Today’s passage begins with the phrase, “Six days later….” So of course we are curious about what has happened six days before this day when Jesus takes Peter, James and John to the top of a mountain where they see him transfigured. Six days before, Jesus has started to speak quite explicitly about his coming suffering, how he will be rejected and killed and will rise again. Remember how Peter takes him aside, reprimanding him for saying such things? And remember how Jesus sternly responds, “Get away from me, Satan! You are seeing things from your human perspective, not from God’s.” Now, six days later, Jesus chooses Peter, along with James and John, to go with him up the mountain. Here they will be given a glimpse of God’s perspective.
When we speak of having a mountaintop moment, we often mean any larger-than-life experience that reaches into our depths and radically changes our perspective. Whether by means of an organized event (a church revival, a spiritual retreat) or one of life’s ordinary sacraments (the birth of a baby, a close call with death), we suddenly see beyond our usual capacity, our hearts open, our defenses fall. Everything we think we already know and understand is transfigured. With Peter, we stumble for words, for ways to respond. We try to make sense of what does not make the usual kind of sense. We blurt out nonsense to comfort ourselves, not because we have wisdom to share.
Transfiguring moments, we learn once we begin to see, are found not only on mountaintops. Awe abounds. The earth is filled with the goodness of God. Today the psalmist sings, “The mighty one speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting. In the perfection of beauty, God shines forth.” Jesus does not need a mountaintop in order to be transfigured. Already, in his healing and teaching and calling forth, he shines. Peter, James and John—like the rest of us, dedicated to the Jesus of our understanding yet still not able, consistently, to see—are the ones in need of transfiguration. We need the journey up the mountain to understand our work at the base, to remember that the work of God is not about the work . . . it is about the beauty that shines forth suddenly, unexpectedly, that stops us in our tracks, that calls us back to our ordinary lives, changed, with a new perspective.
