After a rich and nurturing spiritual experience, it’s nice to coast on that high for awhile. I once enjoyed a retreat whose “glow” and sense of focus lasted several months. Not so for Jesus, James, John and Peter… their spiritual high on the mountain was quickly obliterated as they descended into a scene of trauma, anxiety, failure and discord.
On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met him. Just then a man from the crowd shouted, “Teacher, I beg you to look at my son; he is my only child. Suddenly a spirit seizes him, and all at once he shrieks. It convulses him until he foams at the mouth; it mauls him and will scarcely leave him. I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they could not.” Jesus answered, “You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you? Bring your son here.” While he was coming, the demon dashed him to the ground in convulsions. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the boy, and gave him back to his father.
The plight of the man and his son seems to have made Jesus cranky. Perhaps he was ticked off by the failure of his followers to act on the training they’d received, and exercise the faith necessary to take authority over evil. Maybe that time on the mountain in the regard of his Father, the sojourn with Moses and Elijah, made him anxious to be done with the messy business of saving humanity from itself.
It’s comforting to know that Jesus himself experienced the kind of let-down we so often do when our “regular” life intrudes upon any spiritual serenity we’ve managed to find. But regular life is where we live, not on the mountain but at its base. Jesus did not lift himself above the mess, but plunged into it, to experience it and to redeem it. And bringing his spirit into it, he restored peace.
How can we find the balance between expecting blessing, expecting to dwell in the experience of God even in the midst of ordinary days, and not base our expectations upon spiritual high points? How might we learn to cultivate the awareness of the Spirit in with and through the human mess in which we live, both for our own wellbeing and so we can bring Christ’s restoring peace into all situations?
That, one might say, is the task of the spiritual life. It is why we develop and strengthen spiritual practices that keep our faith strong and our peace pervasive, even in the most challenging and unpeaceful circumstances. We celebrate the mountaintop experiences as tremendous gifts, the memories of which sustain us in difficult times. But the most amazing gift is learning how to live in God when it seems like our prayers are not effective and no one is listening.
That’s how saints are made.
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