Sermon and Worship Resources

These Illustrations are based on Matthew 17:1-9
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Sermon Opener - A Mountain of Meaning - Matthew 17:1-9

A brilliant magician was performing on an ocean liner. But every time he did a trick, the Captain's parrot would yell, "It's a trick. He's a phony. That's not magic." Then one evening during a storm, the ship sank while the magician was performing. The parrot and the magician ended up in the same lifeboat. For several days they just glared at each other, neither saying a word to the other. Finally the parrot said, “OK, I give up. What did you do with the ship?”

The parrot couldn’t explain that last trick! It was too much to comprehend, even for a smart parrot. Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” Scholars over the years have tried to explain what in the world Peter meant by this suggestion. But, I think trying to find meaning to these words is pointless. It’s simply the way Matthew explains: Peter was frightened and he just said the first thing that came to into his head. He simply could not comprehend what was happening.

In life, moments occur that are incomprehensible. The birth of one’s own child is one of those moments. The loss of a loved one is one of those moments. September 11 was one of those moments. There are mountaintop and valley moments throughout life. We are never ready for them. They arrive unannounced changing us in irreversible ways. But there is one thing they all have in common. They demand that we be silent and listen. These moments have something to say to us, to teach us.

But too often our response is like that of Peter, babbling absurdities because we cannot understand the significant, the meaningful moment. When Peter does finally quit talking nonsense a cloud appears, envelopes them, and the voice of God gives this instruction to Peter, James, and John: "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to Him!" That's it. Very short. To the point. What Peter said made no sense. What God said had a mountain of meaning. I would like to spend a few moments this morning unpacking the meaning of it:

1. This Is My Son.

2. Whom I love.

3. Listen to Him.

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Lessons from the Mountaintop - Matthew 17:1-9

Frederick Buechner in his book, Peculiar Treasures, writes about Moses in the following way: "Whenever Hollywood cranks out a movie about Moses, they always give the part to somebody like Charlton Heston with some fake whiskers glued on. The truth of it is, he probably looked a lot more like Tevye the milkman after 10 rounds with Mohammed Ali. Moses up there on the mountain with his sore feet and aching back serves as a good example of the fact that when God puts the finger on people, their troubles have just begun! Hunkered down in the cleft of a rock, Moses had been allowed to see the Glory itself passing by, and although all God let him see was the back part, it was something to hold on to for the rest of his life."

Mountaintop experiences in our faith journey become those moments of revelation that give us something to hold on to for the rest of our lives.

That certainly is the kind of experience Moses had on Mount Sinai, and the kind of experience our Lord had with Peter, James and John on the Mount of Transfiguration. Any experience in which we recognize the Living God can be a transfiguration. It may take place on the summit of a mountain, or as we kneel in prayer on a wooden floor at sea level. It can happen in the midst of a service of worship where God becomes dramatically real to us, and we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Christ is our Living Lord and Savior.

So as we celebrate the Transfiguration of our Lord, let us consider some spiritual lessons from the mountaintop.

1. The Value of Spiritual Mountaintops
2. The Mystery in Mountaintop Experience
3. The Temptation of the Mountaintop
4. The Urgency of Spiritual Mountaintops

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The Transfiguration

A different reading of a Biblical text tries to have its cake and eat it, too. It purges the story of offensive elements while retaining some kernel of truth — for example, interpreting the transfiguration as an embellished tale, as a truth communicated by myth or metaphor, or even as a misplaced and reinterpreted account of the resurrection. But this strategy is easier said than done. Its tendency, as history has shown, has been to make the ancient story look and sound suspiciously like the modern critic.

C.S. Lewis observed that it's a healthy exercise to own up to those elements in original Christianity that you find obscure or repulsive. When we do this, he says, we're less likely to "skip, or slur, or ignore what we find disagreeable." Similarly, I like the advice of Harvey Cox, who cautions against encountering the "sweeping vision" of Christian eschatology, only to "whittle it down to something manageable and lackluster" (When Jesus Came to Harvard).

The transfiguration of Jesus belies all the ways we dilute the stringent wine of the Gospel. The blinding light and the voice from the clouds challenge faith that has turned tepid, perfunctory, and bored. In her book Teaching a Stone to Talk, Annie Dillard thus asks:

"Does anyone have the foggiest idea of what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets! Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews! For the sleeping God may awake someday and take offense, or the waking God may draw us to where we can never return."

I can understand how some people read the transfiguration story and, as Dillard admits, "not believe a word of it." But I pray that God will save me from the safe middle ground of self-serving, domesticating deism.

Daniel B. Clendenin, The Transfiguration of Jesus: "The Real Truth" or A "Pernicious Superstition?"

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The Gift of Wonder

In his book, This Sunrise of Wonder, Michael Mayne writes this to his grandchildren: "If I could have waved a fairy grandfather’s wand at your birth and wished upon you just one gift it would not have been beauty or riches or a long life: It would have been the gift of wonder." (Michael Mayne, This Sunrise of Wonder, p. 11) He goes on to suggest that they set their sights not on success, but on wonder. They should live with a sense of awe. Maybe that’s part of what’s going on at the Mount of Transfiguration. In this glimpse of glory, Jesus is trying to give the disciples the gift of wonder, a sense of awe.

Brett Younger, Glimpses of Glory

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Wonder: It Is So Exciting

In the comic strip Peanuts, Snoopy’s brother Spike, the one who lives in the desert, is sitting with his back against a cactus, writing a letter that says, "At night the sun goes down, and the stars come out; and then in the morning the sun comes up again. It’s so exciting to live in the desert." We’ve gotten used to sunrises and sunsets, mornings and evenings, the moon and the stars. We’ve gotten used to music and art, friends and family, joy and sorrow. We too easily grow accustomed to the wonders that surround us. Laziness keeps us from seeing the flashes of brightness.

