A Mountaintop Experience

Matthew 17:1-9

Spiritual experiences are common in religion. In fact one of the earliest books on the scientific study of religion was “The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature” written over a hundred years ago by Harvard University psychologist and philosopher William James. People in all religions have religious experiences. In fact a lot of times the religion is founded on such an experience. Famous examples are the Buddha’s enlightenment experience and Muhammad’s experience of having the Quran revealed to him. Our Bible is filled with religious experiences in both the OT and NT.

The history of Christianity is also filled with spiritual experiences, from the Pentecostal experience of speaking in tongues, to the mystics’ experience of union with God, to the evangelical experience of being born again. Some people seem to be experience junkies, always looking for the newest fad, the next powerful spiritual encounter. There was an item in the news recently about a snake handing Christian preacher in Kentucky named Jamie Coots, who is the star of the reality TV show “Snake Salvation" on the National Geographic channel. He died recently of a snake bite received during a worship service. Snake handling churches base their practice on a verse in the gospels, but I think the real allure is the thrill of risking your life. It is like the thrill people get from extreme sports. We might call Snake Handling extreme religion. Part of the allure of religion is the experience.

Most of us have had some type of spiritual experience. Though I suspect not the snake handling, but perhaps one of the other Christian experienced I just mentioned. It may be more subtle sense of the presence or guidance of God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit in our lives. It might be an intuition of the reality of God. Or perhaps it is quite dramatic, perhaps even a Near Death Experience or an experience of miraculous healing. Sometimes powerful experiences of God are called mountaintop experiences. Psychologist Abraham Maslow calls them peak experiences.  Skeptics would reduce spiritual experiences to its psychological components. But I see such experiences as possibly – but not always - a real connection to the spiritual dimension of life. Experiences are not necessary to the Christian faith. Some people’s belief in God is much more rational. We can be Christians without having a dramatic religious experience. But we should not dismiss spiritual experiences either.

1. Our gospel lesson for today is about a dramatic spiritual experience had by Jesus and three of his disciples. It was literally mountaintop experience because it took place on the top of a real mountain. Our gospel lesson says that Peter, James and John accompanied Jesus on a hike up a high mountain one day. The text does not identify the name of the mountain, but if you visit the Holy Land today, the tour guides will take you up Mount Tabor, which tradition says is the mountain. There is a nice Franciscan chapel on top commemorating the event. But I don’t think it happened there, because that mountain is not very high. It is more like a round hill rising from the plain. I think the Mount of Transfiguration is Mount Hermon, because in the gospel it is mentioned as being close to Caesarea Philippi, which is situated at the base of Mount Hermon. That is a high mountain.

2. There is something about a mountain view which is by itself a spiritual experience for me. I just love the view from a mountaintop. There is something about the vast openness of a mountain vista that connects me to the Creator. But the experience that the three disciples had with Jesus on the mountaintop was not just a nature experience. Our passage says in verses 1-2, “Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, led them up on a high mountain by themselves; and He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the light.” This was an experience of Jesus Christ. And here Jesus is more than a Galilean carpenter. This was a glimpse into the divine nature of this man that we know as Jesus of Nazareth. This points us to the central truth of Christianity. We do not just have a generic nature spirituality. Our faith is focused on Christ. We say that something unique in the history of the world happened in Jesus Christ. We say that God became flesh in a unique way in Jesus. Jesus Christ is a window to God. Jesus himself said, “When you have seen me you have seen the Father.”

On that mountaintop Jesus’ three closest friends got glimpse of God in the person of Jesus Christ. The light of God and the glory of God shone from the physical form of Jesus. What does this mean for us today? I think it directs our attention toward Jesus, both theologically and experientially. Some people prefer what theologians call a low Christology, Jesus as simply a man – a Palestinian prophet and nothing more. Others have a high Christology where the humanness of Jesus tends to get lost in his Divinity. What we have here in his passage is both the human and the divine. Jesus was a real human being who in some way communicated the presence of God in his very person. That was the power of Christ. When people were in his presence, they experienced God. That is still true today. Even though Jesus is not physically present with us in a body, we still experience God through Jesus 2000 year after he physically left this earth. When we read the stories of Jesus in Scripture, we sense his presence through the written word. When we hear his teachings we sense his presence.  When we worship Christ, we sense the presence of God.

We can experientially know the reality of God through Jesus Christ – both the historical Jesus that we can glimpse in the gospels and more directly the Spirit of Jesus. This is what makes me a Christian and not just a theist. I don’t just believe in God; I believe in Christ. It is great to believe in God, but there is more. There is the experience of God in Jesus Christ. Through Christian worship, like we are doing today, and through individual Christian devotion, we know God in Christ. We experience Jesus as the Son of God. We experience God in Jesus.

I experience God the Creator through his Creation. I experience the presence of God in Nature, in the mountains, lakes and desert, and in the stars. Lots of people experience, that even if they are not Christians. Even if they cannot bring themselves to identify that sense of awe and beauty and majesty as God, they are still experiencing God. I think even atheists experience God, though they would not call it God. I have that same sense of awe, and wonder, and majesty in Jesus Christ – in the gospels and in the Spirit of Christ. That is a mountain top experience, which is akin to what the disciples experienced.

