I wonder what they were thinking as they started up the mountain.
Peter, James, and John were tagging along. I’m sure Jesus was a few steps ahead. After all, he was the only one who knew where they were going. Those three disciples had put in a lot of miles. Every one of those miles was spent following wherever he went.
It had been that way since the first day, when they got in step behind him on level ground. Jesus was walking around the lakeshore, snatching them one at a time. >From that day forward, they spent some time down below on the level ground. They heard Jesus teach, and they were just as astounded as everybody else was. They saw Jesus heal, lifting up the lame and cleaning up the lepers. As saviors go, he was busy all the time, down on the plains and in the valleys. Now he decided to climb up the mountain, first turning to the three to say, “Come, follow me.”
We don’t know what they were thinking. Did they know he had once climbed a mountain before?
Right after his baptism, he headed for the hills. One day he was so high up, he had a good view of all the kingdoms of the world. The buildings glistened with glory. Jesus could sense the authority and power of the world. Just then, trouble struck. Jesus had to fend off a liar who told him, “This could all be yours. Just sign on the dotted line.”
“Get out of here,” Jesus said.
Jesus had been on the mountain before. We don’t know if the disciples knew anything about that. What’s more, we don’t know if the three of them knew that the mountain was his favorite place to pray. As was his custom, Jesus climbed up high to speak to God. Once he went up a mountain and spent a whole night in prayer (Luke 6:12). Nobody told him to do it. It was something he wanted to do. While he was there, he named the twelve people whom he needed in his inner circle. Three of them, of course, were Peter, James, and John.
The irony is not lost on us: those three disciples follow Jesus up the mountain. They slant up one side, then turn on the switchback. In that journey, as they go higher and higher, they approach the kind of place where Jesus had first chosen them in prayer.
But what was going through their heads? We cannot say for sure. One thing’s for certain: They had no clue what was coming. Jesus was always a few steps ahead of them.
As Luke tells the story, he says Jesus began to pray. Just then, something began to happen of Old Testament proportions. His face began to shine — just like Moses on another mountain. His clothes were cleansed whiter than snow. And a cloud rolled in, overshadowing the whole group. Suddenly the walls of time and space broke down, and the two greatest characters of the Jewish Scriptures appeared. They began to chat with Jesus as if he was their contemporary.
What did they see? Luke can’t quite say. The words aren’t adequate. “The appearance of his face changed. His clothes became dazzling white.” That’s all he can describe. The Jesus whom they had grown accustomed to seeing was changed somehow, becoming in appearance like a shaft of light.
Something like that may not happen when you pray, but it happened to Jesus. Most of us don’t have the words to make much sense of it.
Madeleine L’Engle, the great Christian writer, says that’s one of the reasons why we tend to avoid this story. In her words:
The Christian holiday which is easiest for us is Christmas, because it touches on what is familiar; and the story of the young man and woman who were turned away from the inn, and had a baby in a stable, surrounded by gentle animals, is one we have known always. I doubt if many two- or three-year-olds are told at their mother’s knee about the Transfiguration ... And so, because the story of Christmas is part of our folklore, we pay more attention to its recognizableness than to the fact that the tiny baby in the manger contained the power which created galaxies and set the stars in their courses.
She concludes by saying:
We are not taught much about the wilder aspects of Christianity. But these are what artists have wrestled with throughout the years.1
Perhaps an artist ought to set this story in stained glass. It is that kind of story: glossy, unreasonable, and slightly out of focus. Even then, there’s no promise that we can capture the moment.
Peter tried as best he could. He said, “Lord, it is good for us to be here. Just say the word, I will pitch three tents up here — one for Moses, one for Elijah, and one for you.” But no sooner were the words out of his mouth, still hanging in the air like a cartoon balloon, when a Voice within the cloud cut him off and began to speak. As far as we know, Peter never got a chance to pitch those tents.
That’s not to say, however, that the church has not filled the void throughout the centuries. The traditional site for the Transfiguration is Mount Tabor, a high mountain in the north country of Israel. Over the years, the church has gone where Peter could not go, and we have built what he could not build.
