United Methodist Church Hyde Park, NY

LOVE COMES DOWN
Luke 9:28-43a
 
 
 
Today is a special day. Yes, you all know: Valentine’s Day – love and romance, roses and chocolates, candlelight dinners, marriage proposals and diamond rings, and, of course, weddings. I Corinthians 13 is often read at weddings, and understood on such occasions as a reference to married love. Many hear it as a sort of all-purpose tribute to a generic idea of love. But that is precisely what the passage is not.
 
This famous chapter on love really describes Jesus. He is the supreme model of mature love, today and forever. Jesus “is patient and kind;” Jesus “is not jealous or boastful;” Jesus “is not arrogant or rude.” Jesus “does not insist on his own way.” The love of Jesus “never ends.” It’s a good bet that most wedding guests hearing 1 Corinthians 13 are not aware that the passage is really about the love of Christ as it takes shape in the Christian community. In actuality Paul’s words have nothing at all to do with romantic love – which, for all its fabled intensity, is a relatively short-lived phenomenon.
 
Today is a special day, but not just because it’s Valentine’s Day. You may not have realized it when you walked into church this morning, but this Sunday is a major turning point in the church’s year. Today the transfigured Christ turns his blazing face toward disfigurement and certain death in Jerusalem at the hands of his enemies. This week the church turns away from the light of Epiphany into the shadows of Lent.
 
Listen again to Luke’s account of the story: “Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.”
 
According to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, this event – called the Transfiguration – is the most unambiguous revelation of Jesus as Messiah prior to the Resurrection. As Peter, James, and John watch the dazzling scene, the voice of God declares: “This is my Son.” The appearance of Moses and Elijah ratifies the designation of Jesus as the Chosen One of Israel, the fulfillment of the Law (Moses) and the Prophets (Elijah). This is the original mountaintop experience. Peter, always the one to speak first and later to regret it, delivers one of his biggest blunders on this occasion: “‘Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah’ – not knowing what he was saying.”
 
It is part of our human nature to want to build dwellings and ski lodges and resort hotels on top of mountains. We don’t want to come down from the high. But Jesus knows he cannot stay on the summit soaking up the view. He and Moses and Elijah speak together, but not of peak experiences. They speak of his departure, which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem.
 
For you see, love cannot stay on the mountaintop. It must come down. Love must go where it is most needed – not at the pinnacle, but in the valley of the shadow of death. I read the passage from 1 Corinthians today, not because I thought it would be nice to read for Valentine’s Day, but because it is about Jesus as he sets forth to be crucified. “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
 
As a pastor was crossing a Manhattan street near her parish, a taxi came roaring around the corner and knocked her to the pavement. A crowd gathered, and an ambulance was called. It took an unusually long time to arrive. It was forty minutes before she was actually put on the gurney. In the meantime, she lay on the asphalt. She says she was aware of a lot of people standing around looking down at her. But what she remembers most about that long wait was the great distance between her on the concrete and the faces high above. In those minutes she says she very much needed someone to get down on the ground with her, to put a coat under her head, to hold her hand and stay down with her until help arrived.
 
Taylor Branch’s book about the civil rights movement, Pillar of Fire, comes to a climax with Martin Luther King, Jr. traveling to Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. As the undisputed leader of a movement that had captured the imagination of people around the globe, he now had access to the crowned heads of Europe and the inner circles of power in Washington. Surely he could not be faulted if he retired from the barricades and became a highly paid fixture on the lecture circuit. Yet, as the final paragraph of the book states, “King’s inner course was fixed downward, toward the sanitation workers of Memphis.”In Memphis, there was a bullet waiting.
 
Love comes down.“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” Love is grateful for the experience on the mountaintop, but knows that it cannot stay there. Love persists when the glory has faded, when the romance has fled. Love never gives up. Love does not even require reciprocity. Love goes to Memphis. Love gets down on the pavement. Love goes to Jerusalem where the enemy lies in wait.
 
On this day, Jesus turns his back on his glory and begins his descent into the valley. He comes down from the mountain. He comes down from the majesty on high. He comes down from the infinite spaces of dazzling light and prepares to enter the darkness of human suffering and human pain and human death. God is not looking down with detachment from a great distance. God does not remain majestically aloof somewhere over the rainbow. God is not a distant observer of our struggles. God cares. As Jesus of Nazareth sets his face toward Jerusalem, he is about to become in his own person the embrace of God for all the misery of the world.
 
And so wherever one human being reaches out for another in the midst of suffering, wherever a person in power stoops down to help, wherever the mighty bend to the lowly, there is the Lord. Whenever you do this, you are becoming Jesus’ disciple.
 
And whoever you are and whatever your pain, this very day in the power of his Word spoken, he reaches out, he comes down, to seek you, to find you, to embrace you. Love comes down to you.