Sermon: "Peace Be With You"

The Rev. Maureen Frescott

Congregational Church of Amherst, UCC

April 3, 2016 – Second Sunday of Easter

Acts 5:27-32; John 20:19-31

“Peace Be With You”

By a show of hands,

how many of you have never experienced doubt in your life?

How many of you have never doubted your faith?

Have never doubted yourself?

Have never doubted other people –

their words, their abilities, their sincerity?

Now, take a look around the room and see how many hands are up.

I wanted to get that out of the way before we take poor Thomas to task for expressing doubt when he was told that Jesus had risen from the dead.

I always say that Thomas got a bum rap.

For some reason, he was not in the room when Jesus chose to walk through a locked door and show his resurrected self to the other disciples.

Perhaps they had sent Thomas out on a coffee run.

And it was just his bad luck to be stuck standing in line waiting to order 11 Grande Mocha Lattes while Jesus was making an appearance back at the disciples hideout.

And they were hiding out.

They were hiding because they were living in fear for their lives.

After Jesus was arrested and executed they were convinced that they would be next.

And they continued to hide even though Mary Magdalene had come to them that very morning – waking them up in the wee hours before dawn and babbling on about an empty tomb and a man who appeared in the garden claiming to be Jesus returned to life.

If the disciples did not doubt Mary’s story they wouldn’t have been cowering in a locked room. They’d be out telling the world.

Some of them had even poked their heads into the empty tomb themselves – yet still, they were swimming in doubt, and consumed with fear.

It took Jesus standing before them, showing them the holes in his body,

to get them to believe.

So lets not pile on poor Thomas.

He only wanted to see what the others had seen.

They all doubted –

and they all needed to see for themselves before they believed.

We all doubt.  It’s a natural part of being human.

It’s a byproduct of our being finite, limited creatures who can’t possibly know everything or know it with certainty.

Doubt is normal.

It’s what grows out of our doubt that gets us into trouble.

Doubt is healthy when it leads to questions that expand our understanding of the world we live in, our understanding of ourselves,

our understanding of God.

But doubt can be harmful when it leads us to question our self-worth,

when it leads us to distrust and disconnect from others,

when it has us cowering in fear, rather than opening ourselves to experiences that ultimately help us to grow.

The kind of doubt that Thomas experienced is often lifted up as the kind we should strive to avoid, because it’s said to be rooted in his stubborn refusal to accept on faith alone something that he did not witness himself.

Now there are plenty of things that we believe to be true in life even though we have not witnessed the evidence of it ourselves.

We may never have seen an emu in Australia, or a pygmy monkey in the Amazon, or a moose here in NH, but we believe they exist because others have seen them.

I once went on a whale watching excursion off the coast of cape cod. Before we even made it out to sea, I got so sea sick I had to spend the rest of the trip hanging onto the side of the boat forcing myself to look at the horizon.   

I never saw a single whale, but judging from the shouts of joy, and oohs and ahs coming from the other side of the boat, I had to take it on faith that there were whales out there and that they were putting on quite a show.

But believing someone when they say they saw a whale and believing them when they say they witnessed a resurrection is not quite the same thing. 

On the scale of believability, they’re on opposite ends of the spectrum.

So why is it that we’re so quick to judge Thomas when he said he would only believe it to be true if he saw the risen Christ with his own eyes, and touched him with his own hands?

I propose our rush to judgment has less to do with what was going on in that locked room, and more to do with what’s going on in our own hearts.

Too often we tell ourselves that certainty is the key to a successful, happy, and faithful life – and doubt is a sign of weakness.

We tend to admire those who exude the confidence of certainty – in themselves, in their work, in their beliefs.

A good number of us are drawn to leaders and politicians who proclaim with certainty that THEY have the solutions to solve the problems of our world.

And when it comes to religious convictions, we have no shortage of faith traditions that are built on certainty – that require strict adherence to doctrines of belief and behavior -  handed down by a God who threatens to punish us if we waver in any way.

As we’ve said, doubt can arise from fear,

But it can be said that our need for certainty arises from fear as well.

