How Do You Spell “Success?
Mark 9:2-9
September 4, 2005
I remember having coffee some years ago, with a friend who had recently retired from active ministry. He told me that he had worked hard and had been appointed to successively larger and larger churches. “But,” he said, “the one thing I regret is that in the course of my ministry and my drive to get bigger pulpits, I neglected my children.”
Sometimes, when we get what we want, we discover that we don’t want what we’ve got. Success isn’t always all that it is cracked up to be. Unfortunately the drive for success in worldly accomplishments bleeds over into the world of the church. I find that I get caught up in some of those unhelpful attitudes from time to time.
I don’t like to admit this, but there are times when I get jealous of some of my other colleagues who serve larger churches; colleagues who preach to a thousand people or more each Sunday; colleagues who have a large full-time program staff; colleagues whose names are known across the denomination and the country. I want to grow up someday and achieve that kind of success. Then I will feel like I really have arrived.
That is arguably a skewed understanding of ministry and success. It is an understanding of which I have been very critical for much of my ministry. Still, that is the yardstick that many of us use. It’s tempting and alluring. It has the power to reach out and grab you and suck you in.
That’s what successful ministry means, we think: to have a large and expanding budget; to have a huge worship attendance; to have a broadcast ministry; to write books, to be known far and wide. The problem is that, if these are truly marks of Christian success, then we have to count Jesus as a giant failure.
Had he wanted to do so, Jesus could have built a great center of learning in his capital city. He could have established “The Jerusalem Center for the Study of the New Covenant.” That would have drawn people and scholars from all over the world to study in the shadow of the temple. It could have been a great think tank like the Brookings Institute, or the Hudson Institute, or the Institute on Religion and Democracy, or the American Enterprise Institute, or the Heritage Foundation, or any number of those organizations.
But he didn’t do that. He chose instead to wander around the countryside, teaching wherever he found someone to talk to. He never spent much time in one place; never really had a place to lay his head. He didn’t try to organize a large group of like-minded scholars. He instead found 12 ordinary guys…guys who worked for a living and who were somewhat short on formal education. He chose 12 ordinary guys and taught them what they needed to know as they walked along the highways and byways. He didn’t choose to wear his credentials on his sleeve, but wandered around as a simple carpenter and rabbi…not exactly what 21st century standards would define as successful.
The Apostle Paul was the same way. If ever there was a guy on the fast track to success, it was Paul. He describes himself in his letter to the Philippians.
“If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless” (Philippians 3:4-6).
What he was saying was that his bloodlines were pristine, his Jewishness unblemished, his loyalty to his faith unchallenged, his abilities second-to-none. When you looked up the word “success” in the dictionary, you found Paul’s picture. But he learned to define success in a different way.
“But whatever was to my profit, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ…” (Philipians 3:7-9).
Success is found in following Christ, not in accumulating worldly achievements or honors or riches or fame.
One day, Jesus took Peter, James, and John with him and climbed a mountain, probably Mount Hermon, north of the Sea of Galilee where he was transfigured before their eyes.
Down in the wilderness around Jericho, there is a restaurant at the base of a flat mountain. The restaurant is called “The Transfiguration Restaurant” because the owners say that this was the mountain on which the Transfiguration took place. They are really marketing to the tourists.
Anyway, the food is really not very good, but you can get a camel ride in the parking lot after you are through. But I doubt that this is the correct location for the real Mount of Transfiguration based on the fact that Matthew, Mark, and Luke all agree that they were in the area north of the Sea of Galilee, near Mount Hermon.
So Jesus took three of his most trusted friends with him as he climbed the mountain. Once on the summit, they witnessed his Transfiguration. To be transfigured is to have your outward appearance changed. Mark says that Jesus changed right before their eyes; that his clothes became dazzling white. If that wasn’t enough of a shock, they looked and saw that Jesus had been joined by Moses and Elijah.
The disciples were so overwhelmed, that they didn’t exactly know what to say. So many times, not knowing what to say is an indication that you shouldn’t say anything, but apparently Peter’s mother had never taught him that. So he blurted out, “Teacher, how good it is that we are here! We will make three tents, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah. “
I think that there are two possibilities here. Perhaps Peter was so caught up in the moment that he didn’t want it to end. He wanted to hang around a while and just soak up the atmosphere. So it is possible that he thought that if they erected these shelters to shade the men from the sun, then they could linger for a time, and the disciples could take pleasure in being in the presence of these great men. That is one possibility.
There is another possibility. During the Jewish harvest festival of “booths”, these shelters would be built as a symbol of the heavenly tents in which the righteous would dwell once they had reached the heavenly kingdom. So maybe that is what was going on. Maybe Peter was just dreaming about and anticipating the Kingdom of God.
