Sermons

“What’s in Your Alleluia Box?”

Psalm 99; Luke 9:28-36 – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn

Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – March 3, 2019

 Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words that our hearts might be filled with your glory and love, in preparation for the journey ahead.  In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

Have you ever tried to put a mountain in a box? Of course you haven’t.  But maybe you’ve put a picture of a mountain in a box. Or in a photo album.  But today we’re not really dealing with literal mountains anyway, just memories of what we sometimes call “mountain-top experiences”. And we’re not dealing with real boxes either, just the imaginary boxes where we hold things in our hearts.  Of course, if you want to make an actual Alleluia Box when you get home, there’s no reason you couldn’t.  It might be a good family project, so you can learn about each other’s most precious memories.

So what’s in your Alleluia Box?  What are the memories or experiences you hold onto and bring to mind when things are hard?  The whole idea of an Alleluia Box reminds me of that song from the musical “Oliver!” called “Who Will Buy?”  Oliver wakes up to a beautiful morning and things are going well and he sings, “Who will buy this wonderful morning?  Such a sky, you never did see.  Who will tie it up with a ribbon and put it in a box for me?  So I could see it at my leisure, whenever things go wrong.  And I would keep it as a treasure, to last my whole life long.”  And that’s exactly what I’m talking about when I encourage you to have an Alleluia Box. You probably already had one; you just didn’t call it that before now.  So what’s in your Alleluia Box?  Does anyone have a memory you can name in just a few words that helps sustain you when things get rough?

The Transfiguration is definitely intended to go in our Alleluia Boxes.  Our church year always has us come back to this moment on the Sunday before Lent begins, precisely because things are about to get hard.  So they give us this brilliant, shiny, talking-with-Moses-and-Elijah, voice-from-a-cloud, mountain-top Jesus moment to carry us through.  It’s clear that Peter will be putting this in his Alleluia Box.  Indeed, Luke tells us that “in those days” the three disciples didn’t tell anyone what had happened up there.  But they obviously held onto the memory, because it ended up in three of our four gospels.

This is probably the appropriate time to discuss the difference between an Alleluia Box and the “dwellings” that Peter wanted to build for Jesus and Moses and Elijah.  The story doesn’t even have Jesus responding to Peter’s suggestion, instead using the narrator to clarify what we’re supposed to already sense, that is, that building dwellings on the mountain is a terrible idea and Peter ought to be a little embarrassed for bringing it up.  So what is the difference between these “dwellings” Peter wants and an Alleluia Box?

A “dwelling” and an Alleluia Box are two very different ways of trying to preserve an intense spiritual experience, and they illustrate very different understandings of how to do that.  To be fair, Peter’s suggestion comes out of his awe and shock in the very first moments of what’s happening.  He, no doubt, develops a deeper, more sophisticated appreciation for what happened later.  So let’s not pretend we don’t have our own moments of thinking that a “dwelling” is a good idea.  When we want to use the dwelling approach it’s because we’re so excited about a mountain-top experience that we want to freeze it in time and make a shrine around it. We want to stay right there forever, which means the experience itself becomes disconnected from the rest of life. It becomes a destination, rather than a motivation.  We want others to come to us and experience the presence of God just as we did, because it was just that amazing.  The problem is that mountain-top experiences don’t work that way.  They do not take well to freezing.

An Alleluia Box approach, on the other hand, recognizes that those intense spiritual experiences cannot be sustained or frozen or replicated; they can only be remembered and cherished.  So we tell the stories of them, to ourselves and to others, in order to etch them into our memories and store them forever in our Alleluia Boxes. These memories are not destinations in and of themselves, but motivation to go forth from the mountain-top and share the joy we received there.  You remember the third verse of “In The Garden”, right?  “I’d stay in the garden with him, though the night around me be falling.”  Mary would like to stay there forever, as we can easily imagine.  “But he bids me go, through the voice of woe, his voice to me is calling.”  Jesus is telling her that she must go, because there are people out in the rest of the world, “the voice of woe”, who need the joy and hope he has given her.

The difference between a dwelling and an Alleluia Box is that an Alleluia Box is portable.  It comes along on the journey with us.  It’s not a shrine that becomes our destination, but rather a tool for the journey of following Jesus.  And the way we share those experiences in our Alleluia Box is different too.  With Peter’s proposed “dwellings”, people would presumably come, and try to imagine what Peter had seen there (because obviously Jesus and Moses and Elijah weren’t going to hang around, waiting to be ogled like oddities in a fair booth).  When we share the experiences in our Alleluia Boxes, we’re not trying to make them feel what we felt, but rather help them see how to seek out similar experiences of their own.  The invitation is not “I figured out God, and here’s what you have to do so you can too.” The invitation is “Here’s how I experienced God in my life, and I’m convinced God wants to meet you in the way that makes sense for your life too.”

An Alleluia Box is both for providing ourselves with life-sustaining joy and also for sharing that joy with others.  So what’s in your Alleluia Box?  Your baptism?  The birth of a baby?  That time you did the hard thing you didn’t think you could do, because you trusted God would get you through?  That moment of peace you weren’t expecting that somehow came after the death of a loved one?  The time you were able to access God’s grace in ways you hadn’t before and forgive someone who didn’t deserve it?  That vision of light and hope that came to you that one time you were able to truly quiet yourself and open your heart to the presence of Christ?  The brief moment you took to look around at Welcome Saturday and saw the work of the Holy Spirit all around you, in the way God’s people were caring for one another?

These shining moments of God’s glory, these clouds of revelation that overcome us, they are fleeting.  But they fit into an Alleluia Box just fine, even if they happened on mountain-tops.  And that box is portable.  It can go with you everywhere you go, through everything your journey brings you. Those cherished memories are in there, even if you’re in a season, like the one we’re about to begin, when we don’t even open the Alleluia Box.  It’s important to inventory your Alleluia Box once in a while, so that even when you’ve forgotten how to open it, you can remind yourself of what’s inside.  The contents of your Alleluia Box are what help you remember how to follow Jesus and why.  They’re what helps you get over being terrified when a cloud overcomes your life. They’re what helps you hike back down the mountain or out of the garden to tend to the “voice of woe”.

We’re about to embark on 40 days in which we’re not going to open our Alleluia Boxes.  So right now is a great time to take that inventory and make sure you know what’s inside.  The clearer we are about God’s love and grace, the better equipped we are to follow the call of Lent and explore our vulnerability and weakness and sin, that is, our deep and abiding need for God’s love and grace.  I encourage you to find a friend and spend some time sharing with one another the contents of your Alleluia Box.  Take out each shiny thing one at a time, and pray over it carefully and reflectively.  Then put them back in, giving thanks to God, and get ready to follow Jesus down the mountain and into the valley.  Alleluia and Amen.