The fear of not having all the answers.

The fear of being wrong.

The fear of not feeling safe and secure.

The fear of the chaos and the messiness that can result when we can’t put everything neatly in a box, label it, and file it away in an organized and ordered system of belief.

Life is so much easier when we’re handed a script to follow.

One that tells us step by step how to find a fulfilling career,

how to have a happy marriage, how to get our kids into a good school,

how to have a successful life.

One that spells out the religious doctrine we must adhere to experience prosperity, to get into heaven, to avoid being cast out of God’s grace.

In a world built on certainty, doubt is a dangerous thing.

Because it can lead to cracks in the foundation.

And when one certainty is stacked upon another, any wavering in the supporting beliefs can cause the whole structure to come crashing down.

Jesus did not reprimand Thomas for doubting.

He didn’t reprimand any of his disciples because they didn’t truly believe until they saw him with their own eyes.

Instead he said to them, “Did you believe because you saw me?

Blessed are those who believe without seeing.”

This was not a reprimand, but a blessing.

A blessing that they were to carry to those who would come later.

Those who would never see the living Jesus or the risen Christ,  

yet would still come to live out the gospel in the world,

because of what they learned and witnessed from the disciples themselves.

When Jesus appeared before his disciples – both with and without Thomas – he entered the room saying, “Peace be with you.”

He did not ask them why they had scattered to the wind the night he was arrested in the garden.

He didn’t scold them for denying even knowing him.

He didn’t question why they were still hiding behind a locked door,

even after he had sent Mary to tell them what she had seen.

“Peace be with you,” he said.

Be at peace with your weakness and fear.

Be at peace with your guilt and your shame.

Be at peace with your uncertainty and doubt.

See and believe, and then tell others and help them to believe as well,

by being living examples of God’s presence in the world.

How many of us are not at peace because we fear we’re lacking in some way?

Because we failed at something.

Because we wish we’d made better choices in life.

Because we struggle to believe – in God, in humanity, in ourselves…..

and everyone around us seems so confident and so self-assured in what they do and what they say and what they believe.

This kind of internal doubt that many of feel even has a name.

It’s called Imposter Syndrome.

It’s the feeling that we’re not as good, or as smart, or as worthy of love as others seem to be.

It’s the belief that any accolades or praise we receive is not earned,

because underneath it all we’re a fraud.

We’ve fooled people into believing we’re competent and confident,

when in reality we’re riddled with doubt and uncertainty.

Psychological research done in the early 1980s estimated that two out of five successful people consider themselves to be frauds and other studies have found that 70 percent of all people feel like impostors at one time or another.

It’s suspected that Albert Einstein might have suffered from Imposter Syndrome.  

A month before his death, he reportedly confided in a friend, and said:

"The exaggerated esteem in which my lifework is held makes me very ill at ease. I feel compelled to think of myself as an involuntary swindler.”

Doubt is a normal, and essential part of being human.

It leads us to question our assumptions and expand our understanding of the world.

Doubting our faith, and doubting ourselves also seems to be an unavoidable part of our human condition, despite our desire for certainty in all things.

Thankfully, Jesus chose Thomas to stand as a timeless example of someone who doubted and yet still was not judged or rejected for seeking to believe.

“Peace be with you,” Jesus said.

Blessed are those who will see your example and come to believe in their hearts.

Go now, and tell the world what you have heard and seen.

And let God take care of the rest.

Thanks be to God, and Amen. 

Easter Sunrise Sermon: "Why Are You Weeping?"

 

The Rev. Maureen Frescott

Congregational Church of Amherst, UCC

Easter Sunrise Service – 3-27-16

John 20:1-18

“Why Are You Weeping?”

We don’t expect to find life in a graveyard.

If you wander through the Old Burying Ground behind the town hall,

or through Meadow View Cemetery just up the road on Foundry St,

you’ll find gravestones dating back to the 1700’s.

You’ll see names like Davis, Brown, Gordon, and Atherton.

