A Mountaintop Experience

February 21, 1993

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Scripture: II Peter 1:16-21; Matthew 17:1-9

In a way, it’s like a replay of the Baptism. Haven’t we heard some of this before? Just a few weeks back, in the early part of the Epiphany season, we heard the account of the commissioning of Jesus---with John the Baptist, down by the riverside, when the heavens were opened, and the Word descended on Jesus from above as He came up out of the water.... “This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.”

We talked about it in January. Now here it is again.... a different setting---mountain instead of river; cloud instead of water; disciples instead of John; a going up instead of a going down...

But the same electricity, the same intensity, the same glory, the same announcement.... EVEN THE SAME WORDS once more from God---we’ve heard it before: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” Then a cryptic addition: “Listen to him.”

It’s the Transfiguration story, of course, the culminating event of the Epiphany season, the final, resplendent, refulgent, luminous experience that rings down the curtain on the season of God’s glorious manifestation---that’s what Epiphany means-- and by contrast sets the stage for Lent. Next Sunday is the first Sunday of the Lenten season, and we begin with Jesus the hard road to Calvary. The mood alters abruptly, from gloriously supernatural to painfully mundane, from rapture to dust...It’s a dramatic switch.

But the Lenten Road is bracketed, on either side, by the radiance of Easter at the end, and the splendor of the Transfiguration at the beginning. WHO IS THIS ONE who trudges that road with such steely determination, who sets His face toward Jerusalem with such fierce resolution, who offers Himself voluntarily to the inhuman cruelty of crucifixion without a whimper, without a trace of self-pity, without so much as a “mumblin’ word” as the old spiritual puts it?

Who is He? The Transfiguration story gives us a brief, shining preview. Here’s who He really is---NONE OTHER THAN THE ETERNAL BELOVED SON OF THE HEAVENLY FATHER, in whom the Divine Glory, as much as could be packed into one historical personality, is incarnationally revealed. That’s who He is. For one instant, Matthew tells us, those 3 disciples saw the full glory of it.

Not that they understood what they saw. It was only after the Resurrection that it began to fit together. Of course, they said, sort of like the fellow in the commercial...I could have had a V-8... OF COURSE, they said with post-Easter insight. NOW it makes some kind of sense. We had a foretaste.

They sure didn’t get it when it happened. Simon Peter later would write, in words preserved in II Peter: “We were witnesses of his majesty...We ourselves heard the voice come from heaven while we were with him on the holy mountain.”

He doesn’t mention that they were terrified out of their wits at the time. Courage always improves with retrospect.

He doesn’t mention, either, that they were baffled by the experience, uncomprehending of its import, OR that as soon as it was over they were back to their old tricks of hesitant blundering again, following Jesus the way most of us do. He doesn’t mention that. Within 15 minutes of descent, according to the record in the passage that comes next, it was back to business as usual once more. They were the same old dim-witted disciples they’d always been. They knew something big had happened, but it took the Resurrection to make any sense out of it, and even THAT didn’t explain it, it only highlighted the distinctiveness of it.

Mystery there was, and mystery remained; mystery still shrouds exactly what happened out there on the mountain top.

But maybe that’s not the kind of question we need to be bringing to the story. The early Church remembered this strange experience of the disciples...remembered it, preserved it, pondered it, treasured it...and gave it a prominent place in the Gospel story when it was told. Matthew gave it prominent place, right in the middle of his narrative, where it acts almost as a gateway for what is to follow. I don’t think he understood it, any more than we do, but he had to express it somehow, and maybe this is about the only way you can express it.

It’s as if he were trying to say WHEN YOU’RE DEALING WITH JESUS OF NAZARETH, YOU’RE DEALING WITH SOMETHING SPECIAL, something that simply can’t be fitted into ordinary human categories.

He’s saying an astounding, strange and magnificent thing, that in a sudden explosion of glory one day, even prior to the Resurrection, as a kind of foretaste of Resurrection, the real truth of the nature and character of God’s Son was laid bare in all its burning radiance. Dominion, honor, majesty and power broke forth into human consciousness...BRIEFLY. At least 3 men saw for an instant what one day everybody will see on a permanent basis--the shimmering luster of transcendent holiness, gleaming through a person.

