It Is Good To Be Here, But We Cannot Remain

Today is Transfiguration Sunday.  In the Church liturgical calendar this is the last Sunday of the season of Epiphany, the last Sunday before the season of Lent which begins on Wednesday – Ash Wednesday.  It marks a transition both in our worship and in the life of Jesus as described by the gospel writers.  The transfiguration of Jesus upon the mountain top marked a turning point, of sorts, in his ministry path.  From that mountain he turned from teaching and healing in Galilee towards the confrontation and rejection he knew he must face in Jerusalem.

In many churches today is the last Sunday until Resurrection Sunday when any “Alleluias” will be sung. Alleluias are ‘put away’ during this season that the church focuses on penitence; they won’t be sung until the Easter morning’s glorious announcement, “He is risen from the dead!”   Transfiguration Sunday is a day of transition, a day of both dazzling displays of blindingly brilliant glory and also a day fraught with the heavy foreshadows of death. 

The story, as we have it in Luke, begins “now about 8 days after this…” - And at this we should begin to take notice, we who have read through the story more than once.  We will know that the eighth day is the resurrection day.  If Jesus was crucified and buried on the day before the Sabbath, and he was in the tomb all during that seventh day’s rest, it was on the 8^th day that he was raised up.  But, we who have read through the story more than once know this.  The disciples who followed Jesus then didn’t yet understand these things.

So, about 8 days after Peter’s confession that Jesus is the “Christ of God,” Jesus took Peter, James, and John up the mountainside to pray. Neither Mark nor Matthew relates that point in their telling of this story, (and John doesn’t tell this story in his gospel) but Luke does.  Jesus took his friends up the mountain in order to pray.  Prayer is significant in Luke.  In fact, Jesus prays more frequently in Luke’s gospel than the others. 

At his baptism, Jesus prays and the Holy Spirit descends upon him (Luke 3:21-22).  Before Jesus chooses his disciples he spends the entire night in payer.  (Luke 6: 12 – 16) When Peter makes his confession that Jesus is the “Christ of God,” it is after a time of private prayer. (Luke 9: 18 – 20) 

And now, Jesus is taking three of his disciples, three of his closest friends up the side of the mountain to pray.  It isn’t certain which mountain Jesus and his friends were climbing, but according to Christian tradition it was Mount Tabor in lower Galilee - an isolated hill rising abruptly from the surrounding landscape. 

But whether or not it was Mount Tabor or not is not strictly important.   Just as today, Transfiguration Sunday, marks a transition from one Church season to another, mountains are places of transition from the earthly below to the heavenly above.  They are places where one can meet with God, places where one can leave the world of the natural and the mundane and to ascend into very heavens. Jesus is not merely taking his friends on a nature hike so that they can appreciate the splendor and beauty of the landscape below them; he is taking them to a place where they can experience the divine presence away from the cares and troubles of the world below.

And there, atop this holy hill, Jesus prayed.  And as he was praying something happened. His appearance was changed – his face, his clothes were altered.  He was (to borrow a word from Matthew and Mark’s gospel) transfigured.  His face shined.  His robes were dazzling white.  He assumed the appearance of the glory of heaven.  And there were two men with him, speaking to him, Moses and Elijah.

(as an irreverent and irrelevant aside – I’ve always wondered how the disciples recognized them?  Did they recognize Moses and Elijah from their photographs?)

And we who have read through the stories of the bible a time or two are going recognize something here as well, well several somethings, really.  Luke has almost overloaded this story with connections backwards and forwards.  Not only is this mountain a place in which one can move from earth to heaven, but in Luke’s telling of the story it becomes a place to move backwards and forwards through the history of the people of God.

Here in this mountain top experience Jesus meets with two heroes of the faith – men, for the Jewish disciples, Peter, James and John, would have represented the nearly the whole history of their faith – Moses and Elijah,  the messengers of old, representatives of the Law and the Prophets.  And these two men, as well, had experienced their own mountain top encounters with God: Moses on Mount Sinai as he received the tablets of the ten commandments, and Elijah on Mount Horeb where he stood with his cloak pulled over his face as the Lord passed by and spoke to him in that “still small voice.” 

And they were speaking to Jesus about his “departure” that he was to accomplish in Jerusalem- in Greek that is, his “exodus.” As I said, Luke has made this mountain top a place where time and space have become thin.  This place, this event connects both backwards to the exodus in which Moses led the people of Israel out of Egypt and forward to Jesus’ death in Jerusalem. 

And the disciples?  What of them?  What were they doing during all of this?  They were sleeping.  As Jesus spent the night praying atop the mountain, his disciples, his friends were sleeping – just as they will when Jesus prays atop the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem the night of his arrest.  Time and space are thin atop the mountain the story connects forward and backward.

