Reverend Ian Doescher

The Sixth Sunday of Epiphany

This past week, my friend Joshua shared with me a video he had found online.  The video was about five and a half minutes long, and was remarkable footage of a woman sitting on a beach shore, being approached by a seal.  As the video unfolds, the seal comes up to the woman at first hesitantly, and then more boldly.  Then the seal touches noses with the woman, who occasionally looks back at whoever is holding the camera as if to say, “Are you getting this?”  The seal ends up snuggling up with the woman, literally putting its body across her legs while she gives it affection.  It is a remarkable video, and one can only imagine what the woman must have felt like as she experienced this rare communion with one of nature’s majestic animals.  My friend Joshua’s only comment on the video was, “a mountaintop moment.”

The transfiguration of Jesus, which we hear about in today’s gospel reading, is another one of those mountaintop moments, literally and figuratively.  Of course, what happens to Jesus is far beyond anything the natural world can provide or explain, far beyond a seal and a woman cozying up together.  The transfiguration is one of those moments in the gospel we know is significant, though sometimes it is hard to put our finger on exactly why that is true.  In this morning’s sermon, I want to take some time to talk about why the transfiguration is an important moment in Jesus’ life, an important moment in his mission as the Messiah of God.  I’m going to do that in the context of the two holy visitors who appear in conversation with Jesus on that mountaintop.

The two ancestors of Israel who appear to talk with Jesus are, of course, Moses and Elijah.  The appearance of these ancestors is significant for two different reasons.  The first is that Moses and Elijah are representative of Israel’s history and their ongoing story of salvation.  Moses demanded freedom for the people of Israel from an oppressive Egyptian pharaoh who angrily refused to accept the power of God.  So God afflicted the Egyptians with ten progressively worse plagues—my spouse Jennifer was telling our four-year-old Graham the story of the exodus from Egypt the other day, and Graham said, “Mama, why is God so mean?”  It’s hard to explain the exodus to a child, I suppose.  But the history of Israel’s exodus from Egypt is a story in which Moses is central, leading the people out of Egypt, across the Red Sea and into forty years of wandering in the wilderness.  In Exodus 34, which Art read for us, Moses has a mountaintop experience that is similar to Jesus’ by its association with the light of God’s glory.  Moses receives the law from God on Mount Sinai, and “When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands, he was not aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the Lord. When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, his face was radiant, and they were afraid to come near him.  But Moses called to them; so Aaron and all the leaders of the community came back to him, and he spoke to them.”  Moses has encountered God, and his face becomes radiant with light, so much so that the Israelites are afraid of his appearance.

So Moses stands on the mountaintop with Jesus, and Elijah is there too.  It would be appropriate for me to call on one of the members of the women’s Bible study right now, to give us some background on who Elijah was.  Undoubtedly they are more up-to-date on their knowledge of Elijah than I am.  Elijah the Tishbite lived during the time of King Ahab, the most infamous of Israel’s kings and the namesake of Moby Dick’s Captain Ahab.  Elijah was the last true prophet of God in existence in those days, and he showed great power to predict the future, to heal, and of course, to prophecy against Ahab’s misuses of power.  One of the most remarkable things about Elijah is the way he died—or rather, the way he didn’t die.  At the end of his earthly journey, Elijah is taken to heaven on chariots from God while Elisha looks on, Elisha who is Elijah’s apprentice and the prophet who will take his place.  Elijah is a key figure in Israel’s history as one of the last prophets of God, and—as I’ll say in a minute—as a person who represents a key moment of Israel’s salvation history.

Moses and Elijah join Jesus on the mountaintop, as Jesus is transfigured in the light of God.  And as I said a minute ago the first reason this is important is because Moses and Elijah are representative of Israel’s history and their ongoing story of salvation.  And because they appear talking with Jesus, it follows that Jesus, too, is significant for Israel’s history—he is the continuation of their story.  More than that, the transfiguration on the mountaintop shows that Jesus is both the expected continuation and the fulfillment of Israel’s history.

