Transfiguration — Andy James

Light on the Mountaintop

February 7, 2016 By Andy James

a sermon on Exodus 34:29-35 and Luke 9:28-36
preached on February 7, 2016, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

Transfiguration Sunday is one of my favorite days of the church year. It is one of those church holidays that will almost certainly never get taken over by commercialism, in part because different parts of the church celebrate it at different times! It brings us to a story that seems to be incredibly important in the three synoptic gospels and that carried over into the celebrations of the church for many centuries in art and life. And it takes us to a mountaintop to see incredible and amazing light, helping us to see our faith and our world more clearly as we enter the season of Lent.

Our two readings this morning offer us two visions of this very clarity of sight because of God’s light on the mountaintop. First we hear of Moses’ strange shining face after encountering God on the mountaintop. After receiving the law from God on top of the mountain, Moses came down to meet with the people. The people were taken aback when they saw Moses. His face was shining with great light as it reflected the glory of God after his encounter on the mountaintop, and they were surprised and afraid. They knew their God as a fearful and vengeful God, as one whose glory they could not glimpse, as one who knew them and their foibles and flaws all too well, and when they saw Moses’ face aglow with even the reflection of that glory, they wondered and worried what might be coming next for them.

But this was not what Moses intended. He came down from the mountain hoping to engage the people in what God had shared with him. He wanted them to get a glimpse of the glory he had seen so that they might understand God’s presence better in the everyday. In sharing the light of his face, he hoped that they would join him in reflecting the incredible glory of God that had led them out of Egypt and would guide them into the Promised Land. But Moses’ shining face after his encounter with God on the mountain ended up being an incredible distraction for the people, so he covered his face with a veil when he was speaking with the people because they just weren’t ready to experience this light from the mountaintop quite yet.

Our second unique encounter with God and light on a mountaintop comes in our reading from the gospel according to Luke, where we hear of the transfiguration of Jesus that gives this Sunday in our liturgical calendar its name. As he prepared to begin the journey toward Jerusalem that would result in his trial and execution, Jesus took three of his disciples with him up on the mountain to pray, and suddenly “the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white.” In the midst of this strange moment, Jesus was joined by two men, immediately recognizable as Moses and Elijah, and together these three “were speaking of [Jesus’] departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.”

As this light broke on this mountaintop, though, Peter, James, and John were barely able to keep their eyes open. Even amid their exhaustion, their glimpse of this glorious sight led Peter to utter one of the most bumbled lines of the New Testament: “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”

As Peter was fumbling for words and actions to hold onto this moment of glory rather than to share it, a cloud overshadowed them, leaving the disciples filled with fear and trembling all the more, especially as a voice came from the cloud: “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” After this voice, the visitors disappeared, leaving Jesus alone with the disciples on the mountain, the strange radiance of the moment quickly dissipating as they all returned to the plain, recognizing all the more clearly that Jesus would soon be turning his face toward Jerusalem.

These two moments of light on the mountaintop give us glimpses of God’s glory shining into our world in incredible and surprising ways, but they also give us insight into the ways that we respond to this glory breaking into our midst. In both of these stories, the witnesses to this transfiguring light are taken aback. With Moses, the people shrink back when they see his face aglow and demand that he keep it covered up, and with Jesus, the disciples just want to find a way to hold on to the moment so that they do not lose it.

It seems that whenever we come close to the light of God, whether it be on the mountaintop or in the valley, we end up cowering in fear, seeking to avoid it and run away or to capture it and control it to limit its real effect on our lives. I suspect that this fear and anxiety around this light of God on the mountaintop probably comes less from it blinding us or showing us too much of God’s glory. Instead, it may be that this light illuminates us for who we are, showing that we are not the people God has made us to be, that we are not the people we claim to be, that we are unwilling and therefore unable to reflect the light of God’s glory into our dark and weary world.

