There’s much to say about this curious mountaintop scene, which appears in Matthew, Mark, and Luke that we know as The Transfiguration, and that we read together each year on this Sunday before the start of Lent.
How it looks back into the story of Israel and echoes the scene from Exodus we read earlier, when Moses encounters God on the mountain and receives the law of the covenant ”a story, we should say, that feels somehow closer this year as we share our space with Beth Israel and have this beautiful ark containing their Torah scroll present in our worship.
But also how this transfiguration looks back into Jesus’ own story, recalling his baptism, where that same voice comes down from the heavens and declares, This is my Son, the Beloved, with him I am well pleased. The voice here reaffirms God’s approval of all that Jesus has been doing: healing the sick, blessing the poor and suffering, and preaching of a coming Kingdom of God that is much different from the current state of things.
How it looks ahead to the resurrection, when Jesus will again appear radiating with all the glory of God. And how, in less obvious ways, it also contrasts with the crucifixion.1 Here on the mountain, Jesus’ clothes shine with the glory of God. On the way to the cross, he will be stripped, and soldiers will gamble for his clothes. Here, Jesus stands with Moses and Elijah; at the cross, he will hang with two criminals. At the transfiguration, a voice from heaven declares that Jesus is God’s Son; at the cross, this declaration will come as mockery from onlookers. All of this suggesting that we should see one in light of the other, so to speak: see the shame of the cross in light of the glory of the transfiguration ”remembering that despite all that will come, Jesus indeed carries God’s blessing. Likewise, we should see the glory of the transfiguration against the shadow of the cross’s shame. Despite this transfiguration, the way of Christ remains the way of the cross; you can’t live the way he lived, love the way he loved, and fully escape the world’s crosses.
But like the disciples, we don’t need to understand all of that yet. For now, it’s good for us to pause and reflect on this revelation of God on the mountain.
I.
It’s stories like these that are the origin of the term mountaintop experience : moments of clarity, awakening, or transcendence, when we experience God’s presence and are shown that we are part of something much greater than ourselves. This is really what we mean when we speak of the spiritual, or spirituality, terms that can feel vague or unserious, but point to the deep connectedness under the surface of things that humanity has felt and described in different ways since time immemorial. The most serious thing there is. Ancient cultures believed mountains to be thin places, where the line separating heaven and earth is porous, and this connectedness seems to seep through.
Years ago, Audrey and I hiked the Georgia section of the Appalachian Trail. We saw many mountaintops over those 100 or so miles, but I remember one summit in particular. It’s known as Tray Mountain, the last of the 4,000-footers in the state before you cross into North Carolina. The fog was so thick that day that as we climbed the mountain, we literally entered the clouds. When we got to the campsite at the peak, there was an eerie light about the place. The temperature had dropped, and the clouds were sweeping through the campsite, bringing the rain that would come later that night. Initially, we set up our tent overlooking the edge, but quickly moved it back quite a ways ad protected by a cluster of trees. It all felt ominous, unsettling, and even Biblical, like we should be on the lookout for stone tablets. More than anything, it felt like the mountain was alive. Which of course it is ”or rather, the mountain was alive with so many different living things, of which we were merely one. We were aware in that moment of how we were all alive together.
Of course, not all of these moments come atop a literal mountain. But they do tend to come at the end of some path you’ve followed far from home, or an extended effort you’ve made to gain another line of sight, or a challenge you’ve accepted, however reluctantly or perhaps for reasons you’re not completely aware ”perhaps that has been thrust upon you. But you climb and struggle, and let certain things go along the way, and find that you take other things on. And it may be that one day a moment comes when the clouds part and you see the light clearly. Or it may be that a time comes when you simply breathe in deeply and discover, without knowing it, you have been changed in ways you cannot fully explain and dare not try so as to rob it of its mystery.
For Peter that day on the mountain, it was something of the former. He sees the light emanating from Jesus’ face and clothes, and suddenly Moses and Elijah are there talking with him. He was the first of the disciples to find voice enough to speak, though one gets the sense he didn’t know exactly what to say: Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you’d like, I could set up three tents here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.
Now it could be that Peter, in his amazement, only wanted to be helpful and fashion some tents for their guests, God bless him. But his response may reveal something deeper that Peter himself was still sorting through. He senses that whatever is happening is a moment he will remember, and that it will change him, and he doesn’t want it to end.
II.
