When I was a child in coastal Connecticut, in the town of Groton, one my favorite things to do was to pack a lunch and head to the woods surrounding our neighborhood.  I was a notorious daydreamer, documented by a school teacher in a notation on my report card in third grade.  I would cross the street, hike up the hill past the Haig’s house where in a winter like this one kids from our dead end street would slide down on a six-foot toboggan, up a steep rise into the glade and find the beech tree. Peeling a piece of bark and taking a deep sniff, I would stick it in my mouth, bite into, and imagine a mug of birch beer slaking my thirst.  Going past the abandoned shack which was commonly thought to be haunted or inhabited by witches, sometimes frequented by teenagers who were experimenting not with tree bark but tobacco, I would reach my destination: the Bread Loaf.  An outcropping of rocks, the Bread Loaf was two large boulders separated by about a five-foot gap, a space large enough to warrant a long pep talk to yourself before leaping across, but small enough that when you looked at the rocks with squinty eyes, you would swear that they were two big chunks of a loaf of bread.  Ascending the one from a low well that was perfect for shaping mud pies, I would scamper up, plop down criss-cross applesauce and for the hours in the woods, apart from the comforts of home, totally alone with my imagination and with God, I really felt as if I were on top of the world.  If I were to stand on my tiptoes and stretch my ten-year old body, why I think I could have almost kissed heaven.

I took Kari there the year before we moved to New England from Virginia,   It was a chance to show my sweetheart the haunts of my youth: Long Island Sound, Mystic Seaport, Abbott’s Lobster in the Rough in Noank, Faith Lutheran Church, and of course my house and the surrounding deep woods on Laurelwood Road.  To my surprise, at the end of the street, where the skating pond used to be, was a complex of office buildings barely beyond what I remembered was the vast expanse of land between the dead end and civilization.  And the dense woods I remembered were puny, with a few select birch trees and laurel trees, and not as far away from the houses as my boyhood eyes saw them.

Somehow the memories stored from my childhood were stronger than the reality of the visit with my young wife.  It was a shock at first, to realize that my perspective had been altered by a visit some twenty years after I had lived in Connecticut, that the town had turned from the Camelot of my youth to a rather drab town reeling from its untenable reliance on defense contracts to build nuclear submarines.

But another part of me still believes in the power of my imagination that provided a way to experience transcendence in the woods on Laurelwood Road, and that even today the veil to the glory of Christ can still be lifted even in my late forties.

The gospel story of Transfiguration is true.  It is an ancient story, but as real to me as you and I share space and time this morning.  Jesus gathered three of his closest friend and walked with them up to a high place, a place whose summit you could plop down and think, or if you stretched high enough you could kiss the heavens.  And Jesus, the rabbi who taught the ways of the kingdom, the healer who touched all sorts of unclean and ostracized on the edges of civilized society, the man who was famous for his growing association with sinners while offering so much promise to those who wanted to follow him, the carpenter’s son from Nazareth on that high mountain changed in appearance, so bright, pure and clean as you never saw before.  On that mountain, way up high, Jesus was holding conversation with other mountain men whose stories of glory are also true and shimmer to this day, Moses and Elijah. What were they talking about?  We don’t know.  But there they were.

Peter interrupted.  It was like being in the movie theater when the film breaks or all you fixate on is the old guy chomping popcorn.  He wrecked the moment!  Then the film started again, and more mystery, on that mountain touching the sky, a cloud maybe blown by the wind and a voice as deep as thunder, cracking like fire calling attention to the transfigured Jesus as “beloved Son”.  And then it all stopped.  And there was Jesus, just like he was before.

Which was the real Jesus, the one before and then after the moment on the mountain, or the one with Moses and Elijah and changed in appearance?  I think Jesus was himself throughout; it was only the perspective of the viewer that changed.  Whether visibly filled with glory in dazzling white, or leading the three Peter, James, and John down to “reality,” it was the same Jesus.

While this feast day gives us opportunity to praise God in the heights, to shout our Alleluias one last time, I also think the gospel story is a cautionary tale for the Peter in all of us.  There are those of us who identify God moments when we are all pumped up, when things are really going well, when we are at the top of our game.  And that may be well and good, that in those experiences of the summit, we are whole and well.  But in more ordinary moments, and in times of conflict and change, and in the face of threatening dangers, we might wonder where God went.  We might wonder where God is.  And like Peter, we would wish that we stayed on the mountain, close to God. 

Coming down the mountain into the days of Lent we might feel like a splash of cold water has been thrown into our faces.  We will be examining our limitations, our cruelties, and our failures.  Though the landscape may change from mountain to valley, I urge us all to continue to be open to God’s ever available presence.  We will be walking forty days, up and down, in the wilderness, and end up at Golgotha.  There we will be with Jesus again, this time alone and in agony.  Instead of purity and beauty, we will see him sweating and bleeding.  We will be reminded of our own call to faithfulness in the midst of the world’s own cruelty and injustices, and seek forgiveness for our own prejudice and hatred.  While we walk the ways of suffering and death, we will enter the story of our salvation once more, and as Jesus offers his dying breath, we will hear the truth, this time offered not by the voice in a cloud but by a soldier standing by whose perspective is worth repeating as he says “Truly this man was the Son of God.”

People at Christ the King: continue your daydreaming and celebrating today, and recognize Jesus for what he is.  When you come back on Wednesday for ashes, for self-examination and faced with reality, and throughout the days to come, continue to seek Jesus and proclaim him as Savior and friend.  Do not abandon your journey, your memories, or your hardships.  Honor all those who have been to the mountaintop, and those who have taken up the cross.    There is glory to be found in all those places.

Here on our mountain, here framed by the cross, and out there where there are also mountains and crosses to mark our days, we must seek to be transformed by God’s glory at the same time just beyond the pale way beyond and yet as near to us as the closest one in the pew, and the bread and wine of our feast, which accompanies our journeys up and down the mountain.

I.N.I.

| CtK Home | Back to Pastor's Page |

Christ the King Lutheran Church, 3 Lutheran Drive, Nashua, NH 03063 (603) 882-6142
If you have problems with this web page contact: webmaster@ctknashua.org