While We Were Talking

Matthew 17:1-9

Transfiguration of the Lord A

February 26, 2017

Fondren Presbyterian Church

Dr. Robert Wm Lowry

            Last summer my best friend, his two teenage sons, and I drove from Russellville, AR to Bozeman, MT to meet his wife and her parents for a family vacation.  We took a more scenic route than usual so we could see some of the sights along the way.  

            After passing through Colorado and the magnificent sights of Vail Pass, Glenwood Canyon, and the wide-open skies of the western slope, we came into Utah a few hours ahead of schedule.  Looking at the map we decided that there was enough time for a quick side stop at Arches National Park. 

            It is said of the Grand Canyon that it is one of the few things in the world that fails to disappoint and always lives up to the hype.  I could say the same about Arches.  There in the middle of the Utah desert, stretching for miles to the horizon, are incredible red sandstone outcroppings, berms, and, notably, arches, formed by millennia of wind erosion. 

            Driving through the park we reached one particular promontory where, looking out at the landscape stretching ahead, I found myself speechless.  It was a sight that defies description because words are not enough to capture it. 

            I am not one to throw around the language of spirituality too loosely.  But seeing that landscape, with that sapphire blue sky, in that calm and still place, was, I have to say, a truly spiritual experience.  It was one of those moments when you feel God right there; with you; in the moment. 

            Ancient pagan and modern Celtic spirituality described those places where heaven and earth feel closer than in others as “thin places.”  The wind swept island of Iona, a gentle spring gurgling up in a remote place in the Highlands, a promontory looking out over the magnificent Utah desert.  All of those can be thin places.

            “Up a high mountain” might fairly be called the biblical vernacular for “thin place.”  Whenever someone goes up a high mountain in scripture, some kind of encounter with the holy is in the offing. 

            Moses goes up the mountain and meets God.

            Elijah goes up the mountain and hears the voice of God.

            The psalmist turns his eyes to the hills looking for guidance from…God?

            So common is this motif of mountains as places of divine encounter that the very expression “mountain top experience” has crept into our vocabulary to describe those life-changing moments.

            That day on the mountain in ancient Palestine surely lived up to its name for Peter, James, and John.  Jesus takes them, and only them, up a high mountain.  What happens there is one of the more dramatic moments in Jesus’ ministry before the events of holy week.

            The text tells us that when they got up the mountain, “he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white.”  That English translation of the Greek word “metemorphothe” as “transfigured” gives us the name of this day.

            Now when we hear the word “transfigured” our minds often go to change.  Jesus was changed before them from the man they knew into this glowing radiant figure who evidently shares the glowing visage of God revealed to Moses so long before.

            If we want to be literalists and concern ourselves only with the words on the page, that is not a bad place to stop the sermon and get on with our days.  Of course, we know the rest of the story and we know that Jesus was with God in the beginning and we know that in the fullness of the biblical witness we have Christ revealed not as an evolving divine figure in the world but as God incarnate, born of Mary, walking among and ministering too us. 

            Fully human AND fully divine is the theological principle, not fully human and MOSTLY divine as though there were still some divining to be done down the line.

            This Jesus who goes up the high mountain with Peter, James, and John was fully God at the bottom of the mountain, so what does the text mean when it says he was “transfigured before them?”

            To understand Christ in that moment, we need to first understand the mountain, or more particularly, the mountaintop as a place of divine experience.

            Montreat North Carolina is a thin place for many Presbyterians. 

            And for thousands of Presbyterian youth each summer it is a mountain top experience.  It is a place where, together, they come to know what it is to live in the blessed community of Christ in a place where the membrane between heaven and earth is quite nearly invisible. 

            Each night at Montreat, groups from churches or presbyteries who travel together to the conference gather for back home time.  Back home takes as many forms as there are groups to share it.  There is no magic formula other than using the time as an opportunity to live more fully into the miracle of the week. 

            In my home church, one of the traditions is to do “pows and wows” for the day.  Some call them mountains and valleys, some highs and lows, but the idea is the same.  Each person is invited to share the thing that gave him or her the biggest wow or surprise of the day and the thing that gave him or her the biggest pow or disappointment. 

