Delmar Chilton was pastor of Lutheran Chapel in China Grove, NC from 1984 to 1985. Sorting through the church archives, he found some old, hand-written sermons by one of his predecessors, Dr. D.S. Brown, who had been pastor there from 1945-1960. In one of those sermons, Brown talked about the first car he owned, a Model T which he acquired in 1920. At that time, Brown was serving a church nestled in the western reaches of the Appalachian Mountains, near Johnson City, TN.
He describes taking a trip to Knoxville, a little more than 100 miles to the southwest on our present roads. Of course, he was making the trip in the 1920s, long before the interstate highway system was begun, so the trip was far more arduous. Brown often had no road to follow, so he would drive along creek beds. Steep hills proved a particular challenge. His Model T had a gravity fed fuel system. There was no fuel pump. Instead the fuel tank was mounted higher than the carburetor so that gravity would cause the fuel to flow into the engine. Unfortunately, this system did not work when going up a steep grade, of which there were many in the mountains of Tennessee. So, Brown had to turn the car around, put it in reverse and back up many of the slopes.
On that long trip, he would sometimes come to the top of a mountain or a ridge line and off in the distance he could see the lights of Knoxville, but most of the time he was down in the valleys and the creek beds, driving in the shadows of the mountains, down where the darkness of night came early and lingered longer. This, Brown said, is like our faith journey. We occasionally catch a glimpse of the Holy, but most of the time were working our way forward through the valleys. We are occasionally dazzled by the light of our goal, but much of our time is spent traveling in far dimmer conditions.
Peter, James and John caught a dazzling glimpse of the Holy when they went up the mountain to pray with Jesus. It was anything but an ordinary, everyday experience. There, on that height, Jesus is transfigured. His face is changed and his clothes seem to emit light. He literally glows, radiating the very glory of God. It is an overwhelming, mind-numbing declaration of his identity—in him the glory of God is made flesh, the presence of God has drawn near, the power of God is made manifest and the love and grace of God shine forth. And, as if that’s not enough, Moses and Elijah appear and begin to talk with him. All of this sheds light, quite literally, on Jesus’ role as the “Christ, the Messiah of God,” an identity which Peter had confessed just eight days earlier.
The three disciples are having what, in the tradition of Christian spirituality, we call a mystical experience. These are direct experiences of the Divine. They may be visual experiences in which the physical realm is somehow illuminated, as in our scripture; they may be auditory experiences, like Elijah hearing a still, small voice; they may be dreams or visions of something beyond our immediate physical reality; they may be feelings or senses of God’s immediate presence, as when John Wesley’s heart was strangely warmed during a worship service. But whatever form they take, they are gifts from God. They come and go at God’s pleasure. They cannot be produced by human efforts, for they are God’s own self-revelation to us. In a mystical experience, God’s light shines through everyday objects and experiences and makes us suddenly and acutely aware of God’s presence, God’s love, and God’s will.
It can be an overwhelming thing. Surely, the transfiguration must have been awe-inspiring, deeply scary and unspeakably beautiful all at once. Perhaps that’s why Peter reacts as he does. In the midst of this epiphany, confronted by the splendor of God’s glory shining in the face of Jesus (2 Cor 4.6), Peter blurts out, “Good thing we’re here, Lord. Why don’t we make three dwellings, a shelter for each one of you.” It’s as if he wants to prolong the experience. But of course he can’t. It’s not his to prolong; it’s God’s gracious gift. And besides, he can’t stay on that mountain top staring at Jesus’ beauty any more than Brown could stay on the mountaintop staring at the lights of Knoxville. Life is happening down below, down in the valley. There is a journey to be made, work to done, life to be lived, a destination to be reached.
