Colorado Rocky Mountain High (a Lectionary reflection by Steve Orr)

Our mountaintop experience was a bit of a shock.

Two days of driving took us from Midland, Texas to Keystone, Colorado. We were excited about spending a week at a genuine resort, a new experience for our family. We had heard many good things about Keystone; spacious and luxurious condos for each family in our group, free transportation throughout the resort, excellent eateries, lots of fun activities for both adults and kids, and, to top it all off, some of the most beautiful vistas in the USA.

There was just one little thing no one had mentioned. Nowhere in the literature I received from my employer did it explain about the elevation. We had been living at 2,800 feet above sea level. The conference was going to held at various elevations ranging from 9,200 feet to 12,400 feet.

I don't know if you recall feet-per-mile from your grade school math conversions. I still sometimes have that math-phobic's nightmare ("Two trains are leaving Chicago at the same time. The west bound train is going 60 miles per hour and the east bound train is going 50 miles per hour. When and where will they meet? Show your work."), so I had to look it up. A mile is 5,280 feet.

That means our conference/family vacation was taking place, at the lowest, over a mile higher than our normal. Do you see where this is going? We spent the better part of a week alternating between "can't quite catch my breath" and "can't sleep for the headache."

All of this week's Lectionary scriptures are about God and the mountaintop. In Exodus, Moses goes up the mountain to receive God's commandments for His people. In Matthew, Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up the mountain to witness His transfiguration and hear God's confirmation of His sonship. The Psalmist knows of Moses' experience on the mountain, that the mountain is the locus for God, the place where He may be encountered. In his second epistle, Peter references his mountaintop experience as proof of the Gospel. The mountaintop is all through scripture. Whether it's "holy Hill," or "Mount Sinai," or "holy mountain," or any other name, it's not the names used for it in scripture that are important.

What's important is what occurs there.

In scripture, when it's not actually being the location for an encounter with God, it serves as a way of declaring that God is present or nearby; so close that those with evil plans should take note and change their plans. It is also a way to think about encountering God.

Today, we talk of "mountaintop experiences," but we don't usually mean an actual encounter with God on a mountaintop. We tend to use that term to reference a sort of transformational religious experience, a time period wherein we feel so close to God that, as a result, we feel our lives have changed, have turned in a different, positive, more spiritual direction.

Peter, James, and John were terrified on the mountaintop; so afraid, they threw themselves to the ground and hid their faces. Moses stayed up there 40 days and came down with a face glowing so brightly it frightened people. All of this to say: Your mountaintop experience may not be quite the way you envisioned it. Encountering God, wherever it takes place, may be ---could well be--- a shocking experience; if not for you, then possibly for those you encounter afterward.

So, if you have a mountaintop experience, take it for what it is: revelation, confirmation, transformation. And then remember that, in scripture, the vast majority of people never met God on the mountaintop: please, go gently among those who haven't been there, yet.

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READINGS FOR THE COMING WEEK
Transfiguration Sunday (February 26, 2017)
http://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/

Exodus 24:12-18
Psalm 2 or Psalm 99
2 Peter 1:16-21
Matthew 17:1-9
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Will you be with us Friday morning at Lectionary Breakfast? Join us while we discuss the transfiguration of Jesus and its repercussions. We start at 8:00 and wrap it up about 9:00. Food, scripture, prayer, discussion, and, as always, laughter. Waco's "Egg and I" restaurant. We're in the back.

Blessings,
Steve

Revisiting "Amahl and the Night Visitors" (a Lectionary reflection by Steve Orr)

I loved Amahl and the Night Visitors.

Do you know it? The story is of a boy and his mother living in Biblical times, not too far from Bethlehem. It's just the two of them. Their circumstances are not very good. The boy has to use a crutch to get around. The mother seems on the verge of exhaustion.

Late one night, there's a knock at the door.

What happens next is the substance of the first opera ever written for television in America. It was written in English for broadcast on the National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC). When it debuted, it was viewed by the largest audience to ever see a televised opera. Amahl and the Night Visitors was the first network television Christmas special to become an annual tradition.

In time, Amahl and his mother discover that their visitors are kings. They had traveled far and were tired. They asked for permission to rest in the home of Amahl and his mother. As the story unfolds, we learn, along with Amahl and his mother, that these kings are on their way to Bethlehem where they believe they will find a very special child, one that "the heavens" had identified as the "King off the Jews."

I can't recommend this strongly enough. It is a performance that is both endearing and mesmerizing. It captured my attention, fully.