Names that were once prominent here in Amherst back in the days when people rode horses and buggies to church, and stealing a neighbor’s chicken would get you tied to the whipping post here on the village green.

In these now silent graveyards you’ll find names of local war heroes –

like Lt. Archelaus Batchelder – 1^st Lt. in the 27^th Continental infantry,

who was born in 1744 and lived to the ripe old age of 80,

but who would always be known as a soldier of the revolution.

And you’ll find names of those who never had a chance to make their mark on the world – like little Sally Bradley, born in 1792 and buried in October 1793; aged 15 months & 4 days.

You’ll also find colorful characters like Col. Nahum Baldwin, buried in 1788. 

He was a church deacon and town selectman who was rumored to have escaped from the grasp of a hatchet wielding Indian by shimmying out of his long underwear and running naked for 12 miles across the countryside.

The epitaph on Baldwin’s gravestone reads:

Blessed is the memory of the just,

Though they be sleeping in the dust.

We don’t expect to find life in a graveyard,

but the names etched on those aging gravestones each carry a story of a life –

a life given, a life lived, and a life taken away.

Today these centuries old graves are still tended and cared for,

and marked on occasion with flowers or American flags,

even though the weeping mourners who once stood around them have long been dead themselves.

It used to be that we buried our dead right in the center of town.

Where life continued on around them. 

Where families would spread picnic lunches across their loved one’s grave and include them in the festivities.

Here in Amherst our dearly departed are given a front row seat to 4^th of July parades, summer concerts, Easter Egg hunts, wedding processions, and town business meetings.

(because even when you’re dead, there’s no escape from the mundane.)

But still - we don’t expect to find life in a graveyard.

Especially in the early days of our grief, when the pain is still fresh.

When the line between life and death is still a blur.

When the person we’ve lost is still very much alive in our mind and we can’t fathom how and why it is that we can no longer reach out and touch them – or hear the sound of their voice –

or see them coming through the door at the end of the day.

The Easter story is about the blurring of that line –

the line between life and death.

The point where, what once was here - and then was not here,

emerges in front of us yet again.

When Mary Magdalene came into the garden where Jesus had been laid to rest she didn’t expect to find life.

The previous 48-hours had been filled with the overwhelming heaviness of death and grief.

Which may be why she came into the garden under the cover of darkness, before the sun had risen.

Her grief wasn’t ready to be exposed to the harshness of the light of day just yet.

I imagine she felt her way along the darkened path, possibly by memory,

or by sheer will, feeling the pull of the one she loved,

whose lifeless body now rested behind a burial stone…

sealed in an earthen tomb, out of her sight, and out of her reach.

Mary was prepared to find death.

She was not prepared for what she found in its place.

We can only imagine how we might react if we came to visit our loved one’s grave only to discover that the dirt has been removed and the coffin has been opened, revealing it to be empty inside.

Our first reaction might be the same as Mary’s.

“Where have they taken our beloved, and why?”

And our second reaction might mirror Mary’s as well.

Mary wept.

She stood outside the tomb and she wept for her loss.  

All over again.

But the Easter story does not end with Mary weeping,

and our stories don’t end there either.

The sunrise reveals the empty tomb.

Standing there as a beacon of hope.

For Mary, hope came in the form of an angel, and a gardener.

Both of whom said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?”

The gardener of course turned out to be Jesus.

Standing upright and alive right in front of her.

Showing her that death was not the ending she thought it to be.

That death did not have the final word.

The hope that Mary found on that day is there for us as well.

The hope built on the belief – the knowing - that in God’s world every death leads to a resurrection.

Now....if the idea of a literal bodily resurrection in some heavenly realm or on some far off Day of Reckoning is too far-fetched, or too ethereal for you to conceive of, then lets bring the story back down here to earth.

Think about all the little and not so little deaths and resurrections we experience every day.

When we lose something that we’ve built our life around.

Our job, our home, our sense of security, our dream for something better.

When we have to let go of something that is slowly killing us.

Our anger, our addiction, our obsession with having and doing more,

our attachment to whatever or whoever makes us feel hollow and wounded inside.

