Transforming Experiences
Text: Luke 9:28-36
I have to admit, wearing this uniform today is more than just for show. As a congregation, we recently became sponsors for the 4th Clarkson Scout Group, including Beavers, Cubs and Scouts. As a symbol of that new partnership, I this past fall I was “invested” into 4th Clarkson… but I didn’t have to go out any buy a uniform. While I wear this symbolically, given our role as partners with 4th Clarkson, it’s also because I’ve personally been involved with Scouting since I was a child. I apparently was part of Beavers when it was only a pilot project some thirty years ago. I grew up in scouting, and it was a large part of my formative years… I went all the way through into Venturers, the next step past Scouts. I have a lot of fond memories of camping with scouts, I also have a lot of COLD memories of camp. I can wear it as a badge of honour that I once spent a weekend camping outdoors where the temperature before wind-chill dropped to minus 20°C. I should add that was with Venturers… in the steep mountain valleys of Kanaskis Country west of Calgary. It’s not an experience that I think I will ever forget. It’s been more than twenty years, and it’s still really fresh.
Believe it or not, my experience with Scouting also helped me complete my work for ministry in seminary. As an adult education model, before I could graduate with my Masters of Divinity, I had to demonstrate that I was competent at a given number of aspects of ministry. The driving idea behind this was akin to the fact that you don’t want to have a doctor operate on you who got a “D” in Anatomy! We would work at it until we demonstrated that we were competent at a given skill in being a minister. What does this have to do with scouts? Many people at seminary had a hard time wrapping their head around this way of approaching education. Me? I found the perfect metaphor: Badges! Scout Badges! I needed so many badges to graduate, so I began working away at them with this in mind. My supervisors hated the metaphor, but for me it was a compliment, both to the kind of forward thinking at the seminary, but also to Scouts for having given me this kind of background so I could learn in this kind of environment.
It’s a bit more personal for me to be sure, but my whole encounter with Scouts was a genuine transformative experience. For many people, Scouts and Guides are life-changing experiences that shape and mold who we are as people. As a theme, the timing couldn’t be better for this Sunday, given that today we celebrate “Transfiguration” –a life-altering event not only for Jesus, but for those who walked with him.
As the gospel of Luke tells the story, Jesus takes a handful of his disciples for a journey up a mountain. This wasn’t just a casual day-long hike, but would have been a considerable journey that would have easily taken a number of days. One could say that Jesus was taking a few of his disciples out camping. Yet this wouldn’t be like any casual trip they had been on before. While Peter, James and John didn’t know it, this was far more than simply climbing up a mountain to get a good view.
In Biblical stories, Mountains are holy places. As ancient cultures understood it, they saw mountains as the pillars of heaven, that supported the sky… They were places where people encountered the holy. There was something qualitatively different about these distant, often desolate places, away from the noise and grind of everyday life. If you’ve ever been to the top of a mountain, the silence can be deafening. The ancients felt that somehow the barrier between divine realm and the material world was somehow thinner in these places. That this is where one came to encounter God.
All of the scripture readings we hear today point to this. They all describe encounters with God in reference to mountains. Psalm 99 speaks about God’s holy mountain, the story from Exodus talks about a life-changing encounter Moses has with God on Mount Sinai. Luke’s story evokes all of these images when we see Jesus, Peter, James and John beginning to climb up the mountain to pray. As the story goes, the three disciples get far more than they expected. In the midst of what is supposed to be a time of quiet meditation and prayer, suddenly the three see Jesus is a new light. It’s as if that veil between the mortal realm and heaven’s vision has been torn away. It foreshadows what happens at Easter… In the midst of this, they see Jesus speaking with Elijah and Moses… two others who had profound life-changing experiences of God at the top of mountains. Peter, James, and John are overwhelmed by this… much of the story seems to be told from their point of view… that they are so dumbfounded and gob smacked by this that they don’t know what to think much less what to say.
Peter, ever trying to be helpful, manages to stammer out with something.
