Last week I attended the first portion of my final class at Phillips Theological Seminary. The class consists of two 3-day intensive sessions with this past week on Zoom and then I’ll travel to Tulsa in April for the second portion for three days of intensive work on Women in the Hebrew Bible. It is intense work with all the reading, researching, and writing but it is also enlightening, intriguing and interesting work.
Following my three days of Zoom-mania, I flew to Tulsa to report to the Board of Trustees as the student representative at PTS. Again, enlightening, intriguing, and interesting work. I share all of this to set the stage for what is to follow. While in Tulsa I always look forward to attending chapel to worship with my fellow students, professors and the Phillips community.
As Phillips is wrapping up their Black History and African American Heritage month worship series, I had the opportunity to worship, sing, and hear the Word of God. The guest scholar and preacher was Rev. Dr. Courtney Bryant; Pastor of Righteous Relations of All Angels Church in New York City and Professor of Womanist Ethics at Manhattan College.
Rev. Bryant preached on the text from Mark 9 where Jesus took Peter, James, and John up to the mountain top where he was transfigured before them. Peter, oh Peter, how you always want to do the right thing – do we see ourselves in Peter in this story? Peter wants to build three shelters on the mountain top; one for James, one for Moses, and one for Elijah. Peter wants to keep it all to themselves but instead God suddenly speaks and says, “This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!” And so Jesus led them down the mountain, instructing them along the way down that they are to tell no one of their mountain top experience until the Son of Man had risen from the dead.
Imagine how that must have felt to have this amazing moment and to have had this personal experience with God and with Jesus and then not being able to tell anyone, how would you even manage that level of excitement? Have you had such an experience before? How did you manage that?
For most, just as Peter, we want to stay on the “mountain top,” we don’t want to come back to “reality.” We want to relish in the high moment and to stay in the excitement of the moment. But that is not the point here. God takes this group of men up to the mountain top to get away from all the distractions so that he can tell them what he needs and wants them to hear. And then they are led back down to the reality that they are to live within. However, they are not to ignore that which they heard but instead are called to live it out. They are called to follow Jesus and to practice what that looks like in their daily walk.
Did you know that “follow me” appears 22 times in the Bible? As disciples of Jesus, we are called down from the mountain top to follow him. As Rev. Bryant shared, we are called to not only tell people about Jesus but we are called to show others Jesus in all that we do and in all in that we say. How will you show and tell about Jesus today