Mountain-top Moments - Redeemer Episcopal Church

The Transfiguration

Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah”—not knowing what he said. While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.

 

You can hear this sermon at this link, or read it below. 

God of transformation, God of transfiguration— be with us as we encounter you in the eucharist, in the face of our neighbors, in all of creation. Transform us into what we consume, the body of Christ. Amen. 

I have preached about the transfiguration of Jesus a couple of times now in my short tenure as a priest. It is often the last Sunday a rector might have for vacation before the chaos of Lent, so I have filled in quite often. And in each sermon, I have talked about the importance of these mountain-top moments that the disciples are experiencing in this story. 

Mountain-top moments are these moments where we encounter God— where God seems so close we can almost reach out and touch the divine. Or moments when God has so clearly given us instructions in a booming voice, helping us understand something profound, with the intimate knowledge that our lives will never be the same. 

These are the experiences of Moses, Peter, John, and James. These are the times these men can point back to in their lives and say, “there— that is when everything changed.” And of course, they would be talking about a literal mountain-top, when God quite literally spoke to them. 

For Moses, it was a time of conflict and need for God’s people. He found himself upon a mountain, encountering God, and bringing back for his people the laws that would define an entire culture of people for thousands of years to come. 

For Peter, James, and John— this mountaintop experience would mean that they could no longer deny what Jesus had been hinting at for a long time now— he was the son of God. He was the promised messiah. Everything changes when God’s people encounter the divine on the mountaintop. 

But the more I thought about these mountain-top moments this week, the more I thought about how… privileged they are. How.. rare. I had a friend who told me that God had spoken to her in a dream. And I thought about how lucky she must be that God chose her to speak to directly. Especially when I had been praying for answers from God for… well, my entire life. 

When people ask about God’s call in my life, when my students ask me when I have experienced God or how I know that God is real… I list off what sound more like a series of strange coincidences throughout my life instead of one big moment when I heard God’s booming voice telling me to become a priest. 

What about you? What does your experience of God look like? A booming voice or a special dream? Have you seen God face to face? Or can you trace God’s work in your life more like a ribbon being pulled along, quiet but sure? Or maybe you haven’t felt that tug of the divine in your life yet… 

I think many people’s experience of God are like that. Perhaps we shouldn’t be measuring ourselves in terms of whether we have or haven’t had a face to face encounter with God. After all, until this moment up on the mountain that we read about this morning, Peter, James and John had also never seen God quite so clearly or heard God’s voice quake from on high. 

But they HAD seen glimpses. 

They had been following Jesus around for quite some time, witnessing his healing, hearing his teaching, and beginning to understand who he was. They had seen him do miracles from the very beginning of him ministry, and they saw what happened when his teaching didn’t align with the powerful folks around them. All this time, they had been glimpses of the glory of God in Jesus. 

And then, up on this mountain, they saw the full glory of Jesus being transfigured and heard God claim Jesus as beloved son. But none of this was because James, John, and Peter were somehow better than any of the other disciples. It wasn’t because they had done something special or because they were more worthy. In fact, right after Peter sees Jesus transfigured, he fumbles around— insisting ridiculously that they should make shelters for the three men that he sees on the mountain. No, these three disciples are not more special or worthy than anyone else. They were fishermen and sailors and tax collectors, and other regular people that Jesus called to be his disciples. 

Seeing God face to face is not determined by who we are. Seeing God face to face is about who God is. God in all of God’s glory was so full of a never-ending love that God couldn’t help but come to earth and walk among us. So that we might see a glimpse of God. So that we might experience the healing and teaching and richness that is God in Christ Jesus. A glimpse of the glory that they witnessed on the mountain top. 

In the same way, Jesus’ never-ending love led him to the cross— not because of who we are nor because of our own worthiness, but because of who God is. Next week will begin that journey in the church year— Lent, when we come to understand exactly who our God is in Jesus— exactly how far God will go to be with us and love us. 

In a couple of minutes, we will come to this table to feast upon this holy meal, a meal in which Christ Jesus is present and enduring. A table that Jesus has set before all of us. And we will consume the body and blood of our Lord, understanding that in this act we are more than just God’s children, but bearers of God’s image. We are transformed into the body of Christ in the act of receiving it. All of us. And we recognize the divine in everyone we meet. Not because of who we are and our own worthiness, but because of who God is— the one who comes in glory to be here among us in Jesus, and here within us in this meal. 

And just as the disciples were able to see glimpses of God in Jesus as they traveled with him and followed him, we too are able to see glimpses of God when we turn to our neighbors and see the image of God in each other. 

This is what the glory of God in the transfiguration means for us today. That our worthiness or even our own understanding does not determine when God will reveal Godself. Because God already has— in mountain-top moments like the transfiguration, on Golgotha, and in the valleys and plains like in the healing stories, in the teaching and in the conversations with friend and neighbor. 

If we only experience God in the person of Jesus Christ, if we only see God face to face when we turn to our neighbors, if we only hear whispers and nudges, it is enough to transform us. It is enough to transfigure us if we allow it to. Those are our mountain-top moments. That is how encounter the divine. If we pay attention. If we recognize it. If we understand that it’s not about who we are, but about who God is, and who Jesus is— and we hear God’s command and we listen to him. Amen. 

