Exodus
24:12-18 The Lord said to Moses, “Come up to me on the
mountain, and wait there; and I will give you the tablets of stone, with the
law and the commandment, which I have written for their instruction.” So
Moses set out with his assistant Joshua, and Moses went up into the mountain of
God. To the elders he had said, “Wait here for us, until we come to you
again; for Aaron and Hur are with you; whoever has a dispute may go to
them.” Then Moses went up on the mountain, and the cloud covered the
mountain. The glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai, and the
cloud covered it for six days; on the seventh day he called to Moses out of the
cloud. Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a
devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of
Israel. Moses entered the cloud, and went up on the mountain. Moses was on
the mountain for forty days and forty nights.
Matthew 17:1-9 Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and
James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them,
and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly there appeared to them Moses
and Elijah, talking with him. Then
Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will
make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” While he was still speaking, suddenly
a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, “This is my
Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” When the disciples heard this, they
fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. But
Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.” And when they looked up, they saw no
one except Jesus himself alone. As
they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, “Tell no one about the
vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”
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My little dog, Chuy, thinks that every time we go out for a walk around
the block it’s a whole new experience.
Every time we pass that one fascinating mailbox, it’s like he’s never
seen it before. Every time a motorcycle
drives by, Chuy lunges forward as if to say, “what is that extraordinary thing,
I have never seen anything like it before!” It’s annoying, but also kind of
cute.
I think when Peter, James, and John followed Jesus to the mountain they were
like Chuy – although maybe a little cooler about it – they didn’t leap up in
the air with their tongues hanging out. But
like Chuy, they thought they were witnessing something that had never happened
before.
Well, it was strange, wasn’t it? When
Jesus took Peter and James and John to the mountain, they saw him transfigured
– transformed somehow. It’s not clear
exactly what this transformation was.
The best they could do was to say that his face shone like the sun, and
his clothes became dazzling white. He
was almost too much, too intense, to look at.
His appearance was otherworldly.
And at the same time, Moses and Elijah appeared before them, on either
side of Jesus. We asked at the
roundtable, how did they know it was Moses and Elijah. They didn’t have experiences like this every
day, in fact, probably never before. So
how did they know what they were seeing?
Possibly, they recognized them from their childhood picture Bibles. Or they might have been wearing nametags that
said, “Hello, my name is Elijah,” and “Hello, my name is Moses.” But the truth is, we don’t know how they
knew. They just knew.
They probably just knew intuitively, by the way they were feeling. You know that feeling you get all over when
you encounter something awesome, or awful, something otherworldly. Something that defies logic but is,
nonetheless, real.
And they thought, Wow. Nothing
like this has ever happened before. But,
actually, it had. Moses, had he wanted
to, could have told them all about it.
Many hundreds of years earlier, the Lord called Moses to come up on the
mountaintop, and he went. He took his
disciple, Joshua, with him. They waited.
The glory of the Lord shone like a cloud covering the mountaintop. They waited six days, then on the seventh
day, the Lord called Moses, and Moses entered the cloud. Pretty extraordinary stuff. But it’s not all. This wasn’t the first, nor the last, time God
showed Godself.
Earlier in the Exodus story, God made arrangements with Moses for the
people of Israel to have an opportunity to hear from God directly. It was taken very, very seriously. The people had to be consecrated. Then a perimeter had to be set up to prevent
them from getting too close. And when
the day arrived, the third day, God spoke from the mountaintop directly to the
people of Israel.
It turned out to be more of a relationship than they were interested
in. They were terrified. They told Moses, “In the future, you go talk
with God. You go and listen to what God
says, come back and tell us everything God says we should do, and we will do
it. But for the love of all that is
good, please do not make us go near God again.”
And so Moses held private conversations with God after that, in the cloud. The cloud by which it seems God had come to
them throughout their journey from Egypt.
In the Exodus story, they say God showed them the way to where they were
going with a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. The cloud and the fire are the images of the
mystery and the awesomeness of God.
As the story goes, Moses would have frequent conversations with God, on
the mountain, in the cloud. Later on, he
began to take on an eerie, and apparently disturbing, glow when he came back
from these meetings. His face
shone. It was so upsetting to the people
that he began wearing a veil over his face so they wouldn’t have to see
it. It was closer to the divine than
they were comfortable with.
Moses, apparently, had grown comfortable with his role as the liaison
with God through years of practice. The
first encounter he had with God was the burning bush – an awesome, awful
thing. He was helplessly drawn to it,
and as he approached he heard the Voice: remove the sandals from your feet, for
you are standing on holy ground. From
here on, Moses could not escape the role that God had chosen for him as the one
who would bring his people to freedom.
