Not Every Mountaintop Is A Peak Experience

Sermon-Last Epiphany March 6, 2011
The Cloud of Unknowing, "O God, our great companion, lead us ever more deeply into the mystery of your life and ours, that we may be faithful interpreters of that Life to each other, through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Matthew 17:1-9
17Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. 2And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. 3Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. 4Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” 5While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” 6When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. 7But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.” 8And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone. 9As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, “Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”
In 1981 I climbed (walked up) my first mountain. I was in charge of the youth group at Trinity Wheaton, Illinois. The previous year the kids in the group had gone to North Carolina to climb Mt. Mitchell, in the Black Mountains of the Appalachian Mountain Chain , the highest peak east of the Mississippi-but they never got there. So this was my first journey with them. We drove from Chicago to North Carolina, spent the night, and the next day we started driving to the base of Mt. Mitchell. We had an accident. No one was hurt, but it was clearly my fault. So we went back to the cabin where we were staying, talked and talked and talked, and then the next day we drove back to Mt. Mitchell. We made it to the top of the 6700 foot mountain and all the time I was walking up the mountain all I could think was, “my career is over”. We got to the top and it was beautiful, and after an hour on the summit we started back down. It was my first youth group trip, it was my first summit-we had an accident, and we got to the mountaintop. It was scary, painful, and glorious. And I thought to myself, “well, this has to be the lowest and highest moments I will ever have in my ministry.”
The season of Epiphany always ends with the telling of the story of Jesus on top of the mountain-the event called, the Transfiguration. Transfiguration Sunday is usually just about halfway between Jesus’ baptism (Jan. 9) and Jesus’ crucifixion (April 22). That’s not by accident.
Alyce M. McKenzie sums up today’s reading this way:“In the preceding chapter Peter has confessed his faith in Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God (16:16) and Jesus has offered some sober teaching about the cost of following him. Then he goes up on a Mountain with three of his disciples Peter, James and John. Before their eyes, Jesus' clothes and garment shine like the sun. He experiences the presence of Moses and Elijah, two peerless prophets who had shaped the Hebrews' view of what Messiah would be like when he came. As he has just predicted his own suffering and death (Mt. 17: 21-23), now God previews his post-resurrection glory. Peter begins babbling about setting up permanent dwellings for the heavenly visitors, to prolong the glorious experience. As at Jesus' baptism in Matthew 3:17, the disciples now hear a voice from heaven saying "This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!" Then it is time to come down the mountain and heal and teach and suffer.” And head towards Jerusalem.
In 2008 I went on sabbatical. Kyle, our son, and I flew into western Ireland, and that first night we drove to Westport, a beautiful town. Westport is at the foot of a holy mountain, Croagh Patrick, where, legend has it, Patrick prayed and fasted for 40 days. It is a very popular mountain to be climbed. It was supposed to be an easy 2 hour climb. It wasn’t-at least not for me. It took almost 4 hours, a very rocky, difficult path, and it was a dense fog all the way up. And everyone from a 9 year old little boy to a man in his 70s working off a hangover passed me by. Very embarrassing. But we got to the chapel at the top, said our prayers, and talked to the people there. And the fog lifted and the clouds cleared and we could see all the way to Clew Bay 2508 feet below. It was an overwhelming sight. I thought my heart had stopped-either because I was breathing so hard or because it was so beautiful. It was the second day of my sabbatical, and I had climbed a mountain! I fell four times coming back down and was a mass of bruises and scrapes and exhausted when I reached the bottom.
The Rev. Dr. Timothy Smith, senior pastor at the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer in Atlanta writes: [an] “important allusion to the Hebrew Bible is in the explicit appearance of Moses and Elijah in Jesus’ Transfiguration. At the broadest level of comparison, both Moses and Elijah transformatively experience God’s presence on a mountaintop. Also, in Exodus, after the Golden Calf incident when Moses breaks the Ten Commandments tablets, Moses must re-ascend the mountain. When Moses comes back down after his mountaintop experience with God, “the skin of his face was shining” (Exodus 34:30) — just as Jesus’ face shone after the Transfiguration. When you lay the full context of the Hebrew Bible and Gospel lessons side by side, it quickly becomes obvious that the basic template from the Moses story in Exodus was recapitulated in Transfiguration accounts. Both mention “six days,” have three named companions in addition to the central figure, both happen on a mountaintop, both result in shining figures, and both have God speaking from a cloud.”
So when Matthew the gospel writer recounts this story, he wants us to see Jesus as the new Moses. Matthew loves to have Jesus on mountaintops. Only in Matthew do we have the Sermon on the __________. And next Sunday we’re going to hear another story about Jesus told by Matthew where Jesus goes to a mountaintop.
But there’s something we have to remember-Jesus never stays on top of the mountain-he always comes down. No matter how good-or how bad the experience is-he comes down. And the peak, for Jesus, usually is reached after a fair amount of disappointment, and struggle, and is always followed by a great trial. Today for instance-this story follows Peter saying that Jesus has got his ministry all wrong that Jesus doesn’t understand who he is or what he’s about -and then Jesus takes him up the mountain. And what happens after today’s gospel? Jesus heads for Jerusalem-and we head for Lent.
