Following Jesus Down From the Mountaintop Into The World

The Transfiguration is a turning point in Matthew’s gospel.  Shortly after this, Jesus winds up his ministry in Galilee and starts his journey to Jerusalem, where he will be betrayed, tried and executed.  So it is a good story for us this last week of Epiphany, just before we begin our own  Lenten journey to Jerusalem.

  
The Transfiguration takes place on top of a high mountain.  Mountain tops are great places to encounter God.  I was recently at Mohonk Preserve, studying the beautiful cliffs, the dizzying view, the giant boulders left in the path of retreating glaciers, and God seemed very near indeed.  In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus often goes up a mountain to pray, to wrestle with temptation—to encounter the divine.  And that is part of a long tradition in the Bible.  It was on a mountain that God first spoke to Moses from a burning bush about liberating his people, and it was on a mountain that God first gave him the Law, which would transform them into a holy people.  It was on a mountain that Elijah encountered God when he was at the end of his rope—you may remember the story from the book of Kings.  Elijah was despondent, waiting for God to save him.  He stood on the mountain, and heard a great wind, then an earthquake, and then a fire, but God wasn’t in any of these.  God was in the sheer silence.

Jesus, like Moses and Elijah and perhaps like some of you, heads for the highest mountain whenever he needs to speak with God. And God certainly spoke in the astonishing encounter we have before us today.  First, the disciples saw Jesus transformed in front of their eyes—his face shone like the sun and his clothes became dazzling white.  He was filled with divine radiance, much like Moses, who used to come down from speaking to God on Mount Sinai with a face that shone so much that people begged him to cover it because it scared them.

If Jesus’ glowing like radioactive material weren’t enough, Moses and Elijah show up and start talking to him.  Peter tries to cope with all this by offering to build three buildings for Moses, Elijah and Jesus.  It’s a moment of comedy---Peter doesn’t have the foggiest idea of what to say, so he offers to build something.  It’s too scary to have all that divine energy loose in the world, so he tries to to domesticate it,  find some way to contain it.  It makes me think of the way we try to contain God with dogma and ritual, so that God seems safer, more predictable.  It’s kind of the opposite of thinking outside the box.  Peter also feels the ecstasy of the moment and wants to hold onto it.  It’s good for us to be here, he says—let’s just stay here.

Peter doesn’t even get to finish his sentence when God makes the next move.  A bright cloud settles over them and God speaks from the midst of it, which is another echo of Moses’ story.  This proves to be too much for the disciples and they do what any of us would do—they hit the deck, and lie there trembling in their boots, or rather, sandals. This reminds me of one of Annie Dillard’s books, “Teaching A Stone To Speak,” where she says that if we really understood what we were doing in church on Sundays, we would wear crash helmets and strap ourselves into the pews.

Their reaction is really pretty natural when you think about it.  The kingdom, the power and the glory really is God’s, as we say in the Lord’s Prayer, and it’s pretty scary to get close to it. 
But what does this mighty vision mean?  What did it mean to Jesus and the disciples, and what does it mean for us?

It is a densely symbolic moment—on one level, the appearance of Moses and Elijah are a sign that Jesus is the fulfillment and culmination of Israel’s history.  Moses and Elijah represent the Law and the Prophets, which are the first two movements of God’s efforts to redeem the world.  God liberated the Hebrew slaves from Egypt and gave them the Law, so they could become a holy people, reflecting God’s justice and compassion in the way they lived.  When they failed in this calling, God sent prophet after prophet to call them back to the one God, and to the righteousness and love which is God’s will for all humankind.   Elijah represents the prophets who came and were ignored and persecuted. 
For Christians, Jesus is the final movement of God’s unfolding plan for salvation.  Since we could not deliver ourselves through own faithfulness and righteousness, God sent his Son to deliver us through his faithfulness and righteousness.  The author of Matthew is clear that Jesus did not come to overthrow the Law but to fulfill it—to reveal what a human life lived in obedience to God looks like.  It is not a life of being powerful, or successful or universally liked.  It is a life of speaking truth to power as Elijah did when he told off the king and queen of Israel for worshiping false gods.  It is a life of siding with the poor and powerless and not resting until they see justice, as Moses did.  A life lived in obedience to God is a life of humble service and self-giving compassion, as revealed most clearly in Jesus.

So high on that holy mountain, God infuses Jesus with glory and tells the disciples to listen to him, even though he is provoking the powerful and heading straight toward crucifixion.  But after Jesus’ death on the cross, there will be resurrection, and this vision points ahead to that.  Listen to Matthew’s description of Jesus after he rolled back the stone and came out of the tomb:  “His appearance was like lightning and his clothing white as snow.”  Sounds like the scene in today’s gospel doesn’t it? The transfiguration gives us a glimpse of the future, Jesus’ future and ours.

This strange and wonderful episode in Jesus’ life actually relates to the pattern of our lives as Christians as well.  We have our spiritual highs and our mountaintop experiences too, but the true spiritual path is not staying up on our mountains.  The true path is listening to Jesus and following him.  There are a lot of poor and powerless people in the world and we can’t rest until there is justice.  Why in a country as rich as this one are there people going without medicine, without heating oil, without a chance at a good education?  We can’t stay on our private mountains communing with God because God has gone ahead of us down the mountain.  God is with those who don’t make a living wage, who can’t afford a decent place to live.  If we listen to Jesus and follow him, we can’t avoid speaking the truth, even when it isn’t popular, even when it will make us enemies.  How can we keep silent when our government is arguing not over whether torture should be allowed, but what kind of torture is ok?  If we are listening to Jesus, we know that we are called to be peacemakers, in our families, our workplaces and our nation.  We have a path to follow, the path of peace and justice and love, but it is a hard road.  After all, we follow in the footsteps of Jesus, whose way led down the mountain to the cross.