A young woman asked her older co-worker: Why do you go to church every Sunday? Does something happen there that can’t happen somewhere else? And does it happen every Sunday?”

The older woman replied, “What happens is I go to meet the God whom I’ve come to know in Jesus. God meets me in other settings than at church. However, I must confess that I’m sure I miss most of God’s appointments with me. I find that I live most of my days in a daze – as though I’m sleepwalking or on autopilot. I go to church to be reminded that that’s true.”

The younger woman then asked, “So you go to church every week and God meets you there?” The older woman answered, “I go to church every Sunday and for reasons I can’t explain, I meet God about 1 in every 8 worship services.”

The younger woman asked, “Then why do you go every Sunday?” “I go every Sunday,” said the older woman, “because I never know when that one Sunday is going to be.”

I. Transfiguration Sunday

Today the church tells the story of the disciples’ experience with Jesus on the mountain. It’s called Transfiguration Sunday, the Sunday that concludes the season of Epiphany, the season that reveals to the world who Jesus is. I believe that what happened on the mountain can inform our current conversation about the shape our worship life will take in the near future.

We have been walking with those who walked with Jesus. With them we’ve been trying to fit Jesus into the ways we understand and make sense of our experience.

We join Peter, James, and John up on the mountain with Jesus. Even though they knew the story of Moses and how he’d spent time with God on the mountain, I suspect they weren’t expecting something extraordinary was about to happen. It does seem to be true that, while we know the stories of how others have encountered God, we don’t expect anything similar will happen to us.

II. The Context in Mark’s Telling of the Story

Now it’s important to place what is about to happen in the context of Mark’s version of the good news he experienced in Jesus.

In Mark’s telling of the good news story, Jesus heals a blind man before the mountaintop experience and heals a blind man after it. Mark is pointing out that, when it comes to “seeing” who Jesus is, there’s a lot of blindness getting in the way.

And immediately before the mountaintop transfiguration, Jesus has asked his disciples, “Who do you say I am?” Peter declares, “You are the Messiah, the one God has anointed to be our new king and restore our people to the prominence and prosperity enjoyed under King David.

Peter’s answer was right, but it was also wrong. Peter thinks he sees – but he is blind.

Jesus goes on to explain what being God’s Messiah is going to mean. He is going to suffer. He is going to be rejected by the religious establishment. He is going to die. The way Peter sees things, Jesus has it all wrong.

Peter sets Jesus straight. “No, Jesus. God’s Messiah will be immune to suffering and misery and will save us from suffering and misery.” To which Jesus says to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan!” For Jesus and those who follow Jesus, suffering is voluntarily entered, not avoided.”

Peter rebukes Jesus. Jesus rebukes Peter. Jesus says to Peter, “Come with us up on the mountain.” There Jesus’ clothes become whiter than white. And two of their faith’s heroes, Moses and Elijah, appear and talk with Jesus.

Peter, never at a loss for words, says, “Let us build 3 booths, 3 houses – one for Moses, one for Elijah, and one for Jesus.” The narrator tells us that Peter didn’t know what to say, because he was terrified. Terror is what we feel when what we see shatters everything we’ve thought we knew for sure.

III. Informing us about worship

Now how can the experience on the Mt. of Transfiguration enrich our present conversation about our church’s worship life.

A. Aware of our blindness.

Worship is about becoming aware of our blindness. Blindness is caused by our assuming our perspective, our standpoint, is the only one there is. In worship we hear the stories of those who came to see life, their lives, differently. Persons who enjoyed the illusion of certainty had it exploded by a God who refuses to be confined by the smallness of our human prejudices. The biblical witness is that God will not stay forever in the little boxes we put God in.

B. Hearing the Voice

In addition to having our blindness healed so we can see, worship is about hearing a Voice that tells us to listen to Jesus. We are to listen to him even though what he says flies in the face of everything all the other voices in our lives have said and want us to believe.

Other voices tell us that we have a right to have what we want the way we want it when we want it, because others exist, even God exists, to cater to our desires. Other voices tell us that suffering is to be avoided at all costs and self-denial is anathema. Other voices tell us to take the cross down and hide it, because it reminds people of unpleasant thoughts.

C. Being terrified.

Christian worship is about being terrified. It is about seeing and hearing what shakes the foundations of our world to the point that it feels like our world is coming apart. It feels like we are dying. In worship we see that our world isn’t the world God dreams of for us. In worship we hear that death is not to be feared. In worship we hear the good news of God’s promise that God’s kingdom, God’s reign, is at hand and that new life is on the other side of all our deaths.

D. A community of glory.

Christian worship brings us into community with those in whom the glory of God, the radiance of God, shines. We worship together so we can gain a glimpse of the Christ in persons like ourselves. This glory is present in everyone with whom we eat at Jesus’ table. It is in everyone because Jesus feeds us his radiant life which shines through his broken body and shed blood. Jesus gives us himself, so we can give each other ourselves. Jesus calls it love. He shows us how to do it as he washes the disciples’ feet.

E. Not in our control.

The final truth from the Mountaintop about Christian worship is that our spiritual experiences refuse both our preserving them and our duplicating them. Peter wanted to build booths to house Moses, Elijah, and Jesus. This way he could hold on to the experience and revisit it.

The temptation of mountaintop experiences is to believe that, once we have them, we can replicate them. So we go on a retreat, glimpse the risen Christ and come back to our church to make its worship like that on the mountaintop. If only we would sing the same songs, pray the same way, structure worship the same way, then the same thing would happen. We are usually disappointed. God doesn’t do command performances.

The disciples looked up and Jesus’ clothes were the same color as when they started up the mountain. Moses and Elijah were gone. So what happened? Was it real worship or only their imagination playing tricks with them?

IV. The test of true worship

The story of the Transfiguration tells us that true worship occurs when we leave and do what that Holy Voice tells us to do: “Listen to him.” And then, having listened, we do what he tells us to do.

Because the test of true worship isn’t what happens one hour a week. It’s how those of us who worship live all the time.