Last Sunday of
Epiphany Year A
Transcribed from a
sermon given on
March 6, 2011
At St Barnabas Episcopal
Church
By Rev. Valerie Ann
Hart
In 1964 a psychologist named
Abraham Maslow wrote a book in which he wrote about what he called ‘peak
experiences’. These were experiences in which life is transformed for a moment
or a short period of time. Experiences of a sense of peace and joy and unity.
Experiences in which colors are brighter and sounds clearer. Experiences that
change peoples lives. He called them peak experiences, but they could be called
religious experiences, or mystic experiences or mountain top experiences.
As they researched this they
discovered that almost everyone has had this kind of experience. Some moment,
some time, in which everything is clarified, when there was a sense of unity, a
sense of oneness - a mountaintop experience. I bet that almost every one of you
sitting here has had at least one such experience in your life.
The other thing they found about those
who had had such an experience is that almost no one had ever told anyone else,
not even their religious leaders or their spouses. Because after such an
experience there was a sense in which we are not sure I want to share it.
The readings today describe two archetypal
mountaintop experiences. In the Gospel we hear about the transfiguration. And
in the Old Testament reading describes Moses going up on the mountain with God
for forty days.
Jesus takes time away from the
other disciples and goes up on a mountain with three of his closest disciples,
Peter, John and James. While they are up there something happens. Something
profound happens. Jesus is transformed.
One of the ways that these mountain top
experiences have sometimes been describes is that because we are caught in the
material world, because of our attachments, because of the anxiety and concerns
and worries that we have, we can’t see the truth of what the universe, what
existence, is really about. It is said that there is a profound difference
between what we see every day and reality, that there is a background something
beyond our perception. It is as if we walk around like we have a hand over our
eyes, or a veil over our eyes, and we just can’t see.
A peak experience is walking
around with a hand over your eyes, or a veil over your eyes so it is always dark.
Or you are wearing really dark sunglasses, and then all of a sudden they are
taken off for a moment. Suddenly you see the truth of what is out there. You
get a glimpse of a reality that is beyond anything that we can imagine. We get
a glimpse of the spiritual presence that underlies all of creation, and then
the veil comes back down. We get those momentary times when we see something
else. When we see something beyond.
Now these can happen when you are
deep in a spiritual program or you go off on retreat or you are fasting and
praying. They can also happen when you are driving down the highway and
suddenly you see the sun and the rays and the reflection on the water or whatever
it is and it is so profound that it is more beautiful then anything you ever
imagined.
Sometimes it happens when you are
listening to a truly great piece of music. I still remember one time when I
heard Beethoven’s Ninth performed live and there was a moment that was just
transcendent.
Such mountaintop experiences come
in all types and forms. They are a gift. And most of you, I’m sure have
experienced that. And that experience that might be part of why you have any
interest in coming to church, because you have had an experience that has told
you that there is something more. You might not understand what that something
more is. You may not be ready to identify it or agree to any creed or certainty
of the nature of it, but you have experienced that there is something more.
That is the mountaintop experience.
Now like the disciples, when we
have those mountain top experiences we have a tendency to want to hold on to
them. We go back to that spot in nature where we had that mountaintop experience,
and it is just not the same. We listen to the piece of music that transformed
us, and it is nice, but it is not the same. We go back for another retreat, and
maybe it happens and maybe it doesn’t because these mountaintop experiences are
gifts of grace. We can’t control them; we can only appreciate them. Like Peter
we want to build a house around them. We want to hold on to it. We want to take
a picture of it. We want to record the music; we want to somehow stay there.
But the thing about mountaintop experiences is that you can’t live on the
mountaintop. You have to come back down into the valley. We are not allowed to
stay there.
In the church we have a church
year, a cycle, that begins at Advent when we anticipate the coming of the
Messiah, then we have the season of Christmas when we celebrate the
incarnation, currently we are in the season of Epiphany in which Jesus is
making himself known to the world. Then we move into the season of lent, and
then the season of Easter and then after Pentecost we have that long green season
that is sometimes called ordinary time, that represents life after Pentecost.
Today is the last Sunday before Lent, the last Sunday of Epiphany. It is the
last Sunday in which we sing Alleluia at church, so we have lots of alleluias
in the music, because we put the alleluias aside during Lent. And every year on
the last Sunday before the beginning of Lent we read about the transfiguration.
It is always there on the last Sunday.
In the story in the Gospels Jesus
takes the disciples aside and has this magnificent experience just before
heading to Jerusalem. Before that time, he was a Rabbi and an amazing healer.
And then for those three chosen disciples, he took the veil down for a moment.
He let them see a glimpse of who he really was and is.
Now in the story of Moses
encountering God the people did not want to go up the mountain with Moses
because they were afraid of seeing God face to face. There is this sense that
if you saw God face to face you would die. Moses went up and spent those forty
days on that mountain and when he came back his face shone so brightly that the
people couldn’t stand to see it, so he walked around with a veil over his face.
Now imagine if Jesus truly was who
we say he is. If he truly was the manifestation of God on earth. If he let
himself be fully seen it would have been very difficult to be around. The light
would have been so bright it would hurt your eyes. It would frighten you.
People would feel they were going to die. So he veiled himself so he looked
like a normal human being, but up on that mountain, for that short period of
time, he let the disciples see a glimpse of who he was. It is a gift he gave to
those disciples perhaps to help them with what he knew was ahead. You see the
gift of a mountain top experience is that when we go back down in the valley
and things get difficult, when we feel alone and we don’t have any sense of God’s
presence, when we begin to question and begin to wonder, when we struggle in so
many different ways we can remember. We can remember that experience that told
us beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is something more to life than just the
everyday struggles for existence. It helps us through those dark times, those
times of doubt and question. I imagine that this time on the mountain with
Jesus must have helped Peter, John and James as they risked their lives, as
they were afraid for their own safety, as they watched Jesus die.
So we remember the transfiguration
before we start Lent. Lent is a time for us to go down into the valley, to look
at things, to reflect, to take some time as we prepare ourselves for Easter
In the service for Ash Wednesday
the celebrant reads “I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church to the
observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer,
fasting, and self denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy word.”
So there are three things to do
during Lent. It is more than just not eating chocolate. Lent is about self
reflection, acknowledging our short comings, and asking for repentance. It is
about giving something up, about fasting and about prayer. But I’d encourage
you that if you are going to fast whether it is by not eating chocolate or not
going and having you half and half vanilla, decaf, whatever it is, that in
addition to what you give up, whatever money you would have spent on that, give
it away. If you spent $2.50 a day on coffee, put that away and after forty days
you are going to have $100 dollars and you can give to some charity. And I
invite you that if you are going to give something up that you also take
something on.
In the invitation to a holy lent
it talks about study and reading scripture. I invite you to take on some kind
of spiritual discipline, whether it be a prayer time, or it be reading
scripture, or perhaps if you have never done the Day by Day program you can do
that.
I also invite you to think of it
as being part of a community. This is a time when the church traditionally
prepared people for baptism, so I invite you to also be part of a community. We
have several different programs going on this year. We are going to be having
every Wednesday night the Stations of the Cross so you can come and reflect and
meditate on that. We are going to be having on Thursday evenings a soup supper
followed by an education program, where we are going to explore the nature of
forgiveness in terms of different cultures and religions.
(At this point the recording of the sermon ended.)
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