Date: February 11, 2024
Scripture: Mark 9:2-9
Sermon Title: “Learning to Hike Down”
Preacher: Rev. Dr. Bob Jon
You can also listen on Podcast from iTunes and Spotify. Search for “Podcasting from Rev. Bob Jon.”
Some years ago, I brought the youth group from my former church to Wachusett Mountain for hiking. If you have been there before, you probably know it is not a big mountain. It takes less than 2 hours to hike from the bottom to the top. Anyway, about half an hour into climbing up, one boy said he was too scared to go up anymore. He needed to go down. So, I told the others to continue to climb while I brought him down to the bottom. This boy, probably 160 or 170 pounds, leaned on me the whole time, pushing me and grabbing my back. I prayed all the way down, “Please, Lord, save me from my perils.” Finally, I arrived at the bottom of the mountain. I left him with his mother. And I climbed up another 2 hours.
When we use common sense, hiking up may sound more challenging and difficult. Just imagine climbing up endless uphill or stairs. Gravity is pulling you down. The water and food in your backpack feel like carrying heavy rock. However, when they were asked whether hiking uphill or downhill is more difficult, most hikers answered that hiking downhill is more difficult because it is more concerned with safety. Any missteps with slips, twists, or falling could lead to a serious injury. Many people feel pain in their toes and knees while hiking down. Thankfully, our group took a spiral road on the way down which was much easier than going down the same trail we took upward.
In our reading today, Jesus took Peter, James, and John with him and hiked up a high mountain. And Jesus was transfigured before his disciples. His clothes became dazzling bright. And there appeared the disciples Elijah and Moses, who were talking with Jesus. For Peter, this was the most spectacular thing he had ever seen. If it were us, we could have pulled out our iPhones or Galaxies and taken pictures or videos to capture the moments. Peter also wanted to capture and seize the moment forever. So, he said to Jesus, “Teacher, it is good for us to be here. So, let us set up three tents: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” As the Bible says, he had no idea what he was talking about because he and others were terrified.
Or maybe Peter knew exactly what he was talking about. In the previous chapter of Mark 8, Jesus taught his disciples that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes and be killed and, after three days, rise again. When Jesus said this, Peter took him aside and rebuked him. Mark does not tell us what he said there. But I imagine that it was something like, “Hey Jesus. Remember you called me to follow you three years ago? How I left my wife, my family, and my job to follow you? Remember how we constantly moved from place to place, with no money, sleeping in someone’s house, and being mocked by others? And you say you are going to be killed?”
Several years ago, a pastor friend from Korea told me that he was doing some missionary work in Pakistan. He was educating children, teaching the Bible, and gathering for worship. One day, he was blindfolded, taken by several men, and kept in an isolated room for several nights. He thought that he would be executed by these men and prayed to God that he surrender his life to God. The next day, these men told him that they were the national police and ordered him to go back to Korea. The following year, he told me he was going to Cambodia as a missionary. I told him, “Why are you asking for trouble? Why can’t you just go to Korea or another place where you can be safe?” He said, “Because Christ calls me to be where people are struggling and suffering.”
Isn’t that why Jesus is going down the mountain? He could have stayed up on the mountain in all his glory. He is standing with Elijah and Moses, who symbolize the law and prophets; Jesus is the fulfillment of these. If people want to meet Jesus, they could climb up the mountain all the way up there to be healed, to be forgiven, and to understand who God is like. Isn’t that what many of us do? We climb up a high mountain to feel something sacred and majestic. Instead, he set his course down the mountain and eventually toward Jerusalem, where he knew that he would suffer, be persecuted, and be crucified on the cross. But he hiked down the mountain to be with us, with the world in the midst of our suffering, tears, and despair.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor. He was born to a prestigious family in 1906, as his father was a renowned psychiatrist and neurologist in Germany. Bonhoeffer received a good education, and eventually, at the age of 21, he earned a Doctor of Theology. Then, he moved to New York in 1931 to pursue a fellowship program at Union Theological Seminary. Well, his career seemed promising. He could have stayed in the U.S. and worked as a professor. However, he went back to Germany in 1931 and eventually helped to found the Confessing Church in confronting Hitler and the Nazis. In his book The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer wrote, “Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.”
Later, he had another opportunity to come to America and work as a guest lecturer. However, he wrote within months of his arrival, “I have made a mistake in coming to America. I must live through this difficult period in our national history with the Christian people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this tie with my people.” He went back to Germany and was arrested. He was executed at the prison camp one month before the war ended. Some say that he was deeply transformed when he spent a year in New York, sharing his life with African Americans in Harlem who were bruised and victimized by racism and yet found their hope of deliverance and resurrection in Christ. He found Christ among the oppressed.
Henri Nouwen comments, “God wanted to liberate us, not by removing suffering from us, but by sharing it with us. Jesus is God-who-suffers-with us.”[1] It is said that more than 6 million people have escaped Ukraine as of January 2024. At the beginning of the war, we saw many people escaping from shooting and bombing. And I saw a picture of Sister Justine who holds a little infant at the hospital in Lviv, about 300 miles east of Kyiv. As there were tiny infants with terminal illnesses in Ukraine who could not move out of their country, Sister Justine stayed behind to be with them at their hospice, to be with them as these little children waited for their death. Dr. Matilde Leonardi, director of the Besta Hospital in Milan said of her colleague this way, “She’s there tonight, during the war, filling with love the last days of tiny babies like the one she’s holding tonight.”[2]
As Jesus comes down the mountain, he sets the course to Jerusalem where he surely knows he would be crucified. We call this story the Transfiguration of Jesus. But it is also a story about the transformation of Jesus’ disciples who learn to let the moment go but become ready to face new challenges awaiting them down the mountain. It is our transformation because we learn to trust in Christ and surrender our wills to his. It is our transformation because we are being transformed into God’s children as we gather, worship, pray, serve, break the bread, and drink the cup together. It is Christ our Lord with whom we go up the mountain. When we go down the mountain where we face challenges, perils, and struggles, we know that it is Christ who is going there with us.
Amen.
[1] Henri Nouwen, Letters to Marc about Jesus
[2] Paola Belletti, “In Ukraine, Sister Justine Stays with Babies at Pediatric Hospice”, https://aleteia.org/2022/03/04/in-ukraine-sister-justine-stays-with-babies-at-pediatric-hospice/
RAIN OF GRACE 