“Master, it is good for us to be here.” He looks around… trying to think of what to say next. “Hey… why don’t we put up three tents! One for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah!” –I must admit, it’s good timing to have a reading about tents coming up on the same day as the Scout Parade… Peter was on such a high with this experience that he wanted to preserve the experience, build a monument to this whole thing… and have people come to this place and visit this shrine. Yet no sooner does Peter say this than a cloud overshadows them, they hear this powerful voice on the wind telling them to listen to Jesus… and suddenly they’re all alone with Jesus. He doesn’t seem to have even heard Peter, and begins his way back down the mountain.
We call this story the “Transfiguration” –where three of the disciples have a powerful experience, suddenly seeing Jesus in a new way. It’s the moment that they realize that Jesus is not just a teacher or healer, but is something more… much more. Peter wants to preserve this “mountaintop” experience, not really understanding that this experience was to prepare them for the journey to Jerusalem, which would lead to the darkness of good Friday, but beyond that, the hope of new life at Easter. This experience was not the end-all and be-all, it was to prepare them for what was to come. It is a reminder that they didn’t belong on the mountain itself, but actually in the world, to be about the work that God called them to. It’s a reminder to us that Jesus does not call us to preserve a heritage, but to move forward and live and work in the world.
Speaking from experience, each of has those moments or experiences that change us right down to the core of who we are. They are opportunities or moments when we suddenly see the world in a different way, or have a renewed appreciation for life. Yet there is a natural, human tendency to want to hold onto the experience itself, rather than what that experience teaches us. The transfiguration reminds us that we need to look beyond the event, and how it helps us in our actual everyday life… because ultimately that’s where we live from day to day.
I know many of my own experiences in scouting were very much a part of these mountaintop type experiences. In my case, many of them literally happened in the presence of jagged peaks and the wonders of nature. Yet as anyone in Scouting or Guiding will share, these experiences themselves are not what’s important… it’s how these experiences shape us for everyday life. They show us what it is to our best, to learn, to grow and to carry that experience back into our life together… be it at school, at home, at work, or at play.
Amen.
I have to admit, wearing this uniform today is more than just for show. As a congregation, we recently became sponsors for the 4th Clarkson Scout Group, including Beavers, Cubs and Scouts. As a symbol of that new partnership, I this past fall I was “invested” into 4th Clarkson… but I didn’t have to go out any buy a uniform. While I wear this symbolically, given our role as partners with 4th Clarkson, it’s also because I’ve personally been involved with Scouting since I was a child. I apparently was part of Beavers when it was only a pilot project some thirty years ago. I grew up in scouting, and it was a large part of my formative years… I went all the way through into Venturers, the next step past Scouts. I have a lot of fond memories of camping with scouts, I also have a lot of COLD memories of camp. I can wear it as a badge of honour that I once spent a weekend camping outdoors where the temperature before wind-chill dropped to minus 20°C. I should add that was with Venturers… in the steep mountain valleys of Kanaskis Country west of Calgary. It’s not an experience that I think I will ever forget. It’s been more than twenty years, and it’s still really fresh.
Believe it or not, my experience with Scouting also helped me complete my work for ministry in seminary. As an adult education model, before I could graduate with my Masters of Divinity, I had to demonstrate that I was competent at a given number of aspects of ministry. The driving idea behind this was akin to the fact that you don’t want to have a doctor operate on you who got a “D” in Anatomy! We would work at it until we demonstrated that we were competent at a given skill in being a minister. What does this have to do with scouts? Many people at seminary had a hard time wrapping their head around this way of approaching education. Me? I found the perfect metaphor: Badges! Scout Badges! I needed so many badges to graduate, so I began working away at them with this in mind. My supervisors hated the metaphor, but for me it was a compliment, both to the kind of forward thinking at the seminary, but also to Scouts for having given me this kind of background so I could learn in this kind of environment.
It’s a bit more personal for me to be sure, but my whole encounter with Scouts was a genuine transformative experience. For many people, Scouts and Guides are life-changing experiences that shape and mold who we are as people. As a theme, the timing couldn’t be better for this Sunday, given that today we celebrate “Transfiguration” –a life-altering event not only for Jesus, but for those who walked with him.
