Coming Down from the Mountaintop

Luke 9:37-43 The next day, when they came down from the mountain, a large crowd met him. A man in the crowd called out, “Teacher, I beg you to look at my son, for he is my only child. A spirit seizes him and he suddenly screams; it throws him into convulsions so that he foams at the mouth. It scarcely ever leaves him and is destroying him. I begged your disciples to drive it out, but they could not.” “You unbelieving and perverse generation,” Jesus replied, “how long shall I stay with you and put up with you? Bring your son here.” Even while the boy was coming, the demon threw him to the ground in a convulsion. But Jesus rebuked the impure spirit, healed the boy and gave him back to his father. And they were all amazed at the greatness of God.

As I read these words from Luke, my mind is immediately drawn to reflect on what happened just prior to these particular verses. Jesus and his disciples went up the mountain, where Jesus was transfigured before those who followed him. He hung out for a bit with Elijah and Moses, both of whom had their own mountaintop experiences with God (Elijah in 1 Kings 19, and Moses in Exodus 24 through 32). Then, after the conferencing, it was time to head back down. So, the verses above are the aftermath of Christ's mountaintop experience. They tell of the moments in which he came back to the "real world" in order to undertake the work God had placed upon him.

I have come to view my career in education as a series of mountaintop experiences, always with the knowledge that, at some point, I was going to have to move back into the real world.

Unit plans, lesson plans, curriculum writing, strategy sessions, workshop attendance . . . all of these things that recharge us and/or focus us as educators, are in many ways not unlike the mountaintop experience Jesus had with Elijah, Moses and his Father. Just as Jesus did, however, we as educators must come back down that mountain, back into the real world.  Sooner or later, our lesson plans have to be put into action, we have to stop playing around with our curriculum, and we have to drive home from that conference we are attending and head back into the classroom, where the real reason we do what we do resides. Our real world is populated by the children we teach, and what an unbelieving and perverse generation they can sometimes be...

There is an inherent nobility in a teacher, the emulator of Christ, who comes to work every day seeking to make life better for all those with whom he or she comes in contact. There is an inherent nobility in all of those educators who "fight the good fight" of seeking to be Jesus for those who do not know him. We in public education cannot tell our students about Jesus overtly (nor should we be able to), but we can model his behavior on a daily basis, and we can seek positive interactions with all of our students, every day, in order to move them toward their own mountaintop experiences.

It doesn't do us any good to stay on the mountaintop forever. There is clearly work to be done.