There is a line in the stage production of Camelot. You probably remember it. We spent 2 days this week in the office trying to track it down to get the right wording. The W.P. Public Library Reference Department finally came to the rescue. Alan J. Lerner wrote the lyric, and it’s not altogether deathless poetry, I’m afraid, though it probably sounds a lot better when Robert Goulet sings it. My wife says the reading of the telephone directory would sound good when Robert Goulet sings it.

Anyway, the line comes near the end of the play as Arthur is leaving his throne, and the reprieve that the King sings goes, “Don’t let it be forgot that once there was a spot for one, brief shining moment that was Camelot.”

In a way, that’s the Transfiguration story, too, “one, brief, shining moment” when Truth, unfiltered and unshrouded, broke through, and 3 quavering men were captured by its glory.

HAS ANYTHING LIKE THAT EVER HAPPENED TO YOU? Do you think something like that could happen? What are we to make of this account? How are we to read a passage like this?

What kind of language is being used here? Oh, if only we weren’t so sophisticated in our reading of the Bible. May I say this to you...We are among friends, aren’t we? The Bible is the kind of Book you probably ought to read in the nude. Or at the least, at the very least, while hanging upside down from the limb of a tree...Whatever it takes to rattle your stodginess, to help you shed false pretentiousness.... whatever it takes to loosen you---

Bring your aloofness to it, your worldly wisdom, your intellectual haughtiness, your superciliousness and cranky pride, and it’ll protect its treasure like a doting lioness guarding her young.

But climb up in the Bible’s lap with wide-eyed, expectant innocence...rub against it lovingly, and allow it just to sing its song to you, on its own terms, with its own melody, and you’ll begin to hear tunes that will wrap themselves unforgettably around your heart.

It’s funny---The Bible is not a children’s book, but it’s a book for adults who are willing to approach it as children.

When our children first come to Sunday School, as little ones, their teachers introduce them to the wonderful stories of the Bible. They drink them in, with eager, uncritical acceptance.

They hear about Adam and Eve, running free in the garden; they color pictures of Noah and the animals in the ark; they sing songs about Moses and Joshua, about the walls a-tumblin’ down, about Jesus and the blind man, about Zacchaeus in the sycamore tree...Those stories, just as stories, become a part of them.

If they keep coming, they’ll be exposed to the same stories again and again. The stories are taught differently to 9th graders than to 1st graders, but they’re the same stories.

And if you come to Church as an adult, you’ll still hear those same identical stories... in a different form from the 9th grade version, and way different from the 1st grade version, BUT THE SAME STORIES RECYCLED. THAT’S OUR CURRICULUM. The basic Biblical narration forms a central core around which our faith revolves. As we move from infancy to adulthood, from innocence to maturity, we keep coming back to the same Biblical material, because that material is crucial to our identity as Christians.

That material helps us understand who we are. And each time we come back to it, we bring new levels of comprehension. The transition from a childish faith to a childlike faith is easy for some people, some fortunate people. They just sort of grow into it... They’re not plagued by doubts, misgivings, unsettling questions. Their faith naturally progresses into maturity. When it develops that way, it’s wonderful.

Others, of us, though, don’t find it so simple. Somewhere along the way, or maybe at several points, we faced a crisis. How many times do you suppose that’s happened?

Those stories that we once just accepted at face value, that we once just believed, as written, word for word, begin to conflict with what we’re learning elsewhere---Maybe it happens in high school, or at the University...we start studying chemistry, or biology, or history, or philosophy...at the feet of people who are bright and well read, people who know more than we do--at least about some things---and cracks start to appear in our certainty. We’re not quite so sure anymore.

Maybe it’s not right, after all, what I’d always assumed, we say... Maybe it doesn’t hang together as neatly as I thought. We hold up the old stories and contrast them against the new knowledge, and they seem so naïve, even incredible. Can I still believe that? How many times do you suppose it’s happened?

At that point some raised in the Church simply give up their faith. The faith they had, the innocent faith, the childish faith doesn’t possess sufficient fiber to withstand challenge. So they abandon it, leave it on the field and take whatever nourishment they can wring out of the husks of skepticism. Others, when challenge comes, retreat into a kind of fundamentalism...

