Learning from the Mountaintop

 

Rev. Moira Finley

Trinity United Church of Christ and St. John’s United Church of Christ

6 February 2005

Transfiguration Sunday

Matthew 17.1-9

 

Wisconsin is a wonderful place.  We have rivers, lakes and fields that surround us with the beauty of God’s creation.  Whatever the season, we have an amazing diversity in our landscape.  But the one thing we don’t have though is mountains.  Growing up in New Mexico you’re at the foot of the Rocky Mountains.  Living in the shadow of those mountains, they have a profound effect on you.

 

I remember in the second grade standing in the athletic field at our elementary school and learning about directions, that if we were facing the mountains then we were going east.  To this day, in order to figure out what direction I’m going I still have to think about standing in that field and picture the mountains in my mind.  When I needed to clear my head, I went to the mountains.  When I wanted to feel connected to the earth, I went to the mountains.  When I needed a place to scatter my mother’s ashes, I went to the very top of the mountains.

 

There’s just something about mountains, they tug at your heart and soul.  In most religious traditions, the prophet or seer or spiritual leader eventually goes up a mountain to be transformed, to receive a revelation, or to talk with God.  And that’s exactly what happens in our gospel reading this morning.  Jesus takes some of his disciples – Peter and the brothers James and John – up to the top of a tall mountain to witness the incredible.

 

Before they get to that mountain, Jesus and his disciples have been traveling throughout the region of Galilee.  Jesus has been teaching about God’s love through parables and stories, healing the sick and performing miracles like feeding crowds of thousands with just a few fish and loaves of bread.  And immediately before their journey up the mountain Peter has confessed his faith in Jesus for the first time.  Peter has declared that he knows Jesus to be the Messiah, the promised one of God who has come to deliver the people.

 

And now Jesus chooses from among his disciples and takes these three to the top of a mountain.  He doesn’t defend his decision to take only three.  He offers no explanation on why they’re going or what they’ll see once they get to the top.  Once they arrive at the top, Jesus is instantly transfigured before them.  His face shines like the sun.  His clothes look as if they’ve been bleached to the purest white.  And if that wasn’t strange enough, suddenly Jesus isn’t alone.  He’s standing there talking with the great prophets of Israel’s history.  Moses and Elijah have joined Jesus there on the mountain.

 

Peter overcomes his fear and works up the courage to speak.  He offers to build temples to the three prophets, remembering with stone and mortar that this miracle has taken place.  But while he’s talking, a cloud descends on the mountain and the voice of the living God speaks familiar words saying, “This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased, listen to him!”  They are the same words that were spoken at Jesus’ baptism.  After that, Moses and Elijah seem to disappear just as quickly as they appeared and Jesus and the disciples descend the mountain to resume their ministry.

 

Something happens on that mountain.  I can’t say what exactly, physically, it means for Jesus to have been “transformed” or “transfigured.”  I don’t know what happened to his molecules that made it seem as if he was shining and glowing and I can’t say how it was possible for him to stand there and talk with two of the great prophets of history, both long dead by Jesus’ day.  Still, for all I can’t say, I do know that something happened there, in the clouds at the top of that mountain.  It changed the disciples, and if we’re attentive it will change us as well.

 

On that mountaintop, in response to the mysterious, Peter’s reaction is what most of our would probably be.  He offers to build something, to act, to do something.  He doesn’t want to simply sit by and watch what’s happening.  He wants to be a participant, to build these monuments to the event.  Jesus doesn’t answer Peter, doesn’t say yes or no to those temples.  Instead, the voice of God breaks in and gives Peter the command he needs.  Don’t act, listen.  The mountaintop teaches Peter that sometimes we have to put aside our desire to act, and we have to commit ourselves to listening.

 

I am convinced that a lot of what is wrong with the world today has to do with the fact that people don’t feel like anyone’s listening to them.  We all carry around our sorrows and our joys, our insecurities and our fears.  But if there’s no one to listen to us, to share those things with, then we feel like we’re carrying them alone.  That isolation builds and builds, that sense that no one really cares about what’s going on in our lives.  Eventually that isolation expresses itself in destructive ways.  We either turn the destruction on ourselves, doing things in our own lives that aren’t healthy, or on others, expressing our frustration through bigotry, violence, and prejudice.

 

Listening is hard work.  It requires that we stop talking.  Actively listening means that we have to quiet the inner dialogue in our brain, the churning of our mind that comes up with responses or solutions.  Listening means being present with the person who is talking, waiting with them while they find the words they need to express whatever it is that’s on their heart.  Listening isn’t about offering responses or answers, it’s about helping the other person find the answers that are deep within their own heart.

 

Everyday, as faithful people, we have to be about the business of listening.  We have to open our hearts and minds, and our ears, to the voice of God around us.  We have to take the time to listen to those who feel as if no one is listening.  We have to be with our friends and families and hear them out, what they say about life, love, joy, sadness, grief and faith.

 

Soon we will begin the season of Lent, our journey towards Jerusalem.  We’ll try to figure out what it means that in Jesus, God was born into a human body, and what that says about our own bodies.  We’ll think about Jesus’ life and ministry, and what that teaches us about the direction of our own lives.  We’ll think about the cross and what happened there, and how that changes the way we live in the world.

 

As we walk through these six weeks we will need to practice listening.  We need to listen to the other people who will be on this journey with us, the people sitting next to you this morning, the people who share our lives with us.  We need to listen to the inner dialogue in our own hearts, what it is our lives are yearning to say.  And we have to listen to the voice of God speaking to us, calling us forward, inviting us to new life.

 

We have to take the lesson of the mountaintop, and heed the words that were spoken there, “Listen to him.”  Listen to Jesus.  Listen to one another.  Listen to ourselves.  In doing so we’ll mend a few of the tears in the fabric of society, we’ll bind up some wounds, and we’ll build a little piece of the kingdom of God.  Amen.