All this may be what makes the story of the transfiguration so difficult for us. As much as we want God to change things in our world, we are so very deeply hesitant to change ourselves. As much as we want light to shine into the darkness, the glimpse of glory that comes from this light on the mountaintop leaves us speechless and fearful as it illumines our lives more than we might like. And as much as we want God’s glory to shine in us, we see in these stories that the reflections of God’s glory that can come in us might also require us to recognize the glory of God in others around us, to set aside our assumptions, stereotypes, and fears, to see our fellow humans as equal bearers of God’s image, regardless of the color of their skin, the understanding they carry of their gender, the form of their religious practice, the identity of those they love, or any other human characteristic.

Yet in spite of our fear, God’s glory still breaks into our midst, beginning with these encounters of light on the mountaintop, slowly but surely extending even into the dark valleys where things seem to be hidden but light slowly breaks in. The light of God’s glory shines upon our world in ways beyond our understanding, peeking through the clouds of hatred and anger that seem to overshadow the hopeful and joyous light of our lives, sending hope and life even into places where these seem to be so far away. And by God’s mercy, the wondrous light of God reflected in Moses’ shining face and Jesus’ changed appearance is reflected in us, for even when we resist God’s call to bear this light into our lives and our world, God guides us to overcome our fears and break through our uncertainty so that we can reflect the wonder and hope of this glory into our world.

The light on the mountaintop shines far and wide. This light begins in these incredible and beautiful places, illuminating faces with tremendous glory, glowing with wonder and hope for our weary world. This light shines on us and reflects through us into our broken and fearful world, giving us hope for all the difficult journeys of our lives and guiding us through the challenges of the Lent that lies ahead. And this light opens the pathway for us, showing us that even the darkest pathways will lead us to light, for even Jesus’ journey through death ended with an empty tomb.

So may God shine this light on us on this mountaintop, at this table where we gain another glimpse of this glory, and in every place on our journey, so that we might reflect the wonder and hope of God’s new life each and every day of the coming Lenten journey and beyond, until the joy of the resurrection is real for all as the whole creation is made new in Christ Jesus our Lord. Lord, come quickly! Alleluia! Amen.

A Glimpse of Something More

February 15, 2015 By Andy James

a sermon on Mark 9:2-9 for Transfiguration Sunday
preached on February 15, 2015, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

They had been plenty of strange places with Jesus before, so when he asked them to go up the mountain with him, Peter, James, and John were not particularly surprised. It had only been six days earlier that he begun talking his disciples about the journey that would be ahead for him. Right after Peter had recognized him as the Messiah, they learned that he would “undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” It was a stark contrast for them all. It seemed impossible that their beloved teacher and friend could face such horrid things, especially considering that he had just been revealed to them as something more than what they had understood before. How could this man they had come to know so well, this man they had dropped their nets to follow, face rejection that would lead to his death?

So as Peter, James, and John ventured up the mountain with Jesus, their heads were surely swirling with questions. They had already started to get a new and different image of him, and what they would see that day on the mountain peak would only change it even more. It was a solitary, reflective journey for all four of them—Mark tells us that Jesus “led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves,” requiring three different words to make it clear how distant they were from their everyday experience and how disconnected they were from any others who might have usually gone with them along the way.

When they reached the top, “he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white.” Something was happening to Jesus before their very eyes, and even if they could not understand it, they would witness it. Then, before they could figure out what was happening, Elijah and Moses appeared there too, talking with Jesus. The disciples were suddenly surrounded by the Messiah, the Law, and the Prophets. The fullness of the Jewish tradition of the past and the emerging witness of Jesus was present with them on the mountain, and they were witnesses to this glimpse of incredible glory.

Peter’s reaction to this incredible sight was pretty strange. Only a few days earlier, he had just become the first to confess Jesus as Messiah, only to make it clear a little later that he didn’t understand what that would mean as he sought to keep Jesus from taking the road of suffering and death. But as Mark puts it, after witnessing the transfiguration Peter “did not know what to say, for they were terrified.” Rather than just taking it all in quietly, Peter broke the silence strangely, mumbling and bumbling and rambling:

Rabbi, it is good for us to be here;
let us make three dwellings,
one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.

But before any of them could respond to Peter’s incredibly ridiculous suggestion, a cloud came over them, and a voice called out from it:

This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!

