“Mountain’s Majesty”

Feb 15

2-15-26

Matthew 17:1-9

Antioch Christian Church (DoC)

Years ago in NC, I remember listening to a woman named Miz Eva as she reminisced about her childhood. Given her age, that would have been around 1910. What stuck in her mind was a look on her grandmother's face. She said, "There'd come a time during the day when Grandmama would excuse herself from what we were doing. She'd go to her bedroom down the hall, close the door, and pray. In time, I'd hear the door open and Grandmama's feet shuffling back down the hallway toward me. I knew what she’d been doing. I could tell by the look on her face that she'd been talking with The Man.” Miz Eva had trouble remembering what she had for breakfast that morning, but there was one thing she couldn’t forget: the look on her grandmother’s face after she’d been talking with God.

The people of Israel would understand. Down through the generations, they passed on stories about Moses. And there remained etched in Israel's memory an image of how Moses looked after he had been talking with God. Exodus says, "As Moses came down from the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant in his hand, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God" (34:29). Peter, James, and John would understand. Up on the mountain, while Jesus was praying, “the appearance of his face changed.” (Luke 9:29).

Matthew says, “Jesus was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white.” The word is transfigured. As the heading of the bulletin indicates, this is Transfiguration Sunday. Someone told me preachers ought to avoid five syllable words and I normally try to adhere to that rule of thumb. But there’s a time and place in the ongoing education of a Christian for learning new vocabulary words. When our daughter Laura was in elementary school, she used to bring home a list of what were called Refrigerator Words – her spelling words for the week. Transfiguration is today’s Refrigerator Word. Trans as in the word transition: a change. Figuration as in figured or configured: the way something or someone appears. Put it all together and you get transfiguration: a change in appearance. “Jesus was transfigured before them.”

The look on our faces really does say a lot. You can read some people like a book. Was there ever a time when your parents took one look at that innocent little angelic face of yours and asked, "What did you do?" Have you ever looked at someone and said, "You look like you just saw a ghost!" Or, "Well, what have we here? You look like the cat that ate the canary!" Our faces are revealing.

Which raises a question: Years from now, will anyone have a memory of the way we looked after we had been in the presence of God?

Will our grandchildren have a memory of the way we looked when we talked about our faith in God?
Teachers of Bible studies and discussion groups: What does the look on your face say about the subject you’re trying to teach?
Choir, if we couldn't hear a word that came out of your mouths, could we still get the message of your music by looking at your faces?
Or, turn the tables. Choir, as you look at the congregation during worship, do you see in their faces radiant countenances or upset stomachs?
Jan and I aren’t off the hook. We ought to look our parts. Oliver Wendell Holmes once said he would have entered the ministry were it not for all the pastors he knew who acted like undertakers. Kennon Callahan reminded all pastors and worship leaders, “It’s Sunday morning, not Sunday mourning.”[1]

The people of Israel remembered Moses’ face. Peter, James and John remembered Jesus’ face. Miz Eva remembered her grandmama’s face. Will anyone remember the way we looked for having been in the presence of the God?

On the mountain that day Peter, James and John got an eyeful of holiness. They got an eyeful: saw Jesus’ true colors. I’m old enough to remember Cyndi Lauper’s song from the mid-80s: “I see your true colors shining through/ I see your true colors and that’s why I love you.” Peter, James, and John had an epiphany – another Christian Refrigerator Word meaning an Aha! moment, a revelation. They glimpsed the glory of the one standing before them. Though laid in a measly manger at birth and raised a carpenter’s son in backwoods Nazareth, that day they saw Jesus for who he really was and is. Said the voice on high, “This is my Son, the beloved.” They got an eyeful of holiness.

I ask you, is that not a good thing? Is it not a good thing to brush up against things awesome, wondrous? There is within every human being a hunger for the Transcendent. The experience of getting goose bumps, of being brought to tears or rendered speechless, is a good thing… a God thing. You know deep down inside how much we humans enjoy “all things bright and beautiful.” From fireworks to sunsets to rainbows to newborn babies’ fingers and toes. A Monet painting. A Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev ballet. Mozart’s Requiem. The sight of four-board fencing disappearing off into a bluegrass horizon with a half dozen thoroughbreds grazing in the distance. Such sights give us a fix of transcendence, leave us “lost in wonder, love, and praise.” To be human is to crave such moments. If we can’t experience transcendence in natural, healthy ways we seek such highs via drugs or alcohol and other destructive means. Gotta have a taste of transcendence!