They build walls around their faith, isolating it from everything else, keeping it separates and apart.... They put the religion of childhood into one compartment and everything else into another.

For some it becomes almost schizophrenic. WHAT A RELIEF TO DISCOVER THAT THERE IS ANOTHER POSSIBILITY, ONE that doesn’t ask you to give up either your brain or your heart, one that fuses thinking and believing. It’s an alternative both to abandoning your faith and protecting it against any kind of scrutiny.

Paul Ricoeur, who was introduced to me by Ron Byars of Kentucky, uses an interesting phrase which I find very helpful. He speaks of what he calls a “second naivete”. What he means, if I understand him, is not gullibility, but a kind of conscious willingness to attune yourself to the overtones of what’s being said in the Bible, a willingness to enter the world of the speaker, and an openness to more than just the words.

It occurs when you go beyond the original, childish naivete you started with when you first learned the Bible stories...you go beyond that, and move toward a deeper appreciation of the subtlety, and the complexity of the Biblical material. You come to it on its own terms.

YOU RECOGNIZE THAT NOT ALL TRUTH IS LITERAL TRUTH. That not all truth has to be stated in propositional form, that some truth can’t be... that some kinds of reality can only be expressed in story, or poetical imagery, or picture language... Children probably know that instinctively, but many adults have had it educated out of them.

When you experience the second naivete, you don’t have to prove that every incident in the Bible happened exactly as it is written. You recognize that the inspired writers of the Bible stories weren’t interested in questions like, “Where did Cain get his wife?” or “How could Noah have possibly assembled 2 samples of every living creature?”

Those questions represent modern interests imposed on non-modern perspectives. The Bible writers had different concerns...I think I want to say more important concerns. They weren’t scientists asking questions about HOW... THEY WERE BELIEVERS ASKING QUESTIONS ABOUT WHO...and WHY. Their faith was not unsophisticated---don’t ever think that---but it was CHILDLIKE, in the best sense, and they were wonderfully open Godward. Approach what they say on their level, from their perspective, with their sense of trust.

Let them tell it the way they see it. It’s astounding how when you do that, their inspiration comes through to inspire us. The best approach to almost any Biblical passage is NOT to come to it asking WHAT REALLY HAPPENED HERE, but to sit down before it with all your pores open and ask WHAT MIGHT GOD BE TRYING TO SAY TO ME HERE? How might God use this simple and childlike story to speak to us who are no longer simple and childlike?

Somewhere in his writing, Fred Buechner says that when he was a child he believed the Christmas story exactly as Luke wrote it. When he got older, he developed all kinds of doubts about its authenticity. Questions of all sorts proliferated. But when he got older still, he says, he came to believe the Christmas story exactly as Luke wrote it. That’s the second naivete.

Now, that’s a long detour we’ve just taken. How did I get off into that digression into Biblical interpretation when we’re talking about Camelot?

BUT IT IS PERTINENT. It’s right on the money. The Transfiguration story tells us about Jesus and 3 of His followers going up on a mountain where the disciples had a vision and heard a heavenly voice.

WHAT ARE WE TO MAKE OF IT? It’s hardly the kind of story that corresponds to everyday

mundane experience.

It’s not the kind of thing that happens to most people routinely. If you don’t want to use the word “bizarre” in connection with it, I think you’d at least find the word “unusual” congenial. What ARE we to make of it?

We can see it, as children do, simply as a description of an event that happened, as an account that literally took place just as reported. Or we can regard the whole thing as a fiction--in the same category with Camelot, the product of someone’s fertile imagination, a beautiful tale, maybe, but essentially a superstition. OR we can come to the narrative from the perspective of the second naivete, approaching it with a readiness to be open to God’s potential message to His people. We can come to it asking, WHAT WOULD THE GOSPEL WRITER BE TRYING TO SAY TO US HERE, and more deeply still, WHAT THROUGH THE WRITER MIGHT GOD BE TRYING TO SAY TO ME?

