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All the really powerful stuff happens on a mountain. Have you ever noticed this? The Bible stories of encounters with God are almost always on a mountain. Oh, sure, there’s a burning bush and the River Jordan, but most of the other direct encounters with the divine take place where the oxygen is a little thinner and the clouds obscure our vision. It is there that some things are seen, but not seen, heard, but not really audible, known, but still mysterious.
The ancient Celtic tradition holds that heaven and earth are only three feet apart, just above the reach of our outstretched hands…and that the times we manage to reach a little higher, when the ground come up to extend our hands or heaven dips down in a little valley, those are “thin places” where we can come into contact with the holy, which resides all around us, all the time, but is more accessible in some places.
For the Hebrews, and the Greeks, and many other peoples of the Mediterranean area, mountains were automatically such places. Maybe they are for us, too, living as we do on the plains, in the flat areas. I remember vividly a ski trip to Colorado when I was in my teens. I had gotten to be a decent skier by that time and I veered off the trail, into the fresh powder and suddenly I was in the midst of a deep forest, just at the tree line. Now maybe it was the thin air, that always got to me when I visited. Maybe it was due to being out of breath, or tired. But there I had a clear sense of belonging to something much larger, a feeling that was not intimidating, but inspiring. I felt alive, full of potential and ability. Looking back, I attribute that to the space…to the spot I was standing. And I do because I have since had similar experiences, in different places, all of them what I would call “thin”.
Thin places are not necessarily tranquil or beautiful or even fun, though they can be. Disneyland is not a thin place…at least not for me. Nor are the streets of Manhattan, or any shopping mall. They can be a manufactured place like St. Peter’s Basilica or the Blue Mosque in Istanbul,but they can also be a soft sand beach or that special kind of spot in the forest. Or, in the case from our stories this morning, Mt. Sinai, or whatever mountain is depicted in this scene from Luke’s gospel, the transfiguration of Jesus.
Some of these natural places get marked with artificial structures, like the Iona Abbey in Scotland, or like the Church of the Transfiguration, which sits on a hill in Jerusalem, where tradition holds that these events took place. Personally, I don’t think this ever happened. At least not in what we call “real” life. This is a mythological story told to help the tellers of Jesus’ story get a point across. IT is a story about a “thin place”, designed to help the readers of Luke’s gospel, including you and me, understand the message of Jesus.
The story we call the “transfiguration” can really only be told when you know what comes before it and after it…when you try and understand why it is there. Just before the trip to the mountain, at the beginning of chapter 9, Jesus calls the disciples together and he gives them, as Luke writes, “power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal.” This is chapter 9, by the way, which means that they apparently haven’t had this explained to them in the previous 8 chapters. But perhaps Jesus is saying this to them because they haven’t owned up to it, they haven’t taken his hints, picked up on his suggestions, so he’s telling it to them as plainly as he can. So, here’s my paraphrased version of speech #1: OK, guys– this is the deal. You are here to heal people, to release them from the demons that plague them, to release yourself from the demons that plague you and to do that you need to be willing to be vulnerable. You need to be willing to walk off into the wilderness with no extra protection, no weapon, no covering for the rain, no stockpile of food. You should be ready to encounter resistance and even hostility, which you should respond to with love and compassion. Welcome everyone, even those who do not welcome you. Ready? Off they go, the story says, bringing the good news and curing diseases everywhere.
But as soon as a different kind of problem arises, the disciples panic. 5000 gathered, not enough food, and they freak out. And in speech #2, which is really more of an example than a speech, Jesus shows them about trusting in the values he’s trying to teach them. It’s not enough to be generous, trust in generosity. It’s not enough to be kind, trust in kindness.
And then Peter, which is often the case in the gospels, Peter kind of blows it. Once, Luke writes, when Jesus was praying alone, with only the disciples near him, he asked them, “Who do the crowds say that I am?” They answered, “John the Baptist; but others, Elijah; and still others, that one of the ancient prophets has arisen.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered, “The “Anointed One”, the Messiah of God.” And Jesus sternly orders them to not repeat that, and to be aware that he is going to undergo great suffering and torture at the hands of the authorities…this does not end the way that you think it will. Speech #3.
Perhaps this is why the mountain visit happens. Maybe it’s all a dream in Peter’s head. Maybe it is the interaction of humanity and divinity, but whatever the case, it is another try to get across the message of Jesus, at least according to Luke. It is another way, not the direct way, not the way of example, not the way that rejects labels and tries to evoke a paradigm shift, but the poet’s way of dealing out the truth…what Emily Dickinson would call, “telling it slant.”
It is tempting to think of Jesus transformed, transfigured, as him becoming something else…the divinity placed upon him instead of revealed in him. But that light comes from him, as if it were already in him, and when we, like Peter, miss the point and just get caught up in the laser light show, the story of the transfiguration can become a story just about Jesus, which softens it, I think. Peter is not meant to be the one we mimic, for the work of Jesus in the chapters before this is to teach his disciples about themselves, to keep them from playing the game of putting on a mask, taking on a role…or from putting masks, or labels, or titles, on him. But Peter can’t look within, or he’s unwilling to. He is always looking at Jesus, always trying to make him something that he is not, always partially in denial, until the moment of truth, when he also cannot be honest about himself and denies even knowing Jesus.
Peter is so worried about what Jesus is supposed to be, what he is supposed to be, that he cannot see what Jesus is, or what he is. And the same, I think is true of Peter’s vision of himself. Maybe that’s true for us as well. For the good news is clear – we are children of God, beloved by God and accepted by God. There is no “in” or “out”, we are all “in.” And when we accept that, for ourselves and everyone else, well, we transform the world. That’s it.
Yesterday we held a celebration for the life of Dorothy Ann McKee. I mentioned in her eulogy that standing at her bedside in the last few moments of her life on earth, that was a “thin place”, a reminder that God is not so far away and that whatever we imagine heaven to be – gold streets, peace and tranquility, the warm, steady presence of unconditional love…it lies just a few feet above our heads…we are right next to it.
That may have been made more true because it was Dorothy we were saying goodbye to…Dorothy, who modeled more than anyone the simple gospel, that everyone was welcome. There are some who would have labeled Dorothy “disabled” or “developmentally slow” or even uglier words, but I wonder, if her “disability” was to welcome all, and to simply accept people as they are, then perhaps our abilities are not all they are cracked up to be. I know that when I was with it enough to witness that happening in Dorothy, that I was struck a little, maybe even shamed, about my own distinctions. It was another kind of “thin place”, where I was ushered in to the presence of God that, as Fred Craddock used to say, “is what everyone wants and no one wants.”
Our lives are thick. The veil between us and the divine often heavy and opaque, clouded by deadlines or squabbles, finances and ideology. And, like Peter, we get hung up on the wrong things, paying attention to the light in someone else, but ignoring the light in us. Or, like Moses, we veil it…try to hold onto it like it’s a finite resource. Or, and perhaps this is most critical, we try to stay on that mountain, at that “thin place” instead of more deeply understanding the lesson of how close heaven and earth may actually be….the lesson that figures into the last part of the story, where Jesus, no longer radiating a laser light show, goes back into the village and cares for a sick child. This is what the messiah is…this is what the “anointed one” does. There are no conquering armies, no inversion of the power pyramid…just love. Wasteful, foolish love without exceptions. And that, my friends, is heaven…and it lies three feet above our heads. All the time.
That is what we feast on this morning…at this table, where everyone is welcome. No exceptions.
Come and eat.