Do we want mountaintop experiences if they are so hard to get to, and can be so difficult afterwards? A lot of people don’t. Either the climbing is too high, the experience too painful, journey too demanding. The Transfiguration, the name for today’s event, is about Jesus’ appearance being changed in front of his friends. But there is another way to look at it-the transfiguration of Peter, James, and John. They see Jesus in a new way-and they are changed. They are told not to tell this story until after Jesus’ death, because no one will understand it til then.
This is one of the things I have learned-no one experiences a mountaintop-from hearing about it. My summit moments only mean something to me-they are almost impossible to make sense to someone else. All I can do is talk about the mountains I’ve climbed, the journeys I’ve taken-and how I am different because of them. Every time Jesus is on a mountaintop in the gospel of Matthew-he comes down as a different person. There is something about climbing a mountain that always changes him.
This is from Fr. Rick Morley who writes a column called, The Garden Path: After a person is baptized in an Episcopal Church, there is a prayer said for the newly baptized, which concludes like this:"Sustain them, O Lord, in your Holy Spirit. Give them an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works. Amen." The gift of joy and wonder in all your works. I've had too many experiences of taking youth into a grand nave of a wondrous, storied, cathedral or abbey... only to find them more interested in (looking at their shoes and) incoming text messages. Those moments hurt my heart. We had a clergy day a few weeks back with Mike Gecan, the author of "Going Public." He talked about going into his child's Kindergarten class and seeing a bulletin board illustrating what the students wanted to learn in school that year. Most of the statements were like, "behave," "learn to sit still," "follow the rules," "listen to the teacher better."One child (said) wrote "I want to know why the ocean shines like fire."There's a kid who has the gift of joy and wonder in all God's works.”
We have all climbed a lot of mountains, the question really becomes, when did going up the mountain change us-when were we different when we came down? How often are we altered? When are we changed? When does the journey up to the hardclimbed summit actually make us different people? When was the last time that you went to the mountaintop, and were transformed?
This is the last Sunday in the season of Epiphany, the season where we have listened over and over to “ sudden realizations: sudden intuitive leaps of understanding, especially through an ordinary but striking occurrence”.
The story of the Transfiguration is the last “sudden realization” that we will have for a while. Jesus climbed a mountain, and his appearance changed. But epiphany season and especially this last story of Jesus’ transfiguration, has to be about us-you and I, and when we suddenly breakthrough and see ourselves, our faith, our world in a new light, in a new way.
This is the last Sunday after the Epiphany, the season that started with the wise men going on a great journey, following a star-only to find a child at the end of it. What do you think they understood after all of that, what was their “sudden realization”? You know how their story ended? The gospel says that “They went home by a different way”. That’s how this season is supposed to affect us. That’s how we are supposed to be after 8 weeks or epiphanies. That’s what we realize when we come down the mountain after being to the top-that it is time to go home a different way. Amen.
Gladys Milton said, "Whether life grinds you or polishes you depends on the material you're made of." It's an old saying that we can't always choose what is going to happen to us in life, but we can always choose how we're going to respond to what has happened.
The dazzling reign of Jesus is one we can not afford to leave in residence on the mountaintop or be placed in a booth on display. The moment of transformation is one that invites us to new and meaningful encounters with God. How can Jesus be revealed in our time? When we have been to the mountaintop, how do we come down to ministry in the valleys as Jesus did, healing and teaching beyond the moment of change?

Epiphany is the season of revelation. We have seen Jesus revealed, now what? What is there for us to do with what we have seen and heard? Jesus is not new to us; neither is the nature and presence of the Divine? Can we make room for change in our lives and for divine revelation to impact the world through us?
The Reverend Karen Georgia Thompson serves as Minister for Ecumenical Relations in the Office of General Ministries of the United Church of Christ.
13 Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’ 14And they said, ‘Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’ 15He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ 16Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Messiah,* the Son of the living God.’ 17And Jesus answered him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. 18And I tell you, you are Peter,* and on this rock* I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. 19I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.’ 20Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was* the Messiah.*

21 From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. 22And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, ‘God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.’ 23But he turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling-block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’

24 Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. 26For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?
27 ‘For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. 28Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.’