            At a youth leader’s conference not long after Montreat one year, a discussion started over dinner and one of the youth professionals made the comment that after Montreat that summer some of the adults wanted to revamp their youth ministry to model it after the week at Montreat.  The logic was that during that week the group had come together in such amazing ways, they learned in keynote, the unpacked what they learned in small groups, they bonded in free time, and they opened up to one another in such incredible vulnerability during back home time and their version of pows and wows.

            Someone asked how it went with the changes, and the youth professional said it had been a disaster. 

            We went around the table talking about why that might be when one of our number piped up and said, “maybe there is a reason people in the bible visit the mountain top but never live there.  It’s a visiting place not a place.”

            You could have heard a pin drop.

            She was exactly right.

            The goal of making every moment as spiritually enveloping as a Montreat Youth Conference is tempting and laudable, but it is a mountain top and mountain tops are for visiting not for living.

            Peter jumps at the chance to stay on the mountaintop.  When Moses and Elijah appear and begin talking with Jesus, Peter offers to build three dwellings assuming that now that they are up the mountain, Jesus plans to stay there.  After all, who would want to leave?

            It is tempting for us to want to set down roots and build our tent on the Mountain top where we encounter God so fully, where the distance between heaven and earth is so minimal, and where the glowing radiance of God lights our way.

            It is not long, however, that Jesus bursts this particular bubble and just like closing worship at Montreat always arrives on Friday night, Jesus sends the disciples back down the mountain and back to the day to day of their living.

            So why take us up there in the first place?

            It seems awfully unkind for God to draw us to these thin places and up to these mountaintops just to usher us back to the thickness of the world.  Why not just leave us alone?

            The answer, I think, comes in vs. 5. 

            While Peter is speaking to Jesus about setting up camp right there on the mountain top- while he is distracted by clinging to the moment to make it last- the voice of God comes upon them just as it did in the moment of Jesus’ baptism.  Again, God says to them that Jesus is God’s son and with him God is well pleased.

            There is no new information revealed on the mountain. 

            Peter, James, and John are not bearers of some new information about God or Christ, or the relationship of the divine to humanity.

            What they get in that moment is the voice of God telling them what they already know; Christ is God’s son, the beloved, with whom God is well pleased.”

            That mountain top experience was, to be sure like a whelming flood to those disciples, but they were washed over with familiar waters.  They were reminded of what they knew down at the bottom of the mountain; that God is near them and with them and for them.

            I think that is the real point of thin places; of mountaintops; of all the places where we pause and see and feel the goodness and nearness of God.  The truth of God is no somehow transformed in those moments; it is our lives that are transformed.  What changes is not what we see but how we see.

            Perhaps another way of saying what happened to Jesus up on that mountain is that he was seen by the disciples in a whole new light.  In that moment, they caught a glimpse of what was already true about the radiance of God in Christ.  They encountered a thin place and in it they reencountered the truth of the glory of God and THAT is why rather than tell them to set up camp Jesus sends them back into the world. 

            Thin places and mountaintops are not rewards for our endurance in the world, they are the places where our strength to bare witness in the world is renewed and refreshed.  Christ takes us to the mountaintop not so that he might be changed before our eyes but so that our eyes may be more fully opened to him and in him WE might be changed.

            Friends, this week we begin the journey of Lent.  So often we see this as a valley to be traversed so we can reach the mountaintop of Easter morning.  Perhaps this is the year to see Lent not as the valley but the mountain- the gift from God to come to a place where God is near and the light of Christ may shine in our lives. 

            Let us pray.

            God of every mountaintop, you call us to live in your light.  In this season of preparation, transform and transfigure our lives so we may know more fully your love for us and share more boldly your love for the world.  We thank you for those places in the world where we are drawn closer to you and where we know more fully the hope and love you have for us.  We pray these things in the name of the one who calls us to the mountaintop, Christ Jesus our Lord.  Amen.