Glimpses of Heaven – Living on Earth

Exodus 24: 12-18 & Matthew 17: 1-9
Roger Lynn
February 7, 2016
Transfiguration Sunday
(click here for the audio for this sermon)

God is all around us in every moment of every day. Many of us have come to believe this. And most of the time our conscious awareness of this reality is fairly low. We go about our living, doing the things we do. Maybe we offer up the occasional prayer of thanks, or make a request for some guidance. Mostly, though, we just put one foot in front of the other, dealing with each moment as it comes along. And all of that is really OK. But once in a while there are experiences which transform the very shape of our living. There are those moments when we become profoundly aware of the sacred quality of life – when the presence of God takes center stage, not to be ignored. Who can say exactly why it happens when it does? Who can say why one person has such an experience and not another? Certainly learning to pay attention increases the chance that we will notice. And yet there is strong evidence that such experiences remain unexpected and unpredictable. Moses goes up on the mountain and encounters the mysterious presence of the divine. Jesus takes three of his followers up onto the mountain to prayer, and they have a profoundly moving experience of the sacred. The scriptures are filled with stories of such experiences. And yet it is also clear that such experiences are not ordinary or commonplace. Such ‘mountaintop’ encounters with God play an important role in living faithfully, but they do not define or contain such living. The temptation is certainly there – to stay in that moment forever. Peter, in the face of such an encounter, wants to erect some tents – to set up camp and just stay in that moment. But that’s not how it works. Soon enough they are headed back down the mountain again – back into the thick of their living. The difference is that now they have something to sustain them – a glimpse of heaven to remember when they need strength for their living here on earth. We need such reminders – that we are not alone and there is more to this world than we usually see. We need such reminders to keep us going. They don’t happen all the time. Some people go their whole life watching for such an experience. Some spend the rest of their days cherishing the one glimpse they were fortunate enough to catch. But either way, I think maybe the result is the same – our awareness is raised and our living is transformed in the process. We are changed.

Frederick Beuchner describes such an experience in his novel “The Final Beast.” I have always found this description to be powerful precisely because the elements of the experience are so ordinary. God’s presence has the power to shine through even in the midst of our everyday living. A young minister named Nicolet finds himself behind his father’s barn, hoping to have an encounter with Jesus which will rejuvenate his ministry and help him see everything more clearly. He is lying in the grass, his heart pounding, palms up, waiting for the air to part and the splendor of Christ to break through. “ ‘It must happen now,’ he thought. . . Now, now, no longer daring not to dare, but opening his eyes to, suddenly the most superbly humdrum stand of neglected trees. . . to a shoe lying in some high grass, and piles of leaves left over from last year. ‘Please,’ he whispered. ‘Please come. Jesus.’ ” He listens and waits, and then this happens:

“Two apple branches struck against each other with the limber clack of wood on wood. That was all – a tick-tock rattle of branches, but then he felt a fierce lurch of excitement at the beauty of daybreak, and was overwhelmed by the smells of summer coming, and then, starting back for home he was overcome by a kind of crazy gladness and beauty. ‘Oh Jesus,’ he thought, with a great lump in his throat and a crazy grin. ‘Just clack-clack, but praise him,’ he thought. ‘Praise him.’ Maybe all his journeying had been only to bring him here to hear two branches hit each other twice like that, to see nothing cross the threshold but to see the threshold, to hear the dry clack-clack of the world’s tongue at the approach of the approach perhaps of splendor.”

In attempting to describe the experience to his friend a few moments later, Nicolet says this: “ ‘Whatever this is we move around through . . .’ He raked his hand slowly back and forth through the air. ‘Reality . . . the air we breathe . . . this emptiness . . . If you could get hold of it by the corner somewhere, just slip your fingernail underneath and peel it back enough to find what’s there behind it, I think you’d be . . . I think the dance that must go on back there, way down deep at the heart of space, where being comes from . . . There’s dancing there. My kids have dreamed it. Emptiness is dancing there. The angels are dancing. And their feet scatter new worlds like dust. If we saw any more of that dance than we do, it would kill us for sure. The glory of it. Clack-clack is all a man can bear.’ ”

Sometimes we are Moses waiting for days in the fog – waiting for we know not even what. Sometimes we are Peter wanting desperately to capture the moment and preserve it forever. Sometimes we are Nicolet listening to the stunningly beautiful music of the Sacred breaking through in the most mundane of circumstances. Most of the time we are simply ourselves, living our lives as best we can. In each of our moments, in all of our days, may we remember that glimpsed or unglimpsed, bidden or unbidden, God is present. And the God who is present is calling us to live in this world so fully that others might begin to catch a glimpse of God through our transformed living.