It seems to me that many people are seeking after Spiritual Enlightenment or their own mountaintop experiences. It’s something they’ve heard about, they think better people have had these experiences, so they believe they ought to have them too.
So, they go seeking after the next new thing; the latest prayer techniques and the different churches and the praise bands and labyrinth walks and new styles of Bible Study and the Men’s drum-beating Sweat Lodge, and I don’t know what all.
Whatever they’re looking for, it isn’t where they are, it must be over the hill or around the next corner.
Some of this can be traced to biblical stories like today’s scripture lessons, which tell us about extra-ordinary spiritual events.
In our First Lesson, Moses goes up on the mountain and meets God in cloud and devouring fire. That’s pretty significant – or unordinary, right?
In the Gospel lesson, Jesus goes up the mountain with Peter, James and John — and while there is TRANSFIGURED, whatever that means.
And in our Second Lesson, Peter talks about his own memories of that day on the mountain.
Somehow, some people are always looking for something more, something electric and kinetic and spine tingling to happen to them religiously. Which is okay, those things do happen, sometimes, to some people.
What is not okay is when one believes that such experiences are what religion in general and Christianity in particular are all about.
What is not okay is when people think that unless one has had such an experience, one has not really encountered the HOLY. So I want to tell you about some of my most holy experiences.
Luther Memorial is the church of my childhood. I was born into this community, baptized right there at just under 3 weeks old in front of some of the same faces I’m in front of today. I had my first solo at 3 years old standing behind that balcony up there, the same balcony that I would fly hundreds of paper airplanes off of with Tom Smith over my life. My mom would attend the seekers bible studies, and when my little sister was born I became “too old” to stay in the nursery with the little kids, so I would sit in the narthex with Jordan Moe, Julius Ukental, Elmer Molzahn, and Gail Peck. They would tell me jokes, ask me questions about my life that they seriously wanted to hear my responses to, find cookies to give to me, chase me around, and Julius would get in trouble every single week for picking me up too much 😉
On Easter, Dick Chapman would make pancakes and ham, and after eating too much, my dad and I would go glean all the black jelly beans from the table centerpieces than people came to know to leave just for us.
I went through 9 years of Sunday school with the same 6 other girls my age, right through to be confirmed at this rail alongside them all, and then another 7 years later they all sat side by side grinning at me as I walked down the aisle to marry my partner James, as though they had a secret to share with me in their faces – that they had lived holy moments with me in a holy place and we had been changed.
The truth of the matter is that religion is NOT about seeking after the extraordinary, not about the quest for the next new spiritual high, not about looking for an experiential fix of the Holy to carry one through another drab and ordinary week.
NO! Religion is about seeing, and feeling and hearing and respecting the Holy in, with and under the ordinary-ness of our daily lives, in our ordinary relationships. In our communities, and with one another.
To be religious is not a matter of being otherworldly; to be religious is to be uniquely grounded in this world, seeing the very stuff of life as the very stuff of God.
Where are we to find the Holy? On Mountaintops and in Sweat Lodges?
Where are we to look for God’s presence in our lives?
Well, you don’t have to go to the mountaintop; it’s all around you, all the time. We know this. It’s shown to us in our sacraments.
The water in the font, the water in which we baptize. It’s ordinary water. It’s the same water that goes into the drinking fountain, the same water that flushes the toilet.
It’s just water.
What makes it holy? The use makes it holy. We use it to baptize a child, we speak the promise of Christ, and in with that water we bring a new child into Covenant with God and into Community with us.
Look at these wafers. They are just a little whole-wheat flour and water. We buy them by the thousands. It’s not very good to eat – even though when I was a girl, I would volunteer to put away communion after worship just so I could have a few more 😉 if you’re not careful, it will stick to the roof of your mouth.
And this, it’s just wine, grapes fermented and bottled and sold at the grocery store along with Budweiser Beer and Jack Daniel’s Whiskey.
It’s good wine, good with dinner, but it’s nothing special or extraordinary, not until we make Eucharist out of it.
What makes it holy? What turns this ordinary stuff into the Body and Blood of Christ? Not Pr. Julie, she doesn’t have magical powers, and neither do any other pastors (well, not that kind – but all moms have super powers, right Hazel?!)
It’s us and God together; God promising and acting and our believing and celebrating which reveals the Holy within the ordinary.
That’s what happened to Jesus up on that mountain. That is what happened to me at Luther Memorial.
Jesus was a man, just like every other man; smarter, holier than most perhaps, but still very much a fully human person.
Even though the disciples called him Rabbi, Christ even, they still saw him as a man. And then this thing happened. And they knew — Peter, James and John knew that here was the Divine, the Holy, in human form.
And we too are ordinary people, doing ordinary things. We too, as a church, as a community of faith, as the Body of Christ in the world, we too carry in, with and under our human-ness, the brightness of the Holy-ness of God.
We don’t have to go looking for it; we don’t have to struggle after extraordinary spiritual experiences. God is here with us in all that we do.
Our calling is to pay attention — to listen, look, feel and know that God is here, in this place, and in all our places: at home, at work, at church, at school. God is present with us in the world.
All we have to do is lift the veil and look for the Holy with the eyes of the heart. But even if we don’t or can’t find a way to do that – God is still present. There isn’t a thing you or I could possibly do to change that. We are Beloved children of God, and just like God’s voice in the gospel text from today says about Jesus, God is well pleased with us, too.
AMEN AND AMEN.