02/19/23 - From the Mountaintop to the Valley - Westminster Presbyterian Church Westminster Presbyterian Church | Serving God and others with open mind, hands and heart - 02/19/23

02/19/23 – From the Mountaintop to the Valley

FROM THE MOUNTAINTOP TO THE VALLEY

February 19, 2023 | Transfiguration Sunday
Ex. 24:12-18; Ps.99; 2 Pet. 1:16-21; Matt. 17:1-9
Rev. Denise Clark-Jones

Throughout the Christian calendar, we walk with Jesus through the Scriptures. All year long we follow the birth, ministry, death, and resurrection of Christ with our readings from the Gospels. This year the readings are primarily from Matthew, who goes to great lengths to bridge the Old Testament and his gospel. Today’s gospel reading, unmistakably links Moses, the great prophet of Israel with Jesus. The second Old Testament figure transfigured on the mountaintop with Jesus is Elijah, who had his own mountaintop experience with God and was believed to be the one who would return when the promised Messiah would enter the world to save the people of Israel. Our epistle reading speaks of Peter’s eyewitness account of Jesus’ Transfiguration to silence “false prophets” who denied Christ’s promise to return. In the Church season of Epiphany, and the accompanying lectionary passages from the Bible, the focus has been on revelation – God revealing Godself in Jesus Christ, the light of the world, who entered into the darkness of the sinful world to reveal both God’s glory and to illumine our path back to God by walking in Jesus’ footsteps. With a spectacular light show dwarfing any fireworks display or Super Bowl half-time extravaganza, God reveals to Peter, James, and John the magnitude of the mission for which Jesus is preparing them. And as Jesus led these three disciples back down the mountain to accompany him to Jerusalem and the cross, the Transfiguration leads us into Lent, which begins this week on Ash Wednesday. We move from revelation to meditation to transformation.

Each week the lectionary scripture readings have been selected to tell the story of Jesus. The Old Testament readings have been selected to help us to understand Jesus, the One who brought the Hebrew Scriptures, which he knew so well, to life. The psalms echo the Old Testament readings each week with the human response to God’s glory and sovereignty with praise, wonder, obedience, lament, and even anger. The Gospel readings chronicle Jesus’ earthly life from birth to resurrection, the long-expected Savior who announced he had been sent by God, not to change “one dot or tittle of the Law God gave to Moses, but to fulfill the Law as God intended it. We believe he is the Word Incarnate, God coming down to us to reveal Godself to a broken world with the aim to heal and reconcile with us that we might be saved from separation from our Creator, who gives us life. Our epistle readings show us how the early church struggled to fulfill Christ’s Great Commission, following Our Savior’s resurrection and ascension. These scriptures present the great paradox: God is both beyond us and with us. In theological terms, we call this the transcendence and immanence of God. The world began with our Creator and continues to be sustained by the power beyond all powers in the world, the glory which amazes and mystifies us. God is the one who has loved us into being, who maintains a presence in the world and within us to keep us close and touch our lives with grace.

In the account of the Transfiguration, found in all three of the synoptic gospels – Matthew, Mark, and Luke, God’s light of truth peaks through the clouds separating the kingdom of heaven from the earth. To use the biblical image “a veil is lifted.” One of the distinctive features of Matthew’s gospel is the parallels the writer draws between Jesus and Moses. In our Old Testament and gospel reading for today, both Moses and Jesus are on the top of a mountain. In the Bible, big revelations from God happen on mountaintops. These ancient people believed that God resided in the heavens above the flat earth, so being on a mountaintop put one closer to God. In these two stories, both Moses and Jesus have each taken their closest associates with them to be witnesses to God’s glory. These would be the men who would carry on after Moses and Jesus were gone from the earth.

In our reading from Exodus, the Israelites had been led out of Egypt and were now encamped at the base of Mt. Sinai. God called Moses to come up to the top of the mountain alone. Being in God’s presence, God’s glory rubbed off on Moses — it transfigured him. God speaks to Moses from a cloud, a symbol of God’s presence on earth. Moses received the 10 Commandments to instruct the Israelites’ life in the Promised Land. God had transfigured them from slaves to free people, but it was necessary that they use their freedom in a way that honored God and respected each other as children of God. Moses saw the glory of the Lord through a cloud on the mountain, but the people below saw blazing light, like a “devouring fire,” and it both awed and frightened them. Later in the Old Testament saga of God’s relationship with God’s chosen people, Elijah will encounter God on top of that same mountain.

