Crying Babies & Christian Retreat Addiction

There are two times in life when a person feels an overwhelming desire to act. There are the times when the innate sense of “fight or flight” causes adrenaline to course through a person’s veins and jump into action–car accidents, the sight of blood, a baby crying. As I gathered my thoughts to write this piece my little one woke up and cried for someone to pick her up out of her crib. She even got specific. In the midst of the sleepy, whiny gibberish she said daddy. I sat up from the rocking chair and felt an overwhelming compulsion to go grab her out of her crib. My baby was calling out for me. I instinctively felt a need to act. The other times a person feels the need to act are when a person feels the weight of a hundred eyes on him or her pressure the person into action. This type of response happens on middle school playgrounds when kids are peer pressured into smoking cigarettes. It also happens during Christian retreat altar calls.

Joking aside, a Christian retreat is really a mixture of both. Yes, there is typically the awkward re-dedication altar call. Fortunately, there is a deeper response, the adrenaline of detachment from the cares of the world and surrender to God in worship. It’s called a mountain top moment for a reason. The adrenaline is flowing and we yearn to stay in “retreat mode” forever. I’ve seen youth cry because they don’t want to get back on a bus and return to normal life. The momentary rapture of a retreat experience is addicting, so some people begin to chase mountain top moments and seek to replicate that rush of adrenaline spiritual experience.

In Matthew 17 some of the disciples have a mountain top moment. They see Jesus transfigured before them on top of Mt. Tabor and have a literal mountain top moment. Peter, in his attempt to capture the moment, suggests monuments be built to record this amazing happening. Like a young person on a retreat he wants to bottle the moment and store it away forever. Jesus dismisses this notion and then heads back down the mountain.

Once down the mountain Jesus tells everyone to come to the kingdom of God like little children, in humility. It’s a nice image, but sometimes I feel like a baby crying out before God. Indeed, in between the mountain top moment and the sermon on being like children Jesus actually stopped and helped out a father who like a baby was crying out for someone to help his son. Jesus responded and healed the child. Only then did he begin to tell the others that they should approach the kingdom like little children.

The connection between these passages in Matthew 17 and 18 is that Jesus perpetuates the first type of overwhelming response to action. He is teaching his followers that the way to maintain their mountain top response, like the one some of the disciples had at the Transfiguration, is to respond to the people who are crying out all around us for healing and salvation. In his commentary on Matthew in the Resonate Series (see my review), Matt Woodley puts it this way:

The Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa once said that the ‘artist is the one who does not look away.’ In this sense, followers of Jesus are also artists. First, we will not look away from Jesus’ glory. In corporate worship and personal times of silent prayer, we yearn for a true glimpse. We will spend time doing nothing else except listening to the Father who tells us to listen to Jesus. But, secondly, as artists of the spiritual life, we also won’t look away from the world’s pain and agony. With Jesus, we’ll descend mountain of glory and walk among the anguished and the imperfect around us. (180)

For so many, myself included, the spiritual life slips into the second type of response is the typical response. We feel peer pressure to do our devotions and to pray. We don’t want people to find out we aren’t doing what the other cool kids are doing. So we try to build up altars to prove we were there, like Peter trying to memorialize the Transfiguration. The better way to act is to perpetuate the mountain top moment, just like Jesus did. When he came down from his mountain top moment he literally came down, but he never actually came down from the mountain spiritually. He went into action, letting the confirmation of the Father at the Transfiguration spur him toward healing, toward preaching the good news and toward caring for the little ones and least of these. We are called to continue our mountain top moments the same way. Our spirituality does not need to be defined by guilt or peer pressure. Let it be the fruit of your communion with God, a life lived as if instead of holding onto that mountain top moment you chose to give pieces of that special spiritual moment to others who are crying out like babies in desperate need of it.