Sunday of the Transfiguration

August 6, 2006

How many of you have ever said the wrong thing? I was reading the Gospel one Sunday in church and as I began to read I had the sense that something was not right. This was verified by the fact that everyone in the congregation began to turn over their leaflets to see if the reading that I was reading was hidden on the other side. I glanced at the top of the lesson I was reading and realized that I was reading the wrong Sunday’s lesson. So I very calmly finished the section I was reading and, as if I had planned it this way, I casually turned to the proper reading and just kept reading as if that was the way it was supposed to be. That turned out to be one of the longest Gospel readings of the year.

I had a priest friend of mine who told me of a time when he did a funeral for a family he did not know. It was not until after the service that he was informed that he had been referring to the deceased by the wrong name all through the service.

One minister, in his desire to get the congregation to reflect on their commitment and dedication said to them, “Let us bow our heads in prayer, while the organ plays silently.” The organist sat there with his fingers poised over the keyboard wondering what to do. Most of us have said the wrong thing at the wrong time before.

In our Gospel lesson today, Peter says something wrong, well meaning, but wrong. The story talks about the Transfiguration of our Lord Jesus. The word transfigured means to change in appearance. We read that Jesus’ face was altered and his clothes became dazzling white. This change in appearance was reminiscent of our first lesson in which the face of Moses began to glow after he had been in the presence of God.

Jesus had just finished a time of ministry, a time of giving of himself to others at the feeding of the five thousand. Now he goes away for a time of refreshment and renewal. Jesus did this quite often. Jesus ministers and this empties Him spiritually. He withdraws to pray. This time alone with His Father replenishes Him and in this strength he starts ministering again.

This is an important balance! You and I tend either towards activities that are not sufficiently empowered by God’s grace or else becoming so inwardly focused that we end up not ministering what we have to others.

We can always be receiving spiritual things at Bible studies, church, personal Bible reading and prayer and never giving to others what we are taking in. We become like a spiritual Dead Seas that has water flowing into it, but no outlet to keep the water flowing through it. We can become spiritually stale.

The problem with being so busy doing things is that we don’t take time to fill ourselves up again spiritually. In all of our busyness not very much meaningful actually happens. Billy Graham noted one time that if he had to do his ministry all over again, he’d spend much more time in prayer and much less in ministry, and in so doing he would have borne more fruit for the Kingdom.

In our Gospel lesson, Jesus takes time away from the rigors of ministry to be with his Father on the mountain. Luke tells us that Peter, James and John are invited to go up on the mountain, away from the crowds, with Jesus. To the ancient Hebrew minds there was something mystical about mountain tops. Such places were associated with God’s dwelling place.

Right before Jesus took them up He told them of the concept of a suffering Messiah, a concept foreign to their understanding of the Messiah as a conquering hero.

Peter, in a sudden burst of inspiration, had hailed Jesus as God’s Messiah, the Christ only to discover to his horror that Jesus’ notion of what Messiah meant ran counter to everything Peter had always believed. Rather than involving immediate glory, it meant suffering rejection and death… in a word, the Cross.

In the midst of this confusion about who and what the Messiah was, Jesus invited Peter, and James, and John to go up on a mountain.

Notice they didn’t invite themselves. Jesus invites us to experience our own mountain top experience. He is the one that makes it happen. We don’t. We simply make ourselves available for Him to take us up on the mountain.

As Jesus was transfigured two Old Testament figures miraculously appeared on the mountain, Moses and Elijah. This transfiguration of Jesus was a further demonstration of his divine nature. Just as Moses glowed after being in the presence of God, Jesus showed that he was God by causing himself to glow or be transfigured on this mountain.

When Moses and Elijah appeared to them with Jesus, they would later come to understand the significance of the appearance of these two. Moses represented the law giver. Elijah represented the prophets. They were there to testify that all that they represented, the law and the prophets had their final culmination in Jesus.

Then a voice from comes forth, from a cloud as Mark’s gospel describes it. The cloud has always been significant to the Jewish people as the bearer of the presence of God. The cloud or “Shekinah” is a symbol of the divine presence.

It was in the cloud that Moses saw God. A cloud led God’s people through the wilderness. It was a cloud which filled the temple when it was dedicated after Solomon built it. This helps us to understand the meaning of the “Ascension” when Jesus was received up into a cloud. He was not the first astronaut, but rather as taken into the presence of God.

It is here that Peter says the wrong thing. He said, “Let us make three booths, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” Peter wanted to memorialize an experience. He wanted to worship the experience. He wanted to try to hold on to the experience

Now, let’s translate this to our own day. I believe that God wants all of us to have mountain top experiences with Him. Those times where we feel like we are in the very presence of God. Time when we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God is real, that His love is flowing like waves over us, and that we can relate to him as we would a good friend.

