“Life in the Valleys”
“The next day, when they came down from the mountain, a large crowd met him.” Luke 9:37
Intro: This week we begin to celebrate the Holy Season of Lent starting with Ash Wednesday.
Lent is a time to reflect on how we live out discipleship in the world around us.
Sometimes, we can’t measure what we need, so we invent a substitute.
We come up with something that is much easier to measure and stands in as an approximation.
TV advertisers, for example, could never tell which viewers would be impacted by an ad,
so instead, they measured how many people saw it.
Or a model might not be able to measure beauty, but a bathroom scale was a handy stand in.
A business person might choose cash in the bank as a measure of his success.
A book publisher, unable to easily figure out if people are enjoying a book, relies on a rank on a bestseller list.
I wonder if churches today have chosen a false proxy.
How do you measure your life as a Christian?
Do you measure how often your attend church?
Do you measure how much you give?
In fact, every week these are two things that we count.
How many people show up and how much they give.
After all we read in the Gospels and the about the first Church in the book of Acts and the rest of New Testament a lot of verse about numbers. Jesus feed the 5000. There were 3000 added to the church in Acts.
Paul mentions the number of churches in the region.
Certainly keeping count of things are very important.
But sometimes counting can become a substitute for success.
A false measurement of how much we impact other people lives.
A maybe even how much we have allowed the songs, the prayers, and the sermon effect us or not.
Yet there is no way to truly know how every person who attends a worship service on a given weekend has actually been impacted. It’s often assumed that attendance = impact. But this is not necessarily so.
How can churches truly measure impact?
What if churches actually focused on disciplemaking
and determined that their focus would be to make disciplemakers?
A Pew Reasearch article this week said that there are 8% fewer people
who identify themselves as Christians today as there were 8 years ago.
If that is true Christianity has decreased 1% a year for the past 8 years.
Here is the difference I am talking about.
During Lent people are often encouraged to do “Random Acts of Kindness.”
But I am convinced that this is another false proxy. Random Acts of Kindness sets the bar way to low.
Jesus set the goal to change “Random Acts of Kindness,” to “Deliberate Acts of Kindness.”
We are called as believer to “Purposeful reflection and to meditate on our actions
and to serve with thoughtfulness.”
Not hit or miss, here or there, some random acts, but purposeful, persistent, meaningful, intentional
relationship building, long term commitments to transformation of a peoples lives.
If you want to give up something during the Season of Lent that is fine,
but what God really wants is over the next few weeks for you to search your heart
and make a decision to give yourself everyday to something.
Give yourself to someone. Be a servant. Be a disciple.
Don’t settle for randomly putting quarters in washing machine at the laundry mat.
Set down and talk to the person who doesn’t have a washer and drying in their home.
Get to know their story. Share in their lives. Learn about them. Listen.
Don’t tell them about how you use to walk in the snow barefoot up a hill both ways home from school.
You are not there to get their sympathy.
You are there to earn their friendship.
Take a moment and live in the valley.
The bible is filled with stories about mountains and valleys.
Abraham goes up the mountain of Moriah to offer Isaac as a sacrifice.
Moses goes up the mountain Sinai and received the ten commandments.
Elijah goes to mountain of Carmel and has a showdown with the prophets of Baal.
Jesus takes the disciples Peter, James, and John up on Mount Herman.
As Jesus was praying something happened.
Strong’s 438, 4314, 3700 traces the Greek meaning back to the word “visage.”
As in his facial features changed.
His facial expression became different.
Let hold that thought for a moment. I am going to come back to it.
Jill had worked at the auto plant for 12 years.
So when rumors of the “downsizing” spread though the break room she wasn’t too concerned.
She wasn’t the longest worker there but she knew that several hundred had been hired in after she was
So she felt pretty secure about her job.
Plus her husband was good friends with the manager of the plant.
They played golf together.
Their two girls had sleepover around birthdays.
They played soccer on the same team and she was sure everything would be o.k.
When she was called into the office at lunch time she didn’t think anything about it.
When he handed her the pink slip he said, “Jill I am sorry.”
She didn’t feel a thing.
In fact she ate lunch and went back to work on the floor.
It wasn’t until security came and escorted her out of the building that reality set in.
Downsizing. The U-Haul was almost full as they moved out of their house into a smaller one.
Downsizing. From two cars to one.
Downsizing. The kids college fund was gone. Her retirement was gone.
It took Jill 5 years to find another job.
During those 5 years she searched for God.
But it seems like God wasn’t there.
It wasn’t until one day that she was walking in the park
That she came upon an old man with his granddaughter feeding the birds that her life changed.
The old man looked at Jill and told his grandchild to go play.
As Jill sat there on the park bench neither of them knowing what to say,
Jill just cried bitterly as they sat there saying nothing in the silence.
After a while the old man stood up and said, “It has been my pleasure to get to know you.”
With that he took some bread from his pocket and scattered it on the ground and said,
“Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns,
and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” Matthew 6:26
The old man smiled and took his granddaughter by the hand and walked away.
But Jill’s visage changed.
Her face marked by years of depression began to glow.
There was a cheerfulness in her heart that could not be hidden.
She realized that she and her family had not been forsaken by God.
When everything else was spent and all was gone.
