Jesus is Not Special

3-3-19

Grace to you and peace from God our Creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen.

One Saturday when I was in middle school, my youth group carpooled out to Devils Lake State Park, about an hour north of Madison. It was a gorgeous fall day as we trekked up and down the hills around Devil’s Lake and enjoying the spectacular view. After a while, though, I noticed that my knees were starting to feel sore – not from going UP the steep hills, but more from going DOWN them. This is apparently a common phenomenon among people who do a lot of climbing – it often takes MORE energy to get DOWN a mountain than to go UP… and sometimes climbers get into trouble when they use up ALL their energy on the way UP, and don’t have enough strength to get back down again.

It’s sort of a wonder, then, that Jesus came down the mountain at all. After all, who would not want to just hang out with Moses and Elijah, with just your 3 closest friends, and keep your clothes dazzling white when you lived in a dusty climate WAY before TIDE was invented. Jesus COULD have taken Peter’s suggestion of building some tents for Moses and Elijah too, so they would be tempted to stick around for an extended camping vacation. It sounds like heaven for an introvert like me. Just set up shop and make people come to YOU. Especially knowing what would happen to Jesus after he came down.

But if Jesus HAD stayed up there on the mountain forever here in Chapter 9, where would that leave the rest of us? Sure, Jesus would remain shiny and nice, flanked by the Big-League Prophets and Peter, James, and John. But then, Jesus would never have taught us the Lord’s prayer, which doesn’t happen until chapter 11. Jesus would not have taught his parables about God’s kingdom. Jesus would never have healed the sick and blessed children or encountered Zacchaeus “the wee little man.” Jesus would not have his last supper, and he would not have suffered, died, and risen again.

We can’t live up on the mountain, and neither can Jesus. Jesus obviously did come down the mountain, the very next day, and just in time too.  Almost immediately from the crowd that was following Jesus, a father comes forward begging for help. It sounds to our modern ears that his son is suffering from some kind of epileptic fit. Whatever the cause, this helpless child is suffering, and no on else but Jesus can help.

As Jesus approached the boy, the illness cast the poor kid down to the ground yet again, which must have been terrifying to witness. But Jesus got closer, and so his pristine, dazzling white clothes became covered in the dust that the convulsing boy must have invariably kicked up. And, both still covered in that dust, Jesus healed the child and gave him back to his father, who I’m sure was too overjoyed to notice all the dirt. His boy was whole again, and that’s all that mattered. I’m sure that father was glad Jesus came down the mountain.

Peter didn’t want Jesus to come down the mountain. Perhaps he was afraid that Jesus’s shiny special-ness might wear off if he didn’t stay up there. But what Peter didn’t know yet is that Jesus is for everyday use, not just for special occasions. He didn’t know yet that Jesus was serious about getting involved with the messiness of being human, and that meant getting a little bit dusty sometimes… and other times it meant staining his face with tears or even bleeding from a cross. But this is how we know that the love of God is real – real love gets dirty. Real love gets shabby and threadbare from use.

In that favorite children’s story, The Velveteen Rabbit, the stuffed toy that became so well-loved by his boy that all his fur rubbed of, his whiskers fell out, and his lovely brown coat had faded to a dull grey. This boy too became sick, and the velveteen rabbit stayed by his side as he got well again.

But when the boy was better, all his things – which were thought to be “germy” - were packed up to be thrown away, including the rabbit. As the rabbit sat out with the rest of the garbage that night, The Nursery-Magic fairy came to visit him. The rabbit’s scruffy and well-worn appearance proved that the boy had loved him very much. Love had already made the toy rabbit real to the boy… and so the fairy simply completed the process of becoming real by changing the toy rabbit into a real one.

I love what the Skin Horse says to the velveteen rabbit early in the “becoming real” process: “Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you…You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily…  or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off… and you get … very shabby. But these things don't matter at all.”

Being real is being a little rough around the edges, a little dusty and mundane. Because that is where we live MOST of the moments of our lives – up the mountain but also down it. 

As some of my United Methodist women clergy friends wrote in a devotional (We Pray With Her), “Life has those big, beautiful moments, but mostly it’s made up of mundane things…  The good news is that God is in the business of making mundane things holy.” (page 65) Another friend said to me, “Jesus is not birthday cake… Jesus is our daily bread.”

Jesus is not special and doesn’t have to be put away up on a mountain to be kept safe to be used only on special occasions, like breakable fine china. Jesus also uses very “non-special” things for his work. Water and a promise become the means we are called beloved Children of God in our baptisms. Ordinary bread and wine become the means we are welcomed and fed by Jesus’s presence so that we don’t lose the strength to keep going down the mountain and survive and thrive in this dusty world. Jesus is with us every moment, in the breaking of bread, in the dust and in our tears, in our sweat as we work for justice.

We are about to embark on the season of Lent, which begins on Wednesday with a smudge of ash on our foreheads and a reminder that we are dust, and to dust we shall return. Jesus gets down there in the dust of life, and next week he’ll be spending 40 days in the dust of a barren wilderness. But we’ll take more about that next week.

For now, Jesus is both up on the mountain, shiny and savoring the glory of his identity of be the Beloved of his Father, before descending into the dust that makes up our daily realities. Jesus is up there on the mountain, but Jesus is also down here on the flat places as well – as he preached last week in his sermon on the plain. He is down here where real love gets a bit messy, and love might get revealed in the ordinary things, hidden in plain sight.

One of my favorite poems is called “To be of Use,” and part of it goes like this:

“The work of the world is common as mud.

Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.

Greek amphoras for wine or oil,

Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums

but you know they were made to be used.”

Real Love is not about the big birthday parties or cakes you got on your birthday – you saw their love every time your parents kissed your booboos better, or changed your diaper, or taught you how to tie your shoe. Real Love is not about the vows that you made on your wedding day in a white dress or immaculate tux, but it’s every time you said “I love you” before leaving the house, every time your spouse folded the laundry or loaded the dishwasher. Real Love is being present in all the little moments, not just the big ones. Real Love was made to be… useful. And it was made to be used OFTEN… every moment of every day.

This means that we might get a little dinged up on this journey called life. When follow Jesus’ example, WE are likely going to get dusty, smudged, faded, or even broken. Like one of our communion chalices – it came apart right at the seam. But we glued it back together, and we will be using it again. Jesus does the same – healing our broken and loved-off bits, so that we can continue to be vessels of the Real Love of God in the world. Thanks be to God. Amen.