For Sunday, February 7, 2016 – Luke 9:28-43a
Memorable moments of heightened awareness, “mountaintop moments,” cannot be manufactured. They break in upon us, surprise us, usually leave us feeling shaken and vulnerable. In such times we see that life holds more potential, more mystery than our rational minds comprehend. Mountaintop moments are awesome reminders of God’s reality, but are they where our own reality gets lived day by day?
Jesus goes up on a mountain to pray, taking with him Peter, John and James. They have traveled with Jesus for a good while now, and have had quite a few “spiritual highs” with him. The hazy film dimming their vision keeps peeling away, helping them to see more and more clearly who he really is. Even so, they are totally stunned when they see Jesus praying, and his physical appearance begins to change, his face and clothes start shining vividly, and beside him appear two of their spiritual heroes, long-time rock stars of the faith, Moses and Elijah, the three of them just chatting casually like old friends. One of the biggest of big moments! Because he cannot comprehend it, Peter takes a flight of imagination, wondering how to capture it, memorialize it, make it more real.
Of course, memorializing breakthrough moments will not make them any more real—they are simply because they are. Just as Jesus is who he is, and Moses and Elijah are who they are, with or without this transforming moment, so the rest of us do not become more “spiritual” because we have “spiritual” moments. True, to notice mountaintop moments feels good; it is good to be quiet and let the wonder wash over us, to let the big moments be big moments, unexplainable and life-altering. And even better, to begin to recognize that such moments are not reserved for mountaintops alone. What is beyond us also shows up right here beside us. Back on the ground, they have a mountaintop moment, in the chaos and pain of a normal human day. Big moments, it seems, go wherever God goes.
To climb up the mountain is not to escape reality, not to seek something lofty beyond us, but to see what is before us, right in front of us now. The mountain is not a pinnacle but a passage, leading us back into the daily work of God’s dream, that beautiful, indescribable vision. We carry it with us, hold it before us, ponder it and journey on.
