"The Mountain Bottom Experience"

Luke 9:28-43

²⁸Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. ²⁹And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. ³⁰Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. ³¹They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. ³²Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. ³³Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, "Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah" — not knowing what he said. ³⁴While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. ³⁵Then from the cloud came a voice that said, "This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!" ³⁶When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.

³⁷On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met Jesus. ³⁸Just then a man from the crowd shouted, "Teacher, I beg you to look at my son; he is my only child. ³⁹Suddenly a spirit seizes him, and all at once he shrieks. It convulses him until he foams at the mouth; it mauls him and will scarcely leave him. ⁴⁰I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they could not." ⁴¹Jesus answered, "You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you? Bring your son here." ⁴²While he was coming, the demon dashed him to the ground in convulsions. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the boy, and gave him back to his father. ⁴³And all were astounded at the greatness of God.

SERMON: “The Mountain Bottom Experience”

I once went on a pilgrimage of sorts to Italy.  I was living in rainy, freezing Belfast and decided I needed to be under that Tuscan sun myself for a week or so.  I most wanted to find where the author of that great book (Under the Tuscan Sun) lived, in the tiny village of Cortona.  I do realize that this sounds like international stalking, y’all.  But off I went. 

In Cortona, I asked people where Bramasole, her famous house, was, and they vaguely guestured, saying  “Up the hill, near the church.”  Armed with my copy of her book and a little paper bag of fresh, plump grapes from the market, I began my trek up the hill.  Cortona is a walled city, with steps going up the hill that seem to have been designed by giants in some forgotten time long ago.  But all along the way to Saint Margarita church, there were mosaic stations of the cross inserted into those walls, guiding me upwards.

At the top of the hill, I looked around and was overwhelmed.  Vineyards sprawled out in every direction, that Tuscan sun shone on my head and cypress trees dotted the landscape like never-sleeping sentinels.  Though I did eventually find my way to Bramasole thanks to a sweet old man (actually hitching a ride with him, which horrified my parents), that moment at the top of the hill was my mountain top experience.  God was as real as the warm, sweet grapes on my tongue.  As real as the crinkled eyes of a stranger as he smiled at me.  As real as the warmth of the sun painting the landscape, and me with it, gold.

We have all had moments like this: mountain top experiences that, whether we’re on a literal mountain or not, fill our souls to the brim with joy and light.  Moments when the existence and love of God is an undeniable reality. 

I like to think that’s how Peter was feeling when he was invited up on a mountain with Jesus and James and John.  Jesus often liked a little hiking with his praying, so Peter might have imagined this was just an ordinary trek. But then something extraordinary happened: Moses and Elijah came down from who-knows-where and those heroes of the Jewish faith were shining like lightning along with Jesus. 

You need only remember a few words of the Old Testament or the scene from Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark to remember what happens when people see God’s glory face to face.  It usually involves death. 

But here Pete was, seeing that glory without any veil and he was still breathing.  He became so excited that he started to sound like a Boy Scout trying to earn his mountain top camping badge: “Let’s pitch some tents, y’all, and just stay here!”  The language he used can also mean building a shrine.  Perhaps he wanted to stay there basking in that light, worshipping its brilliance for the rest of his days.

But Jesus never meant for his light to stay on that mountain top.  They came down the mountain and like a light switch being turned off, suddenly darkness was all around them.  The darkness of an overwhelming crowd of people.  An urgent voice rose above the rest, shouting, “Teacher!  Help my son!  Please.”  The child was seized with an evil spirit that caused convulsions.  This was, in that time, one way to describe epilepsy. 

The man had first asked the disciples to heal his son, but said, “They cannot.”

Jesus was not a happy camper.  He had just shown his disciples the unveiled glory of God, but it seems they left it there on that mountain top, not thinking it had any place in this needy crowd. 

But with Jesus came a new way of doing things.  The glory of God was no longer toted around in a golden-gilded box that no one could touch or see.  Jesus’ glory was at its brightest, its most illuminating, its most transfiguring, when it was in a place of darkness.  He healed that boy, just as he knew his disciples could do, and all were astounded at the greatness of God. 

As much as my mountain top experience in Italy means to me, it was not the most formative moment of my faith.  We like to think those moments of transfiguring light have the greatest impact on our souls, but in reality, it is the moments of darkness that most shape our faith. 

Moments of sitting with a loved one in a hospital room, where answers abandon us for uneasy silence and the only thing to do is wait, and pray.

Moments of questioning everything you’ve ever heard or believed about God because a great injustice occurs that could not be compatible with such a God. 

Moments of words spoken hastily in anger, instantly causing damage that takes years to repair.

These mountain bottom experiences, where the light of God seems most hard to find, are precisely where we can most be transfigured – transformed – by God’s glory. 

But only if we let them.  Only if we recognize that Jesus came down that mountain for a reason, and that he still chooses to enter into whatever darkness this life brings. 

And only if we recognize that Jesus calls us, like his first disciples, not to keep our faith safely contained in some moment of isolated perfection, but to bring it into those moments of anxiety and doubt, believing that the good news is every bit as real there as it is anywhere else.

If we never take the light of God’s glory into darkness, it ceases to be light at all, for us or anyone else.                                                                          

Helen Keller, a woman well accustomed to darkness, wrote a poem called “A Chant of Darkness”, speaking of the power of it to teach us the meaning of light.

I dare not ask why we are ‘reft of light, 


Banished to our solitary isles amid the unmeasured seas, 


Or how our sight was nurtured to glorious vision, 


To fade and vanish and leave us in the dark alone. 


The secret of God is upon our tabernacle; 


Into His mystery I dare not pry.

Only this I know: 
With Him is strength,

With Him is wisdom, 


And God’s wisdom hath set darkness in our paths. 


Out of the uncharted, unthinkable dark we came,


And in a little time we shall return again


Into the vast, unanswering dark.

The timid soul, fear-driven, shuns the dark; 


But upon the cheeks of him who must abide in shadow 


Breathes the wind of rushing angel-wings, 


And round him falls a light from unseen fires. 


Magical beams glow athwart the darkness; 


Paths of beauty wind through his black world 


To another world of light, 


Where no veil of sense shuts him out from Paradise.


Out of the uncharted, unthinkable dark we came, 


And in a little time we shall return again.

Do not fear the darkness at the bottom of the mountain…it may just be the place where you are able to most clearly see God’s light, and not only to see it, but to reflect the hope of that light to others.  Amen.