Notice that even Jesus does not stay on the mountain. Even he does not spend all his time basking in the glory of God. He leaves his prayers, he leaves the company of Moses and Elijah, and he comes back down to the world. He has work to do down among the people. And so, the Divine Glory descends the mountain in love and compassion. The Human One, who is God’s light incarnate, brings that light back down to his fellow humans, meeting them in the midst of their need with healing, forgiveness, reconciliation and hope. Though he is no longer transfigured, the light still shines in his words and his deeds, in his love for God and humanity. And that light, embodied and enacted, gives life and hope to all who will receive it.
As Jesus descends the mountain, he brings the disciples with him. Peter, James and John were called to join in his work, as are we. We are invited to seek God in scripture and worship, to experienced God in music, baptism and communion. And from time to time, we may even be granted a sense of God’s presence with us; a glimpse of God’s glory may be revealed to us in the midst of everyday life. But we are also called to reflect God’s light in the shadowy valleys and the dry, rough streambeds of the world. We are called to leave the sanctuary, to leave the space of private prayer, to come down off the mountain and move among our fellow humans with love, forgiveness and compassion. And as we do so, God’s light will shine through us and we will, in our own way, be transfigured, our true identity as God’s children revealed as we imitate God’s Son.
In her memoir Breathing Space—about her 20 years of ministry at Transfiguration Lutheran Church in the South Bronx—Heidi Neumark tells how she came to a church that was struggling and on life support. The neighborhood around it had changed. Poverty had become rampant and brought with it all its familiar, accompanying problems: despair, crime, drug abuse, lack of educational opportunity, limited access to transportation and good jobs, the sense that this struggle and deprivation was all there was or ever could be. The congregation had responded by closing itself off from the community, by shutting its doors to the people around it.
She took this morning’s scripture about the healing of the boy with an unclean spirit as a model and she set about, slowly, gradually, helping the congregation to turn outward. “When Peter and the others came down from the mountain,” she writes, “they found a father and a child gasping for life. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the boy and gave him back to his father. And [in that encounter, not only the father and son, but also the disciples] found transfiguration.”
As the congregation began to reach out, they too were transformed. “When the disciples of this Bronx church unlocked the doors of their private shelter and stepped out into the neighborhood, they did meet the distress of the community convulsed and mauled by poverty….But they also discovered transfiguration as a congregation in connection with others.” As they reached out in care and compassion, as they learned to love their neighbors, the people of Transfiguration Lutheran were being transformed into the image of Christ; as their hearts were opened to others in love and their hands were opened to their needy neighbors and struggling strangers in generosity and compassion, they were being transformed from one degree of glory to another…and another…and another.
They learned that God’s glory is to be both found and revealed out in the world. God’s glory descends to the level of human need, calling and empowering us to go down with Jesus and join in his work of compassion and love. “Living high up in the rarefied air isn’t the point of transfiguration [says Neumark] ... [It was] never meant as a private experience of spirituality removed from the public square. It was a vision to carry us down, a glimpse of unimagined possibility at ground level.” The Transfiguration, like the Rev. Dr. Brown’s mountain top glimpses of Knoxville, is a sign of hope that the destination is growing nearer, that the Kingdom of God is drawing nearer, that the light of the promise of God’s Beloved Community still shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it.
In Jesus, God’s glory is revealed: in his life and teaching, God’s grace, God’s love, God’s compassion shines forth; in his death, God’s abiding presence with us is revealed, refusing to abandon us even in death; in his resurrection, God’s life and God’s creative power rises victorious like the morning sun banishing darkness. In Christ, God’s glory descends among us, bringing hope and salvation, transforming our hearts and minds and leading us toward the bright light of God’s future. Our call is to reflect this light, even as it is transforming us into the glory of God’s children. Our call is to embody the beauty of God’s gracious, compassionate love, that others may be drawn to the Divine light. Our call is to take the light of God’s glory in Christ down from the mountain, down to ground level, down into the valleys and alleys, down into the creek beds and the streets, down into the places of shadows and dim light, down to where the people are—the people whom God loves so deeply, so that they too may find the salvation and hope we have received and together we all may be transformed from glory to glory.