Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.” And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone.
As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, “Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”
Sermon by the Rev. Carole Horton-Howe
There are a lot of what we call “mountaintop experiences” in scripture. They are places where God is revealed to a pillar of our faith. So it’s appropriate on this last Sunday in Epiphany as we’re getting ready to go into the season of Lent that our texts are all about these revelations of God on a mountain top.
Remember that it was at the top of Mt. Ararat that Noah’s ark came to rest. And Noah received a covenant from God that never again would God flood the world and cause such total destruction.
And then there’s Abraham at the top of Mt. Mariah thinking that he is sacrificing his second son, Isaac. Instead God provides a ram in the thicket and Isaac was spared. That’s certainly a revelation of God on a mountain top.
Elijah has a couple of those revelation experiences on a mountain top. First on Mt. Carmel where Elijah that the God YHWH, his God, is the one true God. And then again at Mt. Sinai, in the silence, Elijah has a revelation of God and of God’s plan for his life.
Moses gets a couple mountain top revelations of God. He receives the law on how the people called Israel will live in relationship with God and one another. He goes up into this consuming fire, incredible brightness to be in the nearer presence of God where the law is revealed to him. But it’s also on a mountaintop, Mt. Kisco, that Moses goes to find the land that has been promised to the people, to be able to look upon it and learn from God that he will never enter it.
There are many mountaintop revelations of God. So today we hear about how God is being revealed on a mountain top to some disciples who climb up the mountain with Jesus.
Peter, James and John have gone with Jesus not expecting this to be an unusual day. But suddenly Jesus is before them – his clothes are dazzling white – and they realize that some deeply felt change has happened to their teacher.
So this is one of those moments when we can put things into our own context. What do we do when we’re in a moment that we are surprised, in incredible moments that are not going to be repeated? We know it’s the most incredible moment ever -- what do we do? We take a selfie. We grab our phone. We want to do our best to record the moment. Well, today we hear Peter’s version of a selfie: “I got it Jesus, I’m going to build three booths. We need to capture this moment. You’re on this mountain with Moses and Elijah. We need to capture this so we can remember this moment forever.”
And it sounds really great, because we do want those awesome moments to live on. But sometimes we are so busy capturing that moment that we forget to actually be attentive to what’s going on. We lose the very essence of what is happening in that moment.
But in mid thought, just as Peter’s trying to figure out how he’s going to construct these three booths, God starts speaking words that are very familiar to us because they are the exact words that God speaks in Matthew’s gospel when Jesus is baptized. “This is my beloved, my son with whom I am well pleased.” The exact words are heard again. Suddenly everything’s been interrupted by God’s very presence with them. It’s so incredible that they are literally knocked off their feet. Now they are fearful.
So God has told them to listen to my Son and what’s the first thing Jesus tells them? Don’t be afraid. If our response to being in the near presence of our God is to be fearful, then the reminder for us in this gospel to us all is not to be afraid. The reminder to us all is to allow God to speak to us fully so we can hear, so we can know what it is that God wants us to do. Because God has great plans for all of us.
And as much as Peter and James and John might have wanted to stay on that mountain and just be in the presence of Moses and Jesus and Elijah and see these pillars of their belief in that transformed state - as much as they might have wanted to linger in that moment and not let go of it, they couldn’t. Every mountain top experience needs to come to an end.
Several years ago I attended a retreat weekend when we still had the Benedictine monastery in Santa Barbara – and I met two ladies there that spent every weekend and some entire weeks on retreat. They just so loved that mountaintop experience that they would find a church, or some organization who was doing a retreat and sign up. They had applied for a retreat in New Mexico at Richard Rohr’s Center for Action and Contemplation. Apparently in their application that had proudly listed the many retreats they had attended. The response they got from the Center for Action and Contemplation lived up to the “action” part of their name. It was a rejection and an encouragement to them to “come down off the mountain.”
Peter, John and James had to leave, they had to go back down that mountain. And what they had to go back down the mountain to the throng of people waiting for Jesus. They need him. They want to be healed, they want to be made whole. So they’ve got to come down the mountain to the people waiting for Jesus, for just a touch from him.
They had to come down from the mountain to Jesus’ reminding to them yet again I’m only going to be with you a short while longer. I will die and rise again. I’m going to be betrayed by the people I love. They had to come back down the mountain to that.
They had to come down the mountain, back in their own existence to live among the ones who want to persecute them and take their lives just for being followers of Jesus.
Coming back down the mountain is not always a wonderful thing. We don’t always want to come back out of the high, out of the euphoria, out of all the wonder – we don’t always want to come out of that to live in reality.
But yet, that is what we are called to do. We are called to come back down the mountain, no matter how wonderful that moment has been. What’s awaiting us is the work we are called to do by God. And sometimes it’s not a lot of fun. Sometimes it’s lonely. Sometimes it’s frightening to be surrounded by all the things that face us when we come back down.
There are so many people who are counting on us. There are people counting on us who have had that mountain top experience, who have been filled to overbrimming with the presence of the Holy Spirit and to have come to them transformed into new beings and ready to walk God’s walk with them. We’re setting an example for those who do not yet know our God.
That’s what it means to live faithfully in this life. They’re watching us, they’re watching our every move. How do we live after we have enjoyed that moment, how we share God’s love on this planet with all of God’s creation after we have enjoyed that mountaintop. That is what God calls us to do, to be examples, to be disciples to make disciples. This is how we finish Matthew isn’t it? With the great commission – go out and preach and teach and make disciples in my name.
So today we come back down, we come off the mountain. We’re going to spend the next 40 days with Jesus: a little of it in the wilderness, a little of hearing him preach and teach and heal. We have a chance to be really intentional in our relationship with our God. Setting an example for the faithful to follow us. We will share the story of God’s goodness and grace. We will walk in the goodness of God’s love. Amen.