(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on Feb 7, 2016, Transfiguration Sunday)
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A Mountaintop Experience
What happens on a mountaintop?
Today’s story certainly has something to say in response to this question. But we don’t even have to crack the pages of our Bible to start talking about what happens on a mountaintop, because we’ve all been there ourselves, at one time or another. That’s why we can throw around an expression like “mountaintop experience.” It’s a common and familiar enough experience to all, even if it is also in some ways all-too-rare. It suggests that matchless moment of joy that lifts our spirits to heights immemorial and unforeseeable. It can be that moment of discovery that seems to make sense of everything, that “eureka” moment. It can be a moment of great achievement. It can be that moment when our love is returned.
It’s that feeling of oneness that happens upon us unexpectedly, when for one split second the universe does not feel cold and aloof but rather warm with compassion.
For some, the mountaintop is the moment of ultimate victory, a moment that will visit itself upon one team of football players tonight, and perhaps also upon their most diehard fans. (Speaking of which…it is hard for me to forget the night from a few years ago when I was in the pub with my friend Stephen. Liverpool had just won the League Cup, and as a diehard fan himself, Stephen was on the mountaintop. He broke out into just about every Liverpool song he knew. If you want to embarrass me, take a page from Stephen’s book. Just attract the attention of strangers in a public setting and watch as I crawl under the table.)
What happens on a mountaintop?
We all know a mountaintop experience when we’ve had one, yet they remain nearly impossible to describe. That doesn’t stop our story today from trying. When Peter, John, and James ascend the mountain, our story tells us, they see things differently. We’re told that “the appearance of [Jesus’] face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white.” The story then says it more simply. Peter and John and James saw “glory,” the glory of Christ and Moses and Elijah (vv. 31-32).
In the Old Testament, the glory of God is occasionally compared to a fire (cf. Ex 24:17). It’s a rich, suggestive image. It conjures up the great fire that warms our souls and this world, that makes the world glow with love and hope, that burns away the impurities of this life. And in this particular mountaintop moment, I think, Peter and his companions catch a glimpse of this glory, this fire. It’s as though the surface of reality has cracked momentarily, and through the cracks they can see the source of all the heat and glimmer, the inexhaustible flame of love that warms the world.
The Glory of the Mountaintop
What happens on a mountaintop?
If anyone would know, it would be the two who are speaking with Jesus: Moses and Elijah. The two had eerily similar mountaintop experiences (Deut 4:10-14; 1 Kgs 19:8, 11-18). Both were standing on Mount Horeb when the cosmos cracked open and they heard or saw within it, when reality splintered and they encountered the mystery of God in flames and voice.[1]
And both Moses and Elijah learned that the glory of the mountaintop looks different down below. Both discovered that mountaintop glory means a demanding story, a future heavy with responsibility. Moses would descend the mountaintop yoked with a responsibility that would rival the most difficult of bus-driving jobs, as he would lead a grumbling group of tired and hungry Israelites—asking, “Are we there yet? Are we there yet?”—through the desert for forty years. Elijah would leave the mountaintop saddled with the dangerous diplomacy assignment of meddling in the affairs of cutthroat kings (1 Kgs 19:15-18).
So when today’s story says that Moses and Elijah talked to Jesus about what he was to accomplish in Jerusalem,[2] I wonder what they told him. Jesus was already anticipating a rough time in the capital (cf. Luke 9:22). So when I imagine the story, Moses and Elijah aren’t telling Jesus what he already knows. They’re just doing what good friends do in times of difficulty. They’re putting a hand on his shoulder, encouraging him, saying things like, “You’re not alone—not really. We’ve walked a few of these steps too, and they’re difficult, and they’re never quite what you’d expect. But they are also part of the glory of God.”
What happens on a mountaintop?
In today’s world, photos—and lots of them. We snap picture after picture, in a desperate effort to capture the glory of the moment. We’re a little bit like Peter, who wants to preserve the moment by building three dwellings for Jesus and his glowing companions.
