God is on the Mountain

Propers: The Transfiguration of Our Lord, A.D. 2020 A

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Whatever your faith—or no faith at all—there seems to be universal human agreement that mountains are holy places. Everest is the most famous, being a literal goddess to the Nepalese. In China it’s Kunlun, the mountain that connects earth to heaven. For the Greeks it was Olympus; for the Japanese, it’s Mt Fuji; and for the Lakota, the sacred Black Hills.

Even atheists seek truth and enlightenment upon the mountaintop. If you don’t believe me, read Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, as harrowing and horrifying a tale of encountering the implacable divine as one is like to find.

It’s hardwired into us to look at a mountain and see something sacred. Maybe it’s because the arduous process of climbing a mountain reveals deep truths about ourselves. Maybe it’s because the summit is so literally removed from the workaday world, and the great bones of the earth remind us of just how tiny and temporary we really are. Or maybe it’s just because mountains are high, and we always think of God as being “up.” Regardless, it’s part of who we are, an archetype deep in our collective soul.

The two most famous mountain climbers of the Hebrew Bible are Moses and Elijah. And indeed, they’re probably the two most famous characters in the Old Testament, period—rivaled only by the likes of Father Abraham or King David. Moses was the great Liberator and Lawgiver; a child-slave turned prince of Egypt, who ran off to become a shepherd; only later to be sent back as herald and prophet of the Most High, leading God’s people Israel out of slavery in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land.

Elijah lived several generations later, and by all accounts was a sort of second Moses. The miracles God wrought through him echoed and rivaled those of the Exodus. To this day, observant Jews reserve a chair and a glass of wine for Elijah at every Passover Seder. Together, Moses and Elijah represent the Law and the Prophets, the two great authoritative revelations of God in the Hebrew Scriptures.

Now, Moses and Elijah have two big things in common. The first, as I mentioned, is that they both climbed mountains. Moses, as is written, communed with God atop Mt Sinai for 40 days and 40 nights. The Shekinah, the mystical cloud of God’s presence, descended upon the mountain, and thereafter Moses glowed frighteningly with the reflected light of God’s glory.

For the next 40 years, as Israel wandered in the wilderness, the presence of God would periodically descend to commune with Moses in the Tabernacle, an elaborate tent that served as mobile temple while the Hebrews traveled on their long journey. God was with them in the wilderness; God tabernacled amongst His people.

Centuries later, Elijah also ascended Mt Sinai, and he too spoke to God. First there came a furious wind, but the Lord was not in the wind. Then came a great earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And then descended a consuming fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. Finally there came a still and sudden silence—and the Lord spoke to Elijah in the silence.

The other thing that Moses and Elijah have in common is that they both went to Heaven. And this is very strange in the Old Testament. Before Christ, no-one spoke of human beings ascending into the biblical Heaven. Heaven was the abode of God, accessible only to the very highest and most holy of the angels, the veritable dragons of the Lord. Human souls, by and large, descended to the dead, down into Sheol, “the Pit”. But not Moses, and not Elijah.

Elijah was famously assumed, body and soul, into Heaven by a whirlwind, with chariots of fire. And the body of Moses, who died and was buried quite clearly in the Torah, nonetheless was held in tradition to have been won by the Archangel Michael from the devil, and so Michael took Moses, body and soul, into Heaven. And all of this ties into our Gospel reading this morning.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus takes a handful of His disciples—the inner circle of Peter, James, and John—to ascend a high mountain, whereupon He is transfigured before them. We are not told exactly where this occurs, but tradition holds it to have happened upon Mt Tabor, a very large dome of volcanic rock jutting dramatically out of the surrounding terrain. I’ve been up that mountain, and it is a high place indeed.

Before Peter and James and John, Jesus’ face shines like the sun, His clothes turn dazzling white, and a bright cloud overshadows them all. Moses and Elijah appear, speaking to Jesus, and a great Voice thunders from the cloud, “This is My Son, the Beloved; with Him I am well pleased. Listen to Him!”

And Peter bursts out, almost babbling, “Lord, it is good for us to be here! If you wish, I will make three dwellings here: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah!” But in all the tumult the disciples are overcome by fear and they cower. And by the time they look up, it’s all vanished. No more Moses and Elijah. No more dazzling light or cloud of glory. No more heavenly Voice of the Father. It’s just Jesus, standing before them alone.

And He says to them: “Get up. And do not be afraid.”

Now a lot of this stuff should sound familiar, given what we’ve just talked about. For indeed, Jesus’ ministry and miracles make little sense without the Old Testament. In the Hebrew Bible, Moses and Elijah speak to God upon the mountaintop; here they speak to Christ upon the mountaintop. In the Hebrew Bible, Moses and Elijah are raised, body and soul, up into Heaven, into the very presence of God; here they appear raised up and glorified in the very presence of Christ.

In the Hebrew Bible, Moses communed with God in the wilderness within the Tabernacle, which literally means a tent or temporary shelter. This led to an entire Old Testament festival, in which every faithful Israelite looked forward to the Messianic Age, when God would speak to all His people face-to-face in little tabernacles of their own, just as He had once appeared to Moses. Here in the Gospel, Peter wishes to erect three tabernacles for Moses, Jesus, and Elijah.

In every case, every detail, the message is the same. The God who spoke to Moses and Elijah atop Mt Sinai is the same God who speaks to them atop Mt Tabor, revealed as Jesus Christ. The Heaven into which they had been raised, the very presence of the Almighty, is here revealed as the presence of Jesus Christ. And the God who tabernacled with His people in the wilderness is the same God for whom Peter wants to build a tabernacle now—for Peter knows, Peter sees, that this is the Messianic Age, that God has come down to us, as one of us, as Jesus Christ. And make no mistake: this is what Peter’s been waiting for all along.

At last, the Messiah is revealed! At last, the Kingdom of God is at hand!

But then as suddenly as it had begun, the Transfiguration is over. No more light show. No more Voice. No more Moses or Elijah. Just Jesus. And He tells them what God has told His people in every age and every land: “Get up. And do not be afraid.”

Peter’s right, you know. This moment, the Transfiguration, is the beginning of the Messianic Age. It is the end of the world as we know it: a prophecy of the Resurrection and a foretaste of the feast to come. For from this moment, the trajectory of Jesus’ ministry turns. From this moment, He will begin the long walk down from the mountain, down through the valley of the shadow of death, down toward Jerusalem, toward Calvary, toward the Cross.

And there He will be lifted up on a very different sort of mountain, hanged from a very different sort of tree. And in time His followers will come to realize that what He had revealed to them atop the mount of Transfiguration comes to pass fully on the mount of Crucifixion. There is the glory of God. There is the dwelling place of God amongst His people. There is the promised One, the Anointed One, greater than Moses or Elijah. There is Heaven come impossibly to earth—through a dead Man on a Cross.

As we walk with Jesus over these next 40 days, through our own valleys of the shadow of death, let us remember the glory concealed beneath this present darkness, the promises of God fulfilled in the most terrifying and unexpected of ways. Let us remember that Heaven is with us in Jesus through all that lies ahead, as we come down now from the mountain. And let us ever recall His admonition to all of His disciples, to all of His wayward children: “Get up. And do not be afraid.”

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.