Stepping Up to Heaven

Sermon for Feb. 14, 2021
2 Kings 2:1-12; Mark 9:2-9

Preaching about the story of the Transfiguration sometimes feels like analyzing a dream.  No matter which Gospel writer tells this story, it’s an otherworldly experience.  In Luke’s Gospel (not what we heard today), the text even states that Peter, James, and John were “weighed down with sleep” there on the mountain; so, they themselves weren’t sure whether they might not be dreaming (9:32). 

Today’s account from Mark is different, more straightforward.  There are no sleepy disciples here; the story just happens.  But still – what exactly is it that’s happening?  Even if Peter, James, and John are wide awake, they just thought they were taking a little hike with Jesus up the mountain.  They hadn’t planned to meet God up close and personal.

You get a similar sense from today’s Old Testament reading, too.  Elijah had been Israel’s most important prophet – battling the priests of other gods, anointing kings, and talking with God on Mt. Sinai when a corrupt king was trying to kill him.  Now Elijah’s come to the end of his ministry, and God has told him to call Elisha as his successor.  Elisha says “yes” to the prophet and follows along; but soon after, we come to today’s reading. 

Elisha is loyal and refuses to abandon his master, even though something highly dramatic and probably terrifying is about to happen.  Realizing Elijah is about to be taken away, Elisha asks for a “double share of his [prophetic] spirit,” fully embracing his call (2 Kings 2:9).  But then, I wonder if he regrets it immediately, as “a chariot of fire and horses of fire” take Elijah off to heaven (2 Kings 2:11).  Elisha cries out and tears his clothes as a sign of mourning – grief that his master is gone, sure; but maybe some second thoughts about what Elisha has signed up for, too.

Elisha knows that Elijah will be taken from him.  Peter, James, and John know that Jesus is the messiah, God’s anointed king.  They know these things are true – at least they know it intellectually.  But did they know what those truths would mean for them before they crossed their boundaries and followed along to find God revealed in frightening majesty?

Now, the evidence was there to tip them off as to what was coming.  Elisha had seen Elijah call down heavenly fire on a royal army and condemn the king to death – not a move likely to endear the prophets to the next king (2 Kings 1).  For Peter, James, and John, the testimony was straight from the mouth of Jesus himself.  Just six days before their hike up the mountain into heaven, Peter had said out loud that Jesus was the messiah; he got the answer right.  But then Jesus had pushed him – do you know what lies ahead for God’s anointed king?  “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering,” Jesus had said, “and be rejected by the [religious authorities], and be killed, and after three days rise again” (Mark 8:31).  But that’s not all.  When Peter had protested that Jesus got it wrong, Jesus had raised the stakes:  It’s not just the messiah who will take that hike up the mount of Calvary.  “If any want to become my followers,” Jesus had said, “let them deny themselves, and take up their cross, and follow me” (8:34).  The servant is not greater than the master, after all. 

I wonder what the disciples made of that.  I mean, they’d seen Jesus healing people.  They’d witnessed him walking on water and stilling a storm.  They’d watched him feeding thousands from five loaves and two fish.  They’d heard him challenging the authorities and calling them hypocrites for choosing law over love.  Now, the disciples heard Jesus name the cost that love would carry.  Their head knowledge told them they were following God’s anointed king.  But it took them a while to realize the cost that call would carry for them.  It’s one thing to know a truth intellectually.  It’s something else entirely to step across the boundaries of our experience and make that truth our own. 

I spoke to you a few weeks ago about the boundaries we’ll seek to beat this year as we follow Jesus together.  One of those is the boundary of difference – the boundary that says, you and I are not enough alike to take the risk of connection.  Some of those differences are real and active among us – differences of politics and policy, and to what extent a church should address them.  We’ll have some opportunities to talk about that as we read our presiding bishop’s book Love is the Way and as we learn about the practice of civil discourse during Lent.

Other boundaries of difference lie outside our parish family – but they’re not so far away, just a mile or so to the east.  We saw a powerful example of crossing that boundary last weekend, as people here took part in the sixth installment of our Andie’s Pantry ministry with families at Benjamin Banneker Elementary.  Through these months of pandemic, Andie’s Pantry has morphed from an anonymous food-distribution event into an opportunity whereby some of us are stepping into difference.  There are lots of ways to help Andie’s Pantry get food to hungry families, including contributing funds or buying groceries.  But some of us are going one step further – stepping onto a family’s front porch or meeting up at the store to buy groceries.  

There’s a wonderful write-up about it in this weekend’s Messenger and bulletin – parishioners delivering shopping bags to someone’s home, or meeting someone in a grocery store, and having a conversation.  These conversations aren’t about delving into the divisions that plague our metro area.  They aren’t interviews about “what it’s like to be black in Kansas City,” as if one person would want to speak for a community’s experience.  They’re just conversations about what we have in common:  kids, grandkids, frustration with COVID, frustration with the Chiefs, staying warm in such abominable cold.  There is some risk in having these conversations, as Jesus said would come when we set aside our fears and follow him.  But as we take those steps across the boundaries before us – steps of faith, steps of love – we find that we’re stepping up the mountain into heaven itself.

Maybe that’s a way to think about the time that’s coming next for us.  This Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent.  The Church calls us to a season of “self-examination and repentance”; of “prayer, fasting, and self-denial”; of “reading and meditating on God’s holy Word” (BCP 265).  All that is right.  But here’s another way to think about it.  We could see Lent as a time to cross boundaries, a time look and listen and learn from what we find.  It’s a time to follow Jesus through experience – to hold love in our hearts, not just in our heads. 

That’s why spiritual practice makes a difference.  It doesn’t matter whether you give something up or take something on; but I think it does matter that we do something as we make our way through Lent.  Spiritual practice matters because habits form us.  Actions change us.  When we deny ourselves something we lean on, it trains our hearts to beat first for others and not first for ourselves.  When we make time to pray or read Scripture daily, it opens our hearts to God’s astonishing love for us, despite all the reasons we don’t deserve it.  When we meet a stranger in a store and buy some groceries, it turns our hearts to understand, helping us see how we’re bound together with people whose lives we don’t know.  Lent is about beating boundaries between us and others, between us and God, to help us practice in our lives what we carry in our heads – the truth that relationships are what life is all about.

We know that – in our heads and in our bones.  But if you need to hear it from a higher authority, we have that, too.  As God called out to the disciples on the heavenly mountaintop, so God calls to us now:  “This is my Son, the Beloved.  Listen to him!”