As the gospel of Luke tells the story, Jesus takes a handful of his disciples for a journey up a mountain. This wasn’t just a casual day-long hike, but would have been a considerable journey that would have easily taken a number of days. One could say that Jesus was taking a few of his disciples out camping. Yet this wouldn’t be like any casual trip they had been on before. While Peter, James and John didn’t know it, this was far more than simply climbing up a mountain to get a good view.
In Biblical stories, Mountains are holy places. As ancient cultures understood it, they saw mountains as the pillars of heaven, that supported the sky… They were places where people encountered the holy. There was something qualitatively different about these distant, often desolate places, away from the noise and grind of everyday life. If you’ve ever been to the top of a mountain, the silence can be deafening. The ancients felt that somehow the barrier between divine realm and the material world was somehow thinner in these places. That this is where one came to encounter God.
All of the scripture readings we hear today point to this. They all describe encounters with God in reference to mountains. Psalm 99 speaks about God’s holy mountain, the story from Exodus talks about a life-changing encounter Moses has with God on Mount Sinai. Luke’s story evokes all of these images when we see Jesus, Peter, James and John beginning to climb up the mountain to pray. As the story goes, the three disciples get far more than they expected. In the midst of what is supposed to be a time of quiet meditation and prayer, suddenly the three see Jesus is a new light. It’s as if that veil between the mortal realm and heaven’s vision has been torn away. It foreshadows what happens at Easter… In the midst of this, they see Jesus speaking with Elijah and Moses… two others who had profound life-changing experiences of God at the top of mountains. Peter, James, and John are overwhelmed by this… much of the story seems to be told from their point of view… that they are so dumbfounded and gob smacked by this that they don’t know what to think much less what to say.
Peter, ever trying to be helpful, manages to stammer out with something.
“Master, it is good for us to be here.” He looks around… trying to think of what to say next. “Hey… why don’t we put up three tents! One for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah!” –I must admit, it’s good timing to have a reading about tents coming up on the same day as the Scout Parade… Peter was on such a high with this experience that he wanted to preserve the experience, build a monument to this whole thing… and have people come to this place and visit this shrine. Yet no sooner does Peter say this than a cloud overshadows them, they hear this powerful voice on the wind telling them to listen to Jesus… and suddenly they’re all alone with Jesus. He doesn’t seem to have even heard Peter, and begins his way back down the mountain.
We call this story the “Transfiguration” –where three of the disciples have a powerful experience, suddenly seeing Jesus in a new way. It’s the moment that they realize that Jesus is not just a teacher or healer, but is something more… much more. Peter wants to preserve this “mountaintop” experience, not really understanding that this experience was to prepare them for the journey to Jerusalem, which would lead to the darkness of good Friday, but beyond that, the hope of new life at Easter. This experience was not the end-all and be-all, it was to prepare them for what was to come. It is a reminder that they didn’t belong on the mountain itself, but actually in the world, to be about the work that God called them to. It’s a reminder to us that Jesus does not call us to preserve a heritage, but to move forward and live and work in the world.
Speaking from experience, each of has those moments or experiences that change us right down to the core of who we are. They are opportunities or moments when we suddenly see the world in a different way, or have a renewed appreciation for life. Yet there is a natural, human tendency to want to hold onto the experience itself, rather than what that experience teaches us. The transfiguration reminds us that we need to look beyond the event, and how it helps us in our actual everyday life… because ultimately that’s where we live from day to day.
I know many of my own experiences in scouting were very much a part of these mountaintop type experiences. In my case, many of them literally happened in the presence of jagged peaks and the wonders of nature. Yet as anyone in Scouting or Guiding will share, these experiences themselves are not what’s important… it’s how these experiences shape us for everyday life. They show us what it is to our best, to learn, to grow and to carry that experience back into our life together… be it at school, at home, at work, or at play.
Amen.
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