In Matthew’s gospel, we read that when Peter, James, and John reach the top of a mountain: “he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly, there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him.^” Moses and Elijah represent the Law and the prophets. What an awesome experience! For Jesus’ three disciples witnessing the event, the veil between heaven and earth had been lifted right where they stood, and they realized they were in the presence of God. Our souls long for these epiphanies. We crave the unmistakable signs that God is with us. Yet we neglect to see the more subtle signs that God is with us and fail to trust the love and presence we have been promised.

Peter’s first response was to suggest they build three tents for Jesus and the two prophets. He wanted to put God, in the person of Jesus, in a box, so God could be contained and the disciples could stay safely on this mountain forever. So too do we want a Jesus that fits into our comfort zones and our plans. Who wants to leave the glory and go to the cross? Why go down to the valley below where the world is a scary place? Down below there are daily mass shootings, nations invading other nations bringing death, destruction, poverty, and hunger. Below the mountain are people in cities crying out for justice and compassion. There are diseases for which there are no cures or cures that are unavailable to people who lack access to healthcare and medications. There are struggling and empty churches. Coming down the mountain means change and hard work.

What Peter did not get — yet — is that God is too great and too powerful to ever be contained or confined in any place or time. Not in a building, not in a denomination, not even in a particular place and time when God’s presence is strongly felt. God is always present, omnipresent we say in theological terms. It is difficult to fathom that God is both with and beyond us. This is the mystery of the Trinity.

Then, Matthew tells us, the cloud that had descended on Mt. Sinai enveloped them all. God’s glory descended, and a voice from the cloud spoke the same message uttered earlier in this gospel at Jesus’ baptism: “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him, I am well pleased.” But this time, when God speaks these words of affirmation, a command to his disciples was added– “listen to him!”

Matthew tells us: ⁶When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. ⁷But notice what Jesus did. He came to the disciples. He touched them. He told them not to be afraid and invited them to continue to follow him.

Jesus would not have them stay, he knew God had bigger plans that necessitated his coming off the mountain and into the towns and villages on the way to Jerusalem. Jesus would not be deterred from his mission of teaching and healing. He would not miss his final confrontation with the worldly powers that served themselves and other gods. He knew he was leading his disciples into situations that would frighten them and test their faith. He also knew these were experiences they would remember and understand only after he had gone from them. We don’t know what Moses, Elijah, and Jesus talked about on the mountaintop. In this particular moment of time and place, the transcendence and imminence of God meet in the person of Jesus the Christ.

The real mystery of the transfiguration is not that Jesus became dazzling white or that Moses and Elijah appear or even that God speaks out of the cloud. The real mystery of the transfiguration is that the transcendent God who appears in the heavens and whom we meet on the mountaintop walks down the mountain in the incarnate person of Jesus to touch us when we need compassion and assurance and to walk with us directing our way to the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven.

This story is meant to change us — a Transfiguration story to transfigure us. Jesus could not let his disciples stay on the mountaintop because they had a commission to fulfill when they came down the mountain and back to the people. In the same way, Jesus calls us out of our sanctuaries when our worship has ended. Christ calls us to go out into the world and fulfill our commission — to share the Good News and to demonstrate the Good News with acts of justice, mercy, and love.

The Transfiguration story tells us the truth — Jesus has the power to change us and to restore us to the people God created us to be. God’s glory shines through us when we listen to God’s Word spoken through him as well as the prophets and through the saints of the early Church, who did not stop spreading the Good News despite violent opposition from the empire.

In worship, in Word and Sacrament, we have mountaintop nearness to God’s glory. Here at this table, in this time and this place, we take ordinary bread and juice and by the power of God’s Holy Spirit, we share in Christ. At his table, Christ, with one hand in God’s stretches out his other hand to us on earth.

Amen. May it be so!

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