I’ve come to believe there’ s inspiration---call it providence, if you like---in the choosing and putting together of the lectionary readings. The other passage for today, the passage from II Peter, helps us extract meaning from the Gospel passage.

Peter was writing, we know, to Christians who were facing enormous pressure on their faith. They were a small body, living as a tiny minority in a great sea of pagan culture. For a long time, they’d been expecting the return of Christ, looking for Him to come in glory, and establish His reign on earth. They’d lived by that hope, the hope that soon the promises of the Gospel would be fulfilled.

BUT THEY WAITED, AND WAITED, and nothing happened. Months slipped into years, and they were still waiting. Maybe the whole thing is a fiction, some said. There were those who began to doubt that their hopes were built on a solid foundation. I suspect there are some today who can identify with that gnawing, eroding kind of doubt.

Peter wrote to reassure them. And he did it in terms of his own experience, always the most persuasive argument. He did it in terms of the experience Matthew has recorded for us.

Listen, he says in essence, A lot of things are cloudy now; a lot of things are beyond our comprehension. We don’t know God’s timetable; we don’t know why certain things happen as they do, or why God’s plan doesn’t unfold as speedily as we might like.

BUT I’LL TELL YOU THIS---There’s a glory at work in the universe. There’s an ineffable splendor at the heart of things, and it’s that dazzling Truth that ultimately will turn night into glorious day. “I am an eye-witness to the majesty of it. We ourselves heard the voice come down from heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain.” HE CLUNG TO THE VISION OF THAT UNFORGETTABLE DAY.

I don’t know when, I don’t know how...don’t press me for details. But I know there’s something special about that MAN, something bigger than any human category can hold, and I know in my bones that He can be trusted in bringing to pass in good time His redeeming purpose.

What are we to make of the Transfiguration story? I’m afraid I can’t tell you much about the details or the mechanics of it.... I don’t know if anybody standing around with a Camcorder would have been able to record anything unusual or not. It’s not verifiable that way. All we have is the word of the witnesses, their testimony, the record of their remembrance. It’s admittedly not a lot.

But something happened to them out there, something so big that while they couldn’t grasp it all, they knew that Something had grasped them. And they held on to it from that time on. The interpretation of all it meant would have to wait. But the experience itself they could never forget. At least for an instant, for “one, brief, shining moment”, they had seen the glory.

HAS ANYTHING LIKE THAT EVER HAPPENED TO YOU? Would you be willing to be open to the possibility that it MIGHT happen?

Transfiguration experiences don’t have to be as dramatic and intense as Matthew’s record of it. Maybe when we get to heaven, we’ll even find that this report has been blown up a tad. That won’t negate its import. The fundamental truth of it resonates with something deep inside. Every now and then, sometimes when we least expect it, the reality of the HOLY breaks through, and the glory of the Lord steals over us.

Someone has said that the wisest persons are those who judge life by its highest moments. Transfiguration moments don’t necessarily bring us answers. What they do bring us is something better---the TRANSCENDANT CHRIST HIMSELF...and that’s enough.

One night about 3 years ago, my sister called me to say that my father, our father, had had a heart attack and been taken to the hospital in Gainesville. Don’t try to come up tonight, she urged. He’s resting now. Wait until morning.

I tried to sleep but couldn’t. Sometime in the night, as I tossed and turned, I became aware of what I can only call a PRESENCE close by. I can’t say I saw anything, and I probably didn’t physically hear anything, but there seemed to come to me through the darkness a voice and it seemed to say, “Don’t worry. It’s going to be all right. I’m with him...And I’m with you. And I can handle it.”

If you don’t want to call it a Transfiguration experience, it’s all right with me. I only know Matthew’s account of Peter and James and John on the mountaintop is more real to me now. The underlying truth of it strikes a responsive chord in my heart, which says the glory, and majesty, and infinite care of the Lord Christ are very, very real. I know I can trust Him now and forever.

To me the most moving line in the Transfiguration story is where Matthew writes, “But Jesus came and touched them, saying, ‘Get up and do not be afraid.’”

There it is, isn’t it? That’s the Truth, the ultimately abiding, glorious, triumphant Truth...He came and touched them. Be ready, be open...you never know. One brief, shining moment can change it all.