2023-02-21
Brooke Strong
Sermon Text...
February 19, 2023 Hamilton Coe Throckmorton
Matthew 17:1-9 The Federated Church, UCC
When I was a boy, I had an experience one day in which I was walking down the street, and suddenly I felt engulfed by light and love. I distinctly remember feeling as though the world were just as it should be, and that I never needed to worry about anything ever again. It was as if I was being embraced by a giant hug. It was the most reassuring feeling I could possibly imagine. I wanted to hold onto it for the rest of my life. And a moment like that has never happened to me again.
So I understand something of what Peter, James, and John might be feeling as they stand on top of that high mountain with Jesus. I can so imagine them wanting to hold onto that moment and not let it go. I can picture saying what Peter says to Jesus: “Master, this is a great moment! What would you think if I built three dwellings here on the mountain—one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah?” (Matthew 17:4, The Message and NRSV). Oh yes, he seems to say, this is incredibly awesome! Let me build those dwellings and we can all stay here forever and just be happy!
Just as that boyhood moment slipped away for me, though, so, too, do Moses and Elijah vanish in a puff of smoke, and everything is back to the way it was. No holding on to the mountaintop experience. Instead, back down the mountain they trudge, to return to their average, everyday lives. Back to the child wailing for no discernible reason. Back to the same old marital arguments. Back to the endless work frustrations. Back to your bakery being all out of your favorite paczki. For a moment, everything was perfect. And then it was back to reality.
I suspect most of us pine for just such mountaintop experiences. And maybe we even get them once in a while. Or maybe they’re smaller versions, hilltop versions, that give us just a glimmer of hope, a feeling of an inexplicable bliss that reminds us of God’s stunning presence, that fills us with a sense of life’s unspeakable beauty and wonder.
Much of the time, though, I suspect we share another feeling with those three disciples, valley-floor feelings of disappointment and failure and inadequacy and fear. I mentioned last Sunday that Mary and I drove the previous weekend to Georgia for a family funeral. And on the way, I was stopped for speeding. When the officer came to the car window, he asked why I was going so fast. And for probably the only time I’ll be able to answer this way honestly, I said, “I’m on my way to a funeral.” No sympathy at all from the officer. And he issued me a ticket. No mountaintop experience there—I was back in the valley!
The valleys are all around us, of course. A woman loses her job because of a clerical error. A marriage falls apart because of a casual dalliance. An insult by an acquaintance yields a relentless lethargy and discouragement. And as our gaze widens, we see eastern Ukraine shelled relentlessly by an invading Russian army. We see mass shootings multiplying by the day. We see the people of East Palestine, Ohio, threatened by spilled toxins We see people of color cudgeled by a system that punishes and excludes and marginalizes. It’s unnerving and dismaying in the extreme. Our disconcerting valleys are legion.
Lately I have found myself unnerved by the prospects of Artificial Intelligence, and by the recent emergence of ChatGPT, the Microsoft tool that enables a user to have it write an essay or an instruction manual or a recipe or a song. So students could use it, for example, to write their essays for them. The New York Times reported this week that one of its technology columnists, Kevin Roose, had had an extended conversation with a chatbot. “Over the course of the discussion, the chatbot announced that its name was Sydney, that it was in love with Kevin, and that it might want to engineer a deadly virus. Afterward, Kevin—. . . who’s hardly a technophobe—pronounced himself frightened by A.I. . . .. It unsettled me so deeply,” he said, “that I had trouble sleeping afterward” (“The Morning,” Feb. 16, 2023).
Of course, the chatbot is not actually able—at least not yet—to engineer a deadly virus, and it relies on human beings to program it and to accomplish many of its tasks. But it’s also true that technological advances come so fast and furious that we don’t really know how all this will unfold. My former colleague Dan DeWeese sent me an email this week with a link to a story about a rabbi who had gotten a chatbot to create a sermon for him. He then delivered that sermon to his congregation, and afterward the congregation applauded! So I can see that my work here may soon be usurped by the chatbot Sydney! But to be serious, of course, the unknown of what’s to come can be unsettling, even frightening, a potentially disturbing and deeply disruptive descent from the mountaintop to the valley.
Racial inequities, as well, continue to be a valley-like bane of our shared life. Friday’s Plain Dealer reported that in 1970, Black households in Ohio made 73.8% of what white households, while in 2020, 50 years later, they made only 55.5% of what white households make. In fact, in Ohio, while “Asian households have a median income of $85,319, white households make $66,456, and Hispanics of any race make $50,221, Black households in Ohio have a median income of $36,929.” Black adults have far fewer college degrees, far fewer job benefits, and a large gap in healthcare benefits (Feb. 17, 2023, p. A16). Racial disparities mean far too often we live culturally on a valley floor.
Valleys predominate in our daily lives, too, don’t they. We so often live not so much with mountaintop elation, but with personal struggle and disappointment, as well as justice that seems far from rolling down like waters (Amos 5:24).
Yet at the same time, we also have this luminous story pointing us in another direction, a story that reminds us of something we may well have forgotten, or of which we are only too dimly aware. Up the mountain from the challenging valley floor slog Peter, James, and John. And when they least expect it, without any warning, and in a way over which they have zero control, a gift comes to them from out of the mist. It doesn’t take away their pain or their struggles or their frustration. It simply says, ‘In the midst of all that exhausts and wearies and annoys and infuriates you, never forget that the Holy One is there with you, shining like the sun, beaming a joy and a reassurance deeper than any of those valley-floor fears and despairs.’ The same words spoken out of the clouds at Jesus’ baptism are spoken again here: “This is my [Child], marked by my love, focus of my delight” (17:5, The Message).