I said there were two reasons why it is significant that Moses and Elijah join Jesus on the mountaintop.  The second reason is because of what those two leaders did, what they were primarily known for.  I’ve already talked about Moses’ role in the exodus from Egypt, which was the central event of Israel’s past, remembered every year to this day in the celebration of the Passover.  Moses represents Israel’s past, and the beginning of the people of Israel as a separate community.  Elijah, on the other hand, represents future fulfillment.  Because of Elijah’s glorious and mysterious end—taken into the clouds on chariots of fire—it was thought that Elijah would one day return to the people of Israel to redeem them and take them into God’s presence.  That’s why, in the gospel of Matthew, when Jesus is crucified, he calls out “Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani?” and a bystander says, “He’s calling Elijah.”  The crowd, still not understanding who Jesus was, thought Jesus was calling Elijah to come and take him away, just as all of Israel thought Elijah would one day come to release and redeem them.  So Elijah is a person who represents future fulfillment, while Moses is a person who represents Israel’s past, its founding as its own nation.  And when they talk to Jesus, if you listen carefully—and if you know a little Greek—you hear that they reference both the beginning and the end.  Here is Luke 9, verses 30 and 31 again: “Two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendor, talking with Jesus.  They spoke about his departure, which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem.”  When verse 31 says they spoke about his departure, the actual word used in Greek is exodos, Jesus’ exodus, “which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem.”  Jesus will have an exodus, representing Israel’s past, but this is still to come to fulfillment—a future promise.  Moses and Elijah, on the mountaintop with Jesus, show not only that Jesus continues the line of Israel’s history—the first significant point I mentioned, but their presence also shows that Jesus is the embodiment of Israel’s past and the promise of Israel’s future.  Jesus is—as a later prophet will say—the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.  And a voice from the clouds confirms the message: “This is my son, whom I have chosen; listen to him.”  Jesus’ mission has been fixed, and his purpose is now clear.  Just a few verses later, in Luke 9:51, the gospel of Luke tells us, “As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.”  From the moment just after the transfiguration, Jesus is directed toward Jerusalem with a singular purpose, knowing what his end will be.  Just last week I heard someone say, “Jesus didn’t have to go to Jerusalem.  He could have hidden himself away and been an itinerant preacher in Galilee.  He knew what he was doing—he went to Jerusalem knowing he would upset the Romans and probably be killed.”  The transfiguration is the mountaintop experience that prepares Jesus to fulfill his messianic mission.

When it comes to your own faith journey, what is your mountaintop experience, and who joined you in that moment?  What are the experiences of your life you can point to as a time when you felt closest to God, or even a time when you felt you were truly engaged in the work of God?  What did that mountaintop moment help you focus on or point you toward, the way the transfiguration pointed Jesus toward the fate that awaited him in Jerusalem?  We all have mountaintop experiences of faith, times when we are in a thin place where it seems as though we can almost reach out and hold the hand of God, or feel the light of God’s radiance shining on our faces.  I will never forget being in France with the Royal Blues singing group when I was sixteen.  The first day of our trip, tired and groggy from international travel, we stopped in Sainte Chapelle in Paris.  It was just a stop where we could be tourists, not an official concert stop, but Doree Jarboe, our choir director, suggested we “try out the room.”  We sang four pieces in the sanctuary of Sainte Chapelle, all sacred so as to be appropriate for the space.  In one piece, by Rachmaninoff, there was a moment so glorious my whole body shivered and I was sure, in that moment, that God was there listening.  It was a mountaintop experience, one I have held onto and cherished for sixteen years now.

But the other side of mountaintop experiences is that they can’t last forever.  In Peter’s enthusiasm and joy at seeing Jesus transfigured in light and speaking with Moses and Elijah, he has the natural human urge to want to hold onto the moment forever: “Master, it is good for us to be here.  Let us put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.”  The scripture then says, tellingly, “He did not know what he was saying.”  In his excitement, Peter forgot something I think we all know, which is that mountaintop experiences can’t and don’t last forever, and faith is not made up of mountaintop experiences alone.  The year-long Courage to Lead retreat series I just started this past week makes it clear that it is interested in building faith beyond mere blazes of glory.  In the promotional material for the series, I read this line: “The Courage to Lead program goes well beyond a one time, ‘mountaintop’ experience.”  There is a recognition in those words that faith isn’t just about mountaintop experiences—true faith deals with the everyday moments too, the things that have to get done and the busyness of real life.

The artist Raphael painted a well-known depiction of the transfiguration.  At the top of the canvas is just what you would expect to see: Jesus bathed in glory and light, with Moses and Elijah on either side, and the disciples cowering in amazement just below.  But below that, the bottom half of the canvas is chaotic.  Depicted there is the story that comes just after the transfiguration in the gospel of Luke.  Jesus comes down the mountain to find a boy seized by a demon, a demon that the disciples who weren’t present at the transfiguration have been unable to cast out.  So in Raphael’s painting, even as Jesus is being transfigured in a blaze of glory a child suffers and the disciples flounder.  Raphael’s painting is a reminder—though Jesus’ mission has been set, his place in Israel’s history defined and affirmed, all in the context of a powerful mountaintop experience—though all of that happened, verse thirty-seven immediately after the transfiguration story necessarily states that Jesus came down the mountain the next day.  The mountaintop is an amazing place to be—sometimes we want to build shelters and remain there forever—but friends, the real work of faith and of the church is done once we come down the mountaintop and face the day-to-day realities of session meetings, setting up for communion, greeting newcomers, praying for friends, remembering those whom we have lost, and so much more.  God bless the mountaintop, and God bless us when we, like Jesus, revel in mountaintop experiences of faith.  But also, God bless our faith when we are not on the mountaintop, God bless us when we, like Jesus, come down the mountain to do the work we have been called to do.  God bless us in a blaze of glory, God bless us in each and every ordinary moment.  Amen.