It’s in the Cloud

Exodus 24:12-18           The Lord said to Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain, and wait there; and I will give you the tablets of stone, with the law and the commandment, which I have written for their instruction.” So Moses set out with his assistant Joshua, and Moses went up into the mountain of God. To the elders he had said, “Wait here for us, until we come to you again; for Aaron and Hur are with you; whoever has a dispute may go to them.” Then Moses went up on the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain. The glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days; on the seventh day he called to Moses out of the cloud. Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel. Moses entered the cloud, and went up on the mountain. Moses was on the mountain for forty days and forty nights.

Matthew 17:1-9              Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.” And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone. As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, “Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”

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Yesterday started with some dense fog that would not go away.  I mean that in the literal sense.  I needed to leave earlier than usual, as I had promised to drive someone to the hospital in the morning.  The sun was not quite risen yet when I pulled out of the driveway, but I was not too concerned about the short visibility.  I assumed that the sun would come out and “burn off” that fog soon.  But this was not the case, after all; and several hours later, driving my patient home, we were still engulfed in the mysterious fog.

When the roundtable began talking about the cloud of God that was present in both the Exodus and Matthew passages, we thought of the cloud we had been walking and driving in just that morning.  You feel lost.  You can’t see.  In a cloud, we are in a state of unknowing.

It would seem incorrect, though, to describe the cloud Moses enters as a state of unknowing, because this is where he has communion with God.  And it would seem incorrect to describe the cloud that overshadows Jesus and his disciples as a state of unknowing, because this is where the voice of God speaks to them.  And yet, there is some continuity with the sense of unknowing we experience in the clouds. 

When Moses steps into the cloud he disappears from the others.  They no longer see him; they no longer have any knowledge of what he is doing.  He has become something “other,” in a sense, as God is “other.” The experience of Jesus and Peter, James, and John on the mountain is similar.  As Jesus is transfigured, he becomes something “other” as well.  His disciples are left dumbstruck, gaping, wanting to make meaning out of this utterly new thing.

To what can we compare such things?  I think of the Christian mystics of whom I have read.  Julian of Norwich, in particular, who had one documented, incredible, mystical experience, which she spent the rest of her life interpreting.

This morning I was reading Christian Wiman’s My Bright Abyss, and was particularly struck by a passage where he mentions believers who express feelings of sadness that they have never had a particularly intense spiritual experience.  Never to have been overpowered by God.  Never to have been slain in the Spirit, as some say.  I knew what he meant.  There was a time in my life when I had that urgent longing to be just knocked off my feet by God.  Every Sunday in worship I waited for it, almost expecting it, but always disappointed.  As a Presbyterian, it wasn’t as though I was seeing it happen to others around me, but I yearned for it, nonetheless.  To this sense of frustration, Wiman responds this way:

“Really?  You have never felt overwhelmed by, and in some way inadequate to, an experience in your life, have never felt something in your life staking a claim beyond yourself, some wordless mystery straining through words to read you? Never?”

Wiman gave me a different way to see such “religious” experiences, by suggesting they are actually much more ordinary than one might think.  The mere longing I experienced so many Sundays, for instance.  Furthermore, he emphasizes, “Religion is not made up of these moments; … Religion is what you do with these moments…”

I read and reread and reread his words and found myself on the verge of tears, overwhelmed by the meaning in them. 

Each year I read the transfiguration story and, once again, don’t know what to make of it.  But each time, maybe I find some shard of light that gives me something to work with.  This time, I notice that after they go back down from the mountaintop, they encounter a man in desperate need.  He begs Jesus to heal his son, an epileptic.  So it’s back to normal life for Jesus, and what is becoming normal life for his disciples. 

And this stuff of normal life, the healing, the teaching, the blessing, is where all the meaning is really made.  But none of it would even be, if not for the mountaintop – the moments of mystic sweet communion, however we experience them. 

The moments of awe and wonder are fleeting, of course, and they will always elude comprehension.  It is in the normal stuff of life, and the choices we make, where the meaning may take form.

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Listen to Me

1 Corinthians 3:1-9     And so, brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you are still not ready, for you are still of the flesh. For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations? For when one says, “I belong to Paul,” and another, “I belong to Apollos,” are you not merely human?

What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labor of each. For we are God’s servants, working together; you are God’s field, God’s building.

Matthew 5:21-37   “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire. So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell.  It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

“Again, you have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.’ But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one.

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As we continued in these readings from 1 Corinthians and Matthew, we wondered at the roundtable about what is the best way to get people to hear you when you are saying something difficult.  There was concern that Paul might have been offending his listeners so much that they have stopped listening.  Calling them babies struck some as kind of like a playground taunt.

But any sentence that begins with, “And so,” might suggest that we ought to look back at the previous paragraph and consider the context.  So, we looked again at chapter 2.  Which we had to read in the context of chapter 1. 

We noticed Paul is kind of messing with the Corinthians.  He throws out a bomb, turning the idea of wisdom on its head, then he reels it back, and offers some conciliatory words that seem to stroke their egos a bit.  Then he goes and tells them they are, unfortunately, still at the baby food stage.  And so he’s spooning out the pureed stuff for their own good. 

Do they believe him?  My guess is that some do and some don’t.  It’s hard to strike the right note when you’re telling someone a thing they don’t want to hear.

We wondered about our own ability to look at ourselves honestly, to hear difficult words like these words of Paul and the words of Jesus and apply them to ourselves.  “There have been times in my life when I could hear such words as speaking to me,” said one, “and there have been other times when I would hear words like this and think that the person next to me really needed to listen carefully.”

And that is our biggest pitfall, I often think.  I am exceptionally good at seeing the speck in my neighbor’s eye.  I could do this professionally. 

The hardest thing is to be able to look in the mirror and see that I am a spiritual infant.  To see the harm I do by my anger toward a brother or sister.  To see how my jealousies, zealousness, and opinions in some areas fuel division.  To see how my carelessness in other areas hurts those around me. 

In light of such concerns, how does a preacher talk about these texts?