3. Then something more happened to the disciples. Our gospel lesson says in verse 3-4 “And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with Him. Then Peter answered and said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if You wish, let us make here three tabernacles: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” I want to share something with you about Fern Tilton, an 89 year old member of our congregation who passed away on February 7. This is something that the family shared with me and gave me permission to share with you. When I got to Dartmouth Hitchcock hospital the morning that Fern died, she had just passed away. But her family was still there gathered around her bed in ICU. As we gathered around Fern there, we shared stories of Fern and also of Howard, her husband, who I knew from before. Then the family mentioned to me something I would call a spiritual experience that Fern had shortly before she died.

In the last time that she was conscious enough to communicate verbally, the family was gathered around the bed. Then she started saying, “Hi! Hi! Hi!” but she was not talking to her family around the bed. She was talking to people in heaven. She was talking to her mom and her Aunt Paulie. And she talked about Dad,” not her own dad but her kid’s dad - her husband Howard. She said, “You’re Dad!” She apparently was seeing those who had died before her. She was calling out their names and reaching out to them. They were as real and as close to her as the family members gathered around her bed. It was a wonderful confirmation of the reality of heaven and eternal life. You have probably also read or heard of other people who have reported that same type of experience. The veil between heaven and earth becomes thin enough that those people approaching death can see through it.

I think that was the experience that Jesus and the disciples had on that mountaintop. Elijah and Moses had already gone to heaven centuries before. But Jesus was so close to heaven at that moment, and the doors to heaven were open on that mountaintop, and Moses and Elijah came to the door to greet Jesus. Peter, James, and John were witnesses to that heavenly encounter. I read this story of the Transfiguration as confirmation of heaven, just like I interpret Fern’s experience as a confirmation of heaven for her family.

People have different ideas about what happens to us after death. No one knows for sure. Near Death Experiences, and even experiences like Fern had are often written off by people as the hallucinations of a dying brain. There is no way of proving that this is not the case. But I believe in heaven. I don’t know exactly what I will experience after my body dies. But I believe that the death f the body will not be the end of consciousness in some form. I think that the descriptions of heaven in scripture are attempts to describe it in human images and ideas that we are familiar with. I think it will be far greater than anything we know now or can even imagine. But I also believe that we can get glimpses of that spiritual reality now. That is what Jesus and the disciples received on that mountaintop – a glimpse of the Kingdom of Heaven while still on earth.

That glimpse of heaven was so wonderful that the disciples wanted to never end. Peter wanted to set up camp and stay there. He said, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if You wish, let us make here three tabernacles: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” He wanted to set up a shrine for each of them. You go to the Holy Land today there is a shrine or church on every mountaintop and holy place. There is a church on the spot where Jesus died and where Jesus rose, and where Jesus was born, and where Jesus ascended into heaven, and where Jesus wept in the Garden of Gethsemane, and where Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount and where Jesus multiplied the loaves and the fishes. There is a chapel or church or something on every spot associated with Jesus and the disciples. So even if Peter did not get to build the three tabernacles, his spiritual descendants certainly did.

It is our nature to want to keep ahold of those wonderful spiritual experiences in our lives. To memorialize those moments. Some people will look back and recount with nostalgia the wonderful spiritual experiences they have had. And that is alright to a certain extent. But I think this story is trying to push us beyond that type of mentality. Jesus did not let Peter build his tabernacles and stay there. In fact Jesus would not even let Peter and the other disciples even tell anyone about what happened on that mountaintop. It says in verse 9 “Now as they came down from the mountain, Jesus commanded them, saying, “Tell the vision to no one until the Son of Man is risen from the dead.”  That must have been very difficult for the disciples to keep their mouths shut about this great experience. Why did Jesus command them not to tell anyone? He probably had a number of reasons, but one is so that the focus would not be on the experience.

We can make religion all about experiences, but that is not what it is supposed to be about. That can be just another form of self-centeredness. It makes it all about us. I have known people who talk about their dramatic spiritual experiences, and it is all about them. The whole purpose of this little passage of scripture is to make it not about the disciples’ experience, but about Christ. It says in verses 5-8 “While he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them; and suddenly a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear Him!” And when the disciples heard it, they fell on their faces and were greatly afraid. But Jesus came and touched them and said, “Arise, and do not be afraid.” When they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only.”

The purpose of this story in the gospels is clearly to focus our attention on Christ. Religion and spirituality is not about experience.  It is about God, and specifically God in Christ. It is so easy for us to get wrapped up in ourselves and make everything about us. It is not about us. We are not the center of the universe. When we are children we think we are, and some adults still think they are. But we aren’t. The world will go on without us. Even our lives are not really about us. Our lives are about God – glorifying God, loving God, embodying God’s love and grace and forgiveness in our lives. Jesus’ life was not about himself. He constantly was saying that he said or did nothing but what the Father said or did. God was living Jesus’ life. God desires to live our lives. When we are able to be that transparent to God’s Spirit and Power, so that God shines through us, then that is a mountaintop experience.