Gospel Imagination - Redeemer Episcopal Church

He came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. 19 And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them.

Then he looked up at his disciples and said:

“Blessed are you who are poor,
    for yours is the kingdom of God.

“Blessed are you who are hungry now,
    for you will be filled.
“Blessed are you who weep now,
    for you will laugh.

“Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.

“But woe to you who are rich,
    for you have received your consolation.

“Woe to you who are full now,
    for you will be hungry.
“Woe to you who are laughing now,
    for you will mourn and weep.

“Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.

Read the sermon below or listen to it here. 

Let us pray. God of impossible things, be with us in this place as we imagine something new, as we imagine something better. As we imagine your kingdom. Amen.

An exercise or spiritual practice I like to do with my college students and on retreats is to encourage Gospel imagination. 

It is a pretty broad spiritual practice and can be used in many different ways, but the main idea is that we suspend what we know about the world today and we imagine a different way. We imagine what the world might look like according to the Gospel, when the Kingdom of God is fully present. 

It’s not always an easy spiritual practice. Oftentimes we are so bogged down in what is happening in the world, the suffering, the pain, the anger— that it is difficult to imagine a different way. But if we are able to sit in our imagination long enough, we might find reason to hope. 

That is a spiritual practice I am going to encourage in us this morning. Because this story is a difficult one to understand without gospel imagination.  

By the time Jesus comes down the mountain to the great group of people and begins teaching them, he has already had quite the adventure in Luke’s gospel. He has preached in his home, was run out of town; he had begun healing people and word got around that he might even be able to fix your business. Just last week we heard that he commanded some fishermen to put out their nets on the other side of their boat and they caught so many fish that their nets had started breaking. 

Apparently word was getting around about Jesus, because after he prayed on the mountaintop for some time, he comes down to the plain to be surrounded by people from all over the place— from Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. 

People had come to hear what he had to say— maybe he could teach them something important— and so that he might heal them of their diseases or cast out the unclean spirits that have been troubling them. And he did. It says that all in the crowd were trying to touch him, and instead of hiring a couple of bodyguards to keep people from pressing in on him, he allowed the power to come out from him and he healed all of them. 

That feels important. Jesus didn’t select a couple of people to be examples of healing like it seems he does in other stories. No, this time he heals everyone. Everyone in the crowd had something that needed healing and Jesus healed all of them. 

And then he began to teach. 

Most of us have heard the beatitudes enough that they don’t feel as shocking anymore. And perhaps where we heard and understood ourselves within these beatitudes is different today than it would have been last week or last year or ten years ago. Perhaps we are feeling more like the rich these days. Or maybe because of a recent diagnosis, we join the crowd pressing in on Jesus, asking for healing, weeping and waiting for laughter. 

Or perhaps we have always kind of felt situated in the “woe” category. After all, most of us were able to have breakfast this morning, we have probably laughed sometime this week, and by most measurements compares to the rest of the world— we would be called rich. So maybe hearing Jesus’ teaching gives us a tinge of guilt, like some of his other teachings always seem to. 

Or maybe we ignore this passage— we put it in the same file with all of the other stuff Jesus says about rich and poor and hungry and full people. You know, all that good Christian advice that no one we know personally has ever followed. 

A dear pastor Barbara Brown Taylor points out, though, that none of this is advice. When Jesus is giving commands, it is pretty hard to mistake it for anything else. “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you”— that is advice. Those are commands. 

That is not what Jesus is saying here. There is no advice, there are no commands in Jesus’ teaching here. 

What Jesus is doing as he stands on the flat ground among all of these people he has just healed, is using his gospel imagination. He stands among healed and whole people and proclaims that the Kingdom of God will be different than what they have experienced in this world. 

The beatitudes don’t tell us what to do. They tell us who we are, and more importantly, they tell us who Jesus is. 

Jesus is the one who will bring about these reversals of expectation as the Kingdom of God breaks into all of creation. Can we imagine that? 

Jesus is the one who will finally bring all people to a level plain— where none will be too rich at the expense of those who are poor. Where none will be clothed at the expense of those who are naked. Where none will be in power at the expense of those imprisoned. Can we imagine that? 

Can we imagine a world in which we shut down our food pantry because there are no more hungry people? Where we stop our grief-share programs because there is no more sorrow? A world where Rethreaded has to change their mission because human trafficking is a thing of the past? Can we imagine a world where there is no more wage gap? No more food deserts? No more homelessness? 

Perhaps all of this feels impossible to imagine. Maybe our gospel imagination can’t stretch that far just yet.

But Paul reminds us that we proclaim an impossible thing every single day. We worship a God who came to earth as a baby from a virgin mother, walked among us for 30 years and healed, fed, and clothed people from all over the land. We worship a God who was crucified by the authorities who couldn’t comprehend the amount of love he was bringing into the world. 

And after three days, he was raised from the dead. And if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead— an impossible thing— can we imagine more impossible things? If we truly believe that Christ has been raised from the dead and lives among us as the Holy Spirit in and around each one of us— can we believe more impossible things? Can we imagine a different way? Can our imagination then influence our actions as we participate in and hope for the Kingdom of God? 

Amen.