Like Peter—who according to Luke didn’t really know what he was saying—we mistake glory for a fixed moment in time rather than for the ever-burning flame that gives birth to that moment just as surely as it will consume it and move on to something new. We mistake glory for a feeling rather than what inspired that feeling and what will continue to inspire us, if we allow it.
A Tale of Two Mountains
What happens on a mountaintop?
Well—and here’s where things get tricky—it depends on which mountaintop you’re talking about. Because almost immediately after Jesus descends this mountain, he begins a long climb up the road to Jerusalem and a very different kind of mountain.[3] Whereas on one mountain he is shining, on the other mountain he hangs in darkness. Whereas on one mountain God’s voice comes through loud and clear, on the other mountain there is no voice other than a dying man’s last words.
Two mountaintops. Two very different experiences. It is easy to see the glory in one and not in the other. But that’s not how Jesus sees it. For Jesus, the two mountains are one and the same. As he says elsewhere, and in different words, the glory of God’s love is not separate from the cross (cf. Mark 10:37-38; John 12:23); if anything, it dwells most fully there.
The Weight of a Cross
What happens on a mountaintop?
In one word? Glory. But this glory is a double-edged knife. This glory is both a promise and a peril. The ancient Hebrew word for glory comes from the word kaved, which literally means “to be heavy,” though it can also be used to refer to splendor and radiance. It is a curious and colorful translation that captures just what we see in today’s story. On the one hand, glory is revealed in the lightness of those moments when we see the fire behind the world, when the world stops and we step into eternity, when we can easily see the promise that brings us new life. But on the other hand, this very same glory is the heaviness that dwells in the most difficult moments of love. It is what weighs us down with responsibility. Will we allow the flame of love to burn in us and heat the coldest, most unfeeling corners of the world? Will we allow the light of God to lead us into the darkest shadows where it is needed most?
The weight of glory is not just the weightless radiance that nearly eclipses us on the mountaintop. It is also the heavy cross we carry up a hill. It is both the selfless joy that we cannot contain when we see the fire behind reality, and the selfless love that somehow lives through us in the heaviest moments when we cannot see a thing.
As much of the world focuses on a thin sort of glory tonight, today’s story reminds us of a much thicker, livelier, heartier glory, a glory that lives within the best and worst of times. It is a glory that dwells within the radiance of smiles and high-fives as much as it does in giving a ride to a person in need or saying hello to a pair of lonesome eyes. It is a glory that dwells within weightless laughter and beaming faces as much as it does in the weighty words of forgiveness and the heavy cross from which they are spoken.
Prayer
We have glimpsed your glory, God, from many different mountaintops. Even as we desire to revisit these peaks, we hear your voice, “This is my son, my chosen. Listen to him.” And so on that day when his way leads us from a mountain of joy to a mountain of darkness and difficulty, when we must deny ourselves and take up the cross: burn brightly within us, Holy Flame behind the universe. May we know your glory whatever its weight, and may we live according to the sacred fire of love ablaze in our hearts. Amen.
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[1] It is true that, in Elijah’s experience, “the Lord was not in the fire.” Even so, the fire prefaces the silence in which Elijah hears God’s voice. The fact that, like Moses, Elijah encounters fire on Mount Horeb before receiving the word of God suggests that fire is a foundational image used to describe encounters with God. The “changed” face of Jesus (was it glowing like Moses’ in Ex 34:29?) and his “dazzling white” clothes corroborates this use of fire imagery.
[2] The Greek is much more suggestive than most English translations. It says that they discussed his exodos—commonly diluted to “departure” (Luke 9:31)—which would appear to draw a parallel between the exodus and either Jesus’ death or his resurrection and ascension. Just as Moses led the people of Israel from captivity to freedom, so too Jesus in his death and new life leads his followers from captivity to freedom, from sin to grace, from death to new life.
[3] Cf. Luke 9:51, where he sets his face toward Jerusalem.
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