Dwellings

Introduction

I had every intention on taking us on one last field trip here for our last virtual worship experience.

But then we live in SW PA, so it snowed everywhere I wanted to take us.

To Pine Springs Camp

To a favorite spot off the Great Allegheny Passage

Even to my own backyard.

I was too freaked out about driving, and too cold, to go to any of those places.

Some of you know that we have been following a prescribed set of scriptures since this fall called the Lectionary.

We’re actually going to take a break from the lectionary during Lent, but more on that later.

But if I had wanted to script the passage we would study on this the last virtual only Sunday we were going to share together, I think this ultimately would have been the passage I landed on.

There’s a LOT for us to discover today, and a LOT that this passage has to say to us as Laboratory Presbyterian Church in this time and season of life.

QUICK Summary

Jesus in the verses just before this has promised his disciples that they would see “the Kingdom of God come with power.”

He makes good on his promises!

He takes with him the inner circle of disciples, Peter James and John, and they go up a high mountain.

Right away, if you’re Jewish, the words “high mountain” are ringing all kinds of bells for you.

All throughout the OT, the mountains in life are where the people of God go to meet with God.

Moses and the burning bush, the Ten Commandments, Elijah and the prophets of Baal, all take place on mountain tops.

Something’s brewing!

And sure enough, God shows up in power.

Jesus is some how transformed?

And his clothes become super white, whiter than Billy May’s could ever dream of with Oxy Clean.

And then, to top that all off, Moses and Elijah show up.

Moses to represent the law of the Hebrew people, Elijah to represent their prophets.

The three of them stand around for a bit with this special effects show going on, and chat.

Don’t you wish we knew what they each said to each other!?

This is one of those moments that I get a bit jealous of the disciples!

I wish I could have seen and experienced what they experienced.

Except, maybe not. Because this experience is so disruptive and frightening to Peter that he starts speaking without thinking.

Ever been there?

Peter says something fascinating:

Let’s build three shelters here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.

Essentially he says “Jesus, this is awesome! This is glorious! Something amazing is happening here!”

“Let’s stay here forever.

And then a voice shows up out of the clouds, and says what it said at the baptism with a little addition.

“This is my Son, the Beloved, listen to him!”

The listen to him line is interesting.

Listen to where he wants you to go.

Listen to what he wants you to do.

Follow him.

Move.

Keep going!

It’s as if the Father’s voice is saying “I know this is awesome. I know this is a down payment on the glory that’s to come. But you cannot stay here. You have places to be, things to do, and a message to proclaim. Go!”

And truth be told, had they stayed on the mountain, they would have missed a whole bunch!

The healing of a Boy with a demon.

Teachings about who is the greatest in the kingdom.

Teachings about wealth.

Teachings about little kids and the kingdom of heaven.

The healing of Blind Bartimaeus (one of my favorite stories!)

The Palm Sunday entry to Jerusalem.

The cleansing of the temple.

The showdown between the religious elites and Jesus

The cross.

The resurrection.

Had they stayed on the mountain, they would have missed it all.

So what can we take from all of this? What is this passage saying to us today?

Mountain Top Experiences

Teenagers at Camp

In a former life as a youth pastor, I had countless weekend camps and week long mission trips with kids.

And I can’t tell you how many times a kid would tell me “I’m just not ready to go home.”

I’m not ready to go back to the life that’s waiting for me.

I’m not ready to go back to the pile of work that’s on my desk.

I’m not ready to go back to the pain of my broken family situation.

I’m not ready to go back to Monday.

And most of the time, the reason these kids had for wanting to stay at camp was because they had a vital encounter with the Risen Jesus.

They had seen Jesus in the actions of a like minded group of their peers.

They had seen Jesus in the teachings of the speaker for the weekend.

Or in the case of mission trips, they had seen Jesus where he’d promised us he’d be, among the poor, the lonely, and the least of these.

Essentially, they had come across their own mountain top experience, and they didn’t want to leave.

Uncle Rico

There’s a movie that Sarah and I relate to because it’s just a little too on the nose for our nerdy upbringing called Napoleon Dynamite.

If you haven’t seen it yet but plan to, just be warned: it’s an incredibly weird film!

But we lived incredibly weird childhoods, so it tracks!

One of the characters of the film is Uncle Rico.

Uncle Rico has very clearly had a near mountain top experience!

He was on the high school football team, and they lost the big game while he was warming the bench as the backup quarterback.

Uncle Rico spends the whole movie hilariously living in the past, and doing everything he can to get back to his mountain top experience in high school.

Do you know any Uncle Ricos?

Do you know anyone whose best days are behind them?

Do you know anyone who lives almost exclusively in their past mountain top experiences?

Do you know anyone who brings up their glory days every time you’re together?

Believe it or not, this has a nasty habit of creeping in to church life too.

We used to have so many more members!

We used to have so much more to offer our families!

That pastor back then was the best!

We never used to do it like that!

Back to the Future

As odd as it may be, the exact opposite kind of person exists too!

