Exodus 24:12–18; Psalm 2; II Peter 1:16–21; Matthew 17:1–9
A homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity
Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois on Sunday, March 2, 2014.
“MOUNTAIN TOP EXPERIENCES: STRENGTH FOR THE JOURNEY”
(Homily text: Matthew 17:1–9 & II Peter 1:16–21)
“Tell no
one the vision until the Son of man is raised from the dead,” Jesus tells His
three disciples, Peter, James and John, in this morning’s gospel text, as they
prepare to leave the mountain where He had been transfigured before them.
These three
disciples had had a genuine mountaintop experience with the Lord. His appearance had been changed, as He was
bathed in glorious light, appearing in the light of God. And so that there could be no mistake about
God’s working and presence in this event, a voice comes from the cloud saying,
“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.”
Jesus’
disciples’ walk with the Lord had been a series of ups and downs, a series of
forward movements and backward ones. At
times, the disciples seem to “get it”.
At other times, they seem dull and slow to learn.
Just this
sort of inconsistency had been the Lord’s experience with His disciples in the
days preceding the transfiguration.
Jesus asked
His disciples, just six days beforehand, “Who do men say the Son of man
is?” In response, they offer some of the
most-often repeated things they had heard, saying, “Some say John the Baptist,
others say Elijah, and others say Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” (Matthew 16: 13 – 14).
Then Jesus
narrowed the focus of His question, asking them, “But who do you say that I
am?” (Notice the movement in the two
questions from men to you, and the movement from Son of
man to I.) It is Peter, naturally, who blurts out the
response, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Jesus must
have assumed that, having heard this confession about His identity, His
disciples would be ready for the next lesson in their education, for He began
to tell them that He would go to Jerusalem, suffer many things, be killed, and
then be raised from the dead on the third day.
Of course, it is Peter, again, who steps in to say, “God forbid,
Lord! This shall never happen to you.”
So the days
immediately preceding the Transfiguration had been tumultuous ones, days that
had been characterized by ups and downs.
Now,
however, as Jesus takes Peter, James and John with Him up the mountain, He
provides them with a life-changing experience as they are shown the Lord’s
glory, the glory that He had with His Father before coming to earth.
It is an
experience that Peter – or the others – never forgot. We hear, in our epistle reading this morning,
Peter’s recollection – many years later - of this event in his second
letter. He says, “We heard this voice (the
one which said, “This is my beloved Son”) borne from heaven, for we were with
him on the holy mountain.”
Eventually,
the experience of these three became known to all the other disciples, as well.
If we look
back at the Transfiguration, it might be easy to think that that glorious experience
would have served to strengthen the disciples as they walked toward Jerusalem,
where they would experience the Lord’s suffering and death.
However, if
we look at the fact that the disciples deserted the Lord as He was arrested,
tried and crucified, it doesn’t look as though Peter, James and John remembered
the Transfiguration’s importance and significance at all. It was Peter, James and John, the same three
who had been with Him on the mountain, who were also with Him in the Garden of
Gethsemane. There, Matthew tells us,
these three all fell asleep as Judas and the band of soldiers approached to
take Jesus away.
Judging
from what Scripture has to say, it seems as though the importance and the
significance of the Transfiguration didn’t begin to make sense until the Lord’s
Resurrection on Easter Sunday morning.
For in Matthew 28:1–3, when Mary Magdalene came to Jesus’ tomb, she
saw an angel whose appearance was “like lightning”, and whose clothing was
“white as snow”. That same sort of light
of God, similar to Jesus’ appearance on the holy mountain, shone again in the
appearance of the angel of the Lord.
As the
disciples looked back at the Resurrection, and then to the Transfiguration,
perhaps they realized that the Lord was giving them the experience of God that
they needed to make the journey with Him to Jerusalem, as they experienced the
depths of loss as He is crucified.
Surely, the
three who were with Him on that holy mountain began to connect the dots between
the Transfiguration and the Resurrection to understand what God was doing in
the person and work of Jesus Christ.
In the two
events, God provided mountaintop experiences which strengthened and enlightened
His disciples, who were soon to be sent out into the world, carrying the Good
News of what God had done in raising Jesus from the dead. God’s glory and power are revealed in the
splendor of the light of God, and in God’s power over death and the forces of
evil.
Whenever we
read or hear Holy Scripture, we should ask ourselves the question, “What does
this mean to me?” Scripture has a
timeless quality to it, a quality which enables it to speak to us today, just
as it has spoken to God’s people in every time, in every age, and in every
place.
So what
does the Transfiguration mean to us today?
How do we
catch a glimpse of the awesomeness of God in our lives today?
Christian
believers live lives that are marked with some of the same sorts of ups and
downs that the original disciples had to deal with.
We, like
them, have mountaintop experiences (isn’t it interesting that the phrase
“mountaintop experiences” is still in common use today?). We also have hardships, challenges and disappointments
to have to deal with, just as they did.
How does
God give us the height of His glory to strengthen, empower and enlighten us
today? How may we discern God’s
self-revelation?
Some
answers to these questions might include these possibilities:
- Miraculous healings from illness or disease show God’s power in dramatic ways.
- Lives that have been redeemed from addiction or from self-destructive behaviors in ways that go beyond human abilities to bring about disclose God’s working in peoples’ lives.
- God’s revelation of Himself in Holy Scripture can result in a disclosure of God to the believer’s heart and mind that constitute a genuine mountaintop experience.
- The Holy Communion, as Jesus is really present in the Sacrament of the bread and wine, is a revelation of God and a marker of God’s love for us. As we come into union with Christ in the elements of bread and wine, we enter into a mysterious union with Him, a mountaintop experience.
I will
admit that this brief list couldn’t possibly exhaust all the possibilities of
the ways in which God’s glory is revealed to us. My intent in listing these four ways we can
experience God’s wondrous power and glory is to get our own reflection into
gear as we reflect together on the ways in which God has revealed Himself to us
in times past, and in the present. For
these encounters with the divine can strengthen us to meet the challenges and
the difficulties which will, inevitably, lie in our path in times to come.
Thanks be
to God, who reveals Himself to us in ways that give us hope and strength to
walk the path of faith forward with Him.
AMEN.