Brett Younger, Glimpses of Glory

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Our Everyday Life Isn’t Everyday

When middle C is struck on the piano the piston of bones in your inner ear vibrates exactly 256 times a second. Each day you think about 50,000 different thoughts. When you flex your hand you are using seventy different muscles. On the surface of your body there are as many bacteria as there are people on the surface of the earth. (I should have skipped that one.) The mystery of your birth, the mystery of the love you feel, the mystery of the deepest part of you are all most improbable. You are an incredible contingency.

Sam Keen wrote, "I suspect that we are all recipients of cosmic love notes. Messages, omens, voices, revelations, and appeals are all part of each day’s events. If only we know how to listen, to read the signs." Our everyday life isn’t every day. The surface of what we see and hear isn’t all there is. When you laugh, when you cry, when you feel something happening inside, open yourself to the possibilities. The potential of the life that we have been given is breathtaking. Open your eyes. Listen carefully. Pay attention.

Brett Younger, Glimpses of Glory

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The Story of the Transformed

Recently, I was waiting to renew my drivers’ license. During my long wait, a man of undetermined age entered the waiting area and sat beside an older couple. He was clean cut, and casually dressed. He wore an “I Heart Jesus” ball cap.

The younger man immediately struck up a conversation with the older couple. His conversation was somewhat loud, and slightly annoying by volume. He began by telling the couple that he “got saved” this year. “On February 13, the Lord got my attention,” he said repeatedly. He began to share his experience. As he spoke, he told how his family could not believe he was in church now. He told the couple about all the new things he was learning as he read his Bible.

“I read the NIV because it’s written on a level I can understand, since I don’t read so good,” he said. “I can only read like a sixth grader. And, sorry if I’m too loud, I don’t hear. I have one of those things in my ear to help me. I love what it says on the back of my car, ‘Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven. That’s what I am, forgiven…” He continued moving, rapid fire, from one topic to another, but each topic always reverted to his salvation experience. “See I was saved on February 13....”

The persistent drone of stories began to eat away at the peace in the room. Personally, I grew weary of the child-like explanations of deep theological issues. I grew tired of the loud tones and sharp voice. It seemed as though he was too excited, too eager, too saccharine sweet in his story. He was too unbelievable.

In hindsight, I realize that that man was so excited, so changed by the transforming presence of Christ in his life on February 13 that he could do nothing but tell his story. What if all of us were so excited, so changed, so child-like in our exuberance that we were not able to stop telling our stories?

That fellow, in his simple and loud voice, was Peter telling others about his own transfiguration. His was the voice of the transformed. He was the oddity in the midst of the familiar. His voice was the unusual in the noise of life. He was a most remarkable man.

Stephen E. Loftis, Transfigured

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What If?

What if the church lived out its life in such a way others could not help but see it?

What if Christians were so different that society became long-neck gawkers when looking to see the working of the congregation?

What if Christians were the people at which children and adults pointed their fingers and said, “Hey, look at that!”?

What if we so lived the love, salvation, peace, and hope of God that we seemed out of place in the world around us?

What if we were truly transformed into the very people of God? Wouldn’t it be fun, exciting and wonderful if people were lining the sidewalks around our churches just to see what makes us so odd?

Stephen E. Loftis, Transfigured

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Glimpses of God

When I first heard Chet Atkins play guitar, it made me want to be a better guitar player. The intricate way that he played made me want to learn his style and to try to make a guitar sound that way myself. But the first time I heard B.B. King play guitar, one simple note at a time, hung out in the air, sighing breathlessly or screaming in pain, it made my heart hurt – and it made me want to ease the pain that caused that sound. When I see the babies who are brought to the altar rail here, I have to smile at them. They make me want to touch them and to tell them how beautiful they are. But when I saw my own children as babies, they made me want to be a better person, so that I could be what they deserved as a father. Glimpses of God call us to alter our lives and to begin to see and do things differently.

John Bedingfield, Little Epiphanies

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Trust

Presbyterian pastor and writer Frederick Buechner recalls one low time in his life when God broke through in an unusual way. "I remember sitting parked by the roadside once," Buechner writes, "terribly depressed and afraid about my daughter's illness and what was going on in our family." As he was sitting there thinking about his daughter's illness, he noticed a car that seemed to come from nowhere. His message from God, the word he most needed to see at that moment, was found on the license plate. The license plate "bore on it the one word out of all the words in the dictionary that I needed most to see exactly then," Buechner wrote. "The word was TRUST."

Sitting in his car alongside the highway, God's message was revealed on the license plate of a passing car. It's certainly difficult to describe such an experience. "Was the experience something to laugh off as the kind of joke life plays on us every once in a while?" Or was it the word of God? "I am willing to believe that maybe it was something of both," Buechner wrote, "but for me it was an epiphany." The owner of the car turned out to be a trust officer at a local bank. After reading of the incident somewhere, the trust officer paid a personal visit to Buechner one afternoon. He presented Buechner with the license plate which bore the word which he so desperately needed to see that day, TRUST. Buechner placed that license plate on a bookshelf where it serves to remind him of his trust in God. "It is rusty around the edges and a little battered," he writes, "and it is also as holy a relic as I have ever seen."

King Duncan, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com

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The Presence of a Hero

In the summer of 1941, Sergeant James Allen Ward was awarded the Victoria Cross for climbing out onto the wing of his Wellington bomber at 13,000 feet above ground to extinguish a fire in the starboard engine. Secured only by a rope around his waist, he managed to smother the fire and return along the wing to the aircraft's cabin. Winston Churchill, an admirer as well as a performer of swashbuckling exploits, summoned the shy New Zealander to 10 Downing Street. Ward, struck dumb with awe in Churchill's presence, was unable to answer the prime minister's questions. Churchill surveyed the unhappy hero with some compassion.

"You must feel very humble and awkward in my presence," he said,

"Yes, Sir," managed Ward.

"Then you can imagine how humble and awkward I feel in yours," returned Churchill.