God had provided the bread crumbs that had fed their family.
“The next day, when (the disciples) came down from the mountain, a large crowd met him.” Luke 9:37
The bible says that in the verse right before this, Luke 9:36 that “They didn’t tell anyone what they had seen until long after this happened.”
But later in 2 Peter 1:16 Peter tells the what happened.
“We have seen his majestic splendor with our own eyes.”
Remember Peter was one of the disciples who Jesus took with him up on the Mountain of Herman.
It was on that Mountain that Jesus was transfigured.
His face changed, and his clothing became dazzling white.
Then two men, Moses, and Elijah appeared and began talking with Jesus.
They were glorious to see.
And they were speaking of how Jesus would fulfill God’s plan by dying on the cross in Jerusalem.
Peter and the others disciples became so exhausted that they had fallen asleep.
But now they woke up and saw Jesus in all of his glory and the two men standing with him.
As Moses and Elijah were starting to leave Peter not even knowing what to say Peter blurted out,
Master this is wonderful! We will build three shrines, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.
But even as he was speaking a cloud came over them, and terror gripped them.
Then a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, my Chosen One. Listen to him.”
When the voice died away, Jesus was there alone.
But the disciples didn’t tell anyone what they had seen until long after this happened.
The next day after they had come down from the mountain, a large crowd met them.
I believe Peter lived the next three years mostly in the valley.
When Peter got out of the boat he began to sink.
Once when Jesus was telling the disciples plainly that he would go to Jerusalem and that he would suffer at the hands of the priest and be killed but on the third day he would rise again.
Peter rebuked Jesus and said, “This will never happen to you.” Matthew 16:22
Big mistake for Peter.
Jesus turned to Peter and said, “Get away from me, Satan!”
I would say that was a pretty deep valley in Peter’s life.
At the Last Supper when Jesus had broke the bread and gave it to the disciples saying, “Take eat for this is my body. And he took the cup of wine and gave thanks to God for it. He gave it to them and said, “Each of you drink from it for this is my blood poured out to forgive the sins of many.
Then Jesus said, “Tonight all of you will desert me.”
But Peter declared, “Even if everyone else deserts you, I never will.”
But we know that very night Peter denied Jesus three different times.
The bible says in Matthew 27:75 “Suddenly Jesus’ words flashed through Peter’s mind. Before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times. And Peter went away crying bitterly.”
I would say that was a valley in Peter’s life.
We all have our valleys.
A marine who was deployed in Afghanistan tells the story of giving chocolate bars to children.
Instead of keeping the whole bar to themselves,
the child would immediately break the bar into pieces and share the pieces with their friends.
The one chocolate bar was broken
and the joy multiplied many times by the sharing of one child to another and another and another.
Much like the bread we break is the body of Christ.
As it is broken it is multiplied many times as Christ is shared by one person to another and another and another. Are we quick to collaborate and work together as a team?
Are we willing to share our crumbs and broken pieces?
Lent reminds us that we come together at church as dispirited people.
Our mistakes mold us. Regrets teach us. Our valleys shape us as who we are.
For forty days before Easter we are tested, and tempted, our sins exposed before us.
Repenting, searching for purpose and passion in our faith.
This cloudy journey through the valleys of the 40 days of lent prepares us for what happens next.
At the end of Lent we will see Jesus as he goes to Jerusalem for the last time.
We are in between the glorious Transfiguration of Jesus on the Mountain and the cross and the tomb of Jesus.
This signifies in our own life just a flash in time, a brief moment between our own birth and our own death.
Lent is therefore radically about what happens in our own life between the mountain top experiences and the life in the valley’s to the discover of Jesus is always with us we are never alone.
It is an invitation to faith and to enter into a deeper appreciation of salvation.
Lent is to pass through the ashes of trial and temptation and tribulation and enter into pardon, forgiveness.
To go from sack cloth and ashes to grave clothes covered with frankincense and myrrh.
To the resurrection of new life.
It is these moments in between life and death, between mountains and valley’s,
in between Lent and Easter that we ask does our lives have meaning?
Does our faith have value?
Are our hands like Jesus’ nail pierced hands reaching out to invite and encourage those who are in need?
Do our feet like Jesus’ nail pierced feet take us to serve the least, the last, the lost, the lonely?
Closing: Have you experienced a repentance and conversion to Christ?
Have you made a decision to accept Christ in faith?
Have you accepted him as Lord and Savior?
If not, come forward to the altar and pray.
Let the power of the Holy Spirit has opened your eyes to see who Jesus Christ is — our Messiah and Savior —
Heavenly Father you are always giving your people another chance.
You are forgiving and erasing the sins of our past.
As you were Transfigured, Transform us,
on the cross you have made it possible for us to keep coming back until we get it right. Amen.
As we begin our Lenten walk this Ash Wednesday may we remember that we can’t stay on the mountaintop;
even though we felt God’s presence so strongly and clear there once.
We can’t stay because Jesus calls us out
into our families,
into our neighborhoods
into our schools
into our workplaces
and where ever else He leads.
During some Ash Wednesday services, the minister will lightly rub the sign of the cross with ashes onto the foreheads or back of the hand .
This use of ashes is a sign of repentance and worship.
Will you serve God with urgency in these places?
