Coming Back Down
Mark 9:2-9
February 19, 2012
Have you ever had a project – at work or school or home – that simply consumed you for weeks or even months at a time? Something that you poured yourself into whole-heartedly? Something that got you up out of bed in the morning looking forward to the day’s work because it filled your heart and mind and soul even though it was challenging?
And then the big day arrived, and the project was completed: the writing was published, the capstone was put on the archway, the speech given, the report turned in, the conference concluded, the house built, the mountaintop scaled.
I directed a leadership program for the Council of State Governments years ago. For that program one year I arranged a conversation between Cornel West and Wendell Berry, and in advance of their time on the program I and one other colleague had lunch with the two of them at a restaurant in Lexington, Ky. That was a good day. I’d like to have pitched a tent on that mountaintop and stayed for a good long while.
But then comes the next day. You get to work and there’s an expenses document or time sheet to complete, or you get to school and there’s a vocab quiz, you wake up to a sick child, you discover there’s no coffee in the house, the bathroom sink is leaking, the car battery is dead – not major traumas, by any means, not valleys of deep despair, just life as we know it most of the time. You have been to the mountain top, but now you are back down at the level plain where most of life gets lived out moment by moment, day by day.
It is there, on the level plain, that we, in Paul’s words, work out our salvation, day by day, in fear and trembling.
The mountaintop is a lovely place, a place, often, of exquisite clarity and great vision. It’s no wonder that Peter wants to build a house and just stay there with Jesus, Moses and Elijah. But, as the author of Mark makes quite clear, Peter didn’t know what he was talking about. In fact, what he witnessed there on the mountaintop terrified him.
On one level that’s not particularly surprising, for the story of the transfiguration of Jesus operates on one level as a ghost story, so Peter’s terror is like what any of us might experience watching What Lies Beneath or Poltergeist or The Shining. Some stuff is just plain scary!
On another level, though, the story in Mark begs the question: what did these guys talk about there on the mountaintop? I’ve always wished that I’d had a tape recorder at the table with Berry and West, because mostly what I recall was this general sense of “wow, these guys are erudite!”
That experience may not be full of terror, but it can be overwhelming and leave one feeling small and inadequate. The mountaintop can be like that. You get up there at the heights, see everything from on high, maybe get inspired. You see a vision of what life can be like, and then coming back down to the level plain of everyday life can be depressing because you cannot help but take stock of the distance between what might be and what is.
It is no mere coincidence that lots of us catch colds in the days immediately following major events. Many a honeymoon story includes one party with the sniffles, immunity having surrendered after the fact to the stress of the big day.
The plain may be level, but it’s rarely smooth.
Every-day life is not Christmas or Easter. We come back down from the high of holy days because we live our lives here in the day to day.
While the strange little story of the transfiguration of Jesus tells us a little bit about the mountaintop, I find its real instruction does, in fact, concern the plain – not the valleys, mind you, but the level plain upon which most of us dwell most of the time.
You see, transfiguration may happen on the mountaintop, but transformation happens on the level plain – at least the hard work of authentic transformation. Oh, to be sure, I’ve met a few people along the way who have dramatic – and authentic – stories of sudden and life-changing conversions, but even when change comes suddenly it never really comes swiftly. That is to say, following the wisdom of 12-step programs, real changes come day-by-day.
Take, for example, the change that we long to see around marriage equality. At some point in what we hope is the not too distant future, the final legal pronouncement of change will come from on high, perhaps from state lawmakers but as likely from the Supreme Court. It will seem, in that moment of celebration, that change has come from “on high,” from the mountaintop.
But the story of the transfiguration of Jesus, read in the broader context of Mark’s gospel, teaches us otherwise.
As Ched Myers suggests in his interpretation of the story:
The Messianic revolution is not about seizing power in order to impose a new social order from the top down; it seeks to transform relationships in building the new world from the bottom up. Thus it begins with the "least." Jesus recognizes the structures of domination in personal and social as well as political existence; his way can be denied just as easily in interpersonal relationships (9:37-41) as in the courtroom.
Transformation comes on the plain, it comes from living day by day into the transformed reality we long to see made whole and complete. Thus it is with, for example, marriage equality. When Ron and James went down to the courthouse together last week to seek a marriage license they were walking along the level plain of daily life, asking for something as bureaucratically everyday as a marriage license, while, at the same time, asking for something as transformative as justice and equal treatment under the law.
When that transformation is complete it will have been the day-to-day acts of resistance, acts of compassion, acts of faith – of simply living into the reality, in this case, of marriage – that force the change; not a mandate from on high.