Whatever his motivation, they never got around to building any sort of structure because a voice of heaven – the same voice that had spoken at the baptism of Jesus – said, “This is my Son…listen to him!” And just as suddenly, Moses and Elijah disappeared and they were left alone with Jesus.
Perhaps some of the most important words of this lesson occur next. Verse 9 begins with, “As they came down the mountain…” You see, Jesus knew that they couldn’t stay in the experience of the mountaintop encounter. They had to come down to the valley, down to the level places, down to the people who desperately needed to hear the message.
The mountaintop is a terrific experience. We all need times like that. We all need to be enlightened and excited and fired up. We all need the experience of being in the midst of something dazzling and wonderful.
But that is not where true success lies. Just think how they could have promoted this with just a little bit of marketing savvy. This was an experience just waiting to be packaged by some slick advertising professional. They could have taken this and run with it. They could have been the center of attraction. They could have had the world at their feet. After all, Jesus was Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Lance Armstrong, and Billy Graham all rolled into one…and then some. This was success with a capital “S.”
But I think that Jesus is saying something different. I think he is saying that it is time to come down off the mountain and redefine success. Success is meeting people where real needs are.
Moses and Elijah were present on the mountain that day in order to remind the disciples that they stood in a long line of faith that included the law and the prophets. When the outward appearance of Jesus was changed before their eyes, it was to remind them that they were indeed in the presence of God.
On the mountain of transfiguration, they were able to look on the transformed face of Jesus and see God’s glory, but they were unable to remain on their mountain. There was too much to do down in the valley.
Jesus came to earth for the people. As he said in the 4th chapter of Luke, he came for the oppressed, for the poor, and for the imprisoned. He came that the blind might have sight, that the lame might walk, and the silent might speak. He came to lift people out of their poverty of body and soul. He came because so many of the people did not understand the wonder of a God who really did care about their needs. He came because he knew that there were those whose spiritual lives were dry as dust. He came to lift people out of their spiritual exile and religious wilderness. He came as one to serve.
That is why he wouldn’t let the disciples build shelters on the mountain. There was too much work to do down in the valley to spend time up there. They couldn’t just worship on the mountain all day, there was too much other stuff to do.
Of course, worship is important. The worship life of any community is essential. Everything begins with worship. But worship leads to service. It was time for the disciples to come down off the mountain and enter into the lives of the people who needed healing of heart, soul, mind, and body, and strength. True success is found in service, which flows from authentic worship.
By today’s standards, Jesus may not have been a success at all. By today’s standards, his ministry may not have met the criteria for successful programming. But Jesus redefined success. Success is reached when one does ministry in faithfulness in the midst of human need.
How do you spell success? What is important to you? What are your goals? What flows from your worship? Are you willing to come down off the mountain and mix it up with the people who matter to Jesus?
Today, we have been presented with very concrete evidence of the need of God’s people
to be in ministry and to stand in solidarity with the least of these. Hundreds of thousands of people have had their lives completely and utterly changed by the power of a storm. Huge swaths of the Gulf Coast are in ruins. People are dying in the streets of a great American city.
The natural inclination is to ask why. Why do these things happen? If God is all-powerful, why didn’t he divert the path of the storm? If God is all loving, why did he allow this tragedy to strike?
I don’t have answers to those questions. I know that some of you expect me to have those answers and might be terribly disappointed that I don’t. Men and women, scholars and educators, princes of the church and ordinary lay people have been struggling with those questions for untold generations. In the end, no one arrives at a completely satisfactory answer because in our limited, finite human attempts, we can’t grasp the mind of God.
But remember the psalmist who said, “…we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea, though its water roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult” (Psalm 46:2-3).
In a moment, we will have the opportunity and privilege of receiving the Sacrament of Holy Communion. The Body and Blood of Christ will become real to us as we share in this mystery of faith. Through the Sacrament, Christ’s presence will flood our souls. As Jesus blesses us through his presence, we will then have the opportunity and privilege to bless others.
We will not fear, but we will do all that we can to banish the fear felt by others. We will arise out of our worship; we will stand up from the communion table. Flowing from our worship will be concrete action on behalf of God’s people. Money will flow from our pockets and material goods will be channeled through us to desperate people.
The Mount of Transfiguration will always stand before us as a symbol of the glory of God because we need to be continually reminded of that glory. It will also serve as a reminder that, though once full of God’s glory, the mountaintop is now empty, because that glory is being spread over the land of God’s desperate people through our concrete acts of love…in the name of Christ.
