Going up the Mountain

One of the most influential fathers of the Christian Church, as well as of Western thought, St. Augustine, understood Jesus’s Transfiguration that we hear about today, as a necessary, yet temporary, glimpse of divine glory designed to strengthen the disciples for the suffering to come (suffering not just criticism or name calling; but arrest, imprisonment, torture and execution, all for their affirmation and proclamation that Jesus is God). 

So Jesus has decided to take three of his disciples, Peter James and John, up a mountain. Like all of God’s followers, even folks like Moses and Elijah, these disciples cannot see their futures or how God’s promises will unfold; they’re simply willing to go where he goes or where he asks them to go. We know, of course, about Peter’s own story: his doubt, his denial of Jesus, and even Jesus’s last words to him: “you will be taken where you do not wish to go because you follow me, that is, to his death.” But Peter knows nothing of this yet. Jesus alone knows what they’ll face. 

Here they are, looking at Jesus, perhaps thinking they’re about to have a big discussion or pray together or some other mundane task and then suddenly their eyes are opened and they see the glory of God in his fullness. Jesus emanates a “dazzling light,” not a created light; a light that reveals God as God is. They know this because Jesus is talking to two dead men!: Elijah and Moses. Of course they know who Moses and Elijah are - God’s prophets, mediators, law receivers and keepers - but, come on, they’re also dead men!

The disciples are rightfully utterly blown away, astonished, and likely a bit frightened. So Peter, the loudmouth/talker of the disciples, one who knows his scriptures well, says, “Jesus, it’s good for us to be here, if you want, I’ll set up three tents for you, one for Elijah, one for Moses and one for you.” God cuts Peter off mid sentence just as God did with Job: stop your plotting Peter, and listen. 

And God’s voice stills all reality; time seems to stop for God has drawn all things to completion. The disciples cannot but give their unmitigated attention: “this is my Son, my beloved, with whom I am well pleased, listen to him.” Like Jesus’s baptism that we heard about a few weeks ago, so now God the Father reveals the execution of his judgment and mercy: Jesus come to us, come for us, to draw us to him, to take on our very being, and gather us finally to himself, the consummation or completion of all of time; the last day. And so in Christ where they are now, the disciples hear God address each of them: this is my child with whom I am well pleased. A foretaste of the reality to come.

The only response is one repeated again and again throughout Scripture, with Job, as I said last week, so with Peter as we will hear during Easter, “the disciples fell down to the ground in fearful awe.” Silence. Surrender. Stillness. Attention. Augustine suggested that this moment caused the disciples to want to stay on the mountain top in this state of spiritual ecstacy: life with God where sin is fully overcome. They did not want to come down the mountain - an analogy for not wanting to go out from our vision of God into a broken world where we are asked to serve, to love, and even quite possibly to suffer for the sake of sharing God’s love and peace with others. 

And certainly, I think this can occur - where we have a moment of divine intervention that causes us to want to remain there forever. However, in our day and age, I actually think it’s far more likely that we struggle to go up on that mountain with Jesus in the first place. That is, I think we have the tendency to carve up our lives or compartmentalize so that certain parts of who we are, or how we think, or how we make decisions, or spend our resources of time, energy, money, and thought, or how we treat those we severely dislike who really tick us off, belong to us alone; they’re ordered and find their meaning and purpose according to our standards. It’s only parts of our lives, often the leftovers or the disasters, that can belong to God. And I think this happens to us because we tend to operate in survival mode, where we’re guided by exhaustion, anger and fear, rather than trust and faith. We’re unwilling to ascend the mountain with Jesus or perhaps to listen to his voice for fear that we alone must construct the truth like Peter who thought he could build his tents for Moses, Elijah and Jesus. 

It is no secret that our lives have become increasingly busy, with an overload of information and stress, few novel experiences, constant distraction, a lack of interactions that create deep emotional connection and intimacy. This lack of depth in experiences and the memories created by them, condition us to miss the complexity of nuances that slow time down; that give time over to God’s crafting rather than our own. We end up simplifying God’s majestic and complex web of time-bound relationships so we can slide through life without being so buffeted about. But in so doing we can often feel as if time has simultaneously sped up and lost any meaning. 

Yet God gave us time as a gift to see him in the depth of complex relationships, and challenging moments of uncertainty; these moments of time are the very substance of God coming to us; moments of transfigured grace. We subvert that purpose when we focus on trying to do more, rather than trying to do fewer things well, with attentiveness, focus, and trust that as we give ourselves over to God. It is precisely when, like Moses, Elijah, Mary, Peter and Paul - even when we still see him through a glass darkly - that we are willing to bow ourselves, our whole selves down before him, in silence, in attention, in focus, in self-giving response, in the midst of situations that often seem frightening in their novelty and their demand to see this world anew - it is here in these gifted moments that we experience God’s time; time fulfilled, time holy and complete, time in God’s bosom. Will you stop long enough to hear God’s voice? AMEN