Churchill knew he was in the presence of a real hero. So did the disciples. In fact, they knew they were in the presence of someone whose significance went beyond celebrity, even beyond heroic. He was their Lord, their Master, their King. If we are wise, he will be our Lord, our Master, our King. If we are wise, Christ will be our Hero, too.

King Duncan, Collected Sermons,www.Sermons.com

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ADDITIONAL ILLUSTRATIONS NOT IN OUR EMAIL
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Sermon Opener – The Voice-activated Life - 2 Peter 1:16-21

When parents are trying to teach their very young children basic social skills one of the first big lessons is “Use your words.” Instead of grabbing, hitting, screaming, or crying, we teach our children to communicate their needs and desires through the use of words. Instead of snatching a toy away from another child we teach our kids to say “May I please play with that for a while?” Instead of screaming and throwing a tantrum, we teach our children to say, “I’m really mad,” or “He was mean to me,” or “She hit me!”

The power of our voices, the power of words, is the first power we want our children to tap into. Verbal communication is uniquely human and is a uniquely empowering gift.

Despite all the image-based advances in technology, “The Voice” is still the driving force in electronic developments. Voice power is still the ultimate power. Every new, successful emerging technology — for the past seventy-five years -- knows that voice power means market power.

Remember RCA? RCA famously advertised its first record player, the “Victrola,” by showing the family dog with its head cocked in curiosity as it listened to a record player. The advertising tag line was, “His Master’s Voice.”

The “next best thing” in the past few years has almost always been a voice-based development. We now all routinely talk to our cars…

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Describe That Person Theologically

In order to become a minister in most denominations, a ministerial candidate must be examined and tested theologically. The church has a right and an obligation to know if a person is theologically sound before authorizing ordination, so theological questions are asked. I heard recently about a veteran minister who always asks the same theological question of every potential minister; indeed, he has been asking this question of every candidate for over 30 years.

He begins by asking the candidate to look out the window. The puzzled examinee peers out the window, and the old minister adds, "Tell me when you see a person out there."

"I see one," the candidate will haltingly announce.

"Do you know that person personally?"

"No, sir."

"Good. Now, my question is this: Will you please describe that person theologically?"

In three decades of experience in asking that question, the seasoned minister has found that the candidates tend to give one of two different answers. Some will say something like, "That person is a sinner in need of the redemption of Jesus Christ." Others, however, will respond, "Whether they know it or not, that person is a child of God, loved and upheld by the grace of God in Jesus Christ."

"I suppose," this minister reflects, "that, technically, both of these answers are theologically correct. But it is my experience that those who give the second answer make the better ministers."

The reason, of course, is that they have the gift of "transfiguration discernment." They are able to see people in the present tense, in the middle of their circumstances, but they are able to see more than just the present tense. They can also see them as they were at the beginning of creation and as they will be in God's future -- a beloved child of God.

Thomas G. Long, Whispering the Lyrics, CSS Publishing Company.

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The Preview

The story of the transfiguration of Christ is the biblical equivalent of Friday night at your local Theater. It is a preview of what it would be for Christ in the resurrection. Jesus’ face shines like the sun, Matthew tells us, and his clothes become dazzling white. Jesus is glorified right before the very eyes of Peter, James, and John as he communes with Moses and Elijah.

Previews, unfortunately, don’t last long by their very nature. If they did, they wouldn’t be called “previews.” They would be full-length movies. But then again, this is one of the Bible’s true mountaintop experiences, and as we all know, mountaintop experiences don’t last very long. Every once in a while a moment comes along that we wish we could freeze for all eternity. It’s the kind of experience that reaches down into the marrow of our bones and touches us with a special feeling. We wish it would last forever, but it doesn’t.

Randy Hyde, The Preview

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Transfigured: Who Changed?

Laurel A. Dykstra, a scripture and justice educator living in Vancouver, British Columbia, wrote the following in an article for Sojourners Magazine:

"My first night at Guadalupe House, a Catholic Worker “transition house” where I spent nearly 10 years, I sat at the wobbly-legged table amid a circle of men’s faces, black and brown and white, and looked at the peeling linoleum, tattered sheer yellow curtains, broken couches, and roach-filled corners. I had never seen a place so ugly. After a week of hospitality, laughter, community, and connection, I sat in the same seat and caught myself thinking, 'What a kind and homey room this is.' Transfigured.

"So I wonder: In Matthew’s story of the mountain, was it Jesus who changed or was it that John, James, and Peter could now see the face of God shining in the man they knew? Did the thin air and the elevated perspective contribute to their clarity of vision? When they came down from the mountaintop, did they take their new capacity to see into the low places and crowded city streets? Can we? And when we see the face of God shining through those who are familiar to us, do we truly, deeply listen to them?"

Laurel A. Dykstra, "See and Listen," article in Sojourners Magazine

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Children’s Stories and Transformations

Children's stories are full of characters who move back and forth between different realms of reality. Take Cinderella, for example. You know the story of four mice pulling a pumpkin, whisking Cinderella away from poverty into an exalted moment of acceptance and glory. In one transforming moment, the servant is transformed into the queen of the ball. Suddenly, everyone can see Cinderella's beauty and worth. Or take the story of The Lion King, where Simba, a young lion cub, makes a series of selfish choices that lead to his father's death. He has to flee. After a long exile, he is challenged to return. While wrestling with the decision, he sees in a pond his own image, mysteriously transfigured into the image of his deceased father. In that moment, he sees the purpose of his life and discovers the courage to return. Or take Beauty and the Beast, where the beast is transformed by love back into a prince.

In these stories, reality is seen in a whole new way. As for the disciples, during these very mysterious moments on the mountain, the one they had followed up the mountain was transfigured before them.

B. Wiley Stephens, God Comes to Us

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Where God Would Lead Us

William Bennett once wrote, "If we have full employment and greater economic growth, if we have cities of gold and alabaster but our children have not learned how to walk in goodness, justice, and mercy, then the American experiment, no matter how gilded, will have failed."

We can have the wrappings of the gift without the contents. You truly can't judge a book by its cover. This scene in the Transfiguration reminds us we have to get beyond trying to merely preserve the moments beyond our fears and listen to where God would lead us.