Moses did lead the people of Israel out of slavery and through the
wilderness and into the covenant with God that would guide them up to this very
day. Thanks to Moses’ private
conversations with God in the cloud.
Flash forward from that wilderness experience many hundreds of years, to
Jesus and his disciples. Far away from
everyone else, in a wilderness on top of a mountain, the scene repeats. Moses even makes an appearance.
Peter, James, and John stood below them a bit, just like Joshua had stood
below while Moses conversed with God.
Wide-eyed and slack-jawed. They
had never seen anything like this before.
But once he pulled his face together and was able to speak, Peter says
something brilliant: Let’s build some little houses up here, shrines that
people can visit. Let’s take this
feeling and capture it, bottle it, commodify it, sell it or give it away –
It’s hard to know exactly what Peter was thinking here. Perhaps it was just nervous rambling, without
any clear intention. Then the bright
cloud came over them and they heard the Voice, essentially telling him to stop
talking and listen. Listen to the
beloved Son.
In the cloud, Peter and James and John were given the opportunity to see
that God had drawn near to them, pretty much without their even knowing
it. This same God of their ancestors who
were too afraid to stand in God’s presence; the God of Moses and Elijah; the
God who had led them safely through the wilderness and delivered them to the
promised land; the God who did not abandon them ever, through exile and
persecution, even attempted genocide at the hands of many peoples, even up to
the 20th century, as we well know.
You see the connections? What
happened with Peter, James, and John and Jesus has happened before. The cloud, the voice, the shining face. The mountaintop. The six days, the forty days and forty
nights. We are meant to know that this
is directly connected to the God of Israel.
The story of the transfiguration of Jesus is important for telling us
that this is the Christ, the incarnation of the God of Israel. Everything about the story is meant to make
the connection between Jesus and the God of the Old Testament. That for us, and for our salvation, God came
down and took on flesh, becoming truly human.
To show us God’s intention for us – to live in communion with God,
through Christ. It is an extraordinary
epiphany. God is here, and God’s love is
becoming more expansive – it now includes us.
We know this from the cloud, that incredible mountaintop experience. But this knowledge becomes working knowledge
when we come down from the mountain. The
knowledge of God’s expansive love becomes purposeful when we take it out into
the world.
This is what was wrong with Peter’s brilliant idea about building shrines
on the mountain. He wanted to capture
it, keep it; either stay there with it, or carry it around like a bubble of
euphoria. He wanted to stay in the
cloud. But that’s not the purpose of the
cloud.
After Jesus led Peter, James, and John down from the mountain, they were
approached by a man who fell on his knees before Jesus. He begged Jesus to heal his son who was
afflicted with epilepsy. And so Jesus
did. This is the purpose of the cloud –
to touch, to heal, to bless, to love.
There is no staying on the mountain and reveling in the glory. The meaning of this communion with God is
found in the connections we make with others.
When Jesus heals and consoles, when he teaches and uplifts, he is living
out the perfect relationship with God.
He asks us to follow his example.
There is a tendency for Christians to segregate ourselves, creating
exclusive communities, clouds of other people like us. We find it easier to be with people who share
our values and beliefs and practices and preferences. It’s a lot of trouble to get to know people
who have different values and beliefs and practices and preferences. But, for the sake of the world, for the love
of Jesus, it is essential that we start going to the trouble.
There is a lot of hate in our land these days. Much of it has been directed toward our
brothers and sisters, the Jews. We have
seen Neo-Nazi groups come out of the shadows.
We have heard about multiple bomb threats against Jewish Community Centers,
places where people go for water aerobics and youth basketball, and send their
kids to preschool. We have seen the
vandalization of an historic Jewish cemetery in St Louis.
We should not fail to notice that the first ones to come forward to help
the Jews in St Louis were the Muslims.
Just as, when the Muslims lost their mosque in Victoria, Texas a few
weeks ago, the Jews were the first to come forward and help. Where are the Christians?
The Christians were late to the game in Texas. Late to the game in St Louis. The truth seems to be that Christians in
America are slow to condemn acts of hate against another group, and that is
disturbing. That is something that needs
to change.
Friends, we must get out of our Christian cloud and enter the mix where
we encounter others who pray differently but love the same as we do, because
God loves them all. We must shed our
complacency about our faith, and let go of any notions that we are the
persecuted ones, get out of our Christian cloud and respond to a world in need
of love.
The mountaintop is pretty great.
And the cloud is amazing. But
let’s not spend too much time there, because there is much work to do on the
ground.
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