And these are words intended not just for Jesus, but for us, as well. You and I, too, are God’s children, marked by God’s love, focus of God’s delight. Whether we feel it at the moment or not, it is nonetheless true that God is holding you and me close in this very instant. There’s a bit of mountaintop glory enfolding us in all the nooks and crannies, all the failure and success, all the loneliness and companionship, all the despair and hope of our lives. There, can you sense it!—a little bit of mountaintop radiance.
Valley floors and mountaintops both intermix throughout our lives. Discouragement and failure and death intertwine with God’s luminous embrace and reassurance and care. On April 3, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a speech in Memphis, the same city in which Tyre Nichols was recently killed, a speech in which King encouraged the nation to pay attention to striking Black garbage workers there. If he were standing at the beginning of time and could live in any period of history, he asked himself, in which place and time would he like to live? He wouldn’t choose, he said, to live in ancient Greece or Rome, or in the Renaissance or the Reformation, or even in 1863, when Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. He would choose to live instead, he said, precisely where and when he was living.
“Now that’s a strange statement to make,” said King, “because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land. Confusion [is] all around. [Lots of proverbial valleys, we might say.] But I know, somehow,” he said, “that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And I see God working [now] in a way that [people], in some strange way, are responding—something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up.”
King calls people not to get lost in the clouds, not to flee to an imagined Shangri-La on some distant and removed mountaintop, but instead to act and live their faith. “It’s all right,” he said, “to talk about ‘long white robes over yonder’ . . .. But ultimately people want some suits and dresses and shoes to wear down here. It’s all right to talk about ‘streets flowing with milk and honey,’ but God has commanded us to be concerned about the slums down here, and [God’s] children who can’t eat three square meals a day. It’s all right to talk about the new Jerusalem, but one day God’s preachers must talk about the new New York, the new Atlanta, the new Philadelphia, the new Los Angeles, the new Memphis, Tennessee. This is what we have to do.” He knew that, as Christians, we’re called to come down the mountain and to work in the valleys to alleviate poverty and institute justice.
This trip King made to Memphis and this speech of his happened, as you may remember, on the night before he was killed. As he finished his speech that night, this is what he said: “Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And [God’s] allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. And I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any[one]. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord” (https://www.afscme.org/about/history/mlk/mountaintop).
King didn’t fear the future, because he had been to the mountaintop and he had seen the glory of the Lord. But he also didn’t fear the future because he could see the passion of all those working so long and hard here on these valley floors to make of this world a better place. Mountaintop glory mixes with valley-floor work to give King a sense of hope. And that’s what it takes for us, too: reassurance from the on high and dedication here in the valleys of life.
It’s funny, but one of the curious details of the story of Jesus going to the top of the mountain with those disciples is something that Matthew alone reports. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell the story of Jesus’ transfiguration, and in remarkably similar ways. But after the startling visit of Moses and Elijah and the stunning voice from the clouds that they’ve just witnessed, only Matthew says this: “When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, ‘Get up and do not be afraid’” (17:6-7).
Jesus came—and touched them. It’s Jesus’ touch that calms their fears. It’s Jesus’ touch that lets them breathe again. It’s Jesus’ touch that reassures them that “all shall be well” (Julian of Norwich) and that enables them to rise and embark on their ministries.
And the strange thing is that our touch has the same power. Our willingness to convey the physical presence of Christ and to touch each other in healthy, life-giving ways can make all the difference. Our presence with each other can restore life and bestow “the peace that surpasses all understanding” (Philippians 4:7). Just to be present with each other, especially when times are tough, is to bestow on each other a gift of the highest order. You may know that, when Jews die, the custom is for friends and family to come and sit shiva with the bereaved. And the expectation is that, when you come into the home of the grieving person, you’re to go and sit next to them and not say a word. You’re simply to wait until they have spoken, and then you follow their lead and offer comfort and support. That’s something of what it is to convey the touch of God.
Last Sunday, I spent some time during worship recounting my own sorrow at the recent sudden and unexplained death of my niece’s husband, Billy. And after the service, countless ones of you offered comforting expressions of love and support. And it all began right after worship. A youth of this church, who had been in worship and heard the sermon, was the first person to see me downstairs after the service. And she walked up to me and asked, so gently and sweetly, “Would you like a hug?” I gladly accepted and was moved to tears. And I can testify that touch offered with such focus and love can transfigure a mundane and sorrowful and broken valley, and make of it a healing and renewing and enlivening mountaintop.
Our role in faith is to thrill to the blessing of the mountaintop when it startles us in the ordinariness of our lives. It’s to receive and celebrate the remarkable presence of the Holy One when that presence sees fit to arrive. It’s to remember that we are graced beyond belief by the One who assures us that we are the ones in whom God delights. And at the same time, in a full and grace-filled life, we’re bid to get up and not be afraid. We’re beckoned to come down from that mountain and to convey to everyone we meet the touch of God that heals and makes new. It’s an incredibly shimmering life that we’ve been given. And it’s an extraordinarily compelling call to which we’ve been summoned. May we rejoice and live with overflowing gratitude. And may we get up and not be afraid.