B. Wiley Stephens, God Comes to Us

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You Have Abandoned the Love You Had at First

Kathleen Norris wrote a wonderful book called, Dakota. It is a book of meditation and devotion. People now take notice of her. In another writing she talked about her spiritual pilgrimage. She said she was raised in the Church. Then in young adulthood, like so many, she left the Church. Now, in middle age, she has come back to the Church through an experience that she had in a Benedictine monastery in Minnesota.

There she experienced the spiritual discipline of the monastic order called lectio continuo, which means, sitting and listening to the reading of scripture. It changed her life, she said. It was an epiphany. It came to her when she was listening to the reading of the Revelation to John. At the beginning of the Book of Revelation, John addresses the churches. He says to Ephesus, "God has this against you, that you have abandoned the love that you had at first."

Norris wrote this. "These are words of conversion, taking hold they can change a life. 'You have abandoned the love you had at first.' When I first heard them in the monk's choir, tears welled up in me, unexpected and unwelcome. I remembered how completely I had loved God and church as a child, and how easily I had drifted away as a young adult."

"You have abandoned the love you had at first."

She continued. "Somehow the simple magic of having the Bible read aloud to me opened my eyes to recognize the extent I had allowed the resistance of the world to shake my faith. A secular world view, terribly sophisticated, but of little use to me in the long run, had taken hold of me. Consequently I had allowed the fire to die down in my heart. In the Benedictine choir I allowed John's words to wash over me, and my full sense of the sacredness of the world returned, and I had begun to listen as a child again."

Kathleen Norris, adapted by Mark Trotter, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com

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Faith Gives off Light

A few months ago I read the best-selling novel Lying Awake by Mark Salzman. It is the story of Sister John, a cloistered nun, who is slowly drawn into the intimate presence of God through stunning, dazzling, disintegrating visions. An ordinary woman becomes a quivering mystic, disappearing into "pure awareness."

She became an ember carried upward by the heat of the invisible flame ... until the vacuum sucked the feeble light out of her. A darkness so pure it glistened, then out of the darkness ... nova.... More luminous than any sun ... all that was her ceased to exist. Only what was God remained.

Unfortunately for Sister John, there is a complication. Along with her visions come excruciating headaches, which demolish her for days at a time, making her unavailable for the work of the cloister and causing her to be a great burden to the other nuns. Finally, a doctor diagnoses her with epilepsy, a condition that will get worse unless she chooses an operation - an operation that will relive the pain, but most likely destroy the visions. What should she do? After an intense wrestling match, Sister John chooses the operation. Why? With great reluctance, she denies herself, for the health and well-being of the larger, convent community. And sure enough the debilitating pain disappears. But so, too, does the exquisite passion - those intimate, ecstatic encounters with God. She goes back to the ordered, plodding life of the community where she is but one of many, serving God in the mundane moments of daily discipleship.

In a final moment of wisdom in the book, the Mother Superior offers Sister John words that sustain her after the mountaintop moments have disappeared, when her daily faith journey seems dull and tentative:

"We stretch out our emptied hands to take hold of the Light. We may feel that our prayers are arid, or that God has abandoned us. Although we suffer deeply, those become our most precious hours, because only in complete darkness do we learn that faith gives off light."

Susan R. Andrews, The Offense of Grace, CSS Publishing Company

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Places I Wish I Could Have Stayed

I have visited some places I really wish I could have stayed. If it were my choice I would still be there right now. As much as I like it here, I would rather be there.

There is a tent, set on a hill at the top of a 1,500-foot cliff overlooking the Jordan Valley in southern Israel. When the sun comes up in the morning it breaks over the mountains a few miles to the east and literally shatters the darkness around you. The winds sail up the face of the cliff from the valley below and almost make you believe you could lean out into them and fly away. It is quiet. No phone. No traffic. It is the area that Moses wandered for 40 years. I could do that. I could stay there.

There was a day that I sat in the little green room at Decatur Memorial Hospital. I had just become a father. I sat in a chair holding this little blanket in my arms. Inside the blanket were two blue eyes. The eyes looked straight into mine and said things that I could not hear, but could feel more clearly than I had felt anything in my life. My daughter. MY daughter. I would like to go back there. I would like to spend some time there again, seeing those eyes. Oh, the eyes are still here, but now they are 12 years old and they look at many different things. Then, they looked at me. Only me. I am proud of my 12-year-old, but I could go back to that room again. I could stay there.

I think Peter would understand that. I think that whatever else happened in Peter's life - and we have an awful lot of it recorded - he would have given it all up to go back. And I think I know where he would have gone.

John B. Jamison, Time's Up!, CSS Publishing Company

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We Can’t Live on the Mountaintop

A young woman made an announcement one morning to her co-workers, "My honeymoon is over and I am so relieved. Now we can get on with our marriage." That's the way it is with our mountaintop experiences. We can't live there forever. The light is too bright, the pace too frantic, and the demands too great. It is a relief to return to normal lives where we can be ourselves and let others be themselves, but that doesn't mean the honeymoon is forgotten. Just because we don't live on the mountain all the time doesn't mean we forget what happened on the mountain.

William B. Kincaid, III, And Then Came The Angel, CSS Publishing Company

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I’ve Become a Cynic

Lloyd John Ogilvie wrote a book some years ago titled, Falling into Greatness. In it he tells about an old friend who called him one day. “I can’t talk about it over the phone,” he said, “but I need to see you. I’ve fallen into a terrible thing which I can’t seem to shake.” They set a time to go to lunch. Ogilvie wondered what terrible thing his friend could possibly have fallen into. The man had once been a staunch Christian, but he had drifted away from the church and from the fellowship of other Christians.

When they sat down for lunch the friend blurted out, “Lloyd, I’ve become a cynic! I’ve become a negative, critical, and sarcastic man.”

