Exodus 34.29-35, 2 Corinthians 3.12-4.2, Luke 9.28-26
Bridestowe, Lydford, Sunday Next before Lent, 10/2/2013
We all know something about the mountaintop experience.
Most of us at some time have had the sensation of standing at a peak we’ve just climbed, thighs aching, lungs pumping, exhilarated and taking in the wonderful panoramic view which has opened up before our eyes.
And we give thanks for the high places: where it is possible to take a long view of the temporarily tiny towns, fields and farms which spread beneath our feet.
The view from the high places reduces to scratches and smudges on a vast canvas all those monuments to human folly we can see - the massive mansions ennobling their donors, the failed industrial sites, the old private estate churches deifying their buried benefactors.
In the mountaintop experience the geography of the roads and railways, the rivers and coastlines, the clusters of homes, villages and cities, all connects, resonates and reveals, and even the scars on the landscape - old quarries, abandoned works, stacked storage units and tarmacked roads ripping through the country - take on shape, pattern, shade and colour.
We are usually thankful for the the high places when we reach them, for the mountaintop experiences they give us, which stop us in our steps, give cause for reflection, permit us to turn our back for a while on the trivialities and irritations and anxieties of the everyday, and give us renewed energy to face them on our return; to face the grass we tread beneath our feet, to face ourselves. [1]
We might say, then, that mountaintop experiences are about the gaining of perspective, that on the mountaintop we see things in a new way. If we are inclined to such language we might say that the mountaintop gives us a God’s-eye view of the world to which we shall return. And that view lifts our spirits, prepares our hearts, guides our thoughts for the inevitable come-down, the descent from the mountain.
This is even true when our mountaintop experience is not such a healthy one. Those involved in accidents at altitude, those returning from a mountain rescue scene, will doubtlessly be altered by the situation they’ve been involved in. And the Air Ambulance operators and rescue volunteers will have perspectives on life profoundly formed by all they have seen up there, and brought back down to earth with them.
Mountaintop experiences might be especially meaningful when they come in the midst of difficulties or conflicts in our lives.
Take Moses, for example. In anger, Moses had broken the two tablets of stone containing the commandments because when he brought them down from the mountain he found his people had turned their back on God. But out of that conflict God told him to return to the top of that mountain carrying two replacement stones; and on Mount Sinai the second time God renewed his covenant with Moses’ people, and coming down again from that mountaintop with the tablets of the covenant in his hand, the skin of Moses’ face shone because he had been talking with God. [2]
Mountaintop experiences are sometimes a mystery to us. I can’t explain what really happened on the day that two friends and I were caught in a white-out on a peak in Snowdonia, where we couldn’t see our way any more because all there was before us was snow - in the sky, in the air, on the ground - we were surrounded by white, in the blizzard our footsteps had disappeared, and we knew that whichever way we headed we were in danger of stepping off an edge into a drop of hundreds of feet. Our minds play tricks with us now as we recall the moment that a man emerged from nowhere, and greeted us as we stood stranded and stricken there in the white-out, an old man, ill-equipped for a winter mountain climb with a string bag hanging from his shoulders. Was he real? He was real enough to help us overcome our fears that day. Did that incident actually happen? All we know is that he guided us down into safety.
And maybe it was Jesus playing tricks with the disciples, or the disciples’ minds playing tricks with them, that day when he took Peter, James and John up a high mountain, by themselves. Was that really Jesus standing there with Moses and Elijah on each side, his clothes suddenly dazzling white? And when the cloud descended around the terrified group, whose was that voice they heard saying, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!’?
Was this real to the disciples? It was real enough to help them understand more about Jesus that day. Did it actually happen? All they knew was what the voice of God directed them to do: to listen to him.
Just before the disciples went up the mountain Jesus had begun to teach them that the Son of Man would undergo great suffering, that he would be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. As Luke records,
Then he said to them all, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.’ (Luke 9.23-24)
And as the disciples returned from the mountain Jesus ordered them not to tell anyone about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.
Things had taken a significant turn for the disciples. Their mountaintop experience gave them a new perspective on Jesus, on the mountaintop they saw him in a new way. The God’s-eye view of the world to which they returned contained something new - they went up the mountain having heard that there would soon be a cross and a death; they came down from the mountain now understanding that there would also be a resurrection.
This is a major turn in Luke’s gospel; and it is a major turn in the story of the world. It makes possible for the first time the opening up of a new perspective - an eternal perspective, the belief that here, now, and for eternity, for those who embrace it, there will be a resurrection.
This impacts tangibly, radically, in the lives of those who embrace it. In the twentieth century the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr took on a mission inspired by the covenantal laws of Moses in which God commands each to respect and care for their neighbour regardless of their differences, developed a style of speaking inspired by the witness and monumental preaching of the prophets of old, and most of all, lived out a hope inspired by the new perspective of the kingdom of God as taught by Jesus, and demonstrated by Jesus in all his glory - the perspective of the possibility of new life springing from old, the perspective of resurrection.
As we know King aroused the conscience of his nation, and the campaigns he led eventually brought into being the Civil Rights Bill giving equality to black people in that previously racially-divided land. But we know that his campaigning came at a price; everywhere he went he travelled under threat of death.
On April 3rd 1968, at a church in Memphis, Tennessee, King spoke of these death threats and of his faith in the resurrection, and of how that faith impacts in the here-and-now, and in what turned out to be his final speech he famously said,
Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind.
Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! [3]
This major turn in Luke’s gospel; this major turn in the story of the world; this opening up of a new perspective - the belief that here, now, and for eternity, for those who embrace it, there will be a resurrection: is this a major turn in our lives? Can we embrace the perspective which Peter, James and John embraced as they came back down to earth with Jesus that day?
Most mountaintop experiences take a while to process in our hearts and minds; if they are to achieve significance and depth in our lives then that process of reflection is essential. And so Peter, James and John kept the matter to themselves, as directed by Jesus, questioning what this rising from the dead might mean.
We might come to worship expecting a mountaintop experience, for here in this place we draw close to God, here we listen to his voice speaking new words into our experience, here in the physicality of communion our spirits are touched and changed. We expect to leave our place of worship with our perspective altered, to go back down to earth with Christ at our side directing us forward, changing the way we see and do things, changing the way we perceive and behave towards others.
So as Peter, James and John left the mountain of Transfiguration keeping the matter to themselves, but questioning what this rising from the dead might mean, we might leave this place prepared to enter Lent questioning what this rising from the dead might mean for us too.
Notes
A slightly amended version of the same sermon preached at different churches last year. It is more faithful to the Mark than the Luke readings, really.
[1] Opening section based on Junction 24: thanks for the high places in John Davies, Walking the M62, Lulu Press 2007.
[2] See Exodus 32-34
[3] http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkivebeentothemountaintop.htm
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