As quickly as the voice had spoken out, the visitors from the past had appeared, and Jesus’ clothes had turned a dazzling white, things all went back to normal. When they looked around again, “they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.” The reason for their journey complete, the three stunned disciples and Jesus headed down the mountain, and as they made their way back to the other disciples, Jesus “ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.” They had glimpsed his glory and seen the fullness of who he was, and yet they could not describe it to anyone—until it would be visible to everyone.

This story of the transfiguration is one of the most mystical and mysterious in all the gospels, but I think it is probably one of the greatest because it gives us a very real glimpse of who Jesus is. The transfiguration is a rare moment when the veil of heaven is pulled back, the divisions between this world and the next are set aside, and we are given a glimpse of God’s glory. It stands in a line of rare and wonderful moments in the Bible where God reveals God’s self to us: Abraham and the strange visitors, Moses and the burning bush, Moses on the mountain receiving the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments, Elijah in the cave encountering God in the sound of sheer silence, and even Jesus in his own baptism by John the Baptist, as a voice from heaven again declares, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” In the transfiguration and all these moments, we see a little more of who God is, sometimes in mighty and powerful ways, sometimes in quiet and mystical ways, and always with a bit of a veil continuing to conceal a portion of God’s glory, leaving us to await an even greater vision of something more than our human minds can comprehend and our human eyes can see.

But I think that the transfiguration may actually be about more than just this. As we discover more of who God is in this moment when we gain a glimpse of Jesus’ glory, I think we also gain a glimpse of the transfiguration that is possible for us. When we see the transfigured Jesus shining in dazzling white clothes, we catch sight of what we will one day be. When we watch with wonder as Jesus gathers with the Law and the Prophets atop the mountain, we see the beginnings of a conversation that will one day be ours to share. And when we hear a voice from a cloud declaring that Jesus is beloved and worthy of our careful ear, we can learn that we too bear the beloved image of God into a world that needs such a gift even in us.

On the mount of transfiguration, as Jesus is transformed before the eyes of the disciples, so we too witness the possibilities of transformation in our lives and in the life of our world. Like Jesus, we will one day be more than we are today. Like Jesus, we will one day participate in transformed life where we will understand the Law and the Prophets in a new and deepened way. And like Jesus, we have heard and will hear again and again God’s voice in the waters of baptism and the food of this table proclaiming that we too are God’s beloved children. In this glimpse of glory for Jesus and us, in this moment when the heavens are torn apart and God’s wonder is revealed, we are strengthened for all the things that are ahead—for the struggles of yet another depressing week of winter, for the challenges of repentance and renewal in this coming season of Lent, for the joys and sorrows of our lives in these days, for living, for dying, and for life eternal.

So as we come down from this mountain and gather around this table, may we be strengthened by this glimpse of what is ahead for us, that all our living might embody the new life we have already seen in the transfiguration and resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord so that we might join him and all creation in being made new. Lord, come quickly! Amen.

The View from the Mountaintop

March 2, 2014 By Andy James

a sermon on Matthew 17:1-9 and 2 Peter 1:16-21
preached on Transfiguration Sunday, March 2, 2014, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

There’s nothing quite like the view from a mountaintop. Some of you have been with me to see the view from atop Bear Mountain, only some forty-five miles from here, so you know that it is quite a memorable scene. The vista stretches across the Appalachians to the west, up to and past West Point looking north, down along the beautiful Hudson River and across to Connecticut to the east, and finally all the way back down to the Manhattan skyline. It’s one of the most unusual and surprising sights of nature within a short drive from here! But even if you can’t travel that far, there’s an incredible panoramic view of the Manhattan skyline just a few blocks from here on one of the highest hills in Whitestone!

This incredible view from mountaintops has made them an important place for people for many centuries. In earlier times, while the difficulty of building on top of a mountain made using them for cities difficult, the highest points of the landscape were always most suitable for castles and fortresses because it made it easier to see the enemy coming. Beyond their beauty and practicality, mountaintops have also been important places of spiritual life and insight in many cultures and religious traditions. In Greek mythology, many of the gods made their homes and assembled for divine gatherings on Mount Olympus. The mountainous areas of Nepal, Tibet, and India, nestled among the highest peaks of the world’s mountains in the Himalayas, are also home to countless monasteries and the cradles of Hinduism and Buddhism. One sherpa there, a mountain guide for climbers of the highest peaks in the world, told the Times last year, “Mountains, to us, are holy.”