Whether something is taken from us,

or we courageously let it go –

the loss - the death - we feel in its wake is never final.

Something always grows in its place.

This is where the Easter Story resonates with us.

The Easter story is about the grief of letting go

and the joy of discovering something new.

It is in our grief – in the midst of our loss –

that God leads us into the garden – into the graveyard –

and shows us that life can indeed be found there.

Jesus is the embodiment of God’s love, compassion, mercy, and grace.

The life he lived on this earth was meant to show us that we human beings are capable of being so much better than we are.

And in a world that seems bent on spinning off in the other direction –

prodding us to give in to the lure of fear, ignorance, hatred, and prejudice,

we could do with a resurrection right about now. 

Some hope born anew right before our eyes.

The Resurrection is what drove Mary to risk her reputation and her pride and run and tell the disciples that Jesus still lived.

The Resurrection is what drove the disciples to risk their livelihood and their lives to spread the Good News of God’s unconditional love in the world.

The Resurrection is what has inspired people of faith throughout the centuries to do the same.

It inspired our Congregationalist forbearers – many of whom are buried in these graveyards - to fight against tyranny, oppression, and injustice in all forms, 

to work for the abolition of slavery and to march for civil rights for all,

to speak out about the hypocrisy of a faith that preaches ‘love thy neighbor’ while denying equal access to all at God’s table.

We don’t expect to find life in a graveyard.

But every year the Easter Story reminds us just how possible it is.

Thanks be to God and Amen.

Sermon: "It's Not Fair!"

Rev. Maureen Frescott

Congregational Church of Amherst, UCC

March 6, 2016 – Fourth Sunday in Lent

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

“It’s Not Fair!”

Cain and Abel. Jacob and Esau.

Isaac and Ishmael. Moses and Aaron.

The Hebrew Bible is full of stories of sibling rivalry – brothers who fought over birthright, inheritance, and who was truly the favored one.

Joseph’s brothers threw him in a ditch and sold him into slavery.

And when the prophet Samuel lined up the son’s of Jesse to choose Israel’s next King, he went down the line and rejected every single one of them except for the youngest, a small boy named David who was barely old enough to tend the sheep…leaving David’s brothers incensed because an inexperienced child had been chosen over them.

Often when we read the ancient stories in our Old and New Testaments – with their emphasis on shepherds and Pharisees and obscure religious laws - we have to perform some mental gymnastics to tease out a meaning that we can relate to our own lives, here in our modern world.

But the story of the Prodigal Son is one we can relate to in any time.

It’s a story of rejection, and resentment, and reconciliation.

In this story of a father and his two sons we have the story of our human condition. 

Our desire to love, our desire to be loved,

and our fear that there isn’t enough love to go around.

Those of us who have siblings know first hand what it’s like to compete for love, attention, and favor.

Regardless of where we fall in the birth order, most of us have at one time or another felt like we were not getting our fair share, or that someone else was getting more than they deserved – whether we’re talking about the size of a piece of birthday cake, financial support in times of need, or the praise or approval of our mother or father that we so long to have.

As many of you know, I have nine siblings.

In a family with ten children, it’s almost a given that someone is going to feel slighted in some way or another at any given time.

My younger brother Larry and I just missed out on being “Irish Twins”  - we were born just over a year apart. I was number nine and he was number ten. Which means he had quickly and permanently stolen my thunder as the baby in the family.

We were rivals from the beginning.

When Larry was 2 and I was 3, my mother plopped him down on the living room floor in front of the TV to keep him quiet for 5 minutes while she went to fold the laundry.

And I seized upon the opportunity to grab a large can of cookies off the kitchen table…and sneak up behind Larry and drop it on his head.

In the ensuing years, my poor mother heard a chorus of “It’s not fair!” coming from one or both of us, nearly every waking hour.

We’d scrutinize everything from how much cereal we each had poured in our bowls, to who got control of the TV after school, to who got more of my mother’s very limited attention. 

And like any competitive sibling, I would delight whenever Larry got into trouble. The sight of him running down the driveway with my mother quick on his heels swatting at him with the back of her giant hairbrush brought tears of joy to my eyes.

