Delivered August 14, 2011
Religion is filled with examples of religious experience. Sometimes I think that is at the heart of religion. Over a hundred years ago Harvard psychologist and philosopher William James wrote a famous book entitled, “The Varieties of Religious Experience,” and people have been writing about them ever since. Evangelical Christianity is grounded in a personal experience of Christ. Pentecostal Christianity is based on an individual’s experience of the Holy Spirit. The Bible is filled with examples of religious experiences. Moses’ experience of the burning bush and his subsequent encounters with God on Mount Sinai are the heart of the Old Testament religion. In the NT, the whole book of Revelation is a series of visions that the apostle John had on the prison island of Patmos. Our text for this morning is another vision that John, his brother James and Peter had on a mountain. It is called the Transfiguration. It was a powerful spiritual experience for the apostles, which they did not tell anyone about until after Easter. The account of it is found in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. I will be drawing upon al three accounts but using Luke as my main source.
I. First, it happened on a Mountain. If you take a trip to Israel today and ask to go to the Mount of Transfiguration where this story happened, the tour guides will bring you up Mount Tabor, not far from Nazareth, upon which the Franciscans have built the Church of the Transfiguration. You ascent it by a series of switchbacks, a zigzag road that ascends the mountain steeply. Jude and I ascended that mountain in a taxi driven by a crazy man. Going up the mountain was fine, but coming down was a harrowing experience! I guess he had traveled this mountain so many times that he felt comfortable with the hairpin turns, but we did not. He descended much too fast and at every turn he would shout our “Hallelujah!” as we thought we would drive off the road. It scared the willies out of us. You could say that we had our own type of religious experience on that mountain – praying that we would survive.
Seriously, it probably was not Mount Tabor upon which the Transfiguration occurred. The story happens shortly after Peter’s confession at Caesarea Philippi and the accounts say it was a high mountain, something that Mount Tabor is not. It is less than 2000 feet above sea level. Our story likely took place on Mount Hermon, which is 9000 foot mountain that serves as the boundary between Lebanon and Israel. For you Over-the-Hill hikers, Mount Tabor is more like Mount Israel and Mount Hermon is 3000 feet higher than Mount Washington. Its summit is covered in snow six months of the year. So picture a mountain considerably higher than Mount Washington as you hear this story of the transfiguration.
The story says that Jesus “took Peter, John, and James and went up on the mountain to pray.” This was designed as a time when Jesus could take his three closest companions on a spiritual retreat to spend time alone with them in prayer. It emphasizes this aloneness. Mark’s gospel says, “Jesus took Peter, James, and John, and led them up on a high mountain apart by themselves.” Jesus led the way up the trail followed by the three other men. Mountains have always been considered holy places in every culture. All you have to do is go up a mountain and see the view and you know why. It is a spiritual experience in itself.
II. On top of this mountain they have a vision while they were praying. I call it a vision because Jesus calls it a vision in Matthew’s account. Jesus says afterwards, “Tell the vision to no one until the Son of Man is risen from the dead.” This was a spiritual vision, a religious experience. So these are not ghosts that the apostles are seeing on the mountain. This is a vision. Luke tells us that the disciples were asleep for the first part and only woke up later. Verse 32 says, “But Peter and those with him were heavy with sleep; and when they were fully awake, they saw His glory and the two men who stood with Him.” So they start off sleeping while Jesus is praying on the mountain (reminiscent of the Garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives) and as they awoke from sleep they notice that Jesus is talking with some other people. And when they fully woke up “they saw His glory and the two men who stood with Him.”
What was the vision of? It had two elements: One was the transformation of Jesus into a figure of light. “As He prayed, [it happened during prayer] the appearance of His face was altered, and His robe became white and glistening.” Matthew’s gospel says, “and He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the light.” Mark adds, “His clothes became shining, exceedingly white, like snow, [which likely was all around them for comparison] such as no launderer on earth can whiten them.” This is a vision of dazzling light. What does it mean? Light is divine. The apostle John says that “God is light and in him is no darkness at all.” Whenever people report Near Death experiences of heaven they report bright light. This is a visual depiction of Jesus as the Light of the World, as he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” This part of the vision is obvious.
The meaning of the other element of the vision is not so obvious. Two other figures, identified as Moses and Elijah, appeared and talked with Jesus. Moses is the most important character in the Hebrew scriptures. He was the one who received the Torah – the Law - the first five books of the OT considered by Jews to be the holiest and most important part of the Bible. Elijah was an OT prophet whose distinction was that he taken up into heaven in a fiery chariot. Symbolically these two men represent the OT revelation. They represent the Law and the Prophets, which were the two divisions of Scripture in Jesus’ day. The third section of the OT, which is called the Writings, were not canonized until later. So we could say that Moses and Elijah represent the revelation of God in Scripture.
