Matthew 26:36-39

Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane; and he said to his disciples, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” He took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be grieved and agitated. Then he said to them, “I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here, and stay awake with me.” And going a little farther, he threw himself on the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want.”

“God won’t give you more than you can handle.”

Our next theme in this Lenten series is one of those you can imagine stitched onto a throw pillow, or found on a magnet at the Christian bookstore, or on a horrible poster like this…right?

But with today’s “Half Truth” on my mind last week, without even trying, I stumbled upon the story of a little two-year-old boy named William Roberts who wandered away from his family’s backyard and was found, 12 hours later, drowned, in creek near his home. It happened right in southern Indiana, in or around the little town of Borden, just this past January 22nd. Last Wednesday, March 8th, William’s father was in a car accident while he was driving his other six-year-old son, Ayden, to school. Just 9 weeks after the first tragedy, the same family lost another child. Six-year-old Ayden was pronounced dead, too, shortly after the crash.

“God won’t give you more than you can handle,” right?

And while the tragedy of the Roberts family is rare, that kind of deep sadness and struggle isn’t unique. We’ve all heard about the girls from Delphi. Many of us have been following and praying for Brody Stephens and his family. Yesterday we grieved the loss of Phil Jacoby, who died much too soon. It’s all relative, right? This can’t be about measuring the weight or the depth of one person’s burden against someone else’s. Life isn’t a CrossFit competition to see who can carry or bear or survive the greatest sorrow and still find faith – which is one thing that seems to be implied by the sentiment, “God won’t give you more than you can handle.” Like when one stress follows another; when one sorrow piles up on top of another; we’re supposed to just breathe deep, suck it up, and power through the heavy lifting.

“God won’t give you more than you can handle.” Yeah right.

Such a platitude is not only – at the very least – “half true” as our series implies, but it’s also impotent, incomprehensible, and downright insensitive, if you’ve ever heard it in the midst of real, deep grief or surprising shock and stress.

Among so many other things, these Lenten days – this walk to the cross, this journey of ashes and sacrifice and crucifixion and dying – remind us that we are a people not immune to or shielded from hardship or suffering or struggle in our lives.

To the contrary, as we make our way to Calvary in these days – and in the face of well-meaning, but lame half-truths like “God won’t give you more than you can handle” – it’s worth being reminded that we are a people who claim what we call a Theology of the Cross, as a cornerstone of our theology. It’s a Lutheran spin, you might say, on what it means to do CrossFit as an exercise of faith, to take up the cross and follow Jesus. (See what I did there? Cross Fit, get it?)

To put it simply, the cross dares to remind us that sometimes life does give us more than we can handle. (Not God, mind you…God doesn’t give us pain and suffering…but the hardships that come our way are no more and no less than part of life on the planet.) And sometimes it’s too much. Sometimes it’s unfair. Sometimes it just is, more than we can or should have to handle on our own. And it’s okay to say that. I mean, Jesus himself – God’s only Son…God’s own self – was killed… utterly, completely, dead…signed, sealed and delivered into the hands of death and despair and oblivion. It was too much for Jesus – at least once – right?

So, think, if you can, about some of the hardest, most vulnerable, sad and scary times of your life… Think of some of your deepest, darkest struggles… Think about some of the greatest loss you’ve known... Most of us have had moments that were – or felt like – more than we could handle. Maybe we’re in the midst of one of those moments, even now.

When I consider all of that… When I think about that poor family down in southern Indiana, the ones who lost their little boys, whose home has likely gone from one extreme of loud and laughing, hopeful and happy life in every sense of the word, to the other extreme of quiet and confused, darkness and despair, the likes of which I hope I’ll never know, I imagine Jesus in that moment in the garden, “Father, if it be your will, let this cup pass from me.” Even more, I think of Jesus on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” “Dear God, take this away…this sadness, this suffering, this darkness, this despair.” “It’s more than I can handle… it’s more than I can bear… it’s more than anyone should have to endure.”

But I think that’s precisely why the stories of Jesus’ suffering come our way. We’re reminded that God gets it. That even God knows what it’s like to lose a child. That God, in Jesus, knows what it’s like to feel lost, forsaken, out of luck and out of options. That Jesus came for this. Not to get us out of trouble at every turn, but to get into our trouble with us no matter what. To remind us that even our deepest pain, our greatest struggle, our darkest despair – that even death – won’t win the day.

That, yes, sometimes we do get more than we can handle, but that it doesn’t come from God. What comes from God is the victory – the empty tomb, the new life, the second chance. What comes from God is the love we know in Jesus; the love that conquers death; the love that shows up in the fellowship of believers who stand with us in our suffering; the love that endures and abides; the love that never ends.

Sometimes we do get more than we can handle. But – thanks be to God – we never get more than God can handle – on our behalf – through the death and resurrection; through the life- and love-everlasting that is ours in Jesus Christ.

Amen

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."

As has been mentioned, today is the day we celebrate the Transfiguration of the Lord. This is also the final Sunday in the season of Epiphany – a season that began all the way back on January 6th.

Epiphany is the season in which we celebrate the ongoing revelation of God; and the Gospel texts over the past two months has revealed much to us.

We witnessed God’s revelation in Jesus’ baptism.

John the Baptist invited others to encounter the revealed God.

Jesus revealed God’s preference for the poor by calling lowly fishermen as disciples.

And in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus revealed a God who provides all that is needed as well as a God who challenges us to live lives of service to the vulnerable, oppressed, and outcast.

Much has been revealed to us during this past season of Epiphany. But before we turn our attention to the somber season of Lent, before we accompany Jesus on his path to Jerusalem and the cross, we are invited to pause, experience, and learn from one more Epiphany revelation – a literal mountaintop experience.

