March 3, 2019
Hope Lutheran Church
Rev. Mary Erickson
Luke 9:28-36
Mountain Tops and Plains
Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.
Today is the last Sunday in the season of Epiphany. This week we’ll enter Lent with Ash Wednesday. Epiphany is an accordion season. The number of Sundays any given year expands or contrasts, depending on when Easter falls. This year, Easter is very late. So we’ve had an extremely long Epiphany season.
The gospel readings in Epiphany reveal Jesus’ identity. Just as the star shone over Bethlehem and lit the way for the wise men to find Jesus, the stories we ponder during Epiphany shed a spotlight on who Jesus is. We hear about his miracles: he turns water into wine, he heals the sick. We hear the wisdom of his preaching.
These illuminations of Jesus reach a dazzling climax in the final Sunday of Epiphany. Today we ponder Jesus’ transfiguration. Jesus takes three of his disciples with him to the top of a mountain. Peter, James and John pray with Jesus on that mountain top. But while they pray, something extraordinary occurs.
Jesus’ appearance completely changes before them. He becomes brilliantly light. And then two pivotal figures from Israel’s past join him: Moses and Elijah.
Both Moses and Elijah had experienced mountain top encounters with God. Moses climbed to the top of Mt. Sinai. And there God gave him the Ten Commandments. Elijah fled to Mt. Horeb during a very challenging time of his ministry. The Queen, Jezebel, wanted him dead. Elijah escaped to Horeb a defeated and dejected man. But God appeared to him in a “still small voice.” Elijah’s spirits were revived.
Now these two men are meeting with Jesus on the mountain top.
Peter, James and John found themselves in just such a thin place. As their friend Jesus was transfigured before their eyes, they beheld that he was more than just a man. Jesus was divine, he was God-with-us. They saw Jesus for who he really is. In Jesus, the divine presence has come among us.
They were in a thin place. Jesus’ divinity was revealed to them in all his glory and power. That mountain was a thin place.
Peter, James, and John were quite literally having a mountain-top experience. We use that phrase figuratively. A mountain-top experience is a peak spiritual moment in life. It’s an incident along our faith journey that leaves a deep, lasting impression on us. It’s transformational.
A mountain-top experience may be a place or it could be an experience. We can feel that awe-inspiring moment when we see a wonder of nature, like the Grand Canyon. I remember one time in particular when I felt this. I was in seminary in St. Paul and I had a big paper to write. It called for an all-nighter at the local Perkins restaurant! It was just about this time of year, late winter. I finally left Perkins at about 2:30 or 3:00 in the early morning hours. I drove home, and as I got out of my car, I looked up. The sky was absolutely ablaze with the Northern Lights! The entire sky, from one horizon to the other, was filled with shimmering, undulating lights. It took my breath away. I’d never seen the Northern Lights so prominent before, nor have I since. I didn’t want the moment to end, but the frigid night air finally urged me inside.
A mountain-top experience can also be an event, like singing Silent Night on Christmas Eve surrounded by the flickering light of a hundred candles. Or at Bible Camp on a warm summer’s evening, singing songs around a blazing campfire and listening to a touching message shared by your counselor. A mountain-top experience could be something very personal, like a spiritual dream or a vision revealed only to you. Whatever the experience, it stops us in our tracks and we see the world differently.
There’s something about a mountain. Mountain air is different than what we breathe down here. At that altitude, the air is thin. I remember one time when I was in the Black Hills. The Black Hills aren’t nearly as high as the Rockies, but they’re higher than here! I was running to catch up with some other people. But then it hit me – WHAM! Not enough oxygen! I bent over double and panted like I’d just finished sprinting a hundred-yard dash.
Mountain-top experiences have a similar effect. Peter, James and John found themselves responding oddly. In that thin place, the air was rarified. They were simply overwhelmed by the revelation of this thin place they’d entered. They were in a stupor, all groggy. In his woozy state, Peter suggested that he build some booths – small shacks – for Jesus and his heavenly guests.
Those special, mountain-top experiences – we don’t want them to end. Like on Christmas Eve, we don’t want to blow out the candles at the end of Silent Night. We want the moment to last forever. We want to live eternally in the mystical grace of Christmas.
Peter wanted to set up camp on that mountain. He was awestruck by this glorious Jesus and he didn’t want the moment to end.
But mountain-top moments do end. They end because we aren’t meant to stay on the mountain top. We need to return to the plain because that is where we live.
One of my seminary professors offered a very helpful illustration on this. He drew the infinity symbol, the figure eight lying on its back. As he swirled from one circle to the other, Prof. Halvorson explained that we live in two circles of influence. One is inward and the other is outward. We need both of them.
In our inward circle, we retreat from the world to connect with God and to regenerate. This time builds and strengthens us. But if we remain in this inward circle, we risk becoming ingrown.
The outward circle of influence thrusts us into the needs and concerns of the world. In this outward sphere, we’re servants to others and the world. But just as with the inward circle, remaining only in the outward circle isn’t healthy, either. When we stay too long in the outward realm, our resources are depleted. We burn out.
We need to move between both realms, inward and outward, inward and outward. Our mountain-tops are inward places. They build us up and renew our soul. But after we’ve been renewed, we need to move to the outward, for that’s where we find our purpose and meaning. We serve the world in Christ’s name.
Our week has this inward-outward movement. We gather together on Sunday mornings. And each week, it’s like we share a mountain-top experience. We encounter Jesus in the word proclaimed. We meet him in the faces of our fellow believers. And we receive his presence in the bread and the wine.
But our Sunday worship concludes by sending us out. We don’t stay in this place. “Go in peace, serve the Lord,” we say. We leave this place, this inward time together, so that we can spread outward in service. We leave here strengthened and renewed for the living of our mission.
Jesus will leave that mountain top. He’ll bring Peter, James and John with him. Together they will return to the plain. And when they do, the cares of the world will be awaiting them.
Jesus doesn’t stay on that mountain top. He comes down to the plain for the same reason that he became incarnate. Jesus entered our realm because he had a mission. His mission wasn’t located in heaven; it was here on earth. And on earth, his mission’s culmination isn’t found on the Mount of Transfiguration. It’s at the Hill Golgotha. It’s at the cross.
To stay on the mountain would be to abandon his purpose, his very reason for being. He belongs on the plain. Jesus’ destiny – and our salvation – is on the plain.
For as much as our spirits soar on the mountain-tops, our lives are on the plain. But when we return, we bring with us the memory of that thin place. Jesus’ mother Mary took the memories of Jesus’ birth with her. She never forgot them. The Bible tells us that Mary “treasured these things and pondered them in her heart.”
The peak moments along our faith journey leave a deep, lasting impression on us. We take those moments with us and ponder them in our hearts. And as we do so, they plant us more squarely in our daily reality. Memories from the mountain-top add profound appreciation to our lives on the plain.
Our mountain-tops remain with us always, even as we leave them and return to the plain.