Of course I rarely took into account that in addition to me, poor Larry had our three older brothers to contend with. Unlike my sisters, my brothers were masters of torment. There was the time they woke Larry up really early on a Sunday morning and convinced him that he was late for school. He had his school uniform on and was half way out the door before he caught on.

When we have siblings we learn at an early age that we are not the center of the universe.

But as children with or without siblings, we’re all taught that it’s in our best interest to share with others, despite the resentment we may feel when someone takes or receives what we think rightfully belongs to us.

Still, it may surprise us to hear that studies of young children have shown that human beings are more naturally inclined to be altruistic than selfish.

Studies of 18-month-old toddlers show that they will almost always try to help someone who is visibly struggling with a task, without being asked to do so: if someone is reaching for something, the toddler will try to hand it to them, or if they see someone drop something accidentally, they will pick it up and hand it back.

Another study found that 3- to 5-year-olds who are rewarded with stickers or candy for performing a task with a partner, tend to give a greater share of the reward to their partner if the partner has done more work — again, without being asked — and even if it means they get to keep less for themselves.

So perhaps our inborn inclination to cry, “It’s not fair!” has less to do with our selfishness, and more to do with our sense of equity.

We don’t want more than our fair share, we just want each of us to be given what we feel is deserved.         Unfortunately, our perception of what is deserved and what is not deserved is not always accurate.

The fear that the resources and rewards of life are out of balance or unfairly distributed is what lies behind most of our human conflicts – both on a personal and communal scale.

And it’s this fear of imbalance that weaves its way through Jesus’ story of the Prodigal Son.

One son – the younger son - demands his inheritance be given to him while his father is still alive.           

Jesus doesn’t tell us why.

We might assume that the younger son is just itching to get away, and he needs money to do it.

Perhaps he’s bored with life on the farm, or he has no desire to be a part of the family business, or he’s tired of being compared to his hard-working older brother and being made to feel like a disappointment in life.

Whatever the reason, the younger son takes his inheritance, runs off to a faraway land and squanders it all on dissolute living – which is meant to suggest he spent it all on partying, prostitutes, and other primal pleasures. 

When his money is gone and a famine spreads over the land, the younger son takes a job feeding pigs, and winds up envying not just the pigs for their slop, but the slaves back on his father’s farm.

So he concocts a plan – He will return to his father with his head hung low and spouting a well-rehearsed plea for forgiveness.

What happens next may surprise some -

when the father runs out to meet his Prodigal Son and wraps his arms around him in welcome.

It may not be surprising it you’re a parent of a child who has messed up on occasion – either in small ways or big ways.

We don’t stop loving our children – or stop welcoming them home with open arms– just because they’ve made bad choices in life.

But the father’s exuberant welcome may be surprising if we’ve ever had someone in our life who habitually makes bad choices, and never seems to learn from the consequences.

A child, a sibling, a parent, a spouse, a friend – Someone who always seems to need help out of a jam, mostly of their own making.

Someone who hangs out with the wrong crowd, or runs from responsibility, or who doesn’t have enough self control to stop spending all their money on frivolous things or taking unnecessary risks in life.

Someone who habitually lies, cheats, or never seems to get the message that if they keep putting harmful substances in their body they’re going to destroy their lives, and the lives of those around them.

Even if we understand the trappings of behavior disorders, mental illness, and addiction, when it latches onto someone we love we can’t avoid getting caught up in trail of sorrow and pain that it leaves behind.

We all have our breaking points.

The point where the Prodigal Son returns home pleading for forgiveness, for the umpteenth time, and we’re fresh out of compassion and sympathy.

Those of us who have experienced that breaking point, may identify more with the older brother in the story than the father.

Especially when it’s obvious that the younger brother is not sincere in his show of remorse.

He’s only come home because he’s run out of money and he’s hungry.

Yet the father still insists on greeting him with robes and rings and throwing a party in his honor.

Even as toddlers we seem to innately know, this is not fair.

So what point is Jesus trying to make with this parable?