And in the Bible, these holy mountains are everywhere! Moses encountered God again and again on mountaintops, first in a burning bush atop Mount Horeb to receive instruction to return to Egypt and lead the Israelites out of slavery to the Promised Land, then in fire and smoke atop Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments, and finally in the clear air atop Mount Nebo, where he could see the Promised Land that he would never inhabit. Various mountains figure especially prominently in the Psalms, culminating in the comforting words of Psalm 121:

I lift up my eyes to the hills—
from where will my help come?

My help comes from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth.

And the great city of Jerusalem was built atop a hill, with a climb steep enough—and holy enough—to merit a particular set of verbs in Hebrew that indicate that one is “going up to Jerusalem” or “coming down from Jerusalem.”

Even with all these holy mountains throughout scripture, the greatest view from a mountaintop in the Bible comes in the transfiguration of Jesus, recounted for us in our reading this morning from the gospel according to Matthew. Each year, this story leads us into Lent as Jesus makes his way down the mountain from this brief moment of exaltation toward his execution at the hands of the religious and political leaders of his day and finally to his resurrection to new life. Like any mountaintop view, the view from the top matters immensely.

As Matthew tells it, Jesus took three of his disciples on a hike up a mountain by themselves. Once they reached the top, something happened to Jesus. Exactly what happened isn’t clear—“transfiguration” is a word that just doesn’t have much reference beyond this context!—but Matthew does tell us that “his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white.” But this change in appearance was only the beginning of it all, for Jesus and the disciples were soon joined by Moses and Elijah, who came to talk with Jesus. Then, in one of those moments that makes Peter the most loveably stupid of the disciples, he offered a classic ridiculous suggestion:

Master, this is a great moment! What would you think if I built three memorials here on the mountain–one for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah? (The Message)

Peter’s absurd suggestion was soon drowned out by a voice from a cloud that had suddenly overshadowed them, proclaiming,

This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!

Jesus had of course heard these words once before, at his baptism by John in the Jordan, but now his divine being and calling were being made clear to others, too. The disciples didn’t know what to do. The view from this mountaintop had shifted quickly from a beautiful landscape to an incredible declaration of God’s glory, so “they fell to the ground” but then were also overcome by fear. Jesus told them to get up, not to be afraid of this strange gathering on this unexpectedly holy place, but when they got up, Jesus was alone by himself with them. As they headed back down the mountain, Jesus told them to keep quiet about what they had seen—at least “until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”

Now the other thing about views from mountaintops beyond their beauty is that they can vary dramatically. I grew up going every few years to the Smoky Mountains of eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina, and they were appropriately named not because of any smokestacks around but because of the fog that could appear out of nowhere and turn a clear day into a gray mess. Nearly every mountain has this sort of changing view. When the weather is clear, the view is spectacular, but if it is foggy, rainy, snowy, or anything else, you might as well be in the valley because you aren’t going to see anything of any importance.

So on this Transfiguration Sunday, what is our view from this mountaintop? Does this story and this vista make something about Jesus more clear than it was before? Is the view from this high and holy place clear or cloudy as we look to the things behind us and before us? Can we see and understand the gifts that God is placing before us in these days and respond with joy and gladness? Do we have the confidence in God’s mercy and grace to journey the Lenten road with Jesus and trust that we will find our way to more mountaintops ahead—to the Mount of Olives to pray with Jesus and the disciples, to Golgotha to share in the despair of death, and finally after the resurrection to the mount of the Ascension to witness Jesus’ return to glory? Will we do as Second Peter suggests and pay attention to this mountaintop view “as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts”?

Now there will surely be days on this journey when our view is not very clear, when the pathway to the summit is not easy, when what happens there is confusing or uncertain, when we start babbling incessantly about nothingness like Peter, when we fall down in fear and wait for Jesus to come and touch us and tell us that there is no reason for us to be afraid. Yet still, slowly but surely, the Spirit opens our eyes to the incredible view from the mountaintop, a vision of Jesus Christ, transfigured and transformed, making a way through all the wilderness of our world so that we too can be made new.

