The Last Sunday after the Epiphany-The Rev Melanie Lemburg

February 18, 2023

The Last Sunday after the Epiphany-The Rev Melanie Lemburg

The Last Sunday after the Epiphany-Year A

February 19, 2023

“I went up to the mountain,/because you asked me to.” It’s the first line of a song I’ve been listening to all week. It’s titled Up to the Mountain by Patty Griffin. The song was written in homage to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and it references his last speech, I’ve been to the mountaintop, that he preached the day before he was killed.

“I went up to the mountain
Because you asked me to
Up over the clouds
To where the sky was blue
I could see all around me
Everywhere
I could see all around me
Everywhere”[i]

I’ve been pondering this song all week, listening to it, and thinking about how it’s a window into our readings for today, this Last Sunday after the Epiphany. Both the Old Testament reading from Exodus and Matthew’s gospel for today start with an invitation from God to God’s people to go up the mountain. In these stories, Moses and the disciples encounter the glory of God face to face, a glimpse of glory that both awe and inspire, confuse and confound them, a rest and a respite in the midst of a hard and challenging road.

“Sometimes I feel like
I've never been nothing but tired
And I'll be walking
'Til the day I expire

Sometimes I lay down
No more can I do
But then I go on again
Because you ask me to”[ii]

As we close out this season of Epiphany, the season of light, it’s important to remember that God continues to offer us this invitation, to journey up to the top of the mountain, to gain a new or different perspective, to have a respite from the cares and concerns and challenges of everyday life, to catch a glimpse of God’s glory, and to remember…

Some days I look down
Afraid I will fall
And though the sun shines
I see nothing at all

Then I hear your sweet voice, oh
Oh, come and then go,
Telling me softly
You love me so[iii]
Today we are once again offered the invitation to hear the echoes of our own baptism in God’s words to Jesus—You are my beloved child, and with you I am well pleased. We are invited to be fully present to the wonder of God—to see, as another writer puts it “How Jesus shines. Life just shines.
The glory of God spills out of things,/leaks out of every container, even people.”[iv] We are invited to see that belovedness shining out of every person, even when we and they are at our worst.

As we head into the season of Lent, a season of preparation for the new life of Easter, the new life of the resurrection, may we remember this invitation from God is always with us, this invitation to join God “up the mountain” where we once again encounter God’s glory in Jesus, in ourselves, in each other.

“The peaceful valley
Few come to know
I may never get there
Ever in this lifetime
But sooner or later
It's there I will go
Sooner or later
It's there I will go.”[v]