Traditionally, we’re apt to see the father in this story as representing God, and we are the Prodigal Son.

God loves us and welcomes us home, no matter what we’ve done.

And no matter how many times we come seeking forgiveness, it’s always ours for the taking.

In this interpretation, we are the older brother as well.

When we hold on to judgment and spite.

When we’re overly concerned with getting rewarded for our right behavior, and seeing others punished for wrong behavior.

When we believe that our father’s love – God’s love – is limited and there’s only so much to go around, and we become resentful when that love is given to those we believe are unworthy, because it means there’s less for those of us who have rightfully earned it.

But perhaps this story that Jesus tells us about fathers and sons in not just an allegory about our relationship with God and how we encounter God’s love….perhaps it was also meant to be about the relationships we build with each other – and the love that we feel or withhold from one another - as well.

One might say all three characters in the story have lost something.

The father has lost both his sons – one to rejection, and one to resentment.

The son who walked away has lost his home and sense of belonging.

The son who stayed has lost his trust in the fairness of life and the breadth of his father’s love.

Many of us have been on all sides of this relationship at some point in our lives.

We’ve been the one to turn our back in anger on someone who has hurt us.

We’ve been the one who has done the hurting, and at some point we’ve had to reconcile our wrongdoing and ask for forgiveness.

We’ve been the one who continues to offer forgiveness to those we love, regardless of how many times it has been asked for and offered, and how many times our trust has been betrayed.

We do this because God created us as relational beings.

We long to live in relation to one another – to be connected to one another, but we struggle with those relationships because human love, unlike divine love, is not limitless and it is not unconditional.

We mess up. We reject love and we withhold love in response to pain.

We resent those whom we judge to have not earned the rewards they’ve been given.

We feel compelled to take and hold onto more than our fair share, out of fear that there won’t be enough to go around.

Thus we live in a constant state of reconciliation.

We hurt one another, we seek forgiveness and grace, we offer forgiveness and grace.

We turn away, and we turn back.  We turn away, and we turn back.

This is the dance we do with one another.

As siblings, as parents and children, as spouses, as friends, as members of a community, as citizens of this world.

But reconciliation can’t happen unless both parties participate.  

With each taking a step towards the other.

It involves a willingness to swallow our pride and return home, and a willingness to leave the door open for the one who seeks to return.

This is the challenge that Christ has given us in the story of the Prodigal Son.

The challenge to be as generous with our love and our grace towards one another, as God is with us.

We won’t always get it right – and we’re not expected to.

But amazing Grace, how sweet it sounds, when we do.

Thanks be to God.

Sermon: "Climbing Everest"

The Rev. Maureen Frescott

Congregational Church of Amherst, UCC

February 7, 2016 – Transfiguration Sunday

Exodus 34:29-35; Luke 9:28-36

“Climbing Everest”

The summit of Mt. Everest is 29,000 feet above sea level.

This majestic peak has long stood as a challenge for us as human beings as we strive to see how far, how fast, and how high we can go. 

But climbing earth’s highest mountain is not a matter of simply starting at the bottom and climbing straight to the top.

The trek to the summit requires arctic climbing gear, oxygen tanks, and multiple ascents and descents to allow the climber’s bodies to adjust to the thinning air.  The entire trek can take six to nine weeks.

The first week is spent hiking to the Base Camp located at 17,000 feet above sea level.

After a few days, climbers then ascend to Camp One at 20,000 feet.

But first they must cross the Ice Fall – a huge expanse of sheer ice cliffs and crevasses some of which can only be crossed by doing a tightrope walk across narrow metal ladders laid precariously over gaping holes in the ice and snow.  

Once the climbers reach Camp One the ordeal is not over, because they must then turn around and descend back down to Base Camp,

crossing the ice falls yet again.

Climbers spend three to four weeks yo-yoing up and down the mountain between Base Camp and Camps One, Two, and Three, which takes them to 22,000 feet, some 7,000 feet below the summit.