Maybe that's because it is part of my childhood. Or maybe it's because it was the first time I was made to think of the "wise men" as actual people, people who interacted with other people. In any case, it was certainly the first time I recall thinking of a Biblical "character" as a real person, someone who did all the things I do; eat, sleep, have feelings, hurt, have infirmities, be protective of others, be tired, desire things, care about other real people, want to connect with God.

There have been many books, plays, and electronic productions about the Magi who visited the young Jesus. Sometimes they are referred to as kings, sometimes as wise men, sometimes as stargazers; but regardless of their title, people tend to think of them as being three in number. Scripture doesn't speak to this, so we don't know how many there were, only that "they" were plural and that they came later, not the night of Jesus' birth.

That "later" bit is part of the reason we have Epiphany on the church calendar at a later date than Christmas. Epiphany is the day set aside to recognize and celebrate the visitation of the Magi. Epiphany Eve is celebrated on January 5th, the "Twelfth Day of Christmas" of song fame (Drummers drumming, for those of you keeping score), with the observance of Epiphany falling on the 6th (or often on the nearest Sunday).

And, though you might not know it, Epiphany is one of the most important dates to us modern christians. While Christmas, with its announcement to those rowdy shepherds, represents when Christ was introduced to the Jewish people, Epiphany, with its Magi visitation, represents when Christ was first revealed to non-Jews.

Watching Amahl and the Night Visitors made the story of Jesus' birth come to life for me ... though Jesus is not in it. Neither are Mary and Joseph. Because it is the story of rather ordinary people encountering the extraordinary (in the form of Magi), it is the story of all of us. It portrays what it might have been like for us if we had been there.

Just some folks showing hospitality (with the little they possessed) to people on their way to an encounter with the Lord ... and then joining them on the journey.

Sound familiar?

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READINGS FOR THE COMING WEEK
Epiphany of the Lord (January 6, 2017)
First reading
Isaiah 60:1-6
Psalm
Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14
Second reading
Ephesians 3:1-12
Gospel
Matthew 2:1-12

Here is the link to the table of readings for this Epiphany Season, including Sunday, January 8th (January 6 - February 26, 2017): http://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/lections.php?year=A&season=Epiphany
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Join us Friday morning at Lectionary Breakfast as we begin a new year. We still meet at the Waco "Egg and I" restaurant, start at 8:00 and wrap up around 9:00.

Visitors always welcome.

Blessings,
Steve

You Just Don't Know You Know (a short Lectionary reflection by Steve Orr)

You know her. You just don't know you know her.

She was born in 1919. As a young woman, during the 1940's and 1950's, she and her husband, Gower Champion, performed in several films for MGM (including a remake of the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers film, Roberta). But that's not why I'm convinced you know her. And it's not because the two of them starred as dancer and choreographer, respectively, in a 1957 TV sitcom. As it turns out, she lived a very long life. She only died a few years ago. It's possible you may have known about some of her late-in-life work (The Awakening Land, Fame).

But they're not why I'm convinced you know her.

Before she was Marge Champion, all grown up and married, she was a teenager named Margie Belcher.

And quite a good dancer.

In the mid-1930's, Walt Disney hired young Margie to come to his studio and dance for his animators. When questioned about how watching her dance helped them complete the cartoon they were working on, Disney reportedly declared, quite forcefully, "We are not making a cartoon! We are making art." What they were making was "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." And if you've seen it, you've seen Margie Belcher: when Snow White walks, when she sits or stands, when she dances, that's Margie.

Margie was the motion model for Snow White.

Knowing this story changes how we see that animated film, the very first of its kind. No one had every made a full length animated film before it, and even in the short cartoons of the day, no one had gone to such lengths to ensure the animated characters moved like real people.

Life is like this. We spend our days seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling. We use our senses to help us understand our experiences. And, most of the time, that's the whole of it. But every once in a while, someone reveals something to us that changes how we think about what our senses have communicated to us.

From now on, whenever you see Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," or even just a clip of Snow White doing something, you will recall that a teenage girl named Margie, a real girl, is behind every move.

Having such revelations change how we think about things.

That is what is meant by this week's Lectionary selection from Psalm 19:7-14. And that is why we read the Bible.

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READINGS FOR THE COMING WEEK
http://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/

Proper 21 (26) (September 27, 2015)
Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22
Psalm 124
Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29
Psalm 19:7-14
James 5:13-20
Mark 9:38-50
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Friday is almost here. It gets here pretty quickly. I hope you can join us for Lectionary Breakfast. We still gather at 8:00 a.m. at the Waco "Egg and I" restaurant for an hour of revelation, tasty food, and, a staple, laughter.

No one will be asked to model.

Enjoy the week!
Steve