Visions & Mountaintops: a sermon

Our life with Jesus helps us mine the power of stories, visions, memories, and dreams. This old Bible story stirs my own mountaintop experiences and memories, and I hope it may do the same for you. 

A friend from The Old Time pointed out, which you and I can ratify, that “the radical change of a community from disaster is a devastating experience requiring long recovery and it is never the same - -  a mass experience of PTSD for those who had to endure and who are still enduring”. She mentioned floods and fires and storms; and remembered a visit to Alaska in 2004 where everyone had their story of experiencing the big earthquake, 1964, forty years earlier - - which itself stirred my own memory of that earthquake: we lived in Yokohama, Japan at the time, the tsunami warning and fear. And she mused about where all our apocalyptic stories of the wrath of God come from.

Writing this week to comment on my blogpost about the early morning fog, she told me a vision of her own that came to her when her “parents were deathly ill in France some 30 years ago”. She said “It was touch and go for awhile and what came to (her) was that (she) was on a path in the woods, could not see but a foot or two in front and to the side, walking on pine needles and dry leaves, everything gray". She said, “The message I was given was that I just needed to put one foot in front of the other and that everything would be all right, and it was, for a time”.

I have visions and dreams and memories that come back to me, stirred by a crisis, or an event, or a Bible story we read here a Sunday morning. Some remind me, from listening to country & western music that I used to love, that “It was almost like a song” and “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world”. 

Peter, James and John on the mountain with Jesus, Moses and Elijah, God's voice thundering from the cloud, a day to recall and tell children and grandchildren, even us for ages to come. Not only a physical event, but an all-consuming rush of joy that comes but seldom in a lifetime, and the realization, “I’ll never forget this”.

There’s nothing like a mountaintop. I remember suddenly realizing I was in love, a breathless rush of euphoria, feeling captured and no escape! A first kiss. Nurses bringing my newborn baby out for me to see, and me going dizzy, almost fainting with emotion. 

Spiritual, religious mountaintops: nearly forty years ago, a Eucharist at a conference of the Episcopal charismatic movement, high in the mountains of North Carolina. 

Seminary, the last semester of my senior year I studied in residence at Virginia Seminary in Alexandria - - going to Friday night prayer and praise services at Truro Parish in Fairfax, where Linda and I had been members in the late 1960s after returning from Japan. Truro Parish now all new: charismatic reform, with prayer and praise and songs and tongues, yes, tongues. Mountaintop!

For me personally, a February evening in 1984 when God entered my despair with a voice, “I AM speaking to you, Tom Weller”, and set me free.

Life’s happiest Time, an instant, or a touch, a word, a presence - - that may last years, or a few weeks, or but a moment, becomes a mountaintop memory in your heart for ever.

That July 1984 summer day, arriving from Pennsylvania at Trinity Church, Apalachicola, a powerful sense that The Rest of My Life was about to begin and this New Season would be very different. And so it was, and has been, like turning around and finding myself in Narnia, a magical place where nothing is the same and you want it to last for ever. And it does until, with Peter, James & John, you come down the mountain - -

- - and life returns to normal, and the thrill is gone and you cannot get it back. Except in some measure by calling forth memories, as the gospel invites you to do in your heart and mind this morning; your own stories - - just as a disciple remembered and passed this Transfiguration story along to the gospel writers who wrote it down, enriching life, imagination, and possibilities for every Christian forever.

What happens to our memories and dreams, not just night dreams, but the dreams we have for life, and even God's dream for us? America a century ago was in some ways a time of romantic sentimentality with drippy-rhyming music of sweet love songs as lovers parted and men were called away to war:

“Smile the while you kiss me sad adieu, 
when the clouds roll by I’ll come to you, 
then the skies will be so blue …” 

and I wonder sentimentally if the boy came home from war - - or NOT and someone else found his girl. I’m thinking of the stories but especially life’s memories: what of the memories? Where do memories go? Who besides his mother kept alive for the rest of her life, the boy who did not come home? What about loved ones’ memories of him? What of his own stories, memories, visions and dreams? Does all that simply die with us?

Last week we celebrated Presidents’ Day. When I was a boy we had two February holidays: Abraham Lincoln's Birthday and Washington's Birthday. George Washington’s birthday was yesterday. One of the lovely, peaceful, memorable places I’ve been is his home at Mount Vernon, Virginia. High on a hill sloping down to the Potomac River, you can see for miles. George Washington is buried there, and if you let it happen, there’s a sense of his presence, so strong that I wondered if it was only just a sense: or is his love still there?

The mountaintop vision that Jesus told Peter, James and John not to talk about: did it really happen? They were right there in the middle of it. We do not have the story from Jesus, who left us no autobiography; but Peter, James or John remembered and told someone, and now it’s part of our holy history. Remember: every story in the Bible becomes part of you at your baptism, belongs to you personally, and here we are on the mountain with Jesus.

The bible story of Daniel with his night visions of the Ancient of Days and the Son of Man: are they real? Israel and Jesus have certainly known them as real. Joseph the Carpenter, to whom the angel appeared in dreams, once to assure Joseph that Mary had not cheated, and again later, warning Joseph to take Mary and Jesus and flee to Egypt: was that real? What about YOUR dreams and visions?

The voice of God speaking to me that 1984 winter evening: was I awake? I’m sure I was, as sure as I can be recalling a mountaintop experience 36 years ago this month. God speaking to me changed my outlook, and my hopes, and my life. If it was a vision, it was as real as today’s gospel vision on the mountain.

We are a religion of stories, dreams, visions. And we Christians are blessed that people who were there, held on to the memories, and told the stories. 

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Epiphany Season is ending now. It began January 6 with a story of wise men coming to honor Jesus. And Jesus baptized in the river Jordan as from a cloud a voice proclaimed, “My beloved Son”.

Throughout Lent, which begins Wednesday, we shall hear more Bible stories: 

Adam and Eve in The Garden, tempted by the serpent. Jesus in the wilderness, tempted by Satan.

Moses striking the rock at Meribah and bringing forth water. Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at the well and telling her, “I Am the LIVING water”.

Ezekiel telling about the dry bones coming together. Jesus shouting from his friend's tomb, "Lazarus, come out!"

At the end, Jesus crucified on Calvary’s Hill, his "one oblation of himself once offered, a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world". 

On the far side of the mountain, a springtime story in another garden: at early dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb, but Jesus' dead body is not there. As she stands weeping, he speaks to her, “Mary!” Her mountaintop: do you suppose Mary ever forgot that? Or later, when she needed him, did the vision return again and again and again? The vision certainly returned again and again for Peter, James and John.

We are a people of stories and a religion of stories. And you have your own dreams, visions, memories. Today’s gospel on the mountain invites you to go back there, up there - - to be there and remember, even to shelter there for a Time if you need to. As Mary did. As Peter, James & John did. You may find, as I did: It was almost like a song. I would not have missed it for the world.

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Last Epiphany sermon or homily in Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, Panama City, Florida. Sunday, 23 Feb 2020, the Rev Tom Weller. Text: 

The Gospel
Matthew 17:1-9

Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three shelters here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” 

While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.” And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone.

As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, “Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”