This constant ascending and descending is necessary to allow the brain, heart, and lungs to adapt to functioning with less oxygen and to prevent altitude sickness. Pounding headaches, disorientation, blindness, and death can result if a climber pushes himself higher then his body is prepared to go.

Once a climber is acclimated to Camp Three, the push is made to Camp Four, located in the area of Everest known as the Death Zone.

This is where the atmosphere thins to next to nothing. 

It’s only 3,000 feet to the summit, but more climbers die here than on any other place on the mountain.

Here the combination of low oxygen supplies and having the summit within sight can result in poor decision-making.

Climbers have only a small window of time to make it to the summit at this point.

Even in ideal conditions, it typically takes hours to climb only a few hundred feet and wind and severe weather can swoop in and close the window of opportunity at any moment, sometimes for good.  

The summiting season on Everest is only open for two months out of the year, in the spring.  If you don’t make it before the storms move in, you have no choice but to turn around and try again next year.  

With each climber paying $45,000-$100,000 per attempt, it’s understandable why many are reluctant to give up before the goal is reached.

In May of 1996, the yearly window of opportunity was closing fast, when several teams of climbers were approaching the summit.

A storm was moving in and the climbers were told that if they didn’t summit by 2 p.m. that day, they were to turn around and go back.  

Their climb of Everest was over.

At 2:00 the weather was clear, the summit was within sight, and the climbers ignored the warning.  

At 4:00, teams were still summiting when the storm hit.

Hurricane force winds and white out conditions made it nearly impossible for the climbers to find their back down to Camp Four, and rescues at that altitude, even in good weather, are not even attempted.

Twelve climbers lost their lives that day.

And now, twenty years later their bodies remain on the mountain – frozen in time. Serving as ghoulish reminders of our human fragility, to those who dare to risk it all to stand on the top of the world.

The summit of Mount Sinai stands at 7,500 feet above sea level –

only ¼ of the size of Everest.

But for Moses this was highest place that humans could hope to reach – to come face to face with the presence of God. 

On his trek up the mountain, Moses didn’t carry a 40 lb pack and an oxygen tank, like our Everest climbers, but he did carry with him the burden of knowing that he and his people had disappointed God.

His people had built a golden calf, and they worshiped it in place of God, because they had given up hope that they would ever find their way out of the wilderness.

And Moses, in his anger at their lack of faith, had taken the tablets that God had given him and smashed them on the ground.

God’s sacred law written in God’s own hand, now lay in a thousand dusty pieces at the foot of Mount Sinai.

But this God whom the people saw as a punishing God was also a forgiving God.

And Moses returned from the mountaintop with a fresh set of tablets and a brand new covenant – a promise that God would never leave them, if they promised to never leave God.

Moses took another souvenir with him from that encounter – a divine glow that burned his skin and made his face shine – not unlike those of us who have stood on top of snow capped mountains where the wind and the sun redden our cheeks as we move ourselves closer to God.

From Moses, we fast-forward over a thousand years and we find Peter, James, and John following Jesus up yet another mountain.

The burden they carry is the growing fear that they have no idea who this man is that they are following.

Their heads are spinning from all they have witnessed in the previous weeks.

Jesus healed the sick. He brought the dead back to life.

He fed 5000 people with just 5 loaves of bread.

Then he told them that he was NOT the messiah they had expected,

Instead he was destined to endure great suffering and be killed, and on the third day he would rise again.

Who was this man they were following and why were they following him?

Nothing he did or said made sense any more. 

But when they reached the summit Jesus stopped to pray and they saw his face change right before their eyes.

He began to glow with a blinding light….and their eyes grew heavy with sleep.  Suddenly Moses and Elijah were there.

And the voice of God said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”

Now when we hear these stories of encounters with God that resulted in glowing faces and Transfigurations we may wonder if Moses and the disciples were not suffering from altitude sickness themselves.

It may be hard for us to read these ancient texts and sift out a meaning that is applicable to our lives today.

But who among us hasn’t wanted to find a way to move closer to God?

Who hasn’t climbed a mountain, or hiked into a forest, or sailed out on the ocean, or looked towards the heavens, hoping to encounter God?

