There is a remarkable painting by Giovanni Tiepolo completed in the 1770's or 1780's that relates to our text today. I have perused a variety of artwork related to this story via the internet, and much of it has emphasized the distance between the transfigured Jesus on the Mount and the humans who both witnessed and participated in this event. Jesus is adorned in white and is often completely surrounded by a white aura. Sometimes he is depicted with a halo circling his head. Moses and Elijah stand off at both sides, and the disciples lay prostrate at Jesus’ feet.

Tiepolo’s painting, however, doesn’t depict the transfiguration itself. Instead, the artist paints Jesus, Peter, James, and John, beginning the climb up the steep mountain. It is the most ordinary of sights–four men, walking together, at the outset of a journey. Granted, they don’t carry backpacks and wear hiking sneakers. The National Parks hasn’t been there to mark the elevation every little while and erect small covered shelters along the way. Through this painting, I was struck with several aspects of the transfiguration story that had previously eluded me.

The last time we see Jesus take a significant retreat, he is alone, headed into the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights after being baptized by his cousin, John. This time, however, he retreats with some of his closest disciples, confidants, and friends after his public ministry has begun. Jesus leaves behind the noise of pressing crowds seeking healing, religious leaders attempting to entrap him, and even the distance between his calling from God and his family of origin back in Nazareth.

Jesus has recently explained to Peter, James, and John that he will undergo great suffering, but will rise again on the third day. They don’t have a clue as to what he is talking about. Peter goes as far as to rebuke Jesus for such crazy talk. Jesus, in turn, rebukes Peter.

So, again Jesus retreats, but this time with his inner circle. Have you ever gone with some of your closest friends or colleagues to a place apart? I’m thinking of churches that offer special retreats for their leadership team, or college students that spend spring break together. I’m even thinking of Jephtha’s daughter in the book of Judges (Judges, Chapter 11). Her father vows to sacrifice whatever meets him at his door if God gives him a victory in battle. His forces win, but his victory soon turns bittersweet. How could it not? Jephtha’s own beloved daughter meets him at the door. It’s a dark, horrible story. One of its many haunting features comes when the unnamed daughter asks her father to let her go away with her women friends to “bewail her virginity” before she is sacrificed. Each year thereafter, Jephtha’s daughter is remembered by the young women of Israel (Judges 11:37-40). Retreating with our inner circle of friends, we can think of so many associations and stories--some gentle, some tragic, some a mixture of both.

Thus it seems appropriate--even necessary--that Jesus would gather with these three disciples for a mountain retreat as he has sets his face toward the trouble and tragedy that awaits him in Jerusalem, the spiritual capital of his faith. What did Jesus expect to happen on that mountain? Was he in need of strengthening from God? Did he hope for Yahweh to touch this inner circle, whose journey would parallel his own in ways they could never guess at that time? Was he yearning for quiet companionship in this time of reckoning? Indeed, once any of us decides to follow a course that we believe is right yet also know will be costly, we, too, are often in need of community, prayer, and the touch of God.

We cannot know the answers to all our questions, but we need to ask them. This asking helps us to get hold of a story that, at first glance, seems quite removed from most of our lives. Which one of us has seen Moses and Elijah, in conversation with Jesus? Which one of us has watched the earthly Jesus transformed into the Christ of faith, clothed in white and surrounded by a light we cannot bear? Which one of us has heard God speak, “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him”?

Ah, but we have! And we do! The form of such speaking may vary. The circumstances and conduit may change. But none of us would be here today if we weren’t in the process of hearing God speak to us through this same Jesus who walked up the mountain with his disciples to retreat and this same Christ before whom we are often astounded and undone. None of us would be here today if something within us wasn’t compelling us to listen to him. Instead, we would be reading our Sunday paper, or sleeping in, or catching up on our weekday work.

What is the significance of this vision on the mountain, this transfiguration--or transformation--of Jesus? I once heard a preacher say, “The more difficult the call, the louder God will speak.” In other words, if God is speaking loudly, then you are probably going to need that clarity of voice down the road. This was true when I felt the call to greater public service at the funeral of Bob Thomas, one of the great saints of this church. A young nephew challenged the gathered congregation, saying, “Bob is no longer here, but his spirit of loving service remains. He’s leaving his work to the rest of us. What is it that you are called to do?”

It was as if God was speaking that challenge directly to my heart. By the time I left that funeral, I began considering a candidacy for School Board. In the ensuing months, I campaigned and was elected. Three months into my four year term, at the age of 41, I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma.
Now, any idiot would probably decide not to take on something as ambitious as public office if he or she knew that surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy–and recovery from the treatments--was up and coming. When I heard the news that it was cancer, I was as incredulous as everyone else. And there was nothing easy about serving on the School Board at that time.

Yet, I had heard God’s call. What should I do? After much reflection, I determined that I would not resign for health reasons unless God “uncalled” me--in other words, released me from that call. In the absence of such a release, I determined to be faithful. Period.

Tradition has it that Peter was one day crucified upside down. James was killed by the sword, as recorded in the Book of Acts (Acts 12:1,2). John was exiled to the small island of Patmos (Revelation 1:9). They would each need this mountaintop experience with Jesus in the days and years to come, long after their friend and Lord faced his own crucifixion.

With that lengthy and steep trek up and down the mountain, I doubt that Jesus and his disciples spend just the few moments described in the Gospels on the mountaintop. The time apart surely quiets their souls, centers their hearts, and gives them a chance to just be together, alone with God. In that silence comes the vision of Moses the Lawgiver and Elijah the Prophet. In that silence comes the Presence of Yahweh in a luminous cloud. The silence is pierced by the sound of Yahweh’s voice. In that silence comes the Light, which people all over the world identify when the veil between this world and the next is lifted for a brief time.

Peter, James, and John walk down the mountain with Jesus after all this happens, and they can never forget what they have seen and heard. Harder still, Jesus tells them to keep this all a secret until after his own suffering and rising—which they don’t understand, anyhow. He talks with them about Elijah, and they begin figuring out that he is talking about the imprisoned baptizer named John, not Elijah the ancient prophet of Israel. Jesus speaks about the prophets and their suffering, and his own suffering, as if they are all of one piece. And he talks about Jerusalem, a spiritual home he both loves and mourns at the same time, for she does not recognize those who come to save her.

The trip down the mountain must be a lot like the disciples much later walking along the road to