Your Treasure Map

"Your Treasure Map"
Matthew 17:1-9

I've always been fascinated by maps.  Whenever we'd go on a family vacation, my father would stop at a Standard gas station to fill up the Ford Country Sedan station wagon that we'd soon be wedged into for a few hours of driving.  I went with him to gas up the wagon, so I could go in and get a free map.  Those were the good old days: 25 cents a gallon for gas, and free maps.

(I might say, putting in a plug for Nick Squires, you can go to his office at the DOT and still get free maps of Kansas.  That's one thing Governor Brownback hasn't taken away from us.  The newest maps just came in, if I heard right.)

The only thing I hated about those gas station maps was how to fold the darn things back up correctly.

And I liked to watch pirate movies as a kid because they always had maps.  They were either parchment or some kind of animal skin.  There were dotted trails.  There were upside down capital V's for the treacherous mountains.  There was the shoreline with waves out from shore; and maybe a sea dragon swimming amongst the waves.

There may have been a swamp, or a haunted forrest.  But mostly, on those pirate maps, there was always an X.  It signified where the treasure was buried.

I'd make maps like that.  I would get an old dog food can and steal one of the plastic reusable lids from my mom's kitchen drawer.  I'd put some of my treasure in the can and put the lid on.  I'd traipse off into the forest near our house, with the shovel, and bury it.  Then I'd make a map of where it was, just like the pirates had.  How many paces from this tree or that bush.

When I was through with that boyhood phase of my life, I have no idea how many dog food cans I had buried in those woods, and how many treasure maps were tucked around my room.  And how many times my mother would shout, "Has anybody seen any of those reusable lids for the dog food?"  Because my treasure burying was a solitary affair, neither of my three brothers or my sister could rat me out.

Those woods have long been turned into houses and condos, so all my buried treasures have been excavated away.  It didn't matter, because I lost or had thrown away all my treasure maps, where X marked the spot, anyway.

When I got older, I realized there are all kinds of treasure maps we can be holding on to.  X marks the spot where some memorable, or life-changing event took place.  (This might be a good journaling exercise for the up-coming journaling class:  draw a map or two or three where some marker experience happened in your life, some X marks the spot experience where one of the treasures of your life happened, and then write about your map.)

Certainly you would think that Peter, James, and John would have put this meeting of Jesus with Elijah and Moses on their treasure map of life experiences.  We know Peter did, because he mentions it in one of his letters.  "Lord, how good it is that we are here!" Peter exclaimed.  Here!  In this place.  This X-marks-the-spot spiritual highlight place.  They wanted to make a memorial stone in order to mark the spot of this amazing vision.  Some place, up on that mountain, lost now to anyone else but the collective memory of those three disciples, suddenly became unordinary.  On that particular place they witnessed an unbelievable sight, and that spot, that place, became a holy place.

I don't think Peter, or James, or John wanted to bury a tin can with some personal items at that place.  I don't know if they made a map of where on the mountain that place was.  I do know they wanted to make a pile of rocks, signifying a special place where their lives had been made different because of what they saw.

The same thing happened to Jacob in the Old Testament.  He laid down to sleep.  He drifted into the middle of an unbelievable dream-vision about a ladder with angels going up and  down on that ladder.  God appeared and spoke.  Jacob awoke, and with a tone of wonder said, "“What an awesome place this is! This is nothing else than the house of God! This is the ladder of heaven!”  (Genesis 28:17)

Jacob then took the stone that he had used as a pillow and set it up as a pillar, an X-marks-the-spot kind of stone.  A simple place in the wilderness became an awesome gateway to heaven.

Places are important because of the memories we have and of the people who have shared those places with us.  Places have historical significance where some things have happened that provide continuity and identity across our life spans.  It has been at particular places that important words have been spoken, identity has been formed and honed, vocation has been defined, or a destiny has been envisioned.  There are places where vows have been exchanged, promises have been made.  I would guess most of us gathered here have felt the tug of particular places where we have been touched by the presence of the Lord.  Places have a way of rooting us to real life, to God himself, reminding us that we have not grown up, or continued to mature, detached from particular special places.

What is wonderfully amazing about our God is that even though God is as expansive as the universe, even though God's mind is greater than anything we could conceive, God is still a God who chooses particular places in which to reveal himself to us.  God seems to delight in just happening upon us at particular places in order to make contact.

One woman, for example, had the "till death do us part" become a reality after a 40 year marriage.  She spent a couple of months of quiet and reflection with her sister in another community, after her husbands funeral.  One Sunday, after she had returned, she came into the sanctuary intentionally late and found that her pew was occupied by a young couple who had begun to attend in her absence.

The following Saturday she went to visit her pastor.  She asked for help with what she called her sin of "idolatry."  She went on to explain, "For thirty-eight years I shared that pew with my husband.  I know it's idolatrous, pastor, but I feel God is closer to me there than anywhere else.  There is no place like that pew on earth."  For this woman, she had a treasure map and one of the treasures was the inside of her sanctuary.  There was an X that marked a particular place in a particular pew.  That X represented a very special treasure she had buried, so-to-speak.

I would guess there are more than a few of you who have similar feelings about your pew in this sanctuary.  (Show of hands.)  It's not hard for me to imagine, any of you, coming into our sanctuary with a sense of peace and worshipfulness, feeling like there is no sanctuary on earth like this one.  And then echoing Peter's words in your mind and you sit in your X-marks-the-spot place in the sanctuary, saying, "Lord, it is good that we are here."  How many other places are that kind of place for you?

One of the reasons that is so, besides the place itself, is who we share the place with.  A place is important because of the others who are there.  When Jesus was caught up in that meeting with Elijah and Moses, there were three men there to share that amazing vision.  Peter said, "Lord, how good it is that WE are here!"  He didn't say, "How good it is that I am here."  Here is where WE have been touched, and here is where it is that WE, together, remember.  But the place will lose its importance if others are not permitted to share the experience.  Or become part of the place and the story.

In a book about ministry in small churches, Carl Dudley wrote:
Those congregations who care only for themselves are becoming smaller and smaller.  Eventually their place will have no meaning, for they have not shared it with anyone.

The giving of a place to those who have none seems to me to be one way of defining the role of what it is we are to be as Christians.  Faith can only develop when each person has a place.  When we help people find their places we may be helping them come into contact with holy experiences—a place where they can pull out their maps and place a nice X.

The widow I just mentioned shared her pew, her place, that next Sunday with the young couple.  She shared not only the pew, but part of her memories with the couple.  The three of them became very close, and represented what ministry was at its heart in that congregation.  This is what we are wanting to do in the meeting following worship this morning.  When someone has visited our congregation, how can we follow up with some kind of intentional visit and hopefully give them the opportunity to put an X on their treasure map where Pratt Presbyterian Church is?  That's who we want to be.

When Peter looked back to this mountain top, visionary event, he wrote in his second letter,
When we told you about the power and the return of our Lord Jesus Christ, we were not telling clever stories that someone had made up. But with our own eyes we saw his true greatness.  God, our great and wonderful Father, truly honored him by saying, “This is my own dear Son, and I am pleased with him.”  We were there with Jesus on the holy mountain and heard this voice speak from heaven.  (2 Peter 1:16-18, CEV)

Here, Peter recounts that memorable place and event for those who may not have known about it, have heard about it and doubted, but all of whom needed to know the story.  It was clearly a pivotal event for Peter and his own faith development.  Can't you just imagine Peter, though he never mentions it, pulling out his spiritual treasure map, returning to that place on the mountain time and time again, feeling the presence, reliving the simple power of what happened.