A sermon for Transfiguration Sunday
Primary Text: Matthew 17:1-9
The Olympics are just winding up, and most of those world class competitors are going home disappointed. It takes an amazing amount of drive to reach that level. They all want to win, but the inescapable math of moment means most of them won’t. Lots of competitors, only three medals, only one gold.
Did you know that bronze winners are measurably happier than silver? You can see it in their faces. The bronze winners are thinking “Whoo hoo! I got a medal!” The silvers are thinking, “Could’ve had a gold.” Mathematically, it makes no sense, but in our heads third feels better than second. How we think about it changes how we experience it.
Today we celebrate mountaintop experiences through the lens of the Transfiguration. If you grew up in church, you’ve heard this story before. How Jesus took his closest friends up a mountain, and in an instant their whole perspective changed. We tell it every year because it happens to all of us. Not the shining person on a mountaintop thing, the perspective shift.
Maybe it was the day you found out you were pregnant. Maybe it was “I do.” Maybe it was graduation, or your first kiss, or the day you retired. Maybe it was the first day you realized that life has hard limits, not just in general, but for you. Thankfully, others have walked this path before us. We don’t have to walk away from the great moments of our life feeling like losers.
The first thing to know about mountaintop experiences is we are not in control. Moses was called up the mountain by God. Jesus invited the disciples to join him. The call always comes first. Moses could have climbed the mountain any day he wanted, the disciples climbed plenty of mountains in their lives. It only became a moment worthy of scripture because God invited them. First we listen. Then we move.
Christianity recognizes God as a Trinity, which means God is not just the unknowable other, God is not just an amazing teacher, but God is present, guiding our hearts and opening our minds, resonating in the stillness of prayer. Because we believe this, we search for the echoes of that voice in the distilled wisdom of tradition, in the ancient words of scripture, and in honest fellowship with our brothers and sisters. Not to abdicate our individual agency, but to exercise wisdom worthy of the responsibility.
You have been invited to the mountaintop because God sees something in you that you don’t yet see yourself. And even though you don’t always understand, and sometimes you make mistakes, none of that matters. God called you. God knows you. God loves you. When we accept that, accept that we’re not in charge and that’s OK, it frees us to respond joyfully.
Second thing to learn about mountaintop experiences. The rest of the world will not understand. Did you see that American figure skater fall? His name is Jeremy Abbott. He took a brutal fall. Then he got up, skated through pain, and scored a personal best. He didn’t medal, but he walked off with his head held high. And when some folks online started making fun of him, saying that he choked, he had this to say:
“They’ve never had to do what I had to do. Nobody has to stand center ice before a million people and put an entire career on the line for eight minutes of their life when they’ve been doing it for 20-some years. And if you don’t think that that’s hard, you’re a damn idiot.”
“So some people can handle it better than others, but everyone has that mental struggle, everyone goes through the same doubts. I am not alone. They just come at different times and different moments. Some people have their moment at the Olympics, and some have theirs at the national championships.”
“I’m proud to be standing here. I’m a four-time national champion and a two-time Olympian, and no one can take that away from me. So whatever people have to say about me, that’s their own problem because I’m freaking proud of what I’ve done and I’m not going to apologize for any of it.”
When you answer the call, to become what you believe God is calling to you to be, the people around you will not get it. They just won’t. The other disciples didn’t understand. And the people Moses left behind? “Oh look, he’s off to talk to God, face to face. He’s been gone a long time though. I know. How about we make a giant golden idol and throw a party!?” Because that always works out well. He’s up on the mountain talking to God. Did you think he wouldn’t notice?
Expect that people won’t get it. They weren’t there. They didn’t see what you saw. They didn’t hear what you heard. That experience changed you, and you can spend the rest of your life pretending like you’re still who you used to be, limiting yourself to everyone else’s expectations, or you can live your life. At the end of days, only one person will have to answer for the life you built and the world you made. [whisper] It’s not them!
The third thing to know about mountaintop experiences is that you cannot live there. Peter’s reaction is so amazingly textbook. “Lord, let’s build three shelters. One for you. One for Moses. One for Elijah.” Let’s capture this moment and keep it… or share it! Imagine if we could bring everyone else up here. It would change everything! The whole world could come and consult Jesus, Moses, and Elijah for advice. Wouldn’t that be great?
It would be great, except that dream is infinitely too small. The Transfiguration was never about giving advice to a tiny corner of the world. It was about giving Jesus and the disciples what they would need to persevere, through a work so difficult and so important that we’re still talking about it 2000 years later. Their work didn’t actually start until they came down off the mountain. That’s where the water flows. That’s where the cities rise. That’s where life is lived.
If you stay on the mountain, you never change anything! A wedding is not a marriage. A funeral is not grief. Graduation is not a career, regret is not reform, and baptism is not faith. Life starts after you come down from the mountain top, and step into the dirt.
But even though you can’t stay there, you can bring something with you. Moses brought the Law, and it changed his people. The disciples came back with no physical thing they could hold, but with an idea. It was the slowly dawning realization of what would become a fundamental article of the Christianity faith. The core claim of Christianity, consistent for 2000 years, is nothing more or less than this: when you look at Jesus, you see God as God truly is.
It’s an idea that was born on a mountaintop, but it didn’t stay there. It means there’s no difference between the Son of Man walking in the dirt and the Son of God shining on that mountain. It means the light isn’t shining down from above, it’s standing right here next to us in the dirt, and it’s shining out into the night.
We do not have the privilege of a quiet, personal religion, because we do not follow a quiet, personal God. We follow a superstar who shines at us from a mountaintop two thousand years in the past. Then the light went out, he came down from the mountaintop and shone all the brighter. Friend of sinners, breaker of chains, and healer of harms. We are his hands and his feet and this world, and our playing small helps no one.
Answer the call. Expect opposition. Accept how you’ve changed, and then take it out into the world. Even when you fall, you can hold your head high, because your life is not defined by one day, or one choice. Life happens in the valley.
Sermon on Matthew 17 – Mountains and Valleys