Inwardly Lloyd Ogilvie was relieved that his friend was not confessing some heinous sin, but it was clear he was distraught just the same. Ogilvie writes: “My friend had been jarred by the reality of the kind of person he had become because of an ultimatum his wife had given him. She was not willing to spend the rest of her life with a man who had come to be down on life, people, and even God. Several friends had confronted him about his snarling attitude. Three people had resigned from his company because they said they could not work in the negative atmosphere his attitudes had created. The man’s world was falling apart.”

That man by his own admission had become unbearable. Maybe you know somebody like that. Maybe you’re on your way to becoming somebody like that. It happens, doesn’t it? If so, today would be a good day to reverse your direction. We’re going to the mountaintop. With Christ and his closest three disciples.

King Duncan, Collected Sermons,www.Sermons.com

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An Hour of Glory on a Windswept Hill

Dr. William Stidger once told of a lovely little 90-year-old lady named Mrs. Sampson. Mrs. Sampson was frail, feeble, even sickly. But Dr. Stidger said that when he was discouraged he always went to visit Mrs. Sampson. She had a radiant spirit that was contagious.

One day he asked this 90-year-young woman, “What is the secret of your power? What keeps you happy, contented and cheerful through your sickness?”

She answered with a line from a poem, “I had an hour of glory on a windswept hill.”

Bill Stidger said, recounting this experience, “I knew she had been in touch with God and that was the whole reason [for her cheerfulness].”

Listen again to her words: “an hour of glory on a windswept hill.” It sounds very much like the experience Peter, James and John had on the Mount of Transfiguration.

King Duncan, Collected Sermons,www.Sermons.com

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A Vision of True Love

Visions have great clarity, you know. One day that I went over to see one of the oldest members of our church, old Al Lunde who later died in his early nineties. But this particular day that I am remembering he was much younger, perhaps in his early eighties. Al was over at the retirement center, the Good Samaritan, with his wife Cora, disoriented through Alzheimer’s. Old Man Lunde, as I affectionately called him, would come over to the retirement center every day with a bowl of ice cream to give to his wife of many decades, Cora. By the time that Al drove from his home over to the retirement center, the ice cream would be melted. I watched Old Man Lunde take that melted ice cream on a spoon and feed Cora as if she were a newborn baby bird. As he put the melted ice cream into her mouth and patted her on the cheek, I saw. There was no haze, no fog, no trees. I saw for sure the genuine love of God between a man and a woman. I knew that love was true and I knew that quality of love was from God and I was totally convinced of the truth of that moment. It was a vision. I had seen true love…in the flesh…right before my eyes. Holiness. Pure holiness. Goodness. Pure goodness. I had seen a love that I wanted in my marriage.

Edward F. Markquart, Visions on a Mountaintop

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Transfigurations Are the Rule

Transfigurations are big business because we are very aware of the face we present to the world. And we will alter our face to our advantage if we can. Sometimes the change is not just in looks but in our whole image -- including our name.

Larushka Shikne did not like the image he thought his name projected, so he changed his name to Laurence Harvey.

Issur Danielovitch Densky did the same thing and became Kirk Douglas.

In the same way, Frances Gum transfigured herself and her image into Judy Garland. Archibald Leach became Cary Grant. Aaron Schwalt became Red Buttons. And would you have paid money to see Marion Morrison in the movies? Maybe, but Marion didn't take that chance, he became John Wayne.

Remember that in Holy Scriptures many people got new names to go with a new life and a new image. Abram became Abraham. Sarai became Sarah. Jacob became Israel. Saul became Paul. Simon became Peter, "The Rock."

Transfigurations are not the exception. They are the rule. We are all being altered in the appearance of our face, our countenance. We are all changing. To live is to be continually transfigured. So who are we becoming?

Robert Johnson, Transfiguration

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A Jesus for the Ages

Dr. Jaroslav Pelikan of Yale University wrote a remarkable study of the significance of the person and work of Jesus Christ, Jesus Through the Centuries. Dr. Pelikan demonstrates how Jesus has been the dominant figure in the history of Western culture. Each age has made Jesus relevant to its own needs. Jesus has furnished each new age with answers to fundamental questions as every generation has had to address new social problems that tested the more fundamental questions of human existence. The world had to take note of Jesus as a rabbi, as the Cosmic Christ, the Ruler of the World, the King of Kings, the Prince of Peace, the Son of Man, the True Image of Man, the Great Liberator. In many other ways Jesus furnished the answers and the images that affected society in positive ways.

Dr. Pelikan's thesis is that Jesus did not and does not belong to the churches and the theologians alone, but that he belongs to the world. None of this is to say that we can make Jesus what we want Jesus to be. Quite the opposite. It is to say that the Christ is adequate for all our needs and that Jesus transcends culture in such a way that he is able to belong to each age and to address the issues of all time. To understand that, we can do no better than to look to the Holy Gospel for today, which celebrates the transfiguration of our Lord. In that momentous event we learn how and why Jesus belongs to the centuries.

Harry N. Huxhold, Which Way to Jesus?, CSS Publishing Company.

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A Coming Attraction

You go into the movie theater, find a seat that's suitable, clamber over some poor innocent slumbering in the aisle seat, taking pains not to step on toes or lose your balance. You find a place for your coat, sit down, and get ready to watch the movie. The house lights dim; the speakers crackle as the dust and scratches on the soundtrack are translated into static, and an image appears on the screen. It is not the film you came to see. It is the preview of coming attractions, a brief glimpse of the highlights of a film opening soon. The movie makers and theater owners hope the preview will pique your interest enough to make you want to come back and see the whole film.

On the Mount of the Transfiguration, Peter, James and John, the inner circle of Jesus' disciples, were given a preview of coming attractions.

And today, on the Festival of the Transfiguration, so, too, are we -- a splendid preview of Jesus radiant in divine glory, his mortal nature brilliantly though only momentarily transfigured; a dazzling preview of his divinity, unalloyed and perfectly pure, shining in glory like the very sun. A sneak preview, in other words, of Easter, the triumphant climax of the epic love story between God and humankind.

