Jesus takes with him the “inner three” of his disciples, Peter, James and John. And while they’re on the mountain, these three see Jesus transformed: his face shining, and his clothes a dazzling white. And they see Moses and Elijah suddenly there with him - two great heroes of the Jewish faith, both of which were believed not to have died, but to have been taken bodily into heaven.
People seem always to have ascended mountains to find spiritual refreshment and enlightenment. It’s one of the stock images of the cartoonist, the sage on the mountain top, along with the desert island. On a mountain the air is clearer, and you’re away from it all, lifted above the press and hubbub or ordinary human life. You can see an awful long way. And, as someone once said to me about the holy island of Iona, “the sky seems thinner, and you feel closer to heaven.”
Jesus regularly went to quiet places to pray, and often that meant climbing a hill, usually on his own, but not this time. For Peter and the others, what happens there is not untypical of the kind of spiritual “mountaintop experiences” people seem to have: a sense of something changed and transformed, made brighter and clearer, challenging even, that leaves you with the question, “What does this all mean? What’s it saying to me?” A momentary experience - time may seem to have stopped while it happens, but really it’s hardly more than the blink of an eye.
Peter wanted to know more, and to hang on to the moment, at least for a short while. So he talked some nonsense about building three tents; if they couldn’t stay there forever, he at least wanted to hold on to the moment long enough to grasp what was going on, to try to understand. But mountaintop experiences are just glimpses, nothing more; and just then, maybe they needed the experience itself more than to understand it.
More about that in a moment. But it occurs to me that one of the decisive Easter events Matthew writes about also takes place on a mountaintop in Galilee. Right at the end of his Gospel, Matthew tells how Jesus met with his disciples on a mountain, and from there he sent them out into all the world, to make disciples of every nation. Was it the same mountain, I wonder? And is that when Peter really understood what the Transfiguration had been about?
We use the phrase “Mountaintop Experience” to describe the moments when we feel spiritually lifted or enlightened, or when the penny drops in some new or special way. These don’t always happen on mountaintops, but maybe it always feels a bit like being somewhere high up, somewhere where you see further and more clearly.
A survey carried out a few years ago across the UK showed that many more people were prepared to admit to having had something that could be described as a religious or mountaintop experience than were prepared to admit to a religious faith. Each such event may be rare and special itself, but they seem to be part of what it is to be human. Maybe they’re something we need; so how was the Transfiguration important to Peter and James and John?
I think it had an immediate importance as an experience of God’s glory, something to lift their spirits, and it would also have a later importance, as they looked back and reflected, and began gradually to understand it. They needed the experience there and then, and they’d need the understanding further along the road.
If we read on from where our Gospel ended this morning, we’ll see that Jesus and his disciples came down from the mountain straight into a very testing experience of human need, and the battle between good and evil: a frantic father and the demonic possession of his young son. And soon after that Jesus made the decision to move on from the familiar home communities of Galilee, into Judaea, and on towards Jerusalem.
And what they’d experienced on the mountain must have given Peter and the others a new strength and resolve, as they returned to the hard grind of discipleship. And that’s something we need as well. Our faith is constantly challenged, and as Christians we can get stretched and confused and worn out. Jesus offered those he first called no less than a share in the cross, and a life on the open road, and even to be hated by those who hated him first. So it’s not going to be easy, especially when he instructs us to love our enemies, to do good to those who persecute us, and to pray for those who mean us harm. For us as for Peter and James and John, the brief glimpses we get of God’s glory are given us to encourage us and to cheer us and to keep us on the road. We should treasure them as gifts, moments when we glimpse the glory that’s always there, but mostly is hidden from us.
In the Greek language of the New Testament there are two words for time, and two concepts of time. Chronos is everyday time, the stuff that’s measured in our calendars and by our clocks and watches; the time that gets used up, the time that can’t wait, the time that we know we have only so much of, the sand falling through the glass. But there’s also kairos, and that’s time of a different sort, not measured, not ticking away. Chronos is our time, kairos is God’s. Kairos is opportune time, the right or critical moment; the still point that is a breaking-in of eternity into the chronological drudge of our daily lives.
For Jesus, and certainly for his disciples on that day, the mountaintop was a place of kairos; a place where time as measured down below just for a brief interval stood still. And Jesus was momentarily revealed to them for what he always is. The experience of that moment of kairos helped nerve them for the road ahead with its challenges and dangers. Later they’d begin to understand the real meaning of what they’d seen that day - but only after they’d travelled through the testing and confusing times of Thursday in the Garden of Gethsemane, and Friday at Calvary, and the empty tomb on Easter morning.
Then, and in the light of Pentecost, they’d understand and take out into the world the good news that what had seemed to them at the time like a disaster, like everything going wrong, darkness victorious over light, had been in truth just what God had always planned, his loving purpose unfolding, and evil finally and decisively beaten back. By then they’d met again with their risen Lord, perhaps on that same mountain top.
Meanwhile our journey through the Christian year continues into Lent. Jesus set his face towards Jerusalem, and so must we. And as we travel with our Lord toward the cross, hold on to whatever glimpses of the divine come your way, and never dismiss the kairos moments, the mountaintop experiences. They’re important and necessary to our journey of faith, but that faith then has to be taken back down the mountain and into the everyday world. Like Peter and the others, we discover that transfiguration is given us not as an alternative to the messy and scruffy realities of life, but to help us to get back into the scruffiness and keep up the work there, for here too is where we shall find our God.
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