Transfiguration Sunday
Turn and Face the Strange
Rev. Brent Gundlah
First Reading (Exodus 34:29-35/NRSVUE)
Gospel Reading (Luke 9:28-43a/NRSVUE)
A couple of years ago, I decided to spend a late October afternoon up in Big Cottonwood Canyon hiking by myself from Silver Lake to Twin Lakes Reservoir. I was so focused on getting there, and on enjoying the view for a while once I did, that I failed to notice how rapidly it was rapidly becoming cold and dark — getting back down hadn’t been a big priority for me, but it suddenly became one. I was disappointed with myself for losing my focus and ending up in that situation because I knew better.
About twenty years ago, after reading Jon Krakauer’s book Into Thin Air, about an ill-fated expedition to Mt. Everest, I became kind of obsessed with the idea of climbing to the top of the world. I say “idea” because I had no intention whatsoever of actually doing it; instead I read and watched various first-hand accounts of other people who had tried to reach the summit of the world’s tallest mountain in order to get a sense of what they went through. I’m not altogether sure what fueled this interest in high-stakes mountaineering. Perhaps it was because I lived at sea level at the time and it was so foreign to me; it could have been the thrill of the adventure or the inherent danger of the task; maybe it was the seeming otherworldliness of this mythical place that was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. I don’t really know.
In any event, one thing I learned that kind of surprised me was this: the most experienced climbers tend to fear descending a mountain like Everest more than they do ascending it. And, if you think about it for a minute, this kind of makes sense. Having worked so hard to reach the summit, this place that few people have been, one’s joy and triumph can very easily easily give way to resignation and fatigue about having to head down. You’d like to stay and enjoy this unbelievable moment forever, but you eventually come to realize that you can’t.
At some point, it’s time to go back to the realm of the ordinary — to a place filled with people and their problems. And your own problems too. So, if you know what you’re doing, you set-off very deliberately because, if you let your guard down, if you stop paying full attention even for a second, really bad things can happen. You are left only to trust that your guide, your climbing companions, your knowledge and your self-discipline won’t let you down. In the end, you really have no choice but to descend because sitting up on top of a mountain for the rest of your life isn’t really an option.
The ninth chapter of Luke’s Gospel presents us with a mountain-climbing story of sorts. We are told at the start that Jesus takes Peter, James and John — his most trusted disciples — up a mountain to pray; its just the four of them who make this trip. This must have been a little frightening for Peter, James and John because most people thought that mountains were dangerous and kind of otherworldly places in biblical times too.
You see, this particular area of the Holy Land, known as Caesarea Philippi, had a certain reputation back then — among a wide variety of ancient religions — for being a place where mystical revelations were not rare. By the time in history when our story for today takes place, the Romans had even built a temple here as well. Caesarea Philippi was what Celtic people would refer to as a “thin place” — one where the divide between the human and the divine just seems to be far less wide than normal. This was a place to which you went because strange and amazing things could and did happen there. Jesus definitely knew this.
And so once the four travelers arrive on the mountaintop, we are told, strange amazing things do happen: Jesus is transfigured right before his disciples’ very eyes; suddenly the appearance of his face changed and his clothes became a dazzling white. Then the prophets Moses and Elijah appear as if out of nowhere to have a chat with Jesus. If those three disciples had an inkling that Jesus was a slightly out-of-the-ordinary guy before, they should be pretty certain that he is now. But as has been the case with the one named Peter up to this point, you can never be sure that he really understands what to make of Jesus.
Earlier in this same chapter of Luke’s Gospel, Peter declares Jesus to be “the Messiah of God;” it seemed like one of those big “a-ha” moments for the often-misguided Peter, the time when it all finally started to make some sense to him. But today’s reading shows that Peter still doesn’t quite get it — even up here on the mountaintop after seeing what he sees and hearing what he hears; indeed, Peter’s response after having experienced the Transfiguration is kind of… weird.