So today as we make our way to this table, to this little mountaintop where we too are promised a glimpse of God’s glory in Jesus Christ, may the Spirit clear our view from the mountaintop so that we can go forth as transfigured people ourselves, shining forth the glory of God in all that we say and do until the transformation of all things begun in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is complete and all things are made new.

Lord, come quickly! Alleluia! Amen.

Glimpses of Glory

February 10, 2013 By Andy James

a sermon on Luke 9:28-36 for Transfiguration
preached on February 10, 2013, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

Please raise your hand (or write in the comments!) if you have used the word “transfiguration” at all outside the church in the last year. I didn’t think there would be many of you! Transfiguration is one of those very “churchy” words that just don’t mean much unless you’re well-connected to the life of the church. This strange day, Transfiguration, that comes up every year on the Sunday before Lent points us to a story told in all three of the synoptic gospels, where Jesus and several of his disciples go up on a mountain for an incredible spiritual encounter as Jesus meets up with Moses and Elijah and his face and clothes shine brightly.

Transfiguration is just not something we encounter every day. We just don’t see faces and clothes shining brightly or things almost magically changing before our very eyes. This is the stuff of fairy tales, not of real life. Now I think we actually have seen some transfiguration around us over the past couple days as our landscape took on a new and glorious brightness as things shifted from the general winter grays on Thursday to the dreariness of rain and snow on Friday and finally to the beauty and wonder of a bright snowy landscape yesterday and today. But we all know that this glory is only temporary. Already the snow is a little dirty and gray, and by Tuesday much of what is left will be nearly black, leaving us to wish for spring all the more.

The Transfiguration of Jesus parallels these patterns of snow quite well, I think—it gives us a beautiful glimpse of glory before we are forced back into the mundane of the everyday even as we long for something more. The story gets at so many of the recurring images that we have of Jesus and the disciples. Here we see the strange human person of Jesus who suddenly has divine power and presence. We see a connection to the life and history of the people of Israel as Moses and Elijah appear. We see three disciples along for the ride who want to “get it” so badly that they completely miss the point of what is happening. And we even hear another mysterious voice from the cloud reminding everyone of who this Jesus is.

The story is simple but compelling. Luke tells us that Jesus took three of his disciples up on the mountain with him to pray. Suddenly, as he was praying, his appearance changed. His face looked different, and his clothes turned a dazzling white. If all that wasn’t enough, two other figures appeared on the mountaintop and started talking to Jesus. They were talking about his departure and his journey to Jerusalem, and it soon became clear to the disciples that it was Moses and Elijah with him. Peter, James, and John were very tired, but somehow they stayed awake to witness all of this. As the conversation came to an end and Moses and Elijah were leaving, Peter stopped them and suggested that they should find a way to extend this moment. He even was willing to make it happen—he’d build three dwellings so that they could all stay as long as they wanted! But then a cloud appeared around them, and a voice spoke up: “This is my son, my Chosen; listen to him!” After the voice, Moses and Elijah were gone, and the disciples were alone with Jesus. When they went down from the mountain, they were speechless as they waited for what was next.

Like so many of the stories of Jesus’ power and glory from the gospels, I for one am left somewhat empty afterwards, wondering what all this means. We can pretty easily sort out what Jesus teachings mean even if we have to reinterpret them for today, and the crucifixion and resurrection stories have centuries of interpretation that give them an important role in our life of faith. We can even assign some meaning pretty easily to moments of transition in Jesus’ life, like his birth or his baptism.

But wonders and signs are much more difficult. Jesus’ miracles, for one, don’t always make sense to our ears that normally hear of the wonders of modern medicine. And while when Jesus casts out demons I recognize that there is some great power being shown in the person of Jesus, but I wonder what we ought to do today when we don’t recognize demonic activity in the same way or share this same power. And the Transfiguration leaves me scratching my head and wondering what this story might possibly inspire for us today. It doesn’t seem to be much more than a wonderful moment when we can discover the mystery of God’s presence among us.

