Down the Mountain

3 February 2008
Matthew 17:1-9 Matthew 5:1-12
Sermon by Carrie Eikler
Transfiguration Sunday

Some years ago during the Muslim holiday of Idd, a woman named Mrs. Mutahi who lived in the poorer part of Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, had some friends over for a lunch party. When her guests left, she got busy clearing dishes and throwing the trash in the common trash can outside. Later that night, she found a group of boys hanging around the bin, picking clean the chicken bones she had thrown away earlier. She invited the boys into the small house and gave them the leftovers from the lunch. Having no homes to return to, the boys spent the night on Mrs. Mutahi’s floor. For the next few evenings, the boys kept returning in increasing numbers until the house proved to be too small for them. Even after Mrs Mutahi’s daughter offered to take the boys bread for lunch at a public park in the city, in order to relieve the cramped home, the boys kept turning up at the house in the evenings. Over time the group of children grew, and it now included girls. Finally Mrs Mutahi proposed to her “family” of street urchins that they should all move to the foot of the Ngong hills outside of Nairobi, where she and her husband owned a small plot of land. There they constructed a much bigger house than their tiny city home. Mr and Mrs Mutahi became the parents of twenty homeless boys and girls.

When I read this story, I must admit that one of my first thoughts was: “That’s crazy.” I would have likely cut off the goodwill after the first dinner with all those little boys. I would like to think that my compassion would invite them in, but I don’t know if my mercy would invite them back, let alone allow them to sleep on my floor…let alone welcome them back with more children…let alone build a bigger house at the base of some hills to care for twenty children. It’s not that I don’t admire her compassion and mercy, it’s just…well, let’s face it…isn’t it just a short term solution to a larger problem? It is really not a reasonable response when you consider the magnitude of the problem of poverty and homelessness. Yes, a rather good-hearted, but unreasonable, reaction. A bigger house at the foot of the hills doesn’t seem like a realistic solution.

Come to think of it, what is it about hills and mountains that produce such absurdity? Today we hear two stories from the gospel of Matthew. They both feature Jesus taking some arrangement of his disciples up on a mountain…almost as if he is removing them from the clatter below, where the complexities and distractions of the “real world” so they might hear more clearly…see more rightly…the wise words of Jesus. The first scripture we read tells of the disciples Peter, James, and John witnessing the transfiguration of Jesus. This is the day we call Transfiguration Sunday and marks the upcoming Lenten season which begins on Wednesday. To the disciples, Jesus appeared to be transfigured—he is physically transformed. He took on a divine appearance which rocked the disciples to the ground. You can imagine even in their fright how excited they were. Finally! The voice of God confirmed our suspicions and answered our questions. This is the son of God! The messiah! And as they are practically tripping over each other to be the first one down the mountain to tell everyone, Jesus takes the wind out of their sails—“by the way, guys, don’t tell anybody about this…not yet.” Are you kidding? As far as public relations goes, this could be just the boost these guys need to convince the people, to stick it to the authorities, to get the knees knocking of all the puppet politicians from Jerusalem to Rome. It doesn’t seem like withholding this vital piece of information is the best thing for the new Jesus movement. In no way, is this a rational request.

But then the disciples may have expected such absurdity because even when he wasn’t being transformed by a dazzling light, he said some pretty absurd things. In fact, the entire Sermon on the Mount has been viewed as idealistic romanticism to many, and the Beatitudes is simply the hour d’eourvs to a sumptuous meal of illogical ethics. On this mountain Jesus pronounces that those who are blessed are not those who think they are blessed, but those who feel they are cursed: cursed with poverty, cursed with a bleeding heart, cursed with feeling like the responsibility to give an alternative to violence rests on their shoulders, cursed with loss, cursed for being pigeon-holed, cursed with a willingness to offer a second chance. Our contemporary, capitalistic Christian ethic scowls at this—we think, no we are blessed with riches! We are blessed with opportunity! We are blessed with life, liberty, and the pursuit of all the happiness we can buy! We are blessed when we can make decisions of who is worthy and who is not! We are blessed when we have the power to protect ourselves from those who are cursed! We are blessed when we can have what we want, and protect ourselves from what we don’t want! What an absurd notion to think that happiness, or blessedness, could be found in these things Jesus is talking about. And in all honesty, we can imagine that it all sounds and looks good up on the mountain, where we are amazed and transfixed on incredible sights and inspiring words. But then, we all must come down from the mountain. We return to life where the absurdity isn’t inspiring, the absurdity seems…well…absurd, illogical, unrealistic.

I think each of us has had a “mountain top experience” whether or not it was on a real, physical mountain or not. We’ve each had to face the world that remains waiting for us with all its pain, and injustice, spiritual sickness, and physical decay. Jesus seems so far up there, back up the mountain, beyond the clouds. I remember very clearly a mountain top experience, perhaps one of my first. And coincidently, it actually did happen on a mountain. I was 19 years old, a sophomore in college. I was on a January term study seminar in Viet Nam, and my first time in the “two-thirds” world. I had no idea what to expect. The sights, the smells, the sounds at times inspired me, at times revolted me, at times humbled me. We were visiting a Buddhist Temple tucked inside a cave at the top of a mountain, where a large statue of a Lady Buddha stood somberly yet compassionately, resembling in many respects the Virgin Mary. I found myself full of peace as I sat in the presence of such a holy place. And then it was time to return down the mountain. We had been in the country for about a week and a half and I had started getting used to the bands of small children who would gather around us asking for money or trinkets. To be honest, it was getting slightly irritating. The word no rolled off our lips like water from an overflowing cup. No no no nono.