While these mountaintop experiences may be rare I believe there are a number of purposes for us having such an experience. Before I talk about those purposes, I need to make something perfectly clear. The purpose of us having an experience with God like this is not that we would stay up on the mountain, not that we would worship the location of our experience, not that we would sustain that emotional high we might experience, that feeling that we are in the presence of God. It is not meant to be an experience that we can recreate by going back to the place of our experience.

It is rather a time that God uses to etch into our beings the reality of His existence, and His great love for us so that when we come down of the mountain as it were, and we start encountering difficult times which might move us to question the reality of God or His care for us, we can look back on that mountaintop experience and say, “I remember when Jesus was there with me and that He poured out His love on me. He showed me a reality that transcends this temporal life.”

We can look back upon the glorious times we have had with Jesus as a way to remind us that Jesus said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” It reminds us that He is not just there on that mountaintop, but he comes down to the valley below with us. I believe that it is His desire for us to live the bulk of our lives not on the mountaintop, nor in the deep valleys, but rather on level ground. The Old Testament prophet Isaiah said the Messiah would come and figuratively bring down the mountains and raise up the valleys and cause the rough places to be smooth.

This, I believe, reminds us that God’s desire is that we live our lives on a more even keel. The mountaintop experiences won’t be so emotional that we simply live for those experiences or that the valleys of our lives won’t be so low that we lose sight of God and His love. I don’t mean that we won’t have highs and lows, but they won’t be as high or low because Jesus will be there in the midst of our lives to give us perspective on these times in our lives.

Have you had a mountaintop experience with Jesus? Maybe you feel like your life has been lived down in a deep valley and you don’t know how to get out. Maybe you have lost a loved one, or you have lost a friend and you find yourself in the pit of despair.

Just as we remember the good times we had with those we have loved and lost, and that remembrance can help us through our times of grief. So, too, with Jesus we might realize that He is still with us and is there to help us up out of the deep valleys of our lives. In fact, he may on rare occasions take us with Him up on the spiritual mountaintop.

How do you have a mountaintop experience if you have never had one?

First, we should not seek the experience but rather seek the giver of the experience, Jesus. Pray that Jesus would pour out his love into your heart through the Holy Spirit. If you have never invited Jesus to come into your heart and life, that would be the place to start.

Billy Graham is in his upper 80s with Parkinson’s disease. In January 2000, leaders in Charlotte, NC, invited their favorite son, Billy Graham, to a luncheon in his honor.

Billy initially hesitated to accept the invitation because he struggles with Parkinson’s disease. But the Charlotte leaders said, “We don’t expect a major address. Just come and let us honor you.” So he agreed.

After wonderful things were said about him, Dr. Graham stepped to podium, looked at the crowd, and said, “I’m reminded today of Albert Einstein, the great physicist who this month has been honored by Time magazine as the Man of the Century. Einstein was once traveling from Princeton on a train when the conductor came down the aisle, punching the tickets of every passenger. When he came to Einstein, Einstein reached in his vest pocket. He couldn’t find his ticket, so he reached in his trouser pockets. It wasn’t there, so he looked in his briefcase but couldn’t find it. Then he looked in the seat beside him. He still couldn’t find it.

The conductor said, “Dr. Einstein, I know who you are. We all know who you are. I’m sure you bought a ticket. Don’t worry about it.”

Einstein nodded appreciatively. The conductor continued down the aisle punching tickets. As he was ready to move to the next car, he turned around and saw the great physicist down on his hands and knees looking under his seat for his ticket.

The conductor rushed back and said, “Dr. Einstein, don’t worry. I know who you are. No problem. You don’t need a ticket. I’m sure you bought one.”

Einstein looked at him and said, Young man, I too, know who I am. What I don’t know is where I am going.”

Having said that, Billy Graham continued, “See the suit I’m wearing? It’s a brand new suit. My wife, my children, and my grandchildren are telling me I’ve gotten a little slovenly in my old age. I sued to be a bit more fastidious. So I went out and bought a new suit for this luncheon and one more occasion.

You know what that occasion is? This is the suit in which I’ll be buried. But when you hear I’m dead, I don’t want you to immediately remember the suit I’m wearing. I want you to remember this: I not only know who I am…I also know where I’m going.”

The greatest mountaintop experience happens when you first give your life to Jesus and you experience his forgiveness, his love, and his assurance that you are going to heaven; that you know where you are going.

The second way to experience a mountaintop experience with Jesus is to ask Him to fill you with His Holy Spirit. This might happen to you when you are on a retreat. Some have experienced it on the ALPHA Course’s Weekend Away at Camp Crucis. Others, like me, had that mountaintop experience of being filled with the Holy Spirit when I was all alone and began to think about and concentrate on Jesus and His love.

When you come down from that wonderful mountaintop experience your life will be forever changed for the better, just as were the lives of Peter, James, and John. When you come down from that mountaintop you will be much more in tune with Jesus and able to hear that still small voice of God inside you.

I’d like us to enter into the presence of God by singing a song found in your bulletins.