Just as a snowstorm doesn’t carry a lot of meaning in our lives unless the effects go on for weeks or months, the Transfiguration too seems like a relatively forgettable moment in the life of Jesus, just another moment when we see Jesus’ power and glory revealed— and the disciples continuing their usual bungling and fumbling that seems to show up whenever they are faced with the reality of who Jesus is. To most people outside the church, people who see the Bible as a book of stories and not an authority on faith and life, people who are even more confused than I am about Jesus’ miracles and healings and casting out of demons, stories like the Transfiguration are mythical at best and just plain crazy at worst.

But there is something more going on here for us. Even if we don’t fully understand this strange moment, this glimpse of the glory of Jesus can help us to see him more clearly in his time and in ours. Everything that Jesus has done up to this point in Luke’s gospel—the preaching, teaching, and healing that has marked his ministry around Galilee—looks different now that Jesus has shone with this strange glorious light. He is not just a faith healer or an inspired teacher—he is one who has standing and status that comes from beyond himself and is more fully revealed little by little, with each new encounter.

But this glimpse of Jesus’ glory doesn’t just end here on the mountaintop. As his life and ministry continues, Jesus keeps showing his strange and wonderful way to everyone he meets. In his death, it is opened anew once again as we see that even God’s holiness is open to the depths of human pain, suffering, and sin. And most of all, in the resurrection, we see the greatest exposition of this glory as we learn that God’s power and glory extend over anything and everything—even death.

But the real gift of the glory of God revealed in Jesus’ Transfiguration atop that mountain comes as it shows up in our own time. There are countless ways to get a glimpse of this glory in our world. We can see it around us in the wonder of nature, in the beauty of a morning snowfall, in the joy of children, in so many things in our lives. But these glimpses of glory are exactly that: glimpses. They do not show us the full wonder, power, and love of God in our midst. We can’t see everything that we need to know about God just from opening our eyes to see a beautiful snowfall or vista or even by experiencing the wonder of relationship with our fellow human beings.

Yet when we gather as the community of faith, we get a deeper glimpse of that glory than we can have on our own. When we gather as the people of God, our united vision helps us to see things that we might have missed on our own. When we sing songs of praise or offer words of prayer and thanksgiving, we get a closer look at the new world that we also glimpse in the Transfiguration. When we come together to fight for justice, to intervene in the pervasive yet quiet hunger in our community, to step up and say that the poor will not be forgotten anymore, we start shining the glory of God out into our world all the more. And when we gather at this table, we gain not only a glimpse of the glory of the resurrected Christ but also some food for the journey so that we might live out this glory all the more.

So today, as we remember this great glimpse of glory on the mountaintop, as we gather here at this table hoping for our own glimpse of Jesus’ wonder and love, may we glimpse the full glory of God in Jesus Christ in our worship and our sharing so that we might go forth to shine his glory out into our world brighter than even a sunny post-snow day throughout these wintery, Lenten days and beyond until we shine brightly in the glory of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Lord, come quickly! Amen.

Shiny Happy Jesus People

February 19, 2012 By Andy James

a sermon for Transfiguration of the Lord on Mark 9:2-9
preached on February 19, 2012, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

What do we say about the transfiguration of Jesus? This is one of those days that is clearly important in our life together as the church, but figuring out the exact reasons for that and meaning of it is not quite so easy.

What do you say about a story that seems so otherworldly, so seemingly unreal? It’s not like we go around climbing mountains and seeing people’s clothes turn dazzling white every day. And visitations from the great ancestors of our past just aren’t part of our experience. If I were choosing stories for the gospels on the basis of what makes sense, I would probably leave this one out – I’d want things to be believable, to be unquestionable and accessible for everyone.

The transfiguration of Jesus has so much speaking against its reality by these standards. There is only a small pool of sympathetic, highly biased witnesses. Supernatural appearances of ancestral figures stand at the center of the story. Strange voices speak out of nowhere. A sudden ending leaves the whole thing hanging. And those who saw it receive stern instructions not to tell anyone what they had seen.

Yet this story is such an integral part of the gospel witness. Three of the four gospels tell this story, and each of them uses it as a pivot point in its narrative, helping to turn our focus from a humble teacher wandering around the villages of Galilee to the clearly marked Son of God willing to risk even his life to show that God’s power is greater than any human designs.

