Listen to Him on the Mountain

Introduction

When I was a kid, my dad took my brother and me to Machu Picchu in Peru.

I didn’t fully understand what I was seeing.

I mostly remember my dad forgetting the camera, so we were using a disposable camera picked up at a convenience store before going up the mountain.

They didn’t have smartphones back then!!

What I also mostly remember was the climb.

The way the air thinned as we rose...

The special tea we drank to acclimate...

The way my breathing had to slow down...

Then…

 The clouds shifted...

Stone terraces appeared.

Gorgeous ancient walls scattered across the mountain…

…as if suspended between earth and sky.

Something older and larger than I had language to express...

Mountains change perceptions.

As I reflected this week…

I realized that the higher we climb…

…the more we recognize how narrow our vision had been below.

Mountains have a way of humbling us.

The altitude forces you to adjust.

You cannot breathe the same way you did before.

You cannot see the same way you did before.

Some revelations are like that...

Recently, many in our congregation participated in a study titled Our Hearts Were Strangely Lukewarm.

            …an opportunity to explore racism in the history of the United Methodist Church.

As we traced the threads of racism, white supremacy, and Christian nationalism woven into our denominational story…

            …the air felt thinner…

Our assumptions shifted…

Some things we thought we understood looked different from a higher vantage point.

Revelation does that…

...it expands your vision.

...it unsettles you at the same time.

In Exodus and in Matthew, God meets people on a mountain, and something shifts.

Today we are invited to climb.

Exodus: The Cloud

Moses ascends the mountain.

The cloud covers it.

The glory of the Lord settles like a consuming fire.

For six days, the cloud remains.

Then God speaks...

This moment marks a transition in Exodus, from hearing the commandments to entering the cloud.

The ethical ear becomes the contemplative eye.

Moses goes up in obedience.

But what begins as obedience becomes encounter.

The ascent is not escape. It is prevenient grace—God inviting him closer.

God is drawing us closer and closer… wooing us into a relationship.

Yet this is not the final transformation of Israel.

The journey continues.

There will be instructions for worship, and later, failures and renewal.

The mountain does not eliminate human frailty.

What it does is clarify who God is.

Revelation does not remove our limitations.

It deepens our desire to see more.

It awakes convicting grace.

It opens us to justifying grace.

It draws us toward sanctifying grace.

We know something about that...

There are moments in worship when something shifts...

...not because we manufactured it, but because the clouds parted just enough.

And afterward, we descend differently.

Worship is our mountain.

We gather not to escape the world...

...but to see rightly before returning to it.

We listen.

We behold.

We are shaped.

What shapes us here will guide us when we step back into ordinary life.

Which brings us to another mountain...

Matthew: The Transfiguration

Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up a high mountain.

His face shines.

His clothes become dazzling white.

Moses and Elijah appear beside him.

Peter wants to build dwellings to preserve the moment.

But a voice interrupts....

...“This is my Son whom I dearly love. I am very pleased with him. Listen to him!”

The transfiguration reveals who Jesus truly is...

Not merely a teacher...

Not merely a prophet...

Not a projection of our preferred politics...

The light does not replace his humanity…

...it reveals its depth.

The One who shines here is the One who walks toward the cross.

The One who refuses domination.

The One who stands with the vulnerable.

The One whose holiness is expressed through liberating love.

...and the command is not to build something...

The command is to listen to him.

            …to listen to him.

Before the mountain experience, Jesus says...

 “All who want to come after me must say no to themselves, take up their cross, and follow me.”

...take up your cross.

Not to secure your comfort.

Not to protect your image.

Not to preserve your dominance.

Take up your cross...

What does that mean for us today?

James Cone reminds us,

            “The historical Jesus must be taken seriously if we intend to avoid making Jesus into our own images.”

If we take the historical Jesus seriously…

            …we see that Jesus did not align himself with self-glorifying power.

He aligned himself with those on the underside of it.

He refused domination.

He walked toward the cross.

He embodied liberating love.

Which means…

Our allegiance is not to coercive power.

Our allegiance is not to domination dressed up as righteousness.

Our allegiance is not to an earthly system that promises security at the expense of love.

Our allegiance friends...

...is to the Crucified Christ.

Our allegiance is to welcoming the stranger fleeing violence and seeking refuge.

Our allegiance is to honoring the dignity and voices of Black and Brown bodies in a society that too often silences them.

Our allegiance is to the full participation and flourishing of women in every sphere of life.

Our allegiance is to ensuring that queer people know they are beloved and that they belong.

So our allegiance is not to fear...

...not to tribal loyalty....

...not to the nation above neighbor.

Christian nationalism confuses the kingdom of God with the kingdoms of this world.

But the voice on the mountain does not say, “Listen to our nation.”

It says, “Listen to him.”

Listen to him.

Wesleyan Witness

That command has echoed through the centuries.

The church has wrestled, in every generation, with what it means to take that voice seriously.

John Wesley once wrote in his sermon The Way to the Kingdom...

“The kingdom of God is righteousness, and peace, and Joy in the Holy Ghost.”

For Wesley, the reign of Christ was not secured by structure or national identity.

It was revealed in lives formed by holy love.

Righteousness...

Peace...

Joy in the Holy Spirit...

That, my friends, is how the kingdom is known.

After worship today, we will discuss symbols in our sanctuary...

This is not a conversation about loving or not loving our country.

Many of us carry gratitude for this nation.

Some carry complicated histories within them.

Some carry wounds.

But before we discern placement or precedent, we must ascend first.

The question is not simply… what do we prefer?

The question is… what forms us?

In this space of worship, what most clearly cultivates righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit?

If Christ is Lord...

...truly Lord...

Then every other loyalty stands under his light.

Not erased...

Not shamed...

But examined...

The mountain invites humility before certainty.

Kerygmatic Fulfillment

The good news is not that we climb perfectly.

The good news is that in Jesus Christ, God has descended to us.

            …that in Jesus Christ, God has descended to us.

The cloud of Sinai becomes the shining face of Christ.

...and in him...

God’s glory is not distant fire...

...but love in solidarity.

He does not secure allegiance through force.

He invites it through grace.

“This is my Son whom I dearly love. I am very pleased with him. Listen to him!”

When we listen to him...

...we will love boldly,

...we will serve joyfully,

...we will lead courageously.

Not because every tension is resolved...

...but because we have remembered whose light shines brightest on the mountain.

In the name of our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. Amen.