One Mountain Leads to Another       

     Why did Jesus take only Peter, James and John up to the top of the mountain?  Why those three and why only a select group from the larger group of disciples?  I’ve often assumed that it’s because Peter, James and John were the most promising disciples; that they showed the most leadership ability.   That they were chosen because Jesus wanted to lead them to a higher level of knowledge because he knew that they would be important in the later church; that Peter, James and John were being singled out for honor by being taken up on the mountain top with him.  But in conversation with church members last Wednesday night, at Bible study, and the suggestion was made that maybe it wasn’t because they were the best disciples, but because they were the worst disciples.  That Peter, James and John needed special attention because they weren’t getting it; or perhaps because they were understanding things in a way that could lead to disaster.  The going up on the mountain, the transfiguration, for them was not a badge of honor, but a sign that they needed remediation.  They needed extra attention so that they could do better as disciples.  

        I’ve thought about it since then and I find that the answer is both – that Peter, James and John were promising, showing gifts of leadership; that Peter had made a verbal breakthrough and that James and John had shown similar signs of understanding who Jesus is, that were ahead of the other disciples.  And yet, at the same time, perhaps because they were ahead of the other disciples, Jesus wanted to be sure that they understood something that they were in danger of missing out on.  They needed to be cautioned, or strengthened, or taught in such a way that they would not make a mistake based upon their advanced understanding of Jesus.  It was as if in running ahead of the other disciples Peter, James and John were putting themselves in a more perilous position.  And the way that they responded to Jesus after that point could have undermined his ministry as well as endangered the lives of Peter, James and John themselves, their eternal lives. 

        So, they were being shown that they were promising, that they were on the right track; and at the same time they were being corrected.  They were being shown ways in which their understanding needed to be greater and they needed to be prepared for their things that they were not evidently ready for.  That, I think, is why those three were selected and brought up to the mountain top for this event.  And then the familiar features of this story all took place before the eyes of these disciples – Jesus was transfigured before them.  His face was dazzling white; his garments shown with brightness that was unimaginable in any sort of earthly fabric or earthly cloth; nobody could bleach anything as white as these garments shown at that moment.  His face was so white he could hardly be looked upon.  And there they were on the mountaintop, gazing and yet shielding their eyes as Jesus, in his brightness, was before them. 

        And then suddenly, there were with Jesus two other figures.  And the disciples, looking upon them, knew somehow that they were Moses and Elijah.  Remember there were no photographs; Moses and Elijah lived hundreds of years earlier, there was a prohibition against even graven images so that there wouldn’t have been a pictorial tradition of what Moses and Elijah looked like.  And so, for Peter, James and John to recognize Moses and Elijah would mean that they were somehow caught up in the event of superior significance and meaning.  Like when we’re having one of those dreams where everything seems real deep and meaningful; most dreams are kind of crazy, but sometimes you have those dreams where you see immediately what’s important about the person you’re talking with in the dream.  And somehow, Peter, James and John in recognize Moses and Elijah in that sense; and they were talking with Jesus. 

        And the way Peter responds at this point indicates that he had the same question in mind that I was mentioning at the beginning of this message.  Peter also was wondering why Jesus had brought those three up to the top of the mountain.  But suddenly an idea flashed across his mind; even while he was trembling with fear, even while he was overwhelmed by the beauty of what he saw, this idea came upon him: It’s good that we are here. We are here, obviously, to make booths for you, one tent for Jesus and one for Moses and one for Elijah.  Obviously, in Peter’s mind, somehow this meant that God had come into the world in his fullness and he was now going to make his dwelling on his people.  And this was an event that the scriptures looked forward to as the creation of a new heaven and a new earth; and all old things would pass away; and God would make all things new.  This was the coming age of the Messiah; Peter already had said the word Messiah for Christ.  And now that he was seeing Jesus all shining on the mountain top, and here was Moses and Elijah – what could that mean except that this was the end of all things.  The Messiah was here in his glory and now God was going to rule over the earth. 

        That was an example of the disciples’ understanding of Jesus running ahead in a way that lead to misunderstanding; but that was what Peter thought at that moment.  And that’s where the correction came in.  In the cloud swirling around them and the voice from the cloud “This is my beloved Son.”  And unlike the baptism voice that said “with him I am well pleased,” this time the voice was directed right at the disciples with a command, “Listen to him.”  “Listen to him.”  Then the cloud moved on, Moses and Elijah were gone and all was back to normal.  And yet there must have been a sense of being dazed and somewhat breathless after all that excitement was over.  And they walked, musing quietly, down the mountain.  And Jesus told them on the way down not to mention the event until after he had risen from the dead. 

        “Listen to him.”  That was the voice; and that command given to the disciples went along with the fact that they were walking back down from the mountain.  Because they were walking back down into every day life; they were walking to a road that Jesus was supposed to begin traveling purposefully at that moment; purposefully and single mindedly, a road that leads to Jerusalem .  A road that brings each of the disciples to Jerusalem during the celebration of the Passover; a road that causes all these things in Jerusalem to come together in such a way that first everything seemed right and then everything seemed wrong; and then everything seemed as wrong as anything had ever seemed.  I’m speaking, of course, of the Passion: the suffering and death of Jesus.  All of that was the final destination of that road that they were now going to travel now that they’ve come back down from the mountain of Transfiguration .

        All of that was the purpose for which they were coming down from the mountaintop of Transfiguration.  And in climbing to the Passion, they would climb another hill; the hill called Golgotha .  And there at the top of that hill Jesus would be nailed to the cross and would die.  One mountain, the mountain of Transfiguration , leads to another, the mountain of Crucifixion .  That was what the disciples needed to listen to; and that’s what the voice was telling them to do. 

