Focus: Jesus is the God of the mountaintop, too.
Transfiguration is one of those words you only ever hear in church. It means “a complete
change of form or appearance into a more beautiful or spiritual state.” 1 We have this festival of
Jesus’s Transfiguration every year, and you can pretty much predict the sermon message and the
3 or 4 hymns we will sing, including “How Good, Lord, to Be Here!” which ends with the stanza
“How good, Lord, to be here! Yet we may not remain; But since you bid us leave the mount,
Come with us to the plain.” Or as I preach it every year: “The God of the mountaintop is the
God of the valley, too.”
Only…this year is not every year. It’s easy to say, “the God of the mountaintop is the God of the
valley, too,” when you’re standing on the mountaintop—or at least in front of a congregation
with Holy Communion 15 minutes away, and doughnuts and refreshments another 15 minutes
after that.
But that’s not where we are this year. Where are we? Well, let’s ask ourselves. I want each of
us to take a minute right now and think about what this pandemic has meant: to you, your family,
our country, God’s world, over the last year. Let that silence, let those memories, let those
people and those faces preach just for a minute.
This is the valley.
Don’t get me wrong: It took faith for Peter, James, and John to follow Jesus up the mountain just
as it took faith for each of us to wake up every Sunday and drive out to North Main or Buckhorn
Road. Maybe we didn’t see Jesus shining with the uncreated light of the glory of God the Father
every week then, but we all have some pretty cherished memories at those places and with each
other. Every week, even on the Sundays in February, Jesus showed up in word and water, in
bread and wine.
But following Jesus back down the mountain, that was the most faithful thing that Peter, James,
and John had done so far. Why? Because in just the previous chapter, Jesus has told them what
is going to happen. Mark says: “Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo
great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and
after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly (Mk 8:31-2).” So when God the Father
on the mountaintop out of the cloud says, “Listen to him,” this is what he means, not just Listen
to him and say your prayers, do your job, and be good people, but Listen to him because hard
times are ahead. Following Jesus into and through the valley, that is faith.
All of you are here, all of you are listening to this or reading this because in some way, no matter
how many doubts or questions you might have, at some level, you believe Jesus’s promise: “yea
though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you are with me (Ps 23:4).”
What does it look like for Jesus to be with us? We might wish it would be him bearing us up “on
eagle’s wings,” and getting us the you-know-what out of this valley. I’m sure Peter would have
wished that on Good Friday; Jesus himself wished that in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Father if
it is your will, take this cup from me (Mk 15:36).” But more often, Jesus comes into the valley
by transfiguring the suffering that we see—that word “a complete change of form or appearance
into a more beautiful or spiritual state.”
If this year, has revealed the absolute worst in our world, it has revealed the absolute best, too.
When I look at mortality counts, the toll on our hospitals, unemployment, social distancing and
social disintegration, how can I not see death? But when I see frontline workers risking their
lives so that others might live, pastors, priests, and lay people sharing the Gospel in new ways,
incredible generosity to food banks and churches alike, and cards, calls, and Zoom Christmases
to keep others safe and connected, how can I not see Christ?
Mountaintop experiences are for life in the valley. They show us who Christ is and what he is
about and the light he brings to us and the world, when the cloud of darkness of our present
reality would veil our faith. The light of the transfigured Christ is never quite extinguished. It is
the light that shatters the stone to the tomb, streams forth through the breaking of the bread at
Emmaus, illumines Jesus’s face to Mary Magdalene in the garden, and speeds the feet of a
heartbroken Peter to the empty tomb. It is a light that holds out faith and hope even in the valley.
It is the light we need right now.
Today is a very different Transfiguration Sunday because we are in a very different place. Over
the last year, we have met God in the valley. But today, I want you and all of us to trust in this
promise: the God of the valley is the God of the mountaintop, too. Hang onto those glimpses of
hope, hang onto those promises of Christ; listen to him: listen to his words of life. Let the light
of the Christ we know and who is with us now transfigure the pain and suffering that we and our
world have gone through. Because after every valley, Lent, and cross, there is Easter.
Amen.