Mountaintop Experiences

Mountaintop Experiences The Dover Church
February 14, 2010 – Last Sunday after Epiphany, the Transfiguration
Scripture: Luke 9: 28-43a

Before I begin with the actual sermon this morning, I would like to offer a word of explanation for my style of preaching. Those of you who have heard me preach before will know that I often tell stories about myself. While you may already understand why I do this, I feel the need to tell you that I do not tell these personal stories just because I like to talk about myself. On the contrary, my prayer each week as I prepare my sermons is that I will say something true and meaningful. When I started preaching, I used to give very theoretical sermons with lots of references to scholars, poets, novelists and so on. But then it dawned on me that those sermons were all second hand stories. The only story that I really knew to be true and meaningful was my own. Hence, my preaching style which usually comes back to how I know God in Jesus Christ. Just because these are my stories, that doesn’t make them the only true ones. They are however the stories I can tell. More important than my stories is my hope, the hope that whatever I say will help you to recognize God in Jesus Christ in your own stories. This is especially the case when talking about things like the Transfiguration, which no amount of theoretical explanation or cross referencing to the experiences of others will ever help bring to life for you. At least, that’s why I do what I do. So here goes.
I have always loved the water, oceans, rivers, lakes, even splashing in puddles or my bath as a child. When I was serving the church in Cohasset, I bought myself a sea kayak to both get out on the ocean and to reach the hot fishing spots which were not accessible on foot. I lived at the time in a little beach cottage in Humarock with Ella and three cats. I drove around in a little red pickup with my kayak always on the roof, ready to stop and put it whenever a likely spot would present itself. One of these likely spots was the North River on the way home from work. I loved to put in and paddle down to where the river emptied into the sea in Scituate.
One particular day, the weather was perfect, not too hot, not too cold, not too windy, sunny but bearable with sunblock, I had nothing to do and no reason to be anywhere, and the tide would speed me downriver and then help bring me back. I paddled down with my fly rod strapped to the front deck and my lunch and water in a watertight bag under the back deck. It was a weekday, so no one else was around, no power boats, no jet skies, no beach parties with kegs of beer, distracting bikinis, loud music and raucous yelling. Just me in my quiet kayak.
When I arrived at the mouth of the river, I pulled up on a sandbar which had been formed by the current of the river and the tides. I climbed out, sat down, leaned back against my kayak, and starting eating my lunch while I just watched the ocean and the river come together.
And then it happened, what a lot of spirituality gurus call a mountaintop experience like the one we just heard in the Gospel lesson, even though my backside was planted literally right at sea level. And just like that everything began to unfold as somehow different, different as in gloriously perfect. I fell into an intense absorption in the moment: in the blueness of the sky, not thinking about it in an analytical way, but just enjoying the brush strokes of blue and wisps of clouds here and there. I began to notice the bird calls and the gentle sound of the lapping waves, nearby where the water spilled gently onto the sandbar and further off where the ocean waves met the river current more vigorously. I say noticed, but it was something more of a comfortable and pleasant awareness than any sort of rational thought. In fact, I later learned that any sort of thinking would have pulled me right out of the moment altogether and ended the experience just like that.
I felt the light and warmth of the sun on my face and saw how it sparkled on the water. And suddenly I realized, once again in a completely non-rational way but at some level of primary awareness like that of breathing or smelling, that time seemed to stand still. There was no past and no future. I had no thoughts about what had gone before and was not planning for what was yet to come. I just was…completely absorbed in the enjoyment of the moment. And in the enjoyment of the moment I also became swamped by an awareness of the reality of God, not as in a vision of some giant humanoid-like being with a white beard, but as in a felt experience of everything the Bible tells us God is like, if that makes any sense. I felt completely loved. I knew that life was not just good, but great, and that it was all around me in abundance beyond belief to be enjoyed and treasured as a gift from God. I knew somehow that I was good in some sort of non-evaluating, non measurable way. Just good in …well, a good way, if that makes any sense. Even though I was alone, I was not alone, and the presence felt caring and compassionate. My soul could sense the glory of God reaching out in time to the beginning and through everything in an interconnected web of …well, steadfast love and faithfulness. I was, as far as I could tell, sitting in the immediate presence of the living God, fully aware of the fact and loving every minute of it, without counting the minutes. In truth, I have no idea how long I sat there and that was fine with me.
Now what actually happened is beyond words, but I had to try to put it into words for this sermon. In fact, it was the beginning of rational thought and putting the experience into words which brought the whole encounter to an end. The moment I tried to describe for myself and understand what was happening, time started to kick in and my immediate appreciation vanished.
Except in one important way. As I climbed back into my kayak and started paddling back upstream, I suddenly began to remember so many other times in my life when I had been with God like this and had not noticed, either because I was too self absorbed or busy or worried or preoccupied or working or something, or I had just brushed it off or discounted it. I remembered the times when I had actually been on mountaintops, the times in trout streams, the times in church, the times with family and friends when it had been just like it had been that day. And I suddenly knew that God had really been so very close to me always and I had not been paying attention. It dawned on me that it was up to me to open up that temporal, emotional, physical, spiritual spaciousness for me to become aware.
And on the paddle home the idea for my future ministry began to take shape in my mind. I would learn how to practice the ancient spiritual practices of the church and of other faith traditions so that I could open myself to God at all times. More importantly for you, I wanted to learn how to teach others how to practice, so that they, you really, might learn how to become aware, how to remember, and how to relish the prospect of seeking the presence. And ever since then I have done just that. Just so you don’t think this is some sort of delusional fantasy, I can tell you that while the presence defies words, the experience is more real than any theological argument I have ever thought about. Nor is this a narcissistic, amusement park sort of approach to spirituality, it is actually hard work. Sure, there are plenty of times like my kayak story where God just shows up (as I’m sure you know from your own experiences), but there’s all the other times when you have to work at creating that spaciousness.
And so, I hope that you can see that if I had tried to explain the Transfiguration rationally and theoretically to you this morning, it probably would not have made any more sense than what I have just said. You might have noticed how the disciples tried to understand and make sense of what they had been part of, and how that didn’t work out for them.
But enough of me. How about you? What are your stories? Where were you when you noticed God? What were you doing and what was it like? Love? Birth? Death? Church? Mountaintops? Sunsets? I am convinced that everyone has either had these sorts of experiences or longs to. There is not a faith tradition in the world that does not recognize these experiences of the presence. Sadly, our own culture tends to either trivialize or commercialize them, to psycho-analyze or theorize them away, or just plain preclude them with busy-ness. Which is why this story from the Gospel comes right now before Lent. Lent is a season when we try to make room in our lives for the experience of the presence.