Down From the Mountaintop

The Last Sunday of Epiphany

2-3 March 2019

Exodus 34:29-35

Psalm 99

2 Corinthians 3:12—4:2

Luke 9:28-36

Welcome to the last Sunday of Epiphany.  Yes, as incredible as it may seem, as cold as it is today, Lent is already upon us. And if Lent is upon us, can Easter be far behind?  And with Easter, the promise of spring.  Believe me, those who have heard me whine about the weather and lack of sunlight for the past several months are yearning for the advent of spring with every fiber of their being.

But before we get too far in our anticipation of spring and Easter, I need to pull us back into Epiphany one last time, because we have a long, dry forty days of Lent between us today and the joy of Easter.  To set the stage for Ash Wednesday, at the end of the service today we will symbolically bury the word alleluia, which we don't say during Lent, until Easter, when you will hear the alleluias again.  Our readings today also set the stage for our entry into Lent.

As we all know the word epiphany means manifestation, and all through the season of Epiphany we have been exposed to different manifestations of Christ, from the visit of the wise men, his baptism and his first miracle at the wedding in Cana, to his appearance in the synagogue in Nazareth, and his sermons to those coming to him; all manifestations of who this Jesus of Nazareth really is.  And each year we end the season of Epiphany with a visit the Mount of Transfiguration, that not too subtle, definitive manifestation of who Jesus really is.  This year we focus on the account in Luke's gospel.

Eight days before the events in today's lesson, Jesus asked the disciples, “Who do the crowds say that I am?”  I imagine there was some scratching of heads; they hemmed and hawed around a bit. “John the Baptist; but others, Elijah; and still others, that one of the ancient prophets has risen." But then Jesus had put them to the test, "But who do you say that I am?"  I imagine the silence was profound, but finally Peter responded with his great confession, “The Messiah of God.”

Eight days later, Jesus took Peter, James, and John away from the others to the top of a mountain to pray, and while Jesus was praying, they saw who he really was.  No idle speculation here, no parables, no clouded meanings.  Jesus was transfigured in front of their eyes.  His form changed from the Jesus confined to space and time and humanity, to its true nature.  Suddenly his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. The personifications of the law and the prophets, Moses and Elijah, came and talked to him.  It was an epiphany of the one who was at the beginning of all things, the Cosmic Christ.  Then a cloud overshadowed the disciples, and the same voice that spoke to Abraham, to Moses, to Elijah, and to all the prophets proclaimed, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”

For the disciples witnessing Jesus' transfiguration, it was the quintessential mountaintop experience. We’re all familiar with the phrase.  If we haven’t had one ourselves, we probably know someone who has had one.  An encounter with the living God so intense, so personal, that we are forever altered by it.  In a very real way, I am in this pulpit today because of a mountaintop experience I had on March 13^th, 1983, which literally transformed my life.  Rest assured, if I can remember the date and every detail after almost thirty-six years later, it had to be significant, and it was life changing.

That's the first point I want to make this morning.  Even though Christ is the one transfigured in today's gospel lesson, mountaintop experiences transfigure us – change us.  In our Old Testament lesson Moses came down from the summit of Mount Sinai with two tablets of the law.  But the Moses who came down from the mountaintop was not the Moses who went up.  He had been in the presence of God, talking to God, and he had been physically changed by it.  His face shone so much with the reflected light of God he had to wear a veil to keep from panicking the people.

The good news is that we all experience the mountaintop, whether suddenly in a flash of light with a vision of the transfigured Christ, or slowly, through the gentle proddings of the Holy Spirit.  We are all changed by our encounters with God until we actually become members of the body of Christ.  I think some of us just require a little more prodding than others.

Secondly, mountaintop experiences are to get our attention, and to draw our attention to Jesus.  Look at what the voice from the cloud said to the disciples who were present.  “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”  Listen to him.  Eight days earlier, Peter had confessed that Jesus was the Christ.  But in the accounts given by Matthew and Mark Peter followed that great confession by rejecting Jesus’ prediction that he was going to be condemned and crucified.  The Transfiguration got the disciples attention, confirmed who Jesus was, and prepared the disciples for what was to come.  

Peter's initial reaction to his mountaintop experience was to stay there.  “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”  Our initial reaction to our mountain top experiences is usually the same.  We want to stay on the mountaintop.  We want to preserve those feelings of closeness to God that we get from a moving liturgy, a cherished hymn, a valued prayer book, and we try to hold on to them as long as we can.  Mountaintop experiences become the standard upon which we judge every worship service, every sermon.  And if we don't get the demanded spiritual high, something is wrong.  We hear people complain, "I just don't feel the presence of God there anymore," and they drop out and search elsewhere.

We like to think of church services as a spiritual filling station.  Once a week we go in, get filled with the Holy Spirit, and then we exude holiness the rest of the week.  It just doesn't work that way.  Spirituality doesn't come from one mountaintop experience, or from weekly mountaintop experiences.  It comes from a life centered in prayer and the sacraments.

That is my final point.  As cherished as the mountaintop is, we cannot stay there.  Today's Old Testament lesson begins with the words, "Moses came down from Mount Sinai."  He was called up the mountaintop to receive God's law, and in turn to give it to the people of God.  Had he chosen to remain on the mountaintop, Moses would have been just a strange old man with two stone tablets.  It was in coming down from the mountaintop that God's purpose for Moses was fulfilled.

The voice comes to us from the cloud “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”  Then, like he did with his disciples, Jesus takes us by the hand and leads us down off the mountaintop and into the desert.  To be the body of Christ.

We are a desert people, and we worship a desert God.  Jesus realized he and the disciples couldn’t stay on the holy mountain.  The cross waited for him, and a mission waited for the disciples, and those were down the mountain, in the desert. 

Like them, we can’t live on the mountaintop.  We are called to be the Body of Christ to the world, and the world is a spiritual desert.  We are called to spend our lives in it.  But memories of our mountaintops sustain us in the desert, as it sustained Jesus and his disciples during the trials ahead of them.

We stand here on the mountaintop of the Last Sunday of Epiphany.  But we are being called down the mountain to wander in the desert of Lent for forty days.   On Wednesday, the Church will invite you to the observance of a Holy Lent by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.   Let us pray for the grace and strength to emerge from the desert of Lent to the joy of Easter, which lies on the other side.

Amen.