"The The Cloud" March 6, 2011

Exodus 24: 12-18
Matthew 17:1-9
For the last four months heavy gray snow clouds have hung over us. As tired as we all have been of the snow, I think what eats away at us making us depressed is the seemingly never ending Gray. This week on the first of March, the clouds parted and skies were blue. Regardless of temperatures, regardless of snow and ice, suddenly it felt more like Spring. Yesterday a new cloud over shadowed us, different from the others, the steady gentle rains melted the ice and snow and soot, bathing everything clean. Underneath was revealed green grass, open water, the smell of worms. This is not to say that there will be no more snow, but better than consulting the shadows of a hibernating rodent, the gray clouds of endless winter will give way to Lent and the coming of Easter's Resurrection.

Clouds have meaning for us. There once was a Peanuts Cartoon, with Lucy, Linus and Charlie Brown lying on their backs on a hillside staring up at the heavens. Lucy asked what they saw in the clouds, and Linus described the clouds looking like Moses and the Israelites on one side, and Pharaoh and his armies, horses and chariots, coming down upon them, when behind Moses the way suddenly cleared, and a cloud of fire and pillar of smoke separated and protected them from Pharaoh. Lucy and Linus walked away, as Charlie Brown said: “I was gonna say a Ducky and a Horsey but it sounded kind of lame.”

In a recent series of commercials, the Family are dressed up and sitting on a couch for a portrait, but as the Mom looks at the picture, one looks board, another is texting, a third is shoving an Action Figure into the ear of the fourth. And Superhero Mom declares “To the Cloud” and with the advanced technology of Windows 7 Bill Gates is able to help Mom fix the photo to save the Day. In another the couple are bored, sitting at the airport as their flight is delayed yet again. The husband declares “To the Cloud” and the computer is able to provide television shows until they are able to leave.

“To the Cloud” has become an analogy to seeking technology to solve our problems, much as “To the Batcave, Robin” 40 years ago meant consulting data bases and a super-computer to solve riddles or understand clues. When Moses went up the mountain, and on the 7th day entered into the cloud, “To the Cloud” was not about technology, but about mystery, mysticism, holiness. The Cloud, was where Moses received the Law and 10 Commandments from God. The Law and Commandments represent our relationship with God and with one another as ordained by our Creator, Savior and Protector. “To the Cloud” meant seeking what is holy, seeking what is mysterious and mystical, seeking to know from God what does not make sense in this world of our control. Before the Apollo astronauts landed on the Moon, “To the Clouds” meant going where no human had gone before.

Hiking in the mountains, there comes an altitude, when you are above the tree-line, above where things grow, everything is rock, and you cannot make out what is below, obscured beneath trees and shrubs. The Clouds settle upon the mountains and it feels as though you are closer to God than to the world from which we come. In the cloud, the air feels heavy and moist, our eyelashes hang with dew and rocks, light, all reality seems to glisten and shimmer before us.Within the cloud, chronological time seems irrelevant, instead of measuring by seconds, or minutes, hours or days, you come to recognize that others who have gone before us erected stone markers, cairns, and often in the ethereal mysts of the Cloud all we can see is from one stone cairn to the next, one of life's milestones to another point on the journey.

The Transfiguration is one of the moments in the Gospels of Holiness, a moment of mysticism, a milestone that this time, this relationship with Jesus is unique, sacred. Jesus had been traveling with the disciples for a long time. He had been preaching and teaching, he had fed the 4000 with 7 loaves and a few fish. Jesus had asked who the disciples considered he was to them, and Simon Peter had confessed Jesus as being the Messiah, Son of the Living God! Not simply as teacher, or leader, pastor or priest or prophet, but Son of God. To which Jesus confesses, “YES, and as Son of God and also the Son of Man, this Son must be sacrificed for the sins of the world.” Six days later, on the Sabbath Day, he took with him Simon Peter, and the brothers James and John, to the Cloud on the Mountain.

This passage is directly related to what went before, because while Simon Peter makes the leap of faith that Jesus is the Messiah, the other disciples had identified Jesus as being like Moses and Elijah and John the Baptist. The Gospels have never narrated what Jesus said to Moses and Elijah, only that he prayed and Elijah and Moses came to him, as much as to say that Jesus was greater than Moses and Elijah, his ministry was to provide yet a new and deeper relationship with God than the Law or the Prophets had been able. There are people in this life, who serve a purpose for us, some who are our Moses and Elijah, some who are our Peter, James and John. Not that their lives do not serve a purpose for themselves and for God, but some also serve as mentors, some as spiritual guides, some as law givers and truth tellers, some providing wisdom and others demonstrating true humility.

Simon Peter jumps the gun, offering that he and the others could create booths here. It is unclear whether his intent was resting places to house Jesus and Moses and Elijah, that this experience could go on forever, never having to return to reality. OR whether, by creating booths, his offer was that people would pay money to see this, we should bring others here to see this. Either way, Peter's offer profanes what they are experiencing, and a bright cloud overshadows them, and a voice confirms and commands “This is my Son, The Beloved, Listen to Him.” To which, Jesus says what he said more than any other words, “Be not afraid.”

Personally, I have always been moved by what comes after, in this passage. Jesus instructed the three to “Tell No One, Until the Son of Man is Raised From the Dead.” They came down the mountain, and immediately there was a crowd surrounding a Man and his Son. And presumably, the Son lay on the ground in convulsions, because that was what the father wanted Jesus to save him from living. In Matthew's Gospel, Jesus is quoted as describing how little faith the people have that they could not pray to God themselves. In Mark's Gospel, this elicits the Father confessing to Jesus “I believe, but Help My Unbelief.” I think that is exactly where humanity is! We do believe, in the Baptism of our children we confess our deepest desire, that our children would grow up to know and love Jesus. But we also, each of us, have unbelief, disbelief, fears and doubts and angers. We take a pill, we seek a counselor, we look for a new computer application to solve our boredom and our family issues.

If anything, what I hear in these passages of Moses and Jesus going up the Mountain to the Cloud, is that where our generation of humanity, our culture today seeks quick fixes, The Answers to solve our problems, instead the mysterious pilgrimage, the holy experience of Moses and Jesus was about redemption, an experience which changed them so severely that they did not come down the mountain the same. Going to the Cloud is not about a new Application, or how to fix photos so we can be proud of the picture, but seeking to be redeemed, to be changed by God.