But Peter and the others awaken enough to notice that something is going on.  They see Jesus’ transfigured appearance, they see him speaking with Moses and Elijah, and they are overwhelmed by the glory of the moment.  And Peter, as he so often did, blurted out without thinking, “Master! It is good that we are here; let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses, and one for Elijah…”  Let’s build a shrine here on this very place.  Let’s preserve this very moment in time.  But Peter did not really know what he was saying.

As he said this, a cloud came and overshadowed them, and the six of them entered into the cloud – Jesus, Moses, Elijah, and Peter, James and John.   Time and space are almost irrelevant here.  Booths and tents cannot mark or preserve this moment.  In this cloud we are in the presence of God. The cloud that led the people of Israel through the wilderness, the cloud that covered the mountain as Moses met with God, the cloud that settled upon Solomon’ Temple.  We are in the presence of God.  Overshadowed by his presence.  And it is not insignificant that Luke has used the word “overshadowed” here.  It is the same word he used when the Spirit of God overshadowed Mary (and these are the only two times the word is used in the NT.) 

And they were afraid as they entered the cloud.  How could they not be afraid?  They are moving through time and space into the timelessness of God’s presence. Moving out of mere chronos clock time and into kairos .

The Greek language has two words for time, chronos and kairos.  Chronos refers to chronological or sequential time, the tick, tick, tick, of the clock hands one moment following after another.  Kairos signifies a time between, moments of indeterminate time in which something special happens. Chronos is quantitative and measurable.   Kairos is qualitative and cannot be measured or marked or preserved.  It can only be experienced.

“Jesus took John and James and Peter up the mountain in ordinary, daily chronos; during the glory of the Transfiguration they were dwelling in kairos.”  [i]

And there in the timeless they experienced that transcendental oneness with God.  They heard the voice of God speaking to them , “This is my son, my chosen.  Listen to him.”  The voice encouraged them to hear Jesus the same way that they would hear Moses and Elijah, to receive him the same way they would receive the Law and the Prophets.  To follow him as they would those messengers of old.

And they were overwhelmed by this experience.  They were afraid.  How could they not been afraid?  When it was all over they told no one about it? How could they?  Kairos time isn’t quantifiable, isn’t measurable.  It must be experienced.  And those who have not shared the experience will not be able to understand.  How could they have told anyone about the things they heard and the things they saw?  They barely understood them themselves.  It wasn’t until after Jesus’ resurrection that they were able to put words to the experience.

“We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.  For he received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory saying, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.’  We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.”  (2 Peter 1: 16 – 18)

But those moments of kairos time are fleeting.  We cannot live in them.  The regularity of Chronos reasserts itself and we are brought back into the ‘real world.’   We cannot stay on the mountain.  The cloud dispersed and Peter and James and John were alone with Jesus again.  And he led them back down the mountain into the cares and concerns of the world. 

Almost immediately he was mobbed by the crowd and by the man, desperate for his son, and by the feckless disciples.  He and his disciples had just experience that intimate oneness with God, a holy and sacred experience with the Divine, and now he’s confronted by the petty, and suffering, and the obtuse, and the ordinary.  Is it any wonder that Jesus sounds so exasperated when he says to them, “O you unbelieving and perverse generation! How long shall I stay with you and put up with you?” (Luke 9:41)

But we cannot stay in those mountain-top experiences.  The world below calls us, needs us.

I think is significant, also, that the two men who spoke with Jesus in that experience were great leaders of unfinished works.  Moses led the people out of Egypt, led them through the wilderness, led them right up to the Promised Land, but died before he could enter it. His work was carried on by Joshua.  And Elijah, the great hero of the Jewish faith did many miracles in Israel, but left his work to his disciple, Elisha, who did twice as many as his teacher. 

So too with Jesus.  He began a great work – but left it for his followers to continue.  We must come down off the mountain to continue that great work – to share the good news of the kingdom of God and to make disciples of all people.

We must come down from the mountain top experiences and face the concerns of this world; we must meet with the father whose son is desperately ill.  We must face the rejection and persecution that must come.  We must move forward through the ordinary and painful experiences – but we can do this because we have been changed.

We have been changed.  We have been transformed, reborn.  We have been altered. In that encounter with God we have been transfigured.  And we carry within us the dazzling display of his glory.  It is this glory that we are to take with us into the world.

It is good for us to be here on the mountain, but we cannot remain. 

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[i] L’Engle Madeline Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art, North Point Press, New York, NY, 1980. Pg. 93