Finally we returned to the bottom of the mountain and headed to our bus, our warm spiritually-alive and mindful state seeping away by the pressure of the small demanding children. One small girl was steadfast in her urging towards my friend, Jackie, asking for “just a little bit of money.” Perhaps to her breaking point, my friend—my very liberal-minded, good-hearted, justice-seeking, good Brethren girl—said with as much kindness as she could muster “I’m sorry. I need to use my money to buy my dinner tonight.” Perfectly reasonable assertion, I thought. The little girl, whose only stood so tall as our stomachs, responded in broken English: “Well, could you give me a little your money and then not each so much tonight?” We were dumbfounded at such a simple request. We talked a lot about that event in the days to come. We tried to analyze its implications, we tried to rationalize our reactions. We tried to make ourselves feel better by remembering what our tour guides had told us—not to give them money because many times they just take it to thugs, and the children see none of it. Even if we gave her money, she would be begging tomorrow. What went left unsaid, but what we knew we all were feeling, was that a small Buddhist girl could show us the potency of Christ’s message. She had a power over our hearts and our consciences that no amount of money could secure. She proved to me that the amazing feeling on the mountain, if it doesn’t transform us in all its brilliance at the time, becomes an unrealistic fantasy when we come down. And that is where it is all put to the test.

In light of the world’s problems, of poverty and war, in light of our personal problems, of depression, strained relationships, financial insecurity, life down from the mountain makes Jesus’ actions and words seem quite absurd and irrational. Are we expected to take in twenty homeless orphans? Give money for thousands of begging children? Seek out persecution and sadness? Maybe so, maybe not. But I don’t think we can find the answer to these questions if we keep looking through the lens of what is rational, what is reasonable, what is realistic, what is logical. What gives us the best return on our investment. But Christ doesn’t necessarily call us to a life of logical living. Christ calls us to a life of transformational living.

Do we seek transformational living, or do we attempt to get by with what makes sense, with what has been test and tried and proved to work? Do we dare to dance with what may seem absurd to the world in order to test the possibility of creative change? Can we hear Christ say, don’t tell people about me, but act towards people so they see you know me?

Or do we think that our spiritual lives are to be put on the shelf until we can have that perfect mountain top experience that bears no resemblance to reality on the ground, or can we say that a spirit transformed can lead to a world transformed?

Maybe our eyes need to be burned by the blinding light of the transfiguration, or our ears to tingle with words of the beatitudes. But if we are looking for the words of the beatitudes to make sense, while striving to maintain reasoned discretion that will notify us when things get a little “too weird,” it won’t likely happen. Our perceptions of the world and ourselves are too ingrained, too much woven into the fabric of moving through this world. What Jesus says and does is so often chalked up to being some unattainable ethic that doesn’t—that can’t—make sense with our human foibles and follies, in the modern world where what we see isn’t necessarily what we get. Where acts of compassion lead to good people being taken advantage of. Where our ardent strivings for a meaningful and full spiritual life gets blinded by personal pain, and unforgiving demands, or…toddlers who don’t want to sleep through the night, leaving parents to exhausted to smile in the morning.

In her book Mysticism and Resistance, the late German theologian Dorthee Solle writes that in order to perceive the world as transformed beings, we must acquire new senses. Looking through the lens that we have always looked through to view world is inadequate. Rather, “It is an exercise in seeing how God sees, the perception of what is little and unimportant;” says Soelle “it is listening to the cry of God’s children who are in slavery in Egypt. God calls upon the soul to give away its own ears and eyes and to let itself be given those of God. Only they who hear with other ears can speak with the mouth of God. God sees what elsewhere is rendered invisible and is of no relevance. Who other than God sees the poor and hears their cry? to use ‘God’s senses’ does not mean simply turning inward but becoming free for a different way of living life: See what God sees! Hear what God hears! Laugh where God laughs! Cry where God cries!” (Soelle, Dorothee. The Silent Cry, Minneapolis: Fotress Press, 2001.)

Brilliant, beautiful thought! I just wish she told us where we could go to purchase these new senses… Maybe it’s about allowing our rational, logical minds to play with the possibility that somewhere in Jesus’ absurd teachings, there is a place where we each can begin a different way of living life, of seeing what is possible.

While Peter wants to make personal tents for Moses and Elijah and Jesus on the mountain, Jesus says lets go down and make a bigger house, with more rooms, where we and twenty children can make a new family. When the crowds wonder what Jesus could possibly mean by saying that in their desperation they are blessed, Jesus says let’s go down—there’s a little girl who can teach you better than I can, listen to her to understand me. When we are stymied at thinking what possible good a bunch of meek, hurt, persecuted, peace-seeking, mourning, and poor can do in this world, Jesus says “well, how do you think I did it?” If we are at least open to the possibility of trading in our old way of seeing things for new senses, we might recognize that what to the world seems absurd, may be the only thing that can save us.

As we approach Lent we turn inward to examine our spiritual state with God and with one another. Often people think about ways to “give something up” as an act of repentance. But perhaps, as we come down the mountain to walk the road with Jesus to the cross, walk with the women to the empty tomb, perhaps instead of giving something up in repentance, we might explore the ways we can more fully live into the absurdity of Christ’s message, relinquishing bit by bit the chains of our perceptions that enslave us not so we can touch the world in a logical manner, but be part of the world in a transformational manner. See what God sees. Hear what God hears. Laugh where God laughs. Cry where God cries. Make new senses for yourself, come down the mountain, and be blessed.