04 Epiphany 08
February 3, 1007

Ex 24:12-18 (NRSV)

Matt 17:1-9 (NRSV)

The Mountaintop

In Matthew, many things happened on mountains. Jesus was tempted on a mountain. He preached his most famous sermon on a mountain. He did his praying on a mountain. He took his disciples up a mountain to see him in his glory. And at the end of the gospel, he appeared to them on a mountain to give them his commission. It’s clear that in Matthew, Jesus is seen as the new Moses, the Moses with a difference. We’ll get to that difference in a bit.

Jesus leads us away from the familiar valley and up into the unfamiliar and inhospitable mountain. This is peculiar. Here’s a difference between him and Moses. Moses didn’t take anyone with him. He went alone.

There Jesus is transformed in our sight from an ordinary human into an eternal being of light. This is also not really that much of a surprise. We’ve heard of such mountaintop of experiences before:

29 Moses came down from Mount Sinai. As he came down from the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant in his hand, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. 30 When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, the skin of his face was shining, and they were afraid to come near him.
Ex 34:29-30 (NRSV)

God speaks and names him his beloved son, the title given only to the king of Israel, the Messiah. We’ve rather been expecting this. Peter has only recently stated it, that unmentionable possibility: this is the one who will set Israel free. But now God confirms it by calling to mind a scripture

Psalms 2:1-7 (NRSV):
2 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and his anointed, saying, 3 "Let us burst their bonds asunder, and cast their cords from us." 4 He who sits in the heavens laughs; the LORD has them in derision. 5 Then he will speak to them in his wrath, and terrify them in his fury, saying, 6 "I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill." 7 I will tell of the decree of the LORD: He said to me, "You are my son; today I have begotten you.”

So this is the one, this Jesus. God commands us to listen to him. I don’t think this means we’re to passively sit by and hear him out. I think it’s pretty obvious we are commanded to obey him as a subject obeys a king.

We want to stay in that moment forever. Peter wants to build temples. But there is no response from Jesus on this. It appears we must leave this wonderful moment.

We really need to beware the temptation to get addicted to the spiritual experience. There are a lot of experiences we can have that come close to a real spiritual awakening. We can feel excited or sentimental or peaceful or ecstatic, but these are just feelings and are not necessarily a spiritual awakening. In fact, there’s a theory out there that addicts are people who are really trying to live in a constant state of spiritual ecstacy or peace. Some churches knock themselves out trying to get some kind of emotional rise out of people, but I would submit that it’s not up to us when or how we get invited up that mountain, and it’s not up to us what we are shown there. In fact, for me, that understanding is one of the keys to my own spiritual awakening.

God doesn’t always speak. God doesn’t always act. God doesn’t always choose. One of my favorite preachers, Barbara Brown Taylor, once said, “Only an idol always answers.” Beware of preachers who want to sell you a god in a box that you can take out and use when you want, and put away when you don’t.

So we can’t stay on the mountain. We have to go back down.

Someone else has said,” we visit the mountain, but we live in the valley.”

Strangely, Jesus orders us not to reveal what we have seen until after he is risen from the dead.
And this is the way that he is showing us. This is the teaching we are asked to listen to. He is with Moses and he is with Elijah, but it’s our turn to stand on the mountain and get lit up with God’s Spirit. But lest we think this is some kind of happy Crystal Cathedral dose of cock-eyed optimism, Jesus instructs us to wait and see where this all leads us.

It’s going to lead us to the cross.

This is the real revelation: Jesus is pleasing to God because he is ready and willing to pour out his life for the sake of God’s kingdom. And this is the teaching God is asking us to listen to. This is the path God is asking us to follow. It is this willingness that opens us to the light from God. And when we are given that light, others see it, and the kingdom of God comes near.

Peter, years later, will pour out his life on an upside-down cross, and he will do this for the sake of the kingdom. Before he gave his life he wrote this in his second letter:

2 Peter 1:16-18 (NRSV)
16 For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. 17 For he received honor and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, "This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased." 18 We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain.
This seems such a dark message to some people. Offer myself as a sacrifice? Give my life for the world?
But I want to tell you it’s not like that. It’s a hard concept to get a hold of, but there’s a lot of joy in this thing, friends. After twenty years of following the Lord, I can tell you I have a vision of a world transformed someday, a vision I’m coming more and more to trust and believe. I also think the road to that vision will be brutal and terrible, and I don’t mean in any supernatural sense. We don’t need leathery demons to come and help us hurt each other. We’re doing fine with that all by ourselves.
But I believe at the end of it all people will finally come to have a lot more reasons to love God than not to, and I believe at the end of it all, while there might not be many of us left, we’ll finally know what God was trying to tell us all along. Honestly, I don’t know if I’ll see that world in any way I might recognize today, but I’m coming to believe that in some mysterious way, I’ll be there.

You might remember another mountaintop experience from the Old Testament:

eut 34:1-5 (NRSV)
1 Then Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, which is opposite Jericho, and the LORD showed him the whole land: Gilead as far as Dan, 2 all Naphtali, the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, all the land of Judah as far as the Western Sea, 3 the Negeb, and the Plain--that is, the valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees--as far as Zoar. 4 The LORD said to him, "This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, 'I will give it to your descendants'; I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there." 5 Then Moses, the servant of the LORD, died there in the land of Moab, at the LORD's command.

When I was a boy, I saw a preacher on TV. I want to read you what he said about a different promised land.

"Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountain top. 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. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."

He was shining that night. Shining with a light from God. Do you see how it works? The vision’s enough. It’s all we need to light us.

I once worked in a carnival. I ran a very elaborate haunted house with a full staff of live actors. It was a lot of fun. I was taught by the carnies a basic tactic. It was called “building a tip.” The idea was that you should always have a tip, or crowd, around your attraction. This attracts people who are walking down the midway. What do you think is the best way to build a tip for a haunted house? You’ve got it.

You send them out of the house screaming. There is nothing that will attract a crowd to a haunted house more than a steady stream of grown men and women running out of a house screaming. I won’t tell you what we did to get that to happen, but I’m not sure it was strictly legal.

What draws a crowd to a church is a steady stream of people being lit up. I don’t care how much money a church has, how big their building is, how entertaining their programming or how great their preacher is. What draws people to a church is people being lit up.

I’ve seen some of you coming to the mountaintop. I’ve seen some of you lighting up. And I think the community around here is seeing it too.

Amen.