In the Cloud

February 11^th, 2018   “In the Cloud”         Rev. Heather Jepsen

Mark 9:2-9

         Show of hands . . . how many friends here have things stored in the cloud?  How many of us understand exactly what the cloud is and how it works?  That’s what I thought!  The cloud is a modern mystery that many people take on faith.  I have all my sermons from my whole preaching career, and all the photos my iPhone has ever taken stored in the cloud, but I don’t really understand what or where it is.  I know how to access my documents, but I can’t see the cloud and I can’t touch the cloud.  I think that the cloud is my information stored somewhere on servers, but I know if I saw those servers it wouldn’t look like a cloud.  It would look like a bunch of big black boxes, and if I opened them with a screwdriver I would not see my sermons or my pictures inside of them.  And yet, they are there, in the cloud.  I would guess a lot of people have faith in the cloud which they can’t see or hear or touch.  I would also guess that a lot of these same folks refuse to have faith in God because they haven’t been able see or hear or touch God.

         Today is Transfiguration Sunday and we always celebrate it right before we begin the season of Lent.  Like the cloud, the transfiguration story is shrouded in mystery and hard to explain.  The three Synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew, and Luke) all have a central point to their narrative where Jesus ascends a mountain and is transformed before a handful of the disciples.  John doesn’t tell this story.  His Jesus is so holy and god-like that he doesn’t need this moment.

         The way Mark tells it, Jesus heads up the mountain with Peter, James and John.  While there his appearance becomes dazzling white.  Moses and Elijah appear and consult with Jesus.  Then the cloud comes down, overshadows them all, and instructs the disciples, and the reader by proxy, to listen to the message Jesus has.

         Of course, there is a lot of symbolism here.  The mountain is always important as a way to connect with the divine.  Jesus is like Moses ascending Mt Horeb to meet with God and get the 10 commandments.  Moses and Elijah are important because they signify the law and the prophets respectively in the Jewish tradition.  Their appearance shows that Jesus now is the summation of all that previous teaching.  God is in the cloud on Mt Horeb with Moses and so God is in the cloud here, telling the disciples to pay attention.  As they descend the mountain, Jesus tells them to keep all this a secret until after the Son of Man has risen from the dead.  I’m not sure they would know what to say to anybody about this anyway.

         The disciples are totally confused and overwhelmed by this mysterious event.  (Much like the preacher who must craft a sermon on it every single year!)  In Matthew the disciples are so scared they fall down and in Luke they are so bored by Jesus conversation with Moses and Elijah that they fall asleep until the cloud wakes them up and scares the dickens out of them.  In Mark Peter is so scared he doesn’t know what he is talking about when he says “Maybe we should pitch some tents up here.”

         Much like we don’t really understand the cloud that holds our digital documents, the disciples don’t really understand the mystery that is Jesus.  When Jesus’ glory is revealed and they are looking right at him as a divine glowing being, they don’t understand what they are seeing.  Much like I still wouldn’t understand the digital cloud if I was standing there staring at the server.  Yet, I trust the cloud with my sermons anyway.  And so the disciples are told to trust Jesus.  “This is my Son, the Beloved, listen to him!”

         What Jesus has to say is hard to listen to.  A week before they ascend the mountain Jesus tells the disciples that the Son of Man will undergo great suffering, will be killed, and will rise again.  Peter is so upset that he takes Jesus aside to explain to him how confused Jesus must be.  It’s as if Jesus doesn’t know who the Messiah is supposed to be.  Yet, this is the story that God tells the disciples to listen to.  Listen to this path of suffering.  The Son of Man will take up his cross and so must you who choose to follow him.  No wonder the disciples don’t understand.  Who could ever understand a lesson like that?

         I can find a lot of similarities between our modern faith in the digital cloud and our ancient faith in the God of the cloud.  Everything on the internet is in the cloud but we can’t see it.  God is in everything here among us on Earth, and we frequently cannot see it.  Everything is in Jesus Christ, that is what the gospel of John preaches, and yet even when the disciples witness Jesus Christ glorified they cannot see it.  He is too bright to look at and so they look away.  Jesus teaches that he brings the kingdom of God and also that the kingdom of God is coming.  And the church teaches that the kingdom of God is among us now, and the kingdom of God is coming.  Right now and not yet.  There is a lot of mystery here, a lot of gray area, and a lot of cloudiness.  I believe that I have seen and heard and touched God, and yet I cannot adequately explain that to you, and I cannot give you those experiences.  Like the digital cloud, God doesn’t work that way.

         Today we gather at the communion table and this is yet another place shrouded in cloudy mystery.  Here you can eat real bread and drink real juice.  That I can offer you tangibly.  But there is something intangible here as well.  When we say the prayers and celebrate together we believe that the spirit of Jesus Christ is among us in a profound way.  You can’t see it but you can feel it.  And in true divine fashion you can’t always feel it, just sometimes.  God seems to like to keep us guessing, keep us in the grey cloud of faith.

           People demand proof for a lot of things in this life, and yet other things they willingly take on faith.  Modern Americans trust computers, iPhones, the cloud, the stock market, and much more.  Things they believe will always be there for them, even if they don’t really understand what they are or how they work.  Ancient Israelites trusted the God they saw in the law and the prophets, as well as the God they were beginning to see in Jesus Christ.  They didn’t really understand what these things were or how God worked but they had faith anyway.

         The nature of modern faith is much the same.  We trust in a God we cannot always see or hear or touch.  We trust in a God we know some things about but not all things about.  Every now and then, like the disciples on the mountaintop, we get a glimpse of the true presence of God among us.  Sometimes that strengthens our faith.  Sometimes it just confuses us more.

         The transfiguration story is the tipping point of the gospel of Mark.  It is exactly in the middle of the gospel.  Before this Jesus was healing and teaching and figuring out who he was.  After this Jesus will head to Jerusalem and to his own death.  The church too turns toward darker things now as we ponder our own death and sinfulness during the season of Lent.  Like being in a cloud, all these stories are nebulous and confusing.  We know there is truth there but it is not easy to see.  And so every year we tell these stories again.  Transfiguration, temptation, arguing with the Pharisees, Pilate, the Sanhedrin, and the angry crowds, torture, death, and the body in the tomb; we tell all the stories again until we get to Easter in the hopes that this year we will get another kernel of wisdom.  This year we might harvest another smidgen of knowledge from this story in the cloud.  This year we might listen to Jesus and actually understand.

         May God be with us as we begin our Lenten journeys this week.  And may God be with us as we continue to search for answers and faith within the cloud.  Amen.