After all that he’s witnessed, the only thing he can manage to come up with to say is that it is good for them all to be there. He doesn’t appear to know what to think or say or do, really. Then he offers to build dwellings for Moses, Elijah and Jesus so they can all stay there. Peter needs to have nice little compartments to sort and to place the parts of this strange experience into so figures he’ll just make them himself, I guess.
Luke’s earliest readers, though, would have recognized that Peter’s odd offer to construct some kind of holy condominium complex up there on the mountain is full of references to the Hebrew scriptures — ones that have an awful lot of meaning in this particular context. Moses and Elijah, who appear in this story, also both experienced what theologians call theophanies — personal encounters with God — on mountaintops. And Peter’s planned dwellings represent the temporary booths, or sukkot, that are customarily built during the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles. This celebration, as described in the book of Leviticus, serves as a reminder to the people of their forty-year exile in the desert — and this is reinforced by Moses’ presence on the mountaintop. The point here seems to be that Jesus is a prophet of at least the magnitude of Moses and Elijah.
But Luke’s early audience (who were reading this text decades after Jesus’s death and resurrection) would know, as we do today, where this story is going next — and so would realize that Peter’s proposed shelters can really only ever be temporary ones. Because understanding that Jesus is the Messiah — and signing up to be his disciple — means heeding his teachings even when they are hard for us to hear. And we all know what awaits Jesus back down there in the real world.
Importantly, the Feast of Tabernacles is also a time when hope for the promised arrival of the Messiah is very much heightened — and so, for this reason, the holiday is also used by the Old Testament prophet Zechariah not only in foretelling Israel’s liberation, but also in predicting a time when God will come to live among his people. By emphasizing this holiday here, Luke is highlighting Jesus’s arrival as that Messiah, as that living God. Luke’s readers would get this reference too. But poor Peter just doesn’t.
And then it happens: God steps in to make things more clear. Appearing, but hidden from view behind a cloud, God declares: “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” Those poor disciples must have been terrified.
And their fear is perfectly understandable — I mean, its not every day that God shows up on a mountaintop to tell you what’s what. But Peter’s fear seems to be operating on a whole other level here too — because he finally understands much more than he had before. You see, he’s truly afraid of what awaits them down below, at the bottom of the mountain, and back in Jerusalem (which is where they’re headed next).
Earlier in this chapter, Jesus tells his disciples that he “must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elder, chief priests and scribes, and be killed,” and that his followers must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow him, and these couldn’t have been easy things to hear. So, Peter, at least at first, seems to be making a last ditch effort here to avoid it all, hoping that Jesus and the disciples can escape the hardship of the world below by just staying up on the mountaintop. But God knows better. Jesus knows better. We know better. And Peter knows better too. Being Jesus — and being Jesus’s disciple — means having to deal with some difficult stuff.
When we speak of the Transfiguration it’s generally with respect to Jesus, and that’s understandable, but Peter changes here too. After all he has had to see and hear to be convinced about who Jesus is, after all the protest and the pondering, Peter finally seems to realize what following Jesus might actually entail. It’s time to go, and so they all descend the mountain together to begin their fateful journey to Jerusalem.
“Listen to Him,” orders God. And Peter (finally) does so without an argument. Yes, he will doubt; yes, he will fear; yes, he will even deny. But he gets up and follows Jesus down the mountain and back to the people and all of their problems. Because if the work of the Messiah and of the disciple is to be among God’s people, with all the good and the bad they have to offer, then to put aside one’s own doubts and fears — and to go anyway — is what true discipleship, is all about.
The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King once said that, “faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” I had always envisioned this metaphor as climbing up the stairs, but after reading the story of the Transfiguration, I can’t help but think that it applies far more to our journeys down the stairs, the descents we make from the safe places in which we want to stay into the scary, dusty, dark basements of life in this messed-up world.
In the end, even Peter is able to see that following Jesus up the mountain isn’t really a great act of faith. It’s following him back down the mountain that is.