First Presbyterian Church
Wichita Falls, Texas
February 22, 2004
TAKING THE SPLENDOR WITH YOU
Isaac Butterworth
Luke 9:28-36 (NRSV)
28/ Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. 29/ And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. 30/ Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. 31/ They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. 32/ Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. 33/ Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, ‘Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah’ —not knowing what he said. 34/ While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. 35/ Then from the cloud came a voice that said, ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’ 36/ When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.
Can you recall a time when you were close to God? So close, I mean, you could swear you heard the rustle of angels’ wings? Maybe there was an expansive feeling within, perhaps a tear at the corner of your eye?
I recall such a time. Believe it or not, I was in church. I was a student at Austin Seminary, and I was worshiping at a church just off the campus of UT, right there on Guadalupe, or “the Drag,” if you know Austin. We were singing. The hymn was Isaac Watts’ “O God, Our Help in Ages Past.” The organ swelled. The voices of the people swelled with it. The moment was intense. And I sensed that I was in the presence of God. I almost couldn’t sing. I couldn’t contain the joy. I wept. I wanted the moment to last forever. It didn’t.
Within thirty minutes, I was back into my routine. Out in the heavy foot traffic of hurried figures, racing along the Drag to some appointment they were, no doubt, already late for. Cars buzzing by, honking obtrusively, trucks rattling along in careless disregard for my fast-fading ecstasy. No one I saw the rest of the day had felt what I felt. I had almost touched “the hem of the garment,” if you know what I mean. I had felt God close, and now he seemed galaxies away.
No wonder Peter wanted to “make...dwellings” on the mountain! Who wouldn’t want to settle in permanently where the air is rarefied and the vision of holy things is clear. We are tempted to stay in such a place, or at least to mark the spot so that we can find it again...retreat to it when life gets to be too much to handle...if there’s time, of course. I don’t doubt that Peter wanted to make camp on the mountain.
When I was doing my doctoral studies at McCormick Seminary in Chicago, I took Carl Dudley’s course on culture. One day in class, he raised the issue of where people sit in church. It is so easy for us, when we’re young, to criticize those who, in our minds, get too possessive about the seat on which they stake their claim in worship. But Dudley challenged us to try something.
“Ask one of your parishioners,” he said, “someone who has a place they absolutely have to sit in the sanctuary of your church -- ask them to meet you there some weekday. And sit down with them where they ordinarily sit, and ask them to tell you their personal history of the place.”
So, in time, that’s what I did. I asked a woman many years my senior, who was a member of a congregation I was serving, to meet me in the sanctuary on a Thursday afternoon. We sat down in her “spot,” and I asked her to tell me whatever she could remember that had happened to her there, in that pew. And she did. She told me of sermons she had heard and anthems that had melted her heart. She told me about the times she presented her children for baptism. She told me about sitting in that very spot the Sunday after her husband died. She told me about laughter and about tears. And she tried as best she could to tell me about being close to God there. Moments of splendor -- that’s what she told me about.
We all have them. Just like Peter and James and John. Not often, perhaps. Maybe not often enough. But there is some place, some time, we would go back to if we could -- just to witness the splendor again, just to feel the safety of it.
There is a place in a local hospital that I go to from time to time. It’s the very spot -- I’m sure of it -- where I saw my firstborn for the first time. I remember the feeling I had. It started at the soles of my feet and traveled up my body to the crown of my head. An electric feeling of warmth and well-being. I looked at the little figure lying on his stomach in an incubator, and it was love at first sight. I will never forget it. But neither can I ever return to it.
Jesus tells us to “break camp.” Just like he did Peter and James and John on the mountain. There will be no “dwellings” made here, no dwelling here! No loitering. This isn’t the only place God can be found. He is not, after all, a stationary object. He doesn’t stay put. He’s on the move. The minute you try to tie him down, he’s already gotten past you. In fact, he’s half-way down the mountain and, once he gets to the bottom...well, there’ll be a road. And you know where that road leads. Right into the heat of battle, right into the heart of controversy, right to the cross.
We’ll taste a little of it this week and in the weeks to come -- symbolically, of course. Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, the starting of Lent. And we’ll be forty days journeying toward the cross. Of course, most of society won’t even know it. It won’t register...wouldn’t matter if it did. And, besides, it’s nothing if you and I do not make it something.
But, even if we choose to ignore Lent, we can’t ignore life. And life will carry us on a road of its own, a road with twists aplenty and dead ends and deep ruts and uphill climbs. It’s enough to make you want to retreat to the mountain of splendor. To go back to the moments of security and serenity that have too seldom intersected your life. There’ll come a day when the road will have carried you far enough and you’ve made so many turns that you won’t even be able to look back over your shoulder any longer and actually see the mountain.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t take the splendor with you.
When Peter and James and John arrived with Jesus at the bottom of the mountain, they found themselves entangled in a failed attempt to help some poor family whose little boy was experiencing seizures. It was nothing like the splendor of the mountain. Here there was no stillness, no celestial vision, no breathtaking grandeur, no merging of heaven with earth. There was just dirt and dust and mangy crowds and weary, hurting people. And less-than-helpful would-be helpers. And things did not seem nearly so clear. There was no uplift. There were just burdens.
But there was one constant. Jesus was there. His face did not glow any longer, nor did his appearance dazzle. The only glistening was the refraction of sunlight on the sweat of his brow. But he was into it. He was in the mix. He was “down and dirty,” as we say. And there was splendor to that, too.
That’s what I mean when I say you can take the splendor with you. God is surely to be found along the holy way stations of your life. How could I claim otherwise? You have felt his presence there. But, when you find yourself elbow-deep in human need, when you’re fighting for your life or the life of someone you love in some lowly, obscure hour, when you feel lonely and afraid, when the dank, musty stench of the lowlands of existence threaten to stifle the very breath out of you, in the dark moment when you face some cross thrust in your path...then! Then, know that, although you may not feel him as cleanly as you did on the height, God is there all the same. You have taken “many a winding road” since you last glimpsed the radiance and clarity of some holy and treasured moment. But, though you have long since left the mountain of splendor, the splendor of the mountain has not left you!
