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Today we are going to go on a journey – in fact, we are going to go on two. First, we are going to walk up a mountain with Christ and his disciples in order to witness one of the most miraculous and hard to understand events in history. Then we are going to venture into our own memories and see how that experience has affected our own lives.
As we set up off towards our first destination imagine that you are Peter. Just three chapters earlier he had his walking on water experience with Christ. Two chapters ago he had help feed the four thousand, according to the book of Matthew. And then in the previous chapter Peter had made the proclamation that Jesus was the Son of God and Christ responded that he would be the rock upon which the church is built. Grant it Peter also rebuked the death of Messiah for which Jesus called him Satan. All in all, Peter has been on this roller coaster of a ride since Jesus called him and now he is hiking up a mountain, having no idea what to expect. And how could have any of the disciples expected this? In a split moment they saw Jesus shining before them talking with Moses and Elijah, the pillars of the Hebrew faith. Not only are they seeing this unexplainable sight, but they heard the voice of God. They…heard…the…voice….of…God. Excluding the prophets in the Old Testament, not many people could claim to have heard God since the patriarchs. And Peter knew that this was huge. We have to give him credit for that. But then, he seemed to just miss the point, by suggesting to erect three dwellings for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. And then they had to come back down the mountain, as Jesus told them not to tell anyone what they had saw until “after the Son of Man had been raised from the dead.” Judging from the happenings in Chapter 16, it’s likely that Peter still didn’t understand with this phrase meant.
All in all, this wasn’t a long experience, in fact, it didn’t even take an entire day, yet Peter was impacted enough to write about what happened to him on the mountain. Listen to the words Peter wrote again. “We had been eye witnesses to his majesty. For he received honor and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’ We OURSELVES HEARD this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain.” Peter had experienced God in such a way that it impacted his world.
At first glance, as we end our first journey, it would seem that our journey, journey number two, has nothing in common with Peter’s. But that’s not true. We’ve all had mountain top experiences in our life of faith. Pause for a moment and think about a time when you undoubtedly knew that you were in the presence of God. We each have a unique story that tells of how God has interacted with and blessed up. Those moments when you feel engulfed by the total presence of glory.
When I was in Australia a group of us were at a youth group meeting and we were asked the question “how do you know God exists?” There were four of us at this meeting, and each of us answered that question in a different way. And even in the times when we seemed to have similar answers such as “I know God exists when I see the sky and know that it isn’t an accident” each of us had totally different experiences that we were thinking about in connection to our answers.
As I reflect back on some of my mountain top experiences I think about of several, but I’m only going to share three. When I was a sophomore in college I had the opportunity to travel to Israel with a group of about twenty other students from my school, most of who were people thinking about going into some type of pastoral ministry. So here I was, someone who is not too crazy about strangers, traveling with a group of complete strangers. One who I had semi-met previously. Not my idea of the ideal situation. But alas we were traveling together, and had to get along. The first Sunday we were in Israel we went hiking on Masada, a mountain where fortresses used to be kept that over looked the desert. When you reached the top of the mountain, you could see desert all around you, and it was probably one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen. All of us just stood looking across the vastness that Sunday morning, not saying a word, because we were in the presence of God. God used that moment, this unexplainable moment, not only to touch my heart, but also to bind hearts together. And starting here, I formed friendships with six of the closest friends I’ve ever been blessed with.
A second moment for me came when I was camping in Australia. Camping tends not to be a good experience for me, and I was miserable. I hadn’t really slept and found myself once again to be restless. Around 6am, I abandoned all hope of rest and headed out of my tent to do devotions. And there I saw it. A sky that was a different color every way you turned. It was pink and blue and purple on one side and bright orange with streaks of yellow on the other. God had met me in my weakness in order bless me in a special way, in my moments while everyone else was asleep.
A third experience was at my first year of the Creation Concert, Christian Woodstock. As I was just letting go and singing my heart out to God during one of the Newsboys concerts, there were not one, not two, but three shooting stars that came across the sky. We later found out that the appearance of three shooting stars together rarely happens but it was a God-moment for me.
Most of my mountain top experiences involve nature. Other people involve organized events such as church camp or conferences. God has created each of us in a unique way and knows just the right way to speak to our hearts, to impact us. Pause and share our moments with one another.
However, there is a downside to mountain top experiences, we can’t stay on top of the mountain. Peter wanted to erect monuments and stay and worship what he had just experienced, but that wasn’t Jesus’ intention. Often like Peter we want to stay and worship in the moment instead of going back down the mountain, but we must descend. If the disciples had stayed up on the mountain, showering adoration on Christ, they would have missed what happens next in the gospel of Matthew, the healing of the epileptic son. As Christians we sometimes get so caught up in what we believe to be the act of worship that we forget that we live a life of worship. We need to come down off the mountain and do two things:
- We need to share our mountain top experiences with other people. Christ told the disciples not to share what they had experienced until after the Son of Man had risen. That’s happened. We serve a risen God. We are well beyond the time of the church using apologetics to try to “win people for the Kingdom”. God created us each to respond to stories. One of the biggest honors you can be awarded is to share your life story with someone. Go. Share. Tell people how you know God exists because of how he has acted in YOUR life. Sometimes, your story won’t be the one people respond to, because stories touch us each in different ways, but they should still be shared, because you never know if your story will be the one to impact someone’s life.
- We need to use our mountain top experiences to full our faith for service. There are going to be times when it is hard to serve God and follow where he is calling. Times when we feel deflated, abused, and misunderstood. In those times we need to look back to our mountain top experiences to remember that God loves us in a personal way and is calling us to serve him in a special way. Looking back to the mountain and remembering gives us the strength and courage to move forward in faith.
We also need to be aware of another pitfall of the mountain top experience. As Christians we have a nasty habit of worshiping God when we feel good and praying to God when we are in need. There is a song that I rather enjoy that says “when I cannot feel, when my wounds don’t heal, I humbly bow hidden in you….If I could sit with you a while. If you could just hold me. Nothing could touch me, though I’m wounded, though I die.” These lyrics embody the marriage between prayer and presence, especially when times are hard. We are so caught up in living in a neat-segmented world that we separate the good times from the bad with the “appropriate” spiritual responses. But a life of service, when our heart is in the right place, is a life of worship. It is our way of telling Christ that his sacrifice meant enough to us that we want to be like him, proclaiming him with our lips and our hands. But a life of service, this life of worship, cannot be separated from a life of prayer. Let’s not get so caught up in the moment of glory that we forget to communicate to God in an intimate way, thanking him for what he has done. And let us not get so caught up in the heart wrenching concerns for ourselves and others that we forget to look back and see God’s faithfulness towards us on the mountain.
In closing, may you remember the moments where God met you on the mountain and wrapped you in his presence. Those times when you felt that your heart was going to burst out of your chest with the glory of God. Use these times to fuel your desire to travel back down off the mountain and serve God, telling others of the wonderful things he has done in your life and sparking the desire to interact with the world around you to spread the love of Christ. And may our worship of the Risen king never be separated from a life of prayer and devotion to him. Amen.
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