That’s the way change happens. It’s what happened with Jesus in Mark. Sure, the mountaintop experience was remarkable, and it brought clarity for the disciples, even if all we know of what was said on the mountain was the resounding direction, “listen to Jesus! Listen to him!”
And what did he say, what did he command? Simply this: love one another.
Nothing in the world has more transformative power than love, for love is not sentimentality it is power. As Cornel West put it, “tenderness is what love feels like in private; justice is what love looks like in public.” Love is the power by which authentic transformation happens.
Such transformation happened in Mark back down in the day-to-day. Indeed, when Jesus and his friends come back down he heals a sick boy in a profound transformation made possible, Jesus says, through prayer.
What, after all, is prayer other than that day-by-day conversation with God by which we are transformed? Sometimes we pray with words, sometimes with our feet, sometimes simply by going to the courthouse and seeking what already rightfully belongs to us. The work we do, day by day, right here on the level plain of life, can be our most profound prayer. As Wendell Berry put it, “Work done in gratitude, Kindly, and well, is prayer.”
Our life together as church is transformed day by day in the same manner.
We are, as you know by now, in the midst of a season of intentional vision-casting and focusing. As we’ve noted, it takes a bit of prayerful research to do this part of transformation well. For example, we asked the local high school GSA what they needed that we might provide, and we wound up hosting a dance. It could agitate the neighbors, I suppose. We asked PoFEV what they needed that we might provide, and Ron and James wound up at the courthouse. Read the comments on the Arlnow article about that and you’ll know it has agitated some folks. We’ve asked A-SPAN what they need, and now we serve meals to the homeless, and you’d be surprised at how that simple gesture agitates some folks.
We have noted often over the past several months that we are committed to creating a more vibrant congregation here. I don’t know why it took me so long, but I finally looked up the word vibrant to see what its roots are.
It comes from the Latin vibrāre to agitate – that’s who we are and what we do. We agitate, faithfully, through our prayerful lives, day-by-day, right here on the level plain, trusting in the steadfast presence of God, following the way of Jesus, working to transform that which needs transforming in our own lives, and in all the circles of concern that touch and shape our lives.
So may we go forth from this time of worship to live vibrant and faithful lives, full of the tenderness of love in our personal lives and the justice of that same love in our public lives. Amen.
February 19, 2012
Have you ever had a project – at work or school or home – that simply consumed you for weeks or even months at a time? Something that you poured yourself into whole-heartedly? Something that got you up out of bed in the morning looking forward to the day’s work because it filled your heart and mind and soul even though it was challenging?
And then the big day arrived, and the project was completed: the writing was published, the capstone was put on the archway, the speech given, the report turned in, the conference concluded, the house built, the mountaintop scaled.
I directed a leadership program for the Council of State Governments years ago. For that program one year I arranged a conversation between Cornel West and Wendell Berry, and in advance of their time on the program I and one other colleague had lunch with the two of them at a restaurant in Lexington, Ky. That was a good day. I’d like to have pitched a tent on that mountaintop and stayed for a good long while.
But then comes the next day. You get to work and there’s an expenses document or time sheet to complete, or you get to school and there’s a vocab quiz, you wake up to a sick child, you discover there’s no coffee in the house, the bathroom sink is leaking, the car battery is dead – not major traumas, by any means, not valleys of deep despair, just life as we know it most of the time. You have been to the mountain top, but now you are back down at the level plain where most of life gets lived out moment by moment, day by day.
It is there, on the level plain, that we, in Paul’s words, work out our salvation, day by day, in fear and trembling.
The mountaintop is a lovely place, a place, often, of exquisite clarity and great vision. It’s no wonder that Peter wants to build a house and just stay there with Jesus, Moses and Elijah. But, as the author of Mark makes quite clear, Peter didn’t know what he was talking about. In fact, what he witnessed there on the mountaintop terrified him.
On one level that’s not particularly surprising, for the story of the transfiguration of Jesus operates on one level as a ghost story, so Peter’s terror is like what any of us might experience watching What Lies Beneath or Poltergeist or The Shining. Some stuff is just plain scary!
On another level, though, the story in Mark begs the question: what did these guys talk about there on the mountaintop? I’ve always wished that I’d had a tape recorder at the table with Berry and West, because mostly what I recall was this general sense of “wow, these guys are erudite!”
That experience may not be full of terror, but it can be overwhelming and leave one feeling small and inadequate. The mountaintop can be like that. You get up there at the heights, see everything from on high, maybe get inspired. You see a vision of what life can be like, and then coming back down to the level plain of everyday life can be depressing because you cannot help but take stock of the distance between what might be and what is.
