutes, and Samaritans.  Jesus’ life is a living example of this movement toward those that are outcast.  And, if we take our faith seriously, we believe that his life is the very life of God!  God is like Jesus and chooses the lowly rather than the lofty.

If we are reading Luke’s gospel we shouldn’t be too surprised at what Jesus’ actions reveal in this story of the Transfiguration.  In Luke, Jesus is always chooses to be with those that are hurting and suffering.  In fact, the very first thing Jesus does in Luke, his first public sermon if you will, is to quote from the great prophet Isaiah.  Luke tells us that after his temptation in the desert, Jesus returns home to Nazareth, a ghetto in the ancient world, unfolds a scroll and reads the following:

‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’

This is how the kingdom of God works.  It is a topsy-turvy reality where the last are first and the first are last.  It is a reality completely contradictory to the logic of the world, of movements of upward mobility and success.  Jesus’ life and message stand in stark contrast to the notions of normalcy in which we live.  They tell us that the way to God, the true way up, is down, down into the problems and sufferings of the world around us.  When we do this, when we become wholly invested in the world and the realization of God’s kingdom on earth — when and where we do these things God’s liberative work is taking place.

Today, Valentine’s Day, many of us celebrate love, one of the most revolutionary yet overused and most misunderstood words in the English language.  I would submit that this story of the Transfiguration demonstrates, over against Hershey and Hallmark, that real love is not something worth celebrating one day of the year but a way of being and living in the world.  Love is an orientation, a divine kind of orientation that doesn’t always pull us up to mountaintops but often down to those that are oppressed and demoralized, those that perhaps haven’t seen what love looks like.  Jesus was many things but I think most of all he was love incarnate.  And we as part of the community called church are called to be love incarnate today, especially to those on the underside of society.  We are called to show that the way up is down.

Though it didn’t start out that way, Greg Mortenson’s story, in a sense, demonstrates this movement, this kingdom logic.  Through the Central Asia Institute, Greg is still building schools for children in remote villages who have no access to education.  And through the “Pennies for Peace” program, many schools, social groups,  and churches (including our Sunday School class) are helping contribute to this effort.  I’ve even heard that the book Three Cups of Tea is now on the reading list of many schools, some in our own community.

But these things don’t just happen on the other side of the world.  They happen right here in our own community as well.  As Pastor Susan has mentioned before this church reaches hundreds and thousands of people through ministries of mercy, justice, and compassion.  We are a church that not only knows where God’s work is, we are a church that is actively doing God’s work in many ways.  Friends, that is something to be proud of.  Let us continue to show others that the way up is down.

There is an old rock song from the 80’s that I think sums of much of this.  These lines are from the chorus:

I wanna know what love is
I want you to show me
I wanna feel what love is
I know you can show me

It seems to me that we are living in a world that is asking these questions.  Those that are the least among us, those that are suffering and hurting, those that are marginalized and oppressed, those on the underside of history are asking these questions.  These are the people Jesus came to save.  As God’s people called to participate in God’s work in the world, we have the great and awesome responsibility of being love incarnate for the sake of the world.  To show to the world that if Jesus is any sort of and example, then the real way up is down.  The real question is are we up to the challenge?

In the name of the one who Created you, the One who is redeeming you, and the one who sustains you now and forevermore.  Amen.