Grace Presbyterian Church
February 7, 2016, Transfiguration C
Exodus 34:29-45; Luke 9:28-43a;
2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2
Three Journeys to a Holy Mountain
Mountains often
figure into the stories of religious traditions – not just the Judeo-Christian
tradition, but others as well. Not surprisingly, mountains often figure as the
location for an encounter between the human and the divine, or possibly as a
retreat for a person seeking contact with the divine. Such is the commonality
of this connection that it shows up fairly often in popular culture – say, any
number of comic strips in which people are climbing a high mountain to seek the
council of the guru perched atop it. Even in the current blockbuster movie
rampaging though theater box offices, Star
Wars VII: The Force Awakens, the final scene of the movie takes place on a
mountaintop, as a young woman seeks the long-absent last of the Jedi Knights.
To bring the mountain references full circle, that scene itself was filmed on a
mountaintop on an island off the coast of Ireland that had, until the 12th
century or so, been home to a Christian monastery, a place where monks had
sought to live closer to God, and more closely with God.
Moses went up a
mountain.
The Hebrew people
came to a mountain, Sinai, out in a wilderness. Moses went up that mountain to
receive law from God. Receiving the law, first from the finger of God; then the
awful rebellion of the Hebrew people; Moses pleading to God not to destroy the
people God had just delivered from Egypt. Moses up the mountain again, this time
to carve God’s commandments onto new stone tablets.
Exodus tells a
strange story at this point. Moses comes down from the mountain, back to the
people, after having been forty days with God receiving the commandments.
Evidently Moses didn’t notice (though the people did) that after so much time
in the presence of God, his face was glowing. Not in the way we speak of a
pregnant woman or a new mother “glowing”; Moses’s face was literally shining.
Maybe
surprisingly, or maybe not, the people were afraid of Moses. It’s not as if the
Hebrew people hadn’t already seen plenty of strange things – the plagues on
Egypt, the parting of the sea, the fire and pillar going before them – but this
one was too much; too strange, or too close to home, somehow too much for the
Hebrew people to bear, and they were afraid of Moses. Eventually Moses had to
put on a veil, to keep the people from being fearful or freaked out by his
shining face – though he would remove the veil when he went back up the
mountain, to the presence of the Lord.
Elijah went up a
mountain, too.
Even though the
story isn’t included in today’s lectionary reading, Elijah had his own mountain
encounter with God. 1 Kings 19 tells the story of Elijah’s flight from Queen
Jezebel, who had threatened his life after his victory over the prophets of
Baal. Despite seeing four hundred and fifty prophets of a false idol destroyed,
and God miraculously devouring with fire an utterly drenched altar, Elijah
reacted out of fear of the human monarch rather than trust in the God of power
he served. And he ran.
He ran all the way
to Horeb, the mount of God, which in Moses’s time had been called Sinai. There God hid Elijah in the cleft of
the rock, where Elijah witnessed God not in the wind, earthquake, or fire, but
in the “sound of sheer silence.”
But even in the
very presence of God, Elijah reacted with resignation, with fear, and with
hopelessness, repeating the same mantra he had repeated all through this
journey: “I have been
very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken
your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the
sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.“
As a result God sent him down from the mountain with a commission to set apart
a new king for Aram, a new king for Israel, and a new prophet … to replace
himself. Not every mountaintop turns into triumph.
Now Jesus goes up
a mountain.
This wasn’t
uncommon. More than a few times Jesus would, throughout the four gospels, go
off to a mountain to pray. The passage actually says “the mountain,” a definite article as grammarians would say, though
it clearly wasn’t Sinai or Horeb. But it was the mountain, one they knew.
This was a little
different, though, because Jesus took a few of his disciples with him. And it
got even more different when a couple more people showed up, and something
started happening to Jesus. His face changed. His appearance became dazzling
bright. Shades of Moses’s shining face.
To their credit,
the disciples didn’t react in fear, at least not immediately. Peter started
babbling nonsense, about building three booths, but Peter babbling nonsense is
just Peter being Peter, really. But then a cloud started descending on all of
them, the three disciples as well as the three transfigured figures, and then
some fear begins to set in. And frankly, for a good Hebrew, that kind of
theophany (a fancy seminary word for “manifestation of God”) should be met with
a little fear. The real trouble didn’t start in this case until Jesus and the
disciples came down the mountain, when the rest of the disciples had been
unable to heal a sick child. Coming down from the mountaintop isn’t easy, and
things don’t always work the way you think they should after you’ve been on the
mountaintop.
Three journeys to
holy mountains – always they were as holy as any place God created, but here
made holy by the manifestation of God, to Moses, to Elijah, to the disciples in
Jesus. Here the Transfiguration becomes a bookend to Epiphany, when God was
made manifest in the child Jesus to those magi who came from far away. God is
made manifest in Jesus, God is made manifest in the body of Christ as Paul has
been teaching us these last few weeks.
But there’s one
more mountain left, actually.
Besides looking
back, the mount of transfiguration also looks forward. Luke refers to this in
verses 31-32, when Moses and Elijah were speaking to Jesus about his departure,
“which he was soon to accomplish in
Jerusalem.” There Jesus would be led up one more mountain, upon which would
be performed perhaps the most unholy act in human history.
And yet Golgotha,
too, is a mount of transfiguration. Only there, on that mountain,, we are the
ones being transfigured.
Paul helps us
here, in 2 Corinthians. Look at 3:18: “And
all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the lord as though
reflected in a mirror, are being transformed
into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from
the Lord, the Spirit.”
At Epiphany, the
magi see God in the child Jesus. At Transfiguration, the disciples see God in
their teacher. But on Golgotha, at the other end of this approaching season of
Lent, Jesus ascends a mountain so that we might be transformed, we might be
changed “from glory to glory,” so that we might be transfigured into the Body
of Christ, showing God’s love and justice to a skeptical and suspicious world.
One journey
completed, we now take up another. A cross awaits at the end of that journey.
Don’t let the old gospel songs fool you: it is a hideous, cruel, demonic cross.
What happens there is the brutality of fallen and depraved humanity at its
basest and lowest.
And yet…
Because of that
one more mountain we are transfigured, are transformed. We are drawn in to God.
Because God would not settle for our lostness, our separation, our fallenness,
Golgotha, Good Friday, becomes a place of transformation for us.
Today we see Jesus
transfigured, but then it’s our turn.
For
transformation, Thanks be to God. Amen.
Hymns
(PH ’90): “O Splendor of God’s Glory
Bright” (474); “Jesus On the Mountain Peak” (74); “O Wondrous Sight, O Vision
Fair” (75); “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling” (with tune BEECHER)
Ahem. (agnusday.org, again)
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