It is no mere coincidence that lots of us catch colds in the days immediately following major events. Many a honeymoon story includes one party with the sniffles, immunity having surrendered after the fact to the stress of the big day.
The plain may be level, but it’s rarely smooth.
Every-day life is not Christmas or Easter. We come back down from the high of holy days because we live our lives here in the day to day.
While the strange little story of the transfiguration of Jesus tells us a little bit about the mountaintop, I find its real instruction does, in fact, concern the plain – not the valleys, mind you, but the level plain upon which most of us dwell most of the time.
You see, transfiguration may happen on the mountaintop, but transformation happens on the level plain – at least the hard work of authentic transformation. Oh, to be sure, I’ve met a few people along the way who have dramatic – and authentic – stories of sudden and life-changing conversions, but even when change comes suddenly it never really comes swiftly. That is to say, following the wisdom of 12-step programs, real changes come day-by-day.
Take, for example, the change that we long to see around marriage equality. At some point in what we hope is the not too distant future, the final legal pronouncement of change will come from on high, perhaps from state lawmakers but as likely from the Supreme Court. It will seem, in that moment of celebration, that change has come from “on high,” from the mountaintop.
But the story of the transfiguration of Jesus, read in the broader context of Mark’s gospel, teaches us otherwise.
As Ched Myers suggests in his interpretation of the story:
The Messianic revolution is not about seizing power in order to impose a new social order from the top down; it seeks to transform relationships in building the new world from the bottom up. Thus it begins with the "least." Jesus recognizes the structures of domination in personal and social as well as political existence; his way can be denied just as easily in interpersonal relationships (9:37-41) as in the courtroom.
Transformation comes on the plain, it comes from living day by day into the transformed reality we long to see made whole and complete. Thus it is with, for example, marriage equality. When Ron and James went down to the courthouse together last week to seek a marriage license they were walking along the level plain of daily life, asking for something as bureaucratically everyday as a marriage license, while, at the same time, asking for something as transformative as justice and equal treatment under the law.
When that transformation is complete it will have been the day-to-day acts of resistance, acts of compassion, acts of faith – of simply living into the reality, in this case, of marriage – that force the change; not a mandate from on high.
That’s the way change happens. It’s what happened with Jesus in Mark. Sure, the mountaintop experience was remarkable, and it brought clarity for the disciples, even if all we know of what was said on the mountain was the resounding direction, “listen to Jesus! Listen to him!”
And what did he say, what did he command? Simply this: love one another.
Nothing in the world has more transformative power than love, for love is not sentimentality it is power. As Cornel West put it, “tenderness is what love feels like in private; justice is what love looks like in public.” Love is the power by which authentic transformation happens.
Such transformation happened in Mark back down in the day-to-day. Indeed, when Jesus and his friends come back down he heals a sick boy in a profound transformation made possible, Jesus says, through prayer.
What, after all, is prayer other than that day-by-day conversation with God by which we are transformed? Sometimes we pray with words, sometimes with our feet, sometimes simply by going to the courthouse and seeking what already rightfully belongs to us. The work we do, day by day, right here on the level plain of life, can be our most profound prayer. As Wendell Berry put it, “Work done in gratitude, Kindly, and well, is prayer.”
Our life together as church is transformed day by day in the same manner.
We are, as you know by now, in the midst of a season of intentional vision-casting and focusing. As we’ve noted, it takes a bit of prayerful research to do this part of transformation well. For example, we asked the local high school GSA what they needed that we might provide, and we wound up hosting a dance. It could agitate the neighbors, I suppose. We asked PoFEV what they needed that we might provide, and Ron and James wound up at the courthouse. Read the comments on the Arlnow article about that and you’ll know it has agitated some folks. We’ve asked A-SPAN what they need, and now we serve meals to the homeless, and you’d be surprised at how that simple gesture agitates some folks.
We have noted often over the past several months that we are committed to creating a more vibrant congregation here. I don’t know why it took me so long, but I finally looked up the word vibrant to see what its roots are.
It comes from the Latin vibrāre to agitate – that’s who we are and what we do. We agitate, faithfully, through our prayerful lives, day-by-day, right here on the level plain, trusting in the steadfast presence of God, following the way of Jesus, working to transform that which needs transforming in our own lives, and in all the circles of concern that touch and shape our lives.
So may we go forth from this time of worship to live vibrant and faithful lives, full of the tenderness of love in our personal lives and the justice of that same love in our public lives. Amen.
posted by David Ensign at
7:19 AM
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