The Power of Experience

Sunday, March 2, 2025 (Transfiguration Sunday) – Exodus 34:29-35, Psalm 99, 2 Corinthians 3:12—4:2, Luke 9:28-36 [37-43a]

In 1999, I had the privilege of witnessing the birth of my niece, Anna Rachel. When Anna’s mother LeAnne went into labor, she invited me to be in the delivery room alongside her and my brother, Jeff.

When the process was at its most intense, Jeff and the labor nurse were on either side of LeAnne where all the action was happening. I went behind her head, wiped her forehead with a cool cloth, and offered whatever comfort I could.

Anna was finally born in the wee hours of the morning. It was a special moment for brother and sister when we gazed at this new life through the glass of the nursery. I witnessed something very powerful and very holy in those hours.

But I’ve not had the direct experience of childbirth; there’s not a whole lot I can say to a woman in labor. I can’t speak from experience.

I’m not saying that witnessing and being present are of no value. But what has more impact on our lives – watching or hearing about someone else’s experience or having that experience for ourselves? I think we’d all attest that we’re changed at a much deeper level when we have a direct experience.

In today’s texts, we read about two examples of the type of direct experience of the living God that is called a “theophany.” A theophany is a visible manifestation of God, and what is seen in both Moses and in Jesus is that their direct experience of God’s presence causes them to shine with bright light. Moses and Jesus become the visible manifestation or revelation of God.

Today, I’d like us to consider three questions.

• First, what led to these direct experiences of God’s presence?
• Second, how can we make ourselves available for our own meet-ups with God?
• And third, what could those meet-ups empower us to do?

In a few days, we’ll celebrate Ash Wednesday, the day that marks the beginning of Lent. The forty days of Lent are seen as a time of reflection, self-inquiry or repentance, and spiritual growth. During Lent we use Jesus’s forty days in the desert as an example, and so we might choose to take up a spiritual practice or discipline during these 40 days.

Again this year, Redeemer is partnering with Trinity Lutheran Church to offer Lenten worship on Wednesdays at noontime here and in the evening at Trinity. Both churches will focus on spiritual disciplines or what we’re calling “Holy Habits.” We’ve chosen eight Holy Habits: silence and solitude, prayer, scripture reading, sabbath, fasting, witnessing or sharing our faith, and community. We’ll invite you to use these forty days of Lent to explore a new practice each week.

When I ask what led to the direct encounters with God that Moses and Jesus both experienced, we can immediately answer that both men engaged in spiritual practices designed to bring humans closer to God. They actively sought that experience and connection.

Moses retreated from his people in the valley to climb to the top of Mt. Sinai, and there he prayed and fasted. Jesus, too, went away from the crowds with his closest companions, and while his friends slept, he prayed.

In other words, Moses and Jesus regularly stepped away from the normal demands of daily life to spend time with God. They carved out time and space to make themselves available for that Godly meet-up.

My second question asks how we can make ourselves available for our own Godly meet-ups. What’s assumed in that question is that we actually want to meet-up with God, that we want to encounter God in the small spaces of our own lives.

Our Exodus text reveals that the Israelites weren’t so eager to meet-up with God. When God came in the cloud to the Israelites, they begged Moses to make God go away. In today’s text, Moses puts a veil over his face so that his shining countenance won’t frighten or distract them. The long history of the priestly tradition in Judaism and Christianity reflects our human hesitancy to meet God directly. Sometimes we’d rather just have someone else be the go-between. Godly meetups can be overwhelming.

Even Jesus’s closest disciples seem a bit confused by what they’re seeing. Poor Peter wakes up from sleep and is so bowled over by this amazing light that he can hardly think straight. He immediately wants to preserve what he’s seeing for all time as if the living God can be put in a box.

In one sense, that’s what we’re doing when we build church buildings and create creeds and liturgies. We’re trying to contain this wild Spirit of God in a manageable way so we can witness the light without being overwhelmed by it. We might not even want to be changed by it.

But God will have none of that.

God just comes in that cloud and covers the disciples. And tells them to stop their busyness and just listen, to just be in that holy moment. It’s after the disciples have this direct experience of the living God that they follow Jesus back down the mountain and are faced with a possessed boy that needs help.

Jesus has been empowered to heal the boy by the Spirit of God. He’s been empowered through his daily practices of connecting with God. And because Christ and the Father are one, when we follow his way and live “in Christ” – in the community of the Body of Christ – then we, too, are connected and empowered by God’s Spirit.

It’s that connection and empowerment that sends us down the mountain to engage deeply in daily life.

The Buddhists have a saying: Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. We must still take care of the daily tasks of life, but now the point is to bring the new awareness of the presence of God into even our most mundane activities.

Richard Rohr defines a mystic as one who has moved into experiential knowledge of God. Meaning mystics know what they know about God because they’ve experienced God. What we learned in church as children is inherited knowledge. What your ears hear from this pulpit or any other is inherited knowledge. What you read in scripture is inherited knowledge. And of course, inherited knowledge is where we all begin. And any knowledge is better than no knowledge at all.

But the greater and more powerful knowledge comes through direct experience.

That’s true about childbirth and it’s true about knowledge of God. What we learn through experience changes us, and what changes us deeply changes the world.