"Thirsting for Mission"
Julie Madden
Sunday, February 20th 2005

We come from the mountain, we come from the mountain, go back to the mountain, turn the world around.

Every time we sing that song, according to Anna, someone comes up to her and says: “HUH? What does that song mean?”

To me, it is another way of telling the story of today’s gospel, in which Jesus and several of the apostles go to the mountaintop, to be away. While they are there, the apostles are astounded by the presence of the prophets Moses and Elijah. And suddenly Jesus is transfigured by light, radiant, shining. The apostles are transfigured by amazement, and they hear the voice of God coming from the clouds, saying: “This is my child, in whom I am well pleased.” The apostles are afraid and Jesus reassures them. The Gospel ends with the clouds lifting, things returning to normal, and Jesus and the apostles come down from the mountain, to turn the world around.

This story is the life cycle of the Christian. It is our Lenten journey and our Christian journey. We have mountaintop experiences when we feel the light of the Holy Spirit illuminating our lives or see that light shining so brightly in someone else.

Sometimes we know we are in the presence of a prophet – every time I hear Kathy Kelly speak on her work for peace, or when I hear Jim Farrell urge us to examine our consumer culture. I’ll never forget when Marlys Weber told me in November of 2002 that we needed to take a bus to Washington DC for a peace march in February. When four buses filled, I knew that Marlys was a prophet – she could see what the people needed. Sometimes we know the voice of God in our own hearts. In George Bernard Shaw’s St. Joan of Arc, when Joan faces her inquisitors, they claim: “You don’t hear voices. That is your imagination.” And Joan replies: “Of course. How else does God speak to us?”

Sometimes the voice of God is overpowering. Recently parishioner Carla Kjellberg started buying time on a local radio station AM 950 to air a show on Saturday mornings that highlights progressive, compassionate voices. When I asked her why, she explained: “Because God was screaming at me” and sometimes we will do anything to make God stop screaming at us. But our lives are not one peak experience after another. We come down from the mountain, into the valleys and deserts of real life and we turn the world around. We realize that God is in all things, not just in our mountaintop experiences. That is the mission, the sending forth of the Christian.

In “Cost of Discipleship” Dietrich Bonhoeffer gives us the job description of the Christian: “We can never tolerate any limits set to the love and service of all people. If the world despises one of its people, the Christian will love and serve that person. If the world does violence to another, the Christian will comfort that person. Where the world exploits and oppresses, the Christian will raise up the oppressed. If the world refuses justice, the Christian will pursue mercy and if the world takes refuge in lies, the Christian will speak.”

You all know this job description intimately. I know this because every day I spend my life in the presence of all of you. You spend your lives in mission reflecting the love of God to everyone in your lives and in our world. You are doing with your whole hearts what it seems to me you can’t not do. You don’t choose to accept a mission because it’s not a matter of choice or acceptance. It’s what you can’t not do. And I know you are driven by mission because often you come to me and say: “Here is how St. Joan of Arc can share this mission” and suddenly the mission is communal, and that may be the best part of our Christian journey.

You know that our thirst for mission is not solely the journey of one isolated heart, one lone spirit, one solitary walk with Jesus Christ. Our mission as a parish and as a Church, is communal. Each Sunday we come together and we are restored to continue our mission. I believe our struggles of the last couple of years have served to make our mission even clearer: Our mission is to be the good news: we are the hope, the peace, the love of Christ to each other and in the world.

Friedrich Nietzsche asks: “What is “good news”? That true life, eternal life, has been found – it is not something promised, it is already here, it is within you: as life lived in love without subtraction or exclusion, without distance. Everyone is the child of God – Jesus definitely claims nothing for himself alone – and as a child of God everyone is equal to everyone else.” We even share a mission statement that starts: “St. Joan of Arc is a joyful Christian community”. The first word we use to describe ourselves is “joyful” and when we know that good news, it’s no wonder we’re joyful. How could we be otherwise? How could we keep from singing?

More than ever the world needs us, our joy, our commitment to our mission to turn the world around. When I watched Todd’s amazing video, I’m reminded of that mountaintop experience when on one day two years ago, 10 million people around the world protested before the war in Iraq. We were unsuccessful. We did not accomplish our mission. Since then, we have walked together in the valley of the shadow of death, but we are still living our mission as peacemakers – we can’t not be - and we will come together to another mountaintop. Join us – together we will turn the world around.