So here is Jesus in all his divine glory on a mountaintop conversing with two OT saints who represent the two divisions of Holy Scripture. What were they talking about? Luke tells us the topic of their conversation, “And behold, two men talked with Him, who were Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of His decease which He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.” This is referring to the fact that Christ’s death is prophesied in scripture. I think this vision was for Jesus’ sake as much as the apostle’s sake. Jesus had his doubts and fears, as we know from his own words in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus was a real man who had real struggles with his mission of earth – especially his suffering and death. I think this was a pep talk. Jesus needed this. In the Garden of Gethsemane it says that angels came and strengthened him. Here on the mountain, Moses and Elijah came to strengthen him.
III. But the vision of the Transfiguration was also for Jesus’ disciples, or Jesus never would have brought them along with him to see this. And this is where the vision is for us as well. In the following verses Peter gets involved. I love the figure of Peter. He is such a klutz. He sticks his foot in his mouth all the time. I am glad he did because it gives us some of the greatest scenes in the Bible. Verse 33 says, “Then it happened, as they were parting from Him, that Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here; and let us make three tabernacles: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah”—not knowing what he said.”
Peter says this as Moses and Elijah were about to depart. Peter was hoping to delay their departure. Peter wants to keep this fantastic spiritual experience going. He does not want it to end. That is the way it is with all mountaintop experiences – all spiritual experiences. When you are having an exhilarating experience of any type, you don’t want it to end. I really think it is the motivation behind extreme sports, which are sports with a high level of danger – like rock climbing, base jumping or swimming with sharks. People risk their lives in death-defying acts for the experience of being on the edge between life and death. They say that this is when they feel most alive.
The spiritual life is like this, or at least it can be. Some people think religion is boring; I think just the opposite. I think the nonreligious life is boring. The religious life is about God, and how can God be boring? The spiritual life is an extreme adventure. The Bible says that no one can see God and live, and yet for millennia people have sought to see God. God is dangerous. Jacob wrestles with God. Moses comes face to face with God on the Mountain and in the Tent of Meeting. Job argues with God until God shows up, and Job becomes speechless in his presence. This is what the spiritual life is about. It is not just about singing hymns and hearing a sermon on Sunday morning. It is not even about studying your Bible and having meaningful prayer times. It is about meeting God, something too dangerous to comprehend, yet something we are drawn to like moths to a flame. That is why I started off this sermon referencing William James’ “The Variety of Religious Experience.” He subtitled his book “A Study in Human Nature.” It is our human nature to seek God. That is why Moses says, “you will seek the LORD your God, and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul.”
I hope you are here because you seek God or you know God and you seek to know God more. For me the spiritual life is about knowing God. You can phrase it different ways – awareness of God, relationship with God, encounter with God, experience of God, communion with God - use whatever terms you want. It is to Peter’s credit that he is having this spiritual encounter and does not want it to end. But his solution is not a good one. His solution is to build three tabernacles – one of Moses, one for Elijah and one for Jesus. Then they can all camp out together on top of the mountain.
I see this as the impetus toward religion. Religion is the human attempt to corral God. To confine him to a certain time and place. To put God in a building or a ideology or a theology or a worldview or even in a religious experience – to cage God in a religion and then use rituals to bring him out of his cage at the proper time like a trained animal at a circus. Religion is an attempt to tame God – to control God. In C. S. Lewis children’s book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe there is a scene where the faun named Mr. Tumnus is describing Aslan (the lion who represents Christ.) Tumnus says that Aslan is a lion, but he adds that “he is not a tame lion.” Our God is not a tame God. Much of Mainline Protestantism and Evangelical Christianity try to tame God to appear on cue on Sunday morning when the right music is played and the right prayers are said. That is why I think that so much of Christianity – Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Pentecostal or Evangelical - are just playing religion. Most of churches would not know what to do if the Holy Spirit actually showed up in our midst on a Sunday morning!
Peter was having a genuine spiritual encounter and it was ending. He did not want it to end. He wanted to plant the “Church of the Three Tabernacles” on that mountain. Turn it into a mountaintop shrine where Moses, Elijah and Jesus could live and people could come to visit them. But you can’t do that. Spiritual experiences come and go. Anything that begins must end; it is the nature of things. But Christ remains.
IV. Christ remains. That is the point of the vision. The story says, “While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were fearful as they entered the cloud. 35 And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is My beloved Son. Hear Him!” 36 When the voice had ceased, Jesus was found alone. “
A cloud descends. You know what it is like to be in a dense cloud on a mountain. Visibility is zero; you can’t see anything at all. Here in the story the cloud is symbolic as well as physical. If you know the Bible, then you know that God often appears in a cloud on the mountain. It is the opposite of vision; this is blindness. This is God telling Peter, “You are blind to what I am trying to communicate.” This was pretty typical for Peter. Jesus told him things like this all the time. Peter didn’t get it, yet again. Then a voice bellowed from the cloud, “ This is my beloved Son. Hear Him!” And when the fog lifted it, there was only Jesus. The others were gone and there was just Jesus present with them.
This story is communicating that Christ is the living presence of God. Christ is what it is all about. It is not about shining clothing and celestial figures. It is not about mountaintop tabernacles. It is not about the Law and the Prophets, except insofar as they point to Christ. It is not about visions or spiritual experiences. It is about the abiding presence of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. This is the Christian life, the spiritual life – the presence of Christ. Hear him!
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