Mark WM. Radecke, God in Flesh Made Manifest, CSS Publishing Company

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This Thing Is Not a Watch

Several decades back an inventor had a daring vision for a better kind of watch. After working on his idea for some time and building a prototype, he decided to go to Switzerland, the world capital of watch making, to seek backing for the manufacture of his new design. When the renowned Swiss watchmakers examined his invention, they said, "This is not a watch. It doesn't have hands to tell time. I just has little numbers. You have to have a big hand and a little hand to make a watch." Then, when they opened the back, they were even more negative. "This thing doesn't even have gears or springs or jewels. It is just a lot of electronic parts. This thing is not a watch!" And they would have nothing to do with it. So the inventor took his revolutionary idea to Japan where he found industrialists who weren't so sure what made up a watch and who agreed to manufacture his idea. And, of course, you know, the rest is history. Most watches today are electronic and are made in the Far East instead of in the Alpine confederation.

An ancient biblical proverb says, "Where there is no vision, the people perish." (Proverbs 29:18 KJV) Without a vision, we have no future.

James L. Collier, “Without a Vision…"

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Listening

I would hate to have a hard count of how many times I have interrupt people in conversation and how many times I jumped ahead with my thoughts expressing the wrong conclusion to someone else’s words.

We miss so much in life because we will not listen.

Writer Charles Swindoll once found himself with too many commitments in too few days. He got nervous and tense about it.

“I was snapping at my wife and our children, choking down my food at mealtimes, and feeling irritated at those unexpected interruptions through the day," he recalled in his book Stress Fractures. "Before long, things around our home started reflecting the patter of my hurry-up style. It was become unbearable.

"I distinctly remember after supper one evening, the words of our younger daughter, Colleen. She wanted to tell me something important that had happened to her at school that day. She began hurriedly, 'Daddy, I wanna tell you somethin' and I'll tell you really fast.'

"Suddenly realizing her frustration, I answered, 'Honey, you can tell me -- and you don't have to tell me really fast. Say it slowly."

"I'll never forget her answer: 'Then listen slowly.'"

Brett Blair,www.Sermons.com. Adapted from: Bits & Pieces, June 24, 1993, Page 13-14

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Peter

Among the apostles, the one absolutely stunning success was Judas, and the one thoroughly groveling failure was Peter. Judas was a success in the ways that most impress us: he was successful both financially and politically. He cleverly arranged to control the money of the apostolic band; he skillfully manipulated the political forces of the day to accomplish his goal. And Peter was a failure in ways that we most dread: he was impotent in a crisis and socially inept. At the arrest of Jesus he collapsed, a hapless, blustering coward; in the most critical situations of his life with Jesus, the confession on the road to Caesarea Philippi and the vision on the Mount of transfiguration, he said the most embarrassingly inappropriate things. He was not the companion we would want with us in time of danger, and he was not the kind of person we would feel comfortable with at a social occasion.

Time, of course, has reversed our judgments on the two men. Judas is now a byword for betrayal, and Peter is one of the most honored names in the church and in the world. Judas is a villain; Peter is a saint. Yet the world continues to chase after the successes of Judas, financial wealth and political power, and to defend itself against the failures of Peter, impotence and ineptness.

Eugene Petersen quoted in: Tim Kimmel, Little House on the Freeway, Page 191-192.

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An Hour of Glory on a Windswept Hill

One day he asked this 90-year-young woman, “What is the secret of your power? What keeps you happy, contented and cheerful through your sickness?”

She answered with a line from a poem, “I had an hour of glory on a windswept hill.”

Bill Stidger said, recounting this experience, “I knew she had been in touch with God and that was the whole reason [for her cheerfulness].”

Listen again to her words: “an hour of glory on a windswept hill.” It sounds very much like the experience Peter, James and John had on the Mount of Transfiguration.

Sometimes we refer to special events in our life as “a mountaintop experience.” Many of us have had such experiences, a time when God seemed very close. It may have been on an actual mountain. It may have been by a seaside. Dare I say it? It may even have happened in a worship service. Such things have happened to people within the walls of this church. I hope it happens to you today.

King Duncan, adapting William Stidger,www.Sermons.com

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Heck of a Place to Lose a Cow

Southern Utah folklore still enshrines stories about Ebenezer Bryce, a cattleman who used to run his herds early in this century on land that is now Bryce Canyon National Park. The canyon he used is actually the face of a high plateau, carved by wind and water into fantastic, colorful sandstone castles and cathedrals. Few people can stand on the canyon's rim, look down at the majestic scene below and fail to sense awe and inspiration.

Once, Bryce was asked what it was like to have spent his working life in a setting of such overwhelming natural beauty. The cattleman replied: "It's one heck of a place to lose a cow."

You might think this as proof of the man's dedication to his work, but it is probably more accurate to lay the remark to his inability to perceive the majesty of the place. Too often we are blind to the grandeur, beauty, and wonder of life.

It is easy to miss--we don’t listen slowly enough!

Staff,www.Sermons.com

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Tis Good to Be Here

In the classic fantasy book by J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, the book that the Lord Of The Rings trilogy does not cover, Bilbo Baggins and his troop are traveling through a dark, dangerous forest infested with gigantic, poisonous spiders and all manner of dark critters and creepy-crawly things. Just being in that kind of place was a frightening experience. And each member of the group, especially Bilbo Baggins, wanted to get out of that dreadful forest of darkness. As they traveled on, hoping against hope that the edge of the dangerous forest was near and not having their hopes fulfilled, one of the leaders orders Bilbo Baggins to climb the tallest tree he can find in order to have a look around and see where the dark forest ended.

