Imagine that you are hiking up a mountain. (And if your hiking days are behind you, start by imagining that your body is strong, and hiking is still a thing that it can do.) Maybe you’re in the Cascades; maybe you have another mountain range in mind. It’s a warm day, not too hot—just right for a hike. There’s a bit of a breeze.
You hike and hike, up and up and up. Finally, after several hours, you get to the top, and this whole view opens out before you. You find a rock that’s sort of comfortable and sit there, taking it all in: the forest, the creeks flowing and bouncing and splashing down to join the river in the valley, the clouds floating by as they have done for millennia, the ridges fading off into the distance.
There are specifics that anchor you to this day, this moment: that plane flying overhead, this granola bar you are unwrapping, the twinge in your left knee, the unevenness of the rock on which you are perched. But there’s also a timelessness, a sense of the eons it has taken to create these mountains, the centuries it has taken to grow this forest and evolve this ecosystem. If you had come to this spot two hundred or a thousand years ago, it might have looked substantially the same. Water has flowed off of these slopes in this very same way for as long as there have been slopes and rainfall. All that has come before has led up to this moment. And long after you hike back down to the car and drive home, long after this whole generation is gone, mountaintops will still be there with clouds passing over them, rain and snow falling upon them, sun and stars shining above them.
There is this moment of sitting on this rock on this mountain, and you want to hang onto it, freeze it in your memory, hold it in your heart forever. You are this tiny human on this enormous planet. You are a mortal in this eternal landscape. You are a blip in time and space. It is humbling. At the same time, you are connected to all of it. There is a sense of God, of creation, of forces larger than yourself, greater than you can understand, unfolding over a time frame you cannot comprehend. You are a part of it. The atoms in your body are the same as the atoms forming this mountain. The water in your cells is the same as the water flowing down this mountainside. We are all family.
When people tell me that they don’t want to “do church” in a building but prefer the church of the great outdoors, I hope and imagine that they are experiencing something like this. It is profound, humbling, moving, grounding. It feeds the soul.
When the psalmist writes,
“I lift up my eyes to the hills—
from where will my help come?
My help comes from God,
who made heaven and earth.”
I imagine the psalmist having an experience of sitting on a mountaintop and knowing themselves to be connected—to God, to the mountain, to everything. Here the hills are a source of comfort, a reminder that God created heaven and earth and will not abandon us, ever. God will not let your foot be moved. God will keep you from all evil. This psalm is like a lullaby: so soothing.
Maybe this is what Peter, James, and John thought might happen when Jesus invited them to come with him up the mountain. They would get away from the crowds, sit up top looking out over the valley, talk. Perhaps they are thinking of Psalm 121, looking to the hills and mountains for comfort and protection from God.
Or perhaps they are thinking of other mountaintop moments in the sacred texts. Moses going up Mt. Sinai to confer with God and then coming down with the Ten Commandments, the Law that guides them on how to be in good relationship with God. Perhaps they recall the prophet Elijah and his face-off with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, each calling on their god to strike fire onto an altar in a high place. Or the time that Elijah fled from his tormentor and hid out in a cave atop a mountain, and there was wind and fire and earthquakes and then silence. And God said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” [1 Kings 18-19.]
There are so many significant things that happen on mountains. But the disciples are going with Jesus. Surely everything will be manageable and fine, right? Because Jesus is in control. Maybe Jesus chose these three because they are extra special. Maybe there will be some reward.
Clearly, they’re not expecting the thing that happens. As if they are suddenly in a collective dream state, they see Jesus dazzling, radiant, glowing, and his clothes are brighter than anything possible on earth. They see Moses, the bringer of the Law, and Elijah, representing the Prophets, conferring with Jesus—their Jesus, the guy they eat dinner with every night.
Peter, who is known to speak first and think later, blurts out something about building dwelling spaces for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah, like he wants to hang onto this moment by enshrining them in boxes. Maybe the three disciples and the three holy men are all going to live on the mountaintop now and will need some kind of containers, some kind of tents or houses. And the three disciples, Peter, James, and John, can . . . take care of them? Who knows what half-formed plan he has. Even he doesn’t seem to know quite what he’s saying.
Then this cloud shows up, also very bright, and a voice emanates from the cloud: “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” These words may take us, the readers, back to Jesus’ baptism. You may recall that, as Jesus comes out of the River Jordan, a voice from above says, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with whom I am well pleased.” Almost word for word the same message, only now the voice adds, “Listen to him!” Maybe that’s God’s way of saying, “Peter, stop babbling, just take it all in.”
But the disciples can’t take it all in. They are too overwhelmed with terror. They hit the ground when they hear the voice of God. It is well known that you cannot see God and live, unless you are Moses. So they’re not looking, they’re not listening, they’re just face down in the dirt, out of their minds with fear.
And then, as if a bubble burst or a dream ended, there is Jesus, tapping them on the shoulder and saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.” Moses, Elijah, the cloud—all have vanished. There is just Jesus. And as they start back down the mountain, puzzling over what just happened, Jesus suggests that they don’t mention it to anyone else until the Son of Humanity has been raised from the dead. And they nod dumbly, as if they even know what he’s talking about.
We know this reading so well that it’s hard to imagine it turning out any other way, but just for a moment consider what might have happened if the disciples had not been blinded by fear. Surely they would still be experiencing awe and wonder. Might they have been invited to sit with Jesus, Moses, and Elijah and to learn at their feet? Who knows? Did they fail some kind of test by panicking? Who knows? All we know is that their fear dictated their response, and the vision then ended.
I lift up my eyes to the mountains. Where does my help come from? Is it from a comforting God, who will keep watch over me my whole life long? Is it from a terrifying God who is too big for me to understand? Yes and yes.
God does not promise that our lives will be easy or happy or long. God does promise to be there with us through all of it, to challenge us with visions bigger than our understanding, to give us glimpses from time to time of holiness, to send us back down into the valley with more questions than answers but with inspiration to keep doing the work. This God is for real, the stuff of visions and of everyday life, the stuff of mountaintops and valleys alike. This God does not fit into a dwelling or tent or any kind of box that we can build to try to capture and contain God. This God can scare the bejeebers out of us. And if we can keep our wits about us, we may be invited into glimpses of transfiguration and transformation for ourselves. Dare to see the dazzling, radiant Christ. Dare to listen to that Christ, that holy voice that dwells both within you and all around you. Our loving God is still speaking, still transforming us—if we are bold enough to listen, to look, to say yes. Amen.