He doesn’t want it to end! We never do. We never want this dance to end, or this night to end, this meal, this vacation, this retreat from our lives back home. We don’t want the kids to grow up; just stay this size forever. We don’t want to leave the bedside or the graveside; we don’t want to leave their side. We don’t want to come down from the mountain. But of course we must.
The bright light comes and goes up there at the top of the mountain. The voice bellows down from above, and the disciples fall down on the ground, overcome by fear. Jesus taps them on the shoulder and says, Get up ”literally ˜raise up’ ”Don’t be afraid. And they made their way down.
This is how it must be. Life cannot be spent on mountaintops, at least not a life following Christ. These experiences are important and profound and have the power to change our lives. But the extent to which this is true has everything to do with what we do when we come down the mountain into the valley, and here is the part of this story we often overlook, to the point that it’s not even included in the lectionary passage.
It’s on their way down the mountain, seconds after they’ve witnessed the glory of God come upon them, and the voice declares Jesus as the Beloved, that Jesus tells them again that he must suffer ”that this, too, is part of the story. And if we were to continue reading, we would learn that no sooner had they made their way down the mountain than they found they were needed in the valley. A crowd of people has gathered around a young boy who is possessed by a demon and suffering terribly. The boy’s father runs up to them and begs Jesus to heal his son. This is how it must be.
The mountain is important, but only so far as it prepares us to face the valley, for it’s there, in the valley, that life is lived. The Christian faith is not meant to be a kind of escapism designed to shield us from the harder parts of life and the world. No, it’s meant to be a kind of holy realism that helps us see the world as God sees it, which of course is how it really is: for all its beauty, but also its brokenness. For all is enchantment, but also its wounds. For all its grace and wonder, but also its devastation and pain. It’s in the story of Christ that we find the strength, the courage, the hope to hold all of this in love. As Brené Brown put it, powerfully, faith isn’t an epidural shielding the pain, it’s the midwife sitting next to you saying, Push, this is going to hurt.
Yes, it was on the mountain that Jesus was declared God’s Beloved Son, but it was down in the valley that another beloved child was waiting ”there were two in this story.
III.
And this was the purpose, I think, of Jesus taking those three disciples up there with him on the mountain. If it were just about the blessing he received, or the light that surrounded him, or the color his clothes turned, he could have gone up there alone. If it were just about Jesus being transformed, he wouldn’t have needed them to go with him. Which makes me think that it was actually the disciples who needed to be changed ”who needed to be transfigured. Who needed to see that light so they could go back down into the valley with new eyes.2 That’s often how it happens with blessing.
It happened some years ago at the church I served as a very young minister, Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas. It was the 8:30 service, and George, the pastor, decided at the last minute to do a baby dedication. An infant was under foster care with a family from the church, and learned that the child would soon be placed with his biological grandparents, which, in this case, was a matter of some distress. So this dedication was a kind of goodbye for the foster family and the church, which had welcomed this tiny baby into its fold for those weeks.
Baby dedications are always powerful, as the congregation commits to love this child and support the parents in raising them. But here, these familiar words took on new meaning.
George walked the child around the room and introduced him to his church family, and the church family claimed this child as their own, promising to do whatever they could to support the child in faith and love, as they would any other child of the church, knowing he would soon be leaving. And as George looked this couple in the eyes and said to them the same charge I have adopted and brought with me here: This child, precious as he is, does not belong to you. He was given to you to love and to nurture for this short time; there was a sense that something was happening. Something was transfigured. It wasn’t Jesus, exactly ”though Christ was without a doubt present. It was that family, with their faces shining with tears, like the sun. It was that baby boy, dressed in his laced gown of dazzling white. It was the church that was changed. It was the church that left that place with new eyes.
Many things awaited that family down the mountain, hard, hard things. But God would be with them. And many things awaited that tiny infant, but God would be with him, too, that Beloved Son.
IV.
It’s not a coincidence that we encounter this story of the transfiguration on the Sunday before the start of Lent. We consider this one final blessing of Jesus before he sets his face toward Jerusalem and readies himself for the journey toward the cross ”a journey that we will be invited to walk, too, over these 40 days.
After all, the miracle of the resurrection happens not when Jesus Christ is transformed, but when we are.
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1 Thomas G. Long, Matthew, 194
2 Tom Long teases this out even further, examining how the disciples change throughout the story of the Transfiguration.