We often talk about finding God in the mountaintop experiences – as if God can only be found in the thin places, in the holy places, in the quiet and faraway places that require physical effort or intense spiritual focus to reach.

We also talk about finding God in the valley experiences –

How it’s all well and good for Peter to want to linger on the mountaintop, building a dwelling to remember the moment, but as Christians we have real work to do down below.

After all, Christ doesn’t want us to be transfixed by the dazzling white of his robes, instead he calls us to roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty, by doing the work of the church.

The problem we encounter when talking about the Transfiguration in either of these ways is that they both can make us feel pretty inadequate – as Christians and as human beings.

Perhaps because we don’t feel holy enough or focused enough or spiritual enough to have a mountaintop experience – to encounter God in the thin places – the sacred places.

Or conversely, perhaps we’ve grown weary of feeling like we’re not doing enough work to please God, because for as much as we do, we’re always being reminded that we’re not spending enough time in the valley getting our hands dirty in service to others.  

This is the byproduct of the Puritan work ethic and sense of righteousness that we’ve inherited from our Congregationalist forbearers -  the belief that unless we’re toiling away in the trenches during the week and presenting ourselves spit shined and spotless on Sunday morn, we’re not earning God’s favor.

The truth is, God encounters us – and we encounter  God - wherever we are in whatever we’re doing.

In our mountaintop experiences – our joys, our celebrations, our accomplishments, our spiritual awakenings.

In our valley experiences – our suffering, our grief, our illness, our addictions, our fall flat on our face failings.

And every point in between – in the grocery store, when we’re stuck in traffic, when we’re surfing the internet, when we’re having lunch with a friend, when we’re standing in a voting booth.

God is with us, always. 

The high places and the holy places may have fewer of the distractions that keep us from noticing God.

And the low places and the sorrowful places may have more of the emotional upheaval that pushes us to look for God.

But God is all around us - and with us - no matter where we are.

Guiding us, inspiring us, speaking to us, listening to us.

I want to share a mountaintop experience that I once had.

It happened on Watchusett Mountain in MA in July of 1997.

I was in a 50-mile bike race that included 4 laps of the lower hills before the road took a hard left and headed up the mountain in a series of increasingly steep switchbacks. 

As a bike racer, I was a sprinter, not a hill climber.

I grew up on Long Island where the steepest hills I encountered were the overpasses on the Long Island Expressway.

On Watchusett Mountain I was undertrained, overgeared, and out of breath. 

It took every ounce of my strength, my will, my being just to turn the pedals over.  And I knew if I stopped pedaling for even a second, I would tip right over and never get going again. 

Thankfully, there were spectators stationed at every switchback, who clapped their hands and urged me on, “You’re almost there!” they shouted.

“The finish is just around the bend!”

They lied.

Over and over again, I rounded each corner only to find yet another switchback and the road going up and up and up.

So I made a deal with God.

I said, “God, just get me to the top of this mountain and I promise I will go back to church.”

Well, I made it to the top of the mountain and I finished the race.

But I didn’t go back to church.  

I was much too busy for that. 

A year later, in July 1998, in that same race, I crashed my bike while going downhill - and broke my pelvis.

THEN I went back to church.

We don’t have to reach the summit to have a mountaintop experience.

And when we’re gasping for air –

thinking that God will be there if we can only reach the top –

or that God will reward us if we can manage to pick ourselves up off the ground – we need only think of Peter, James, and John

as they watched Jesus be transformed in the presence of God. 

All Jesus did was pray.

He had to take his disciples up the mountain,

and away from all the distractions to get them to take notice,

but all it took was the act of prayer for them to see his face begin to change, and to hear the voice of God say, “This is my son, listen to him.”

Jesus was transformed by God – Moses was transformed by God.

And those of us who stand by as witnesses are transformed as well.

Not through their encounters, but through our own. 

I leave you with this prayer, written by Catholic monk and mystic, Thomas Merton:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.

I do not see the road ahead of me.

I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself,

and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.

And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing.

Thanks be to God and Amen.