        Jesus, in his glory, because he is the Son of God, because he is shining white like the sun, because of who he really is deep down inside; Jesus had come to earth in order to go to Jerusalem and do what he must do there; suffer what he must suffer there.   And you, disciples, need to be in step with that.  Unlike the way Peter had been in his earlier conversation when Jesus had mentioned the cross; and Peter had taken him aside and rebuked him saying, “Lord, this must not be!”  And Jesus rebuked Peter in response.  The voice from heaven was saying the same thing: Learn this message Peter, James and John that the glory of Jesus is going to glow even more glorious in a way that does not look glorious in the eyes of human beings, in a way that looks painful and sad and shameful and like failure.  The glory of the Mountain Transfiguration is going to lead to an even greater glory that is going to look like a horror – The Crucifixion.   One mountain leads to another.

        There is, of course, a mountain beyond that as well; the mountain of Ascension, you could say; the mountaintop from which Jesus bad his final earthly farewell to his disciples; and led them to move on into the life of glory that was beginning in their midst on earth after the resurrection; and was going to end in the glorification of all human life in union with God in heaven.  One mountain leads to another mountain, leads to another mountain; but right now, the attention of the disciples needs to be focused on that second mountain.  And they need to see the connections between the glory on earth and the deed done on the second mountain; and so do we.

        The voice that says, “Listen to him” speaks to us as well.   And I think all people who have had some sort of desire to connect with Jesus have put themselves in the same position that Peter, James and John might be in going up to this mountain of transfiguration.  We are people who have an understanding of Jesus, people who have a sense that Jesus is special.  You might express that as I do, in the terms of the Nicene Creed- Jesus is the eternally begotten second person of the Holy Trinity, taking on human flesh and coming into our life, so that he is truly man and truly God.  We may like that language and that conceptuality. Others of you may not go along with me in quite that way of expressing it; and yet the fact that you’re here, I think indicates that what we share in common is the sense that Jesus is somehow important. 

        And that’s true; and that’s right; and that’s a breakthrough.   But it’s not a breakthrough that is the end.  We’ve been climbing a mountain when we realize Jesus is important; we’ve done something good.  Spirituality is often expressed as a mountaintop journey.  We go all the way up the mountain through various struggles and disciplines and practices that purify us from our contamination with things that are of the earth, and the base aspects of everyday life, we climb the mountain higher and higher ascending to the point where we reach the pinnacle and there we find the truth.   The literature of spirituality in bookstores talks about these mountaintop climbs in a number of different forms. 

        That ultimate truth that we find at the pinnacle might be a guru, somebody who is holy, who is able to tell us about the ways of eternal things, in another religious tradition; or it might be some sort of breakthrough that we’re supposed to make in our own mind, in our own understanding.  But still I think we have this sort of one dimensional idea of what it means to make a breakthrough about truth, that when we realize that Jesus is special we climb to the mountaintop and it feels like that’s the point that was the turning point in our lives.  That’s the point where we realize all that was really important in life and the rest of life is just about staying in that stage in some sense and we can go on from there.

        But what Jesus wants us to do is realize that that first mountaintop is not the ending, but is really only a beginning or even perhaps a way station somewhere in the early-middle part of our journey.  And we need to go back down from the mountain; we need to go to Jerusalem and be prepared for the second mountain climb in our own lives.  Because the Passion of Jesus, the taking apart of life that Jesus went through methodically and piece by piece during those horrible events from Thursday through Friday evening of Holy Week; as Jesus went through that Passion, he was doing it for us. 

        Doing it in a way so that his life in being unmade presented to us a life that our lives could be joined to; so that we, being unmade, could be knitted back together in a way that was pure, holy and good; and that was able to attach itself to God and move up into a better life than the life we’d been living before – a better life that begins on this earth, a better life that has no ending after death, a better life that is our destiny with God.  But that destiny could only be created for us, we could only be brought to that destiny through Christ allowing his life to be broken that we in the brokenness of our lives could connect with his and we could be remade in the midst of his brokenness into whole and complete persons once again. 

        In other words, we too need to be broken on a cross; we, too, need to have a Passion of our own.  And it’s ours and yet it’s Christ’s, we too need to suffer; because on that road of suffering we’re entering into the sufferings of Jesus; and it’s his suffering that makes our suffering meaningful; and it carries our sufferings into that stage where they connect us with Jesus Christ.  His life living in us transforms us; but it’s through the cross, it’s through that second mountaintop.  We too, are crucified.  

        Jesus was not crucified on the cross so that we wouldn’t have to think about it; Jesus was crucified on the cross so that we could go through this “camel through the eye of the needle” process; so impossible and yet so necessary.   So that we could go through the same process of being reshaped, refashioned; we too, by sharing in his suffering and death and by joining into his resurrection could be made into glorified creatures, ready to rejoice in eternal unity with God and with each other.  One mountain leads to another. 

        The season of Lent is our journey down into the valley, our journey towards Jerusalem , and it climaxes in Holy Week in our trip back up the mountain.  During the season, during the Sundays of Lent, I’ll be trying to lead us in exploring different scenes of this journey, this breaking apart, this connecting our brokenness with the brokenness of Christ.  I’ll be trying to lead us in thinking about these things because I need this so badly every year.  I need so much to have this level of examination take place in my soul, in my heart, in my emotions, in my mind. And I think if I need it, then probably many of us here feel the same need; and that’s our journey in the weeks ahead. 

        On the other end, the next day we’ll sing Alleluia after today, on the other end is the celebration of the risen Christ – Easter Sunday.   But between now and then, we have a lot of traveling to do, a lot of learning to do, a lot of inner work to do.  So that like Peter, James and John, we who have already made one breakthrough can be taught how to be ready for the second and more important breakthrough that lies ahead.  Amen.

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