I call these people the “I’ll be happy when” crowd.

I’ll be happy when I get that new laptop.

I’ll be happy when I get that promotion at work.

I’ll be happy when summer actually arrives and I don’t have to shovel snow anymore.

Ok, that last one might have been me...

For this type of person, the mountain top experience exists not in the past, or even in the present, but rather in some idealized future.

The other thing I’ve come to know about the “I’ll be happy when” crowd is that the goal post keeps moving.

They get the laptop, and they’re still not happy.

They get the promotion, and they’re still not happy.

Summer shows up, and all of a sudden it’s way too hot.

These people are essentially building dwelling places on mountains they’ve never visited, and may not be as awesome as they assume.

Dwellings

This season may not be a mountain top...

I don’t know anyone really who has decided that this COVID era is a mountain top experience.

To be sure, and I can’t underline this enough, there are blessings in this season!

There are bright sides we can and should explore.

It hasn’t all been bad.

But it sure has been hard for all of us, and particularly hard for a select few who have watched their livelihoods, their preferred way of life, or even beloved loved ones taken away from them in this season.

It has been a season of stress.

It has been a season of difficult decisions

It has been a season of anxiety.

It has been a season of disruption.

I’ve seen individuals go through seasons like this, but never an entire globe all at the same time!

What I’ve noticed though is that in these seasons of stress and anxiety and disruptions, we tend to retreat to our dwellings, don’t we?

Running to Dwellings of the Past

Some of us in seasons of disruption want to reboot to the last time the world made sense.

We might find ourselves calling up old friends we haven’t heard from in a while.

We might find ourselves dreaming about our past accomplishments, dusting off the trophy case so to speak.

We might find ourselves browsing backwards in our Facebook time lines.

Or we as a church might feel a gut-level instinct to get back to…something?

Get back to the way we always used to do things!

Get back to the numbers we were used to!

Get back to the traditions and rituals that bring us the most comfort.

For what it’s worth, I think those are fine dwellings to visit.

But we don’t want to live there.

Running to Dwellings in the Future

The “I’ll be happy when” crowd has seen their stock rise exponentially in recent days, and not just because they’ve invested in Game Stop.

I’ll be happy when I can sit in church without a mask.

I’ll be happy when I don’t have to have my meals delivered to me with GrubHub.

I’ll be happy when this thing is over and things get back to normal.

The first truth about this kind of thinking is that these dwellings are never promised to us.

But even if we got these dwellings, they’d be nice.

But we don’t want to live there either.

We want to listen to the word of Jesus, and be present in the here and now.

Missing what’s right in front of us

If we are living in the dwellings of our past, or the dwellings of our future, we are missing what Jesus is actively doing right in front of us.

The reason God’s voice from heaven needs to tell the disciples to listen to Jesus is because…they’re not!

They’re not paying attention to what is happening right in front of them.

They’re not thinking about the way that Jesus is pointing to the in-breaking Kingdom with this display.

They’re not focused on the work of Jesus in their midst.

Are we?

Are we so focused on the minor inconveniences that many are experiencing in this pandemic that we’re missing the greater suffering of our neighbors?

Are we so locked in to the good old days that we’re having a hard time seeing the good work God is doing in the here and now?

Are we so focused on a hypothetical and promised future that we’re numb to the glory and the dazzling displays of grace all around us today?

I hope not.

The presence of Jesus Christ is something that church tradition has argued for a long time that we need to practice.

It doesn’t really come naturally to any of us to stay locked in and present in the moment.

So I invite us all to practice being in the now.

Take 5 or 10 minutes every day, and just be outrageously aware of the now.

Focus on things that are beautiful about today.

Focus on the people that God has put in your life right now.

Focus on what Jesus is up to in our lives and in our world, and listen to him!

The Mission Ahead

The truth is that Jesus is in fact calling us to come down from the mountain.

There are so many things that I think Jesus is calling us to as we work our way out of our dwellings and in to the present mission, but here are just a few to think about.

We are called to be a community of love and refuge, where every soul can experience the grace, peace, and healing of Jesus Christ. 

That mission statement should call out some questions for us in the coming weeks as we get back together.

Who needs love?

Who needs refuge?

How can we find them?

How do we help facilitate the experience of grace, or peace, or healing?

How can we as a congregation more and more point toward Jesus Christ?

The short answer: We listen.

We listen to Jesus when he tells us that the least of these, the lowercase people of our day need to be loved.

We listen to Jesus when he tells us the ways that some folks are being battered by the storm of this pandemic, and need a place of refuge.

We find those folks by being willing to seek out and listen to our neighbors, our brothers and our sisters.

We help facilitate the experience of grace and peace and healing by allowing ourselves to be joyful recipients of grace, and peace, and healing from Jesus Christ.

We cannot stay in the dwellings of our glorious past, or our hopeful future.

Those are lovely places to visit.

But we are called to listen to the loving voice of Jesus Christ in the here and now.