Reluctantly, Bilbo climbs the tree, with limbs, branches and leaves scratching at him all the way. Several times he nearly falls. Having pushed his way through the forest canopy, he is nearly blinded by the sudden and intense sunlight. It took some time for his eyes to get used to the light, but once they had, Bilbo found that it was very wonderful and beautiful up there. The canopy above him was the most beautiful blue sky and around him was an ocean of green treetops. After being in the damp darkness below, he enjoyed the sunshine and was able to soak it into his weary, tired and aching bones. The fresh air blew softly in his face and invigorated his lungs and cleared his mind. What a wonderful place to be! And no doubt, if we could have asked Tolkien's fictional character, Bilbo Baggins, he would have said, "Yes, 'tis good to be here."

Now, that story is fiction, but it reminds us of a time when three disciples were permitted a view that was extraordinary. What happened on the Day of Transfiguration was real. When Jesus took Peter, James and John with Him, He took them out of the dark valleys of this world and up to a high place, a mountaintop, where their eyes would squint at the bright light of the Son of God, who would be transformed before their wondering eyes. It was good that they were there to view this special revelation of God.

Staff,www.Sermons.com.

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Don't You Ever Do That to Me Again!

Fred Craddock tells a wonderful story about a young minister, newly graduated from seminary, serving his very first church. He gets a call telling him that a church member, elderly woman who has given her life in service to the church, is in the hospital. She’s so weak she can’t even get up out of bed, and the doctors don’t hold much hope for her recovery. Would he go up and visit? Well, of course he will and he does.

All the way to the hospital he’s thinking about what he will say to this Christian lady, what words of comfort he can give her to prepare her for her eminent death. He arrives at the hospital, goes up to her room for the visit. He sits and talks with her a few minutes, just small talk really, nothing earth shattering. When he makes ready to leave, he asks if she would like him to have prayer with her. She answers, "Yes, of course. That’s why I wanted you to come."

He then asks politely, "And what exactly would you like me to pray for?"

"Why, I want you to pray that God will heal me," she answers in a surprised tone of voice.

Haltingly, fumbling over the words, he prays just as she wanted, that God will heal her, even though he’s not really sure that can happen. When he says the "Amen" at the end of the prayer, the woman says, "You know, I think it worked! I think I’m healed!" And she gets out of the bed and begins to run up and down the hallway of the hospital, shouting, "Praise God! I’m healed! Praise God! I’m healed!"

Meanwhile, the young minister, in a stupor, stumbles to the stairwell, walks down five flights of stairs, makes his way to the parking lot and somehow manages to find his car. As he fumbles to get his keys out of his pocket, he looks heavenward and says, "Don’t you ever do that to me again!" He had a mountaintop moment, but he didn’t know what to do with it!

Johnny Dean,www.Sermons.com.

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The Battle Hymn

In 1861, a prominent Bostonian woman and her husband were visiting Washington, D.C. shortly after the outbreak of the Civil War. They witnessed an impressive military review one day and were on their way back to their hotel with some friends in a carriage when their way was blocked by several columns of soldiers. To pass the time, Julia Ward Howe and her friends began to sing popular army songs, including "John Brown's Body." The soldiers cheered the singing, but one of her friends suggested to Mrs. Howe that the lyrics could be improved.

Early the next morning she arose in her hotel room and quickly scribbled out some new lyrics, inspired by her memory of the soldiers from the day before.

Her new words were published in the spring 1862 issue of Atlantic Monthly and the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" became the major war song of the Union forces. The opening words and the refrain are certainly familiar: "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord...Glory, hallelujah! his truth is marching on." Perhaps the last verse is not quite as well known, which speaks of "a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me...While God is marching on."

Unknown

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Peter, James and John

G.C. Morgan wrote concerning the special three: "There can be no doubt that these men, Peter, James, and John, were the most remarkable in the apostolate. Peter loved Him; John He loved; James was the first to seal his testimony with his blood. Even their blunders proved their strength. They were the men of enterprise; men who wanted thrones and places of power...Mistaken ideas, all of them, and yet proving capacity for holding the keys and occupying the throne. What men from among that first group reign today as these men?

On four special occasions, Jesus admitted them to experiences from which they learned precious lessons. On the occasion of the raising of Jairus's daughter (Luke 8:51), they were granted a preview of their Lord's mastery over death ... On the mount of transfiguration (Matt 17:1), they gained clearer insight into the importance of His impending death ... On the Mount of Olives (Mark 13:3), they marveled at His prophetic discernment ... In the Garden of Gethsemane (Matt 26:37), they glimpsed in the sufferings of the Savior something of the cost of their salvation..."

J.O. Sanders, Enjoying Intimacy with God, Moody, p. 19

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A Sign That Death Is Not the Last Word

When she called her minister to come to the hospital, she had just received the worst possible news from her physician. The cancer had returned with a vengeance, and there was nothing more that could be done. Her time was now a matter of weeks -- or days. When her minister arrived, she shared the sad news and made her request, "I want you and some of the elders of the church to come here and, like the Book of James says, to pray for me and to anoint my head with oil."

The minister, a Presbyterian and unaccustomed to the ritual of unction, was startled by this request. "I'm not sure I can do this," he hesitated. "It seems more like magic than ministry."

She gripped his hand, "No. I am going to die. I know I am going to die. The doctors have made that clear. I am never going to leave this hospital alive."

"Then why do you want me to anoint you with oil?"

"Because it will be a sign that death is not the last word about me, a sign that I belong to Christ, a sign that in the power of God I am already healed."

So, around her bedside gathered her minister and a few others from the church. Long ago, when she was an infant, another minister had prayed over her, laid his hand upon her head and said the ancient words, "I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost." Now, prayer was offered for her anew, hands were laid on her head again and the sign of the Holy Spirit was traced in oil upon her forehead. Here in the depths of her pain was a moment of transfiguration discernment. She -- and everyone else in the room -- remembered her baptism and glimpsed, even in the midst of her suffering, the glory of her resurrection.

Thomas G. Long, Whispering the Lyrics, CSS Publishing Company.

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Sermon Opener - Lessons from the Mountaintop

Mountaintop experiences in our faith journey become those moments of revelation that give us something to hold on to for the rest of our lives.