• Helena, mother of Constantine, built a sanctuary in the top of Mount Tabor in 326 A.D.
• By the end of the sixth century, three churches stood on the mountaintop, one each for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah.
• More shrines were built there over the next 400 years, and Saladin destroyed all in 1187.
• A fortress built in 1212 was destroyed by the end of the thirteenth century. The summit was abandoned for another six hundred years, until a Greek Orthodox community built a monastery.
• Some time later, the Franciscans built a Latin basilica on the highest point of the summit, where they now maintain worship services and a website.2
The problem, of course, is that we have never been able to capture the event of the transfiguration. We can build shrine after shrine, but that merely reduces the truth of the transfiguration to a distant memory. No, a story like this is too enormous, too truthful, and too unmanageable. All a preacher like me can do is to tell the story, and point in the same direction where it is pointing.
Jesus climbs a high mountain with Peter, James, and John. When they get to the top, something happened to him, and they saw it. He remains the same Lord whom they know and love; yet they realize how radically different he is from them. The same Jesus who became like us in every way is revealed as someone far beyond our comprehension. There’s nothing about this moment that you could ever call “helpful.” Instead it points us to the transcendent mystery of God, a mystery which is always beyond our grip.
I was listening to a radio show on a Christian station. It was springtime, and a happy announcer was trying very hard to apply this story to our lives. He said something like, “We need to pay attention to those moments when we see things in a new way. Like when we observe the butterfly we never saw before. Or the child’s smile. Or when we have a new thought that changes our perception.”
I turned the dial and murmured, “Oh, be quiet. Don’t tell me about me or you or the butterflies. Speak to me of God. Tell me something that makes my jaw drop. Bend my knees in worship; and should I refuse, break my knees with holy splendor.”
Whatever happened to awe? This is worship, after all, and before worship is ever helpful to us, worship should direct our attention to the God who is worthy of our worship. I don’t know about you, but I want to hear about a God so holy that my eyebrows get singed during the sermon. I want to know about a Jesus for whom it is no big deal to bust down the divisions of time and space, so that he can talk with Moses and Elijah whenever he wishes. I hunger for a kind of worship that knocks me off my feet, precisely because it points to the Presence which we cannot manage, control, or even count on with any predictability. Is that too much to ask?
Another preacher said it best when he asked:
What if the church serves people, not as a market transaction, but because it is the people of God? What if our choir works hard on their anthem, not because they hope you will like it and be inspired by it but because the choir knows that we are called to be a sign, a signal, a foretaste, a beachhead of God’s Kingdom in the world? What if I’m preaching this sermon, not because I think it’s uppermost on your list of weekly wants, but rather because I believe this is what God wants? What you get out of what is done here should not be as great a concern among us as fidelity to the peculiar nature of God’s Kingdom.
What is the greatest service the church can render the world? Perhaps the service we render is not necessarily what the world thinks it needs. But the church is not only about meeting my needs but also about rearranging my needs, giving me needs I would never have known had I not come to church.3
With no help from his disciples or us, Jesus was transfigured. We caught a glimpse of his glory, but we could not capture it. We heard an awesome voice but we could not institutionalize it. All we could do is bend our knees, point in awe, and listen for the Voice to speak. The word that best describes all this is worship.
There was a congregation somewhere in the Midwest who suffered a severe blizzard one winter. The snow was high. Even the mail did not get through for a week. That meant the pastor and congregation had no clue what was the denominational emphasis for that week. They were accustomed to being told by the central office of the denomination that it was United Nations Sunday, or the Festival of the Christian Home Sunday, or some other thematic day.
According to the tale, an embarrassed pastor stood before the congregation that Sunday and apologized for the lack of information. Then he announced, “In the absence of any other reason for gathering, we will just worship the Lord.”4
1. Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art (Wheaton, IL: Harold Shaw Publishers, 1980) 80-1.
2. The site can be reached at http://www.christusrex.org/www1/ofm/san/tab00mn/html
3. “On Not Meeting People’s Needs in Church,” William Willimon, Duke University Chapel, 6 July 1997.
4. Attributed to Halford Luccock.