"Mountaintop Experiences"

Transfiguration Sunday, Year A (3-2-14)

Sermon Texts are: Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21; Matthew 17:1-9

Mountaintop Experiences

The whole thing was extraordinary beyond words - so much so that it is described using a word that we pretty much never use unless we’re talking about this one, specific, extraordinary event.  Jesus takes Peter, James, and John, his three closest disciples - the ones who are almost always right there at his side whenever anything happens, and they go up the mountain together.  And as they’re at the top of the mountain, Jesus is suddenly transfigured - he literally transforms before their eyes.  His face begins to glow with brilliant light, his very clothes become a radiant, dazzling white, and two of the greatest men of the Hebrew tradition, Moses and Elijah, appear beside him and just carry on a conversation for a moment.

It’s like a scene from a Cecil B. DeMille movie.  It’s grandiose and powerful.  It leaves no doubts to a person hearing it, let alone being there to see it firsthand, that Jesus is someone different, someone special, someone powerful.  It’s the kind of scene that gives true definition to the term “mountaintop experience.”

So when Peter, ever the practical one, the man of action, offers to build dwellings for Jesus, for Moses, and Elijah, perhaps this action strikes us as a little odd.  If you just saw something like what Peter, James, and John had seen, would your first reaction be to build something?  Would it be to fall down in worship?  Or to tremble in fear and awe?  Peter and the disciples have experienced Christ’s power before several times - Peter has even affirmed Jesus’ identity as the Son of God in just the six days ago to which this passage is referring.  So then… why does Peter suddenly leap up to build dwellings for Jesus?  There’s no way to say for certain - Some point to a longstanding tradition that runs throughout the Old Testament of building booths, altars, and other special landmarks at locations where major encounters with God occur - Jacob’s well, the booths that marked the Jewish Feast of the Tabernacles, and other various altars built from stones at various important places where God spoke to God’s people.  Others make the case that Peter was just so struck in the moment that he never wanted for it to end - he suggested the dwellings so that Jesus, Elijah, and Moses could set up shop on top of the mountain, have people come to them, perhaps, and receive their portion in the Kingdom.  Still others argue that Peter didn’t know what else to do in that situation, but that he knew he had to do something.

Whatever his rationale, Peter opens his mouth and begins to take action.  But God enters into the scene, interrupting whatever Peter’s plans may have been, and declaring for the second time in Matthew’s Gospel, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased - Listen to him!”  Whether it’s a desire to hold on to the sublime, a sense of religious duty, or just not knowing what else to do, Peter seems to have missed the point.  Something important is happening and he’s trying to react to it before he even knows or understands what it is.  And so God enters the scene dramatically and reminds Peter what the priorities are, meanwhile quite literally putting the fear of God into the disciples in the process.

We often talk about the “mountaintop experience” - and many of us have shared in events like this.  The world suddenly becomes a “thin place,” we feel elated, closer to God, like the boundaries between heaven and earth are suddenly blurred and we stand among angels.  But like Peter, we’re terrible at knowing what to do with those experiences once we’ve had them.  We have a habit of making the experience itself into the thing that we remember and cherish, rather than the God that our experience connected us so strongly.  We come away from our experiences with that “on fire” feeling - ready to go out and to make a difference in the world, to build dwellings, both literal and figurative, for God.  And we do everything in our power to keep that fire burning, to stay on the mountaintop and keep glowing.

The problem is that even in the original transfiguration, the glow fades away - Jesus doesn’t stay radiant for the rest of the Gospels.  Our own glow fades away, as well - and that’s not a bad thing.  God tells the disciples to listen to Jesus, because it’s what Jesus tells them after the experience that is so important and what they need to hear.  Jesus instructs Peter, James, and John not to tell anyone about what they’ve seen “until after the son of Man has been raised from the dead.”  Jesus’ identity isn’t something that he wants openly broadcasted to the world - it’s not that he’s denying who he is or completely trying to hide it, but he realizes the kind of distraction that it could be, the misunderstandings that people already have of who they think he is to be as the Messiah, and what kind of expectations they would further place upon him were his identity to be fully broadcast.

Jesus instead teaches us that our faith is to be marked with an extreme kind of humility - a willingness to come down from the mountaintop and to conceal the glow, to not let ourselves become distracted by the experience of God to the point that we lose track of the mission of God to which we have been invited.  Jesus warns us that we should be so circumspect in our participation in that mission that even our left hand doesn’t know what our right is doing when we give to others, that we look perfectly healthy and strong even when we fast and empty ourselves, and that our prayers should be given behind closed doors lest we be more inspired by the sound of our own voice than by the desire to communicate in earnest with God.

Next week, we’ll be moving into the season of Lent, a time of reflection, repentance, and remembrance - in a way, it’s a time for us as a church to come down from the mountain together.  Jesus, Peter, James, and John descend from the mountain and back into the world, back into the crowds of the suffering, the hungry, the poor and the hurting.  Jesus continues in his journey, the cross fixed firmly in his gaze while the disciples are still left to wonder, to follow, to listen and to obey.  This is the journey into which we are invited, as well - and as we encounter God, as we move from the mountaintop and are transformed in the presence of Christ, as we are nourished by his body and blood, let us also be humble, remembering the God who meets us, the God who calls us, and the God who leads us onwards.  To God be the Glory.  Amen.