Following Jesus can be really hard. But in the Transfiguration, we have a story about following the path, even when it forces us to face our fears.

Transfiguration | Luke 9:28-36

Jesus chose three disciples to join him up a mountain, for prayer. It must be an honor to be chosen. How special they must feel to be given this time with Jesus. Alone, personal. With all the walking and the teaching and the crowds following everywhere, it’s a wonder Jesus would even think of them. To consider sharing this time with them.

These few, these three, they follow him up a mountain, which we all remember is where God appears to humanity. Remember, God appears to Moses, most famously. With those tangible tools: a bush, some tablets, a stick. The mountain is where God appears.

And when God appeared one of those times Moses climbed a mountain, when they were leaving Egypt behind; Moses was worried they wouldn’t know where to find God. He thought they’d be lost in the wilderness without God. And still God came to them at night as fire and in the day as a cloud. And in these forms, God went with them out of Egypt and into the dangerous wilderness.

Fire and cloud. It wasn’t that long ago that we had the tongues of fire and the presence of God, the Holy Spirit in our midst, in the Pentecost. We remember God in the fire. But do we remember God in the cloud? In the dark, storm clouds above; in the thunder and lightning? Do we remember God is even with us?

Seeking

So they go up this mountain with Jesus. They may have thought of things like these, but probably not. I know they didn’t think of mountaintop gurus and holy men like we do. Perched at the peak, cross-legged and wise. Quiet, listening for God in the silence of exclusion. Alone.

The rambunctious seeker, coming to him for wisdom, and of course, seeking answers to life’s burning questions.

What is the meaning of life?

What am I supposed to do with it?

All the prattling on we do because we’re scared to think. Too scared to know the truth. That the answer is already there. Because we’ve already read and ignored it. “Love? That can’t be it.” So we’ve come to get certainty from God.

And the man opens his eyes, once lost in solitude, and a big smile breaks the stone of his face and he simply says

You know it already. Search your heart. Find it like I have, in your being with me now.

We go to these mountaintops because they are places of encounter with the divine. And we know to look for it there.

But do we find it there?

Transfigured – the Encounter

These three disciples were looking for a special teaching and they received an encounter. An opportunity to learn something completely different.

An encounter with God for themselves. And if they have eyes to see and ears to hear, they’ll learn from it.

Light dazzles and obscures Jesus’s face: it says that he is transfigured. What does that mean? We know that prefix: trans: from the word transform. To change from one thing to another. To trans-figure is to change appearance.

How I like to see this difference is like painting a chair. It looks different, but the chair is the same. But that doesn’t get at what else is happening. Change is happening. Change that is visual but fundamentally imperceptible.

It is somehow something radically changed and yet feels entirely the same.

Like the Eucharist. If you eat that bread before it’s blessed and eat one after, they taste the same be we know they’re not. The substance, molecules, the parts which make that bit of bread are still there, and yet it is different. It doesn’t go back to what it was before. It has the same parts, but it’s a new thing.

And in the middle of this, Moses and Elijah come. And somehow the three disciples know who they are. They don’t question how they got there, they don’t have time. Maybe they have name tags: Hello. My name is: Elijah. They can tell the other one’s Moses – the light must shoot out of his head a certain way.

This is the mountaintop and Peter is freaked because it can’t get any better. He’s fumbling for his phone to get a picture–he has to Instagram the moment. #blessed

And that’s when God shows up.

and they were terrified

It’s perfect, isn’t it? Jesus doesn’t have to say “Oh, Peter!” God doesn’t give him a chance, interrupting the foolish suggestion:

While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them;

The cloud overshadowed them. Above them, it cast its shadow upon them

and they were terrified as they entered the cloud.

Notice the cloud did not come upon them or surround them or overtake them, they entered the cloud. Despite the fear, the terror overtaking them, they entered the cloud.

There is no way these disciples thought the mountaintop would be like this. The joy and excitement over the presence of Moses and Elijah is cut and drawn from them in an instance as the terrifying storm, the cloud came into their midst.

And they faced it. They entered it. They weren’t petrified, stupefied, like from medusa’s gaze of evil. This is facing the power of God! They’ve done that before, back in the boat with the storm raging and there’s Jesus. He calms the storm; they were terrified then, too. They gawked in horror realizing Jesus isn’t just some faith healer.

And here, on the mountain, at the doorstep of heaven, they see the face of God and they enter into it, terrified of what they’ll find. But they step forward, into the darkness. And there, God speaks:

“This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”

And then {poof!}: gone.

Leaving the mountain

They are once again alone with Jesus on the mountain. He doesn’t speak, the teaching is over. No guru to seek in isolation, but there is God. Now disappeared. Jesus is different to them now. Even more than before. Different, powerful, tied to the divine somehow. Like Moses and Elijah, but…different. They couldn’t explain it to the others if they tried.

I don’t know if they even look at each other. If it’s a knowing silence as they depart with exchanged glances. Or if they don’t want to look at each other. My guess is that Jesus just started walking and their job as disciples is to follow him.

The silent descent from the mountain is pregnant. Hope and possibility come down with them.

They don’t yet grasp how they couldn’t stay there. Up the mountain. Living in God’s house, the temple at the top. Alone. Away from their community and away from the world.

And they probably don’t realize mountaintops aren’t for staying or for living on. Only visiting God on that sacred ground. They have light blinding their eyes to see and a booming voice ringing in their ears to hear. And they are listening to Jesus in this silence. His breathing, stepping on rocks, the way his feet impact the earth.

Do you think they know that God doesn’t stay there? That God is with them on this descent, between them? That God was with the others, left alone at the bottom to wait? Do they know that yet?

No tents, houses, or temples for our mountaintops; there can be nothing so permanent, precious, or safe. They must come down and join their friends and the crowds. There’s work ahead of them. Their work: of following, listening, restoring the world. Where God is already.