The story of the Transfiguration is an odd one that has long-perplexed pastors, professors and parishioners because the story seems especially out of place in Matthew’s Gospel. As you will notice throughout the year as we explore this Gospel, Matthew’s primary objective is exploring the real-life implications, actions and behaviors associated with faith. At first glance, the story of the Transfiguration seems like it has little to do with real life. A shining face, dazzling white clothes, and the appearance of two ghosts…what in the world does this have to do with you and me? If Matthew’s concern is instructing us on how we live out our faith, what point is he trying to make by including this story?

It could be that Matthew’s objective in telling this story is to address how we should respond to our own mountaintop experiences – the times in our lift when we feel on top of the world and surrounded by God’s grace.

Mountaintop experiences are scattered throughout the Bible. The first one that comes to mind is Moses and the Israelites’ experience at Mount Sinai in the book of Exodus.

On the top of Mount Sinai, Moses encountered God. There, Moses received instruction from God, as well as the two tablets of stone containing the Ten Commandments. Moses was then commanded to go down the mountain and share his God-encounter with others. Unfortunately, while Moses was away, the Israelites had begun to worship a false idol – a calf which they had crafted out of gold. Moses was so angry when he returned to camp that he melted the golden idol, crushed it to powder and made the people eat it…which sounds excessive until you remember how you felt the last time you spent time around people who just can’t seem to get their act together.

Safe to say, Moses would have preferred to stay on top of the mountain, where the pressures and worries of real-life, as well as the eventual disappointments of the people whom he was called to lead, lay thousands of feet below. I think we all would prefer our mountaintop experiences to last as long as possible.

Certainly this was true of Jesus’ disciples. Here on the top of a high mountain, Peter, James and John witness something amazing. They experience God in a direct, powerful and very clear way. Peter responds by asking permission to build dwellings for Moses, Elijah and Jesus; effectively saying, “Oh, this is wonderful, let’s make sure you all stay here permanently, so that I know where to come find you.” It’s not a stretch to think that the next request out of Peter’s mouth would have been for permission to build a dwelling for himself, so that he would not have to return to the fears, frustrations and fractured-existence of his daily life and simply stay with the Lord on the mountaintop.

On the top of the mountain, finding himself in the awesome presence of God, Peter’s inclination was to build a building – a closed-off structure that would literally and figuratively allow him to preserve his experience of God in a familiar and easily-accessible form whenever he desired.

However, God was not pleased with Peter’s efforts to take Jesus captive. God cuts off Peter’s request with a clear command to shut up and listen to Jesus. Peter had missed the point. Jesus had no intention of staying on the mountain. He had work to do, and so did Peter. Jesus’ presence would not be exclusively tied to the mountaintop experience; he would also be found in the valleys.

When we encounter God in powerful ways we, like Peter, try to pin it down and seal it shut, for easy access later on. Much like what kids do over the summer, as they run around trapping fireflies in glass containers, hoping to capture the wonder of the moment and preserve it forever. There is a word for our attempt to contain God. There is a word that describes our desire to seal up God into a pretty and convenient little box for easy access. This word is “religion.”

Religion at its basic level is a structure built off the blueprints of particular people’s experiences of the divine. The theory goes, if you reconstruct the original circumstances of the divine experience as accurately as possible, one has the chance to recreate and re-access the experience of the divine.

A problem with religion, however, is that it can so easily become a hollow shell. Religion is a well-intended structure meant to preserve and revisit a mountaintop God experience; however, we must realize that God is living, active, on the move. God is there for our mountaintop experiences but subsequently moves from there into the valleys of suffering and pain where God’s presence is most needed. Our call is to follow God down from the mountain and into service.

Religious experience does not work like a mathematical equation. Recreating one person’s authentic religious experience does not necessarily produce the same results. Following a set of rules, creeds, and traditions without having the desire to experience God for oneself, or without the desire to let that experience move you to serve others, will produce nothing. No matter how beautiful the construction, a dead religion can never constrain a living God.

Our challenge, as people of God, is to fight the temptation to trap and suffocate God’s awesome presence within our literal and figurative walls. Our challenge, as people of God, is to experience God’s awesome presence out in the world: in our workplaces, homes, parks, nursing homes, schools, food pantries, and community events as we serve those whose lives are anything but beautiful mountaintop vistas.

We worship a living God and God will not be contained in one place. God will not be contained in one theology. God will not be contained in one’s religious practices.

I pray that you would have mountaintop experiences. I pray that God would be revealed in your lives in the most profound and shocking ways. I pray that you would experience God as you worship within these walls. But I also pray that you have the courage to expect God’s presence in the midst of the dark valleys of your life.

Jesus has no plans to stay on the mountain. From the top of the mountain Jesus has his eyes firmly affixed on Jerusalem and the cross awaiting him. This mountaintop experience will be followed by a very real and very painful valley. And yet, Jesus has one more thing to say, “Get up and do not be afraid.” Jesus’ words on the mountaintop, words of hope and promise, loudly reverberate in every direction, penetrating every valley and dark place. “Get up and do not be afraid.”

When all else fades -- and indeed, soon enough all will become dark indeed – Jesus remains, reaching out in help and healing. At the very close of Matthew's account, he will gather with these and all of his disciples on another mountain, and promise that he will be with them, and with you and me, even to the close of the age.

Amen.

"Half Truths: God Won't Give You More Than You Can Handle"

"What Happens on the Mountain Does NOT Stay on the Mountain" – Matthew 17:1-9