So as we celebrate the Transfiguration of our Lord, let us consider some spiritual lessons from the mountaintop.

1. The Value Of Spiritual Mountaintops

2. The Mystery In Mountaintop Experience

3. The Temptation Of The Mountaintop

4. The Urgency Of Spiritual Mountaintops

Robert A. Beringer, Something's Coming...Something Great, CSS Publishing

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Whatever Goes Up Must Come Down

A little boy was out in his backyard, throwing a ball up in the air. An elderly passerby, not accustomed to such youthful delights, asked the boy what he was doing. He replied, “I am playing a game of catch with God. I throw the ball up in the air and he throws it back.”

I am in no position to comment on God’s ability to play ball, but I do know that whatever goes up must come down. There may be exceptions, such as Charlie Brown’s kite! But as a rule, whatever goes up must come down. The process is so predictable that you could refer to it as a scientific law.

The same process applies to our religious lives. It is a good thing to “go up” to a great experience with God, but we will become greatly disillusioned if we do not remember that eventually we have to “come down” again.

John Thomas Randolph, The Best Gift, CSS Publishing Company, p. 96

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Climbing the Mountain

When we are out driving and approach a great stretch of mountains, it is breathtaking and terribly humbling. A drive through the mountains gives us a different perspective on things. Some people invest a lot of time and money in mountain-climbing. That's not for the exercise. They could get the exercise doing a hundred other things. Mountain-climbing is about mastering the mystery and standing where few have stood. We rarely hear of stories about the treacherous descent down a mountain, even though that is great exercise as well. The stories are always about climbing the mountain, risking it all to get to the top, and spending time on some high peak that causes people to see things, and maybe even themselves, differently.

And Then Came The Angel, William B. Kincaid, III, CSS Publishing Company, Inc.

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An Impossible Sermon

That outstanding teacher of preachers, Dr. Fred Craddock, suggests that it is better to "hold this text before the listeners in (its) full extraordinariness rather than reduce (it) to fit the contour of our experiences. It is better to be led to the foot of the Mount of Transfiguration, to be helped to sense its significance on Jesus and three apostles, and to be left there for a while in awe of its mystery and power.

Such an experience might finally influence life in more ways and in more depth than interpretations that reduce the text to lessons that assume `this is the way life is for us today.'" Dr. Craddock's caution makes this an almost impossible sermon. He seems to be saying, "Tell the story, but don't worry about illustrations; Jesus is Jesus, and we are, after all, just us."

Adapted from Fred B. Craddock, Luke [Atlanta: John Knox Press] 1990, pp. 132-133 Staff.

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Up and Down the Mountain

When Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross was doing research for her famous book on death and dying, she met a woman who was a member of the cleaning staff in a large hospital. This woman spent her days cleaning floors, emptying wastebaskets and tidying up patients' rooms. The hospital staff, however, began to notice that each time this woman finished cleaning the room of a dying patient, that person was invariably more content and more at peace.

The woman explained to Dr. Kubler-Ross that she had known a lot of fear and tragedy in her life, as well as good times when others helped her know of God's love. She had been up and she had been down the mountain. The worst time was when her three-year-old son was ill with pneumonia. She brought him to the public health clinic, and he died in her arms while she waited her turn. All of this could have embittered her, but she said to Kubler-Ross, "You see, doctor, the dying patients are just like old acquaintances to me, and I'm not afraid to touch them, to talk to them, or to offer them hope."

The hospital decided to promote this woman to "Special Counselor To The Dying."

Robert A. Beringer, Something's Coming...Something Great

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The Bible Class

The weekly Bible class was past its scheduled closing time, but no one made any move to leave, even though the pastor had closed her books and ended the session with prayer. Some incident in the evening's session had opened a reservoir of questions about the way in which God speaks to people. Most of the post-session questions the pastor had heard a hundred times in her ministry.

"Why doesn't God speak to people today, as he did to, say, Moses or Abraham or lots of those other folks in the Old Testament?" someone wanted to know. "I'll bet every generation of people asks that question," Pastor Olson mused to herself.

But before she could respond, another question popped out from another class member. "Yeah, isn't there a story in one of the Gospels -- I think it's Matthew -- about Jesus and the three disciples who go up the mountain or hill or whatever it was. I don't remember the whole thing, but doesn't Matthew say they heard a voice? What was it the voice said?"

Pastor Olson answered, "You remembered it all right. It was the Transfiguration story, and the voice said, 'This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.' "

"Yeah, that's it," the questioner agreed. But he pushed on, half jokingly, "Why don't we hear God saying that today?"

Again the pastor answered, this time with a slight smile, "Oh, I've said those words many times from the pulpit, 'Listen to Jesus.'"

"Well, come on, pastor, that's not quite the same, is it?" the questioner replied.

Pastor Olson said, "Perhaps not physically the same as hearing a voice from a cloud or a burning bush or whatever. But don't we believe that the message read from Scripture and preached from the pulpit is supposed to be God's Word?"

Someone objected, "But that's really not the same -- not as dramatic -- as a voice ..." he raised his arms in the air for emphasis, "coming out of the sky, so to speak, and ... and ... giving us a message."

Pastor Olson paused then asked, with just a bit of teasing in her voice, "Do you really think you would listen more attentively or obey more closely if some dismembered voice were to come out of the clouds and tell you what to do with your life?"

Silence for a moment. Then, "Well ... I don't know, but it sure would get our attention," someone offered with a chuckle.

"True," she replied, "but after the initial attention-grabber, then what? I guess my point would be that we need to be careful so we don't appear to be telling God how to come to us and how to speak to us. That's God's prerogative."

"So you think God is still speaking to us as he did to some of the people in the Bible?" someone asked as he began gathering up the coffee cups.

"Speaking to us, yes," Pastor Olson replied, "but not in the same manner. Speaking, yes, loud and clear, most of the time. And still saying it is important for us to listen to his Son."

Merle G. Franke, Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit Cycle A, CSS Publishing Company, Inc.