Willing for the Encounter

Sermon for Feb. 19, 2023
Exodus 24:12-18; 2 Peter 1:16-21; Matthew 17:1-9

As I’ve been thinking about my sabbatical to come, I’ve found myself remembering a place I visited on my sabbatical eight years ago.  That may be because there are four pictures of this place hanging on the walls of our house; I guess I wanted to take it home with me once the trips were done.  It’s Tewkesbury Abbey, a glorious church in a Tudor village in the Cotswolds of England.  I went there because their approach to mission at Tewkesbury was a great example of what I was studying – congregations doing both traditional and fresh expressions of ministry side by side.

So, Tewkesbury Abbey is this monumental structure from the 1100s, looking as much like a castle as a church.   You walk in, and you’re struck by both the tremendous height of the roof and the massive thickness of the pillars holding it over you.  The place manages to be both airy and fortresslike, all at the same time.  It’s a study in transcendence – a place to worship a God who is so much more, and so far beyond, our poor powers to understand.

At the same time, Tewkesbury Abbey had begun an effort called “Celebrate,” a mission into the equivalent of a public-housing project, just on the other side of the wall marking out the abbey’s grounds. The missioner was creating Christian community from the bottom up, gathering people who were dealing with generational poverty, domestic violence, poor education, and economic dead ends. The missioner wanted the people of the housing project to know that God was walking right alongside them through it all – and she knew that the massive, ancient Abbey was a stumbling block to approaching God that way.  She told the story of one public-housing resident who had tried to worship at the abbey but ran out in “fear” – a fascinating choice of words – “fear” of the God whom the resident encountered there.  So, as part of a larger effort to serve the community she was building, the missioner put together worship in an elementary-school cafeteria, including kids and parents making biblical scenes out of fruit and vegetables, and then all of them sharing a hot, free dinner at the same tables afterward.  It was a study in immanence – worship of a God who walks beside us and offers us a warm hug on a cold, wet day.

Keep that contrast in mind, that contrast between immanence and transcendence, as we go back to the readings for this last Sunday after Pentecost, the final stop of our multi-week tour of Jesus revealing God’s light to the world.  First, from Exodus, we hear about Moses going up on Mt. Sinai.  More accurately, we hear about God calling Moses to come up Mt. Sinai once again, at this point the fifth time Moses has made the trip.  God tells Moses simply to “come up … and wait there” (Exodus 24:12) so that God could give him stone tablets bearing instructions for how the Israelites should live as God’s people in the world.  Actually, what God tells Moses to do is to come up and “be” there, be ready to receive these instructions in God’s good time.¹  A great cloud, “the glory of the Lord” (24:16), comes and dwells on the mountaintop above Moses, and he spends six days simply being near God’s presence and being sanctified for the encounter he’s about to have.  Finally, God calls, and Moses treks higher up the mountain, entering the cloud of God’s glory, which has become “like a devouring fire” (24:17).  He remains there 40 days, receiving the Law for setting up God’s earthly dwelling place, the ark of the covenant and the elaborate tent where it would be housed as the people traveled – in other words, God’s instructions for bringing the transcendent divine presence into the people’s day-to-day experience.  

Then we have the Gospel reading, Matthew’s telling of Jesus’ transfiguration.  Just as Moses spent six days in God’s presence before being called into the cloud, so it’s six days after Peter proclaimed Jesus to be messiah that Jesus takes three of his deputies with him up the mountain.  The disciples have begun to understand that Jesus is God’s anointed king, but now they’re about to see he’s also so much more than that – that, in fact, he’s God in the flesh.  No longer will the people experience God’s presence on earth by keeping the Law and worshiping in the temple; instead, Jesus himself brings God’s presence into their lives.  So, there on the mountaintop, he’s transfigured before them, transformed to reveal the glory he always embodies, just usually veiled.  Moses and Elijah are there, too, showing Jesus to be the next step in God’s self-revelation to the world, completing the Law and the prophets.  

And then, Peter has something to say.  Now, it’s standard preaching procedure to make fun of Peter here for thinking the disciples could capture this moment by setting up three tents, sort of like posting a quick photo of God’s glory.  But Peter also echoes the Exodus story when he offers to build three tents there on the mountain – an updated version of the tent of meeting that God commanded Moses to take with the people on their travels.  So maybe Peter isn’t as much of a goof as we usually make him out to be; at least he knew his Scriptures.  

Anyway, suddenly God shows up, the cloud of divine glory descending on this mountain just as it had on Mt. Sinai.  But instead of giving Peter, James, and John a set of written laws, God gives them the Word in the flesh – “Listen to him!” God proclaims about Jesus.  And the disciples get the message – that Jesus is more than Moses or Elijah, more than the Law, even more than just God’s anointed king.  He is the Law and the prophets and God’s royal authority embodied – God among them.  So, quite reasonably, the disciples “fall to the ground … overcome by fear” (Matt 17:6).  

And in that moment, when his blinding glory is shining through, what does God incarnate do?  Does Jesus issue divine directives?  Does he rebuke the disciples for being dimwitted?  No, none of that.  Instead, he reminds them that he dwells with them, that he has chosen them.  God incarnate touches them, and takes them by the hand, and says, “Get up, and don’t be afraid” (17:7).

What must that have felt like?  Maybe literally we can’t imagine.  I think we’re probably more comfortable with a God we encounter at either end of the spectrum of immanence and transcendence.  I could get it if God is a consuming firestorm on a mountaintop that miraculously allowed Moses to come out of an encounter unscathed.  That’s a God that makes sense – one so powerful and so distant that, if I just keep my own distance, I might come out unscathed, too.  Or, I could get it if God is a friend, someone who wants to pull up a chair and have a beer me, someone who actually wants to hear my story, and walk with me through it, no matter how hard things get.  That’s a God that makes sense – one so loving and so close at hand that I only need to offer my own hand for God to lead me through whatever life brings.  

But this Gospel story today tells us something harder to understand – and something far more glorious.  God is a consuming fire, ready to purge us of the “sin that clings so closely” (Hebrews 12:1), especially here on the brink of Lent.  And God is our friend, who reaches out to us as we lie cowering on the ground, afraid of all we can’t manage on our own – a friend who touches us, and pulls us to our feet, and says, “Get up, and do not be afraid.”

So, how do we connect with a God who is both immanent and transcendent?  The key isn’t figuring out how to do it ourselves.  The key is being willing to connect in whatever way you find God coming to you – calling from the whirlwind or knocking on your door.  And that’s what might be the deepest mystery of all: that God is waiting for you, hoping you’ll take the hike up the mountain, hoping you’ll reach out your hand when you’re down, hoping you’ll listen for the still, small voice coming to you on the winds of the Spirit. 

What stands between us and the presence of the divine is simply our willingness to have the encounter.  Absurdly enough, the Lord God is waiting for us to say, “Yes, I am willing for you to do … what you will do with these things that baffle me, or break me, or beat me down.”  The sovereign of the universe, the flaming fire of Love, the creator of all that was and is and ever will be – God is waiting for you to look up, or look in, or look to someone you love and say, “Come, Lord.  I am willing.”

1.      HarperCollins Study Bible, 124 (note).