Celtic Christians speak of “thin places” where “heaven and earth meet” and God’s grandeur bursts forth (Bruce Epperly). A sanctuary on a Sunday morning is supposed to be such a place. So, we opened by singing, “Immortal, Invisible, God only wise, in light inaccessible hid from our eyes” Whew! Talk about transcendence! Every week we hear Holy Scripture, at the end of which the reader says, “God speaks to God’s people!” and you respond “Thanks be to God!” with an exclamation mark! The choir sang, Walk in the light (walk in the light) Beautiful light (well it's a beautiful light) Come where the dewdrops of mercy shine bright (Oh Lord) Thanks, indeed, for one day in seven on which to receive an eyeful and earful of holiness. My dear brother in Christ, Eph Calbert, knew a sanctuary on Sunday morning is “a thin place” for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. Every Sunday in Arizona where I started a new church we’d set up an elementary school cafeteria where we worshipped for eight years, then we’d go back into the art room classroom and pray for the day’s worship, and as we left, just as we crossed the threshold of the classroom and entered our makeshift sanctuary, Eph would say “Pastor, what’s God gonna do today?” I hear the echoes of his voice as I make my way into a sanctuary every Lord’s Day. Anticipating an epiphany. Expecting my soul will somehow be transfigured.

I know what God did the day Peter, James, and John went up the mountain. God said to them, “This is my Son, the beloved, listen to him.” Peter, James, and John got an eyeful up there on the mountain all right, but it's the earful they got that was the real takeaway of their mountaintop experience. “Listen to him,” said the voice from on high and then live your life in the light of his wondrous presence and wise words. You see, the real test of a mountaintop experience is not how it makes us feel at the moment but how it inspires us to live in the days that follow. As a result of entering the thin place that is a sanctuary we ought to be transfigured. Which raises a question: as a result of our having been in here would anything about the way we live out there convince someone else that we’ve been in the presence of the Living God? People expect people's lives to be transfigured who say they’ve spent time with God. Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) was one of the great writers of the 20th c. This being Black History Month, it’s fit and right to remember her. Such literary giants as Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, and Maya Angelou are all literary progeny of Zora Neale Hurston. She grew up in a Baptist church where her father was pastor and she remembered how “some of the congregation told of getting close enough to peep into God’s sitting-room windows. Some went further. They had been inside the place and looked all around. They spoke of sights and scenes around God’s throne. That should have been enough for me,” she wrote, “But somehow it left a lack in my mind. They should have looked and acted differently than other people after experiences like that. But these people looked and acted like everybody else….”[2] When people who have been to the mountain on Sunday don’t act differently when they return to the level places Monday through Saturday, the Ooohs turn into Eews. People expect people’s lives to be different out there as a result of sitting in God’s presence in here.

Jesus’ life was changed. He went up on a mountain and then he went down and commenced a journey that ended on a cross. Transfiguration Sunday is followed by the forty days of Lent. On the mountain Peter, James, and John saw Jesus’ face shining, his clothes dazzling white, but just under seven weeks from now Jesus will go up another mount called Golgotha and he’ll be transfigured again – in one man’s words, “bloodied and spat upon, those dazzling clothes torn into souvenir rags.[3]” The one who was glorified on a mountain was also crucified. Two sides of the same coin. On both mounts his true colors came shining through: shimmering Son of God and Suffering Servant of all Humankind. One and the same. He lived and died, was transfigured on the mount of Transfiguration and the mount called Golgotha, so that we might be changed inside out, transfigured inside here so we might live differently out there.

Will anyone remember the looks on our faces and the way we lived our lives as a result of our being in the presence of God and God’s beloved son Jesus?

Let Peter, James, and John and all the disciples of Antioch say, AMEN

[1] Kennon Callahan, Dynamic Worship, p. 18

[2] Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road, (Univ. of Illinois Press: Chicago), page 267.

[3] Father Thomas Rosica at http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/obedient-listening-to-god-and-to-jesus