At the core, this is a simple story. Jesus gathers his three most-trusted disciples – three of those fishermen whom he called on that first day as he was walking by the Sea of Galilee – and he takes them with him up the mountain. Atop the mountain, something happened to Jesus. There, he looked entirely different from the man who had hiked up with the disciples. His appearance changed, and “his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them.” Then two others appeared and started talking with Jesus. Somehow, maybe based on the conversation they had with Jesus, the disciples recognized these guests as Moses and Elijah.

It was an incredible experience. The disciples were mesmerized and terrified by it all. Peter clearly didn’t want it to end, so he stupidly suggested a plan to preserve the moment, to build three shrines atop the mountain for the three great leaders so that they could enjoy this time of teaching and learning for all eternity. But even before Jesus could respond to Peter, a voice spoke out of the cloud, just as had happened a few years earlier at Jesus’ baptism: “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” Suddenly Jesus and the disciples were all alone again, and it was time to head back down the mountain. Along the way Jesus instructed them to keep quiet about what they had seen until the time was right.

There are plenty of possible ramifications of this story for Jesus. Biblical scholars have debated the meaning and consequences of this text for centuries. Theologians have suggested that this might be the moment when the divine nature of Jesus started to become clear. And storytellers and literary critics have noted how this transfiguration is a turning point for Jesus in much the same way as the later story of his triumphal entry into Jerusalem transitions us so well into the last week of Jesus’ life.

Yet I think all those impacts of this story are a little too theoretical for us. I for one want to know what this transfiguration business has to do with me. Why should this strange story of a shiny happy Jesus matter to me two thousand years after it theoretically happened? What is the point of following someone who one day suddenly lit up brighter than a Christmas tree? And can we even get anywhere close to this shining Jesus ourselves?

Well, first of all, I think this story helps us to think more clearly about the idea of the mountaintop experience. The human life always seems to have its ups and downs, and one of the great challenges seems to be how to carry what we learn in our highs into our lower moments. Jesus’ brief moment of bright glory on the mountaintop is a good reminder for us that we can be energized by our glimpses of glory. As our last hymn put it so well,

How good, Lord, to be here,
yet we may not remain,
but since you bid us leave the mount,
come with us to the plain.

– Joseph Armitage Robinson, 1888

When we carry the memory and power of our mountaintop moments into our daily lives, we have wisdom and energy to be more faithful and to listen more closely to what God is calling us to be and to do.

Yet the brightness we witness on top of the mountain is also important, too. In the Transfiguration, we get a nearly-complete glimpse of God’s glory as revealed in Jesus Christ. We still see him as a teacher, but we also finally see him exalted and glorified, receiving the honor and appreciation that we know he deserves, getting a little preview of the greater glory that will come on Easter. By the power of this witness to God’s glory, by our glimpse of this shiny happy Jesus, we too can bear a bit of that glory into the world. Like good mirrors that reflect light into more visible brightness, like the orbs of our night sky that shine brightly yet often only cast back the light that they receive, we can be reflections of God’s glory into this world that so desperately needs God’s light.

And so we can and should and must be shiny happy Jesus people because of this light that we witness on the mountaintop. We can embody a new and different way of life and living that points to something beyond ourselves so that others might join us on this journey. We can reflect even a little glimpse of God’s glory into our broken and fearful world so that all might have courage to be the people whom God has called them to be. And we can shine with the wonder of Jesus himself because of this encounter so that we can have the light we need to follow in his path.

So today as we prepare to begin the season of Lent, we can be shiny happy Jesus people. We sing songs of God’s glory and wonder and praise. We rejoice with “alleluias” loud and strong as we prepare to set them aside for the season ahead. We gather at this table, hoping to catch a glimpse of our bright, shining savior meeting us here. And we go forth to continue reflecting the light of Christ that we find in this place into our lives and our world.

May we shine with happiness, peace, joy, hope, and love, today and always, living and walking as the shiny happy Jesus people that we are, unafraid to reflect his glory and new life into every place until he comes again to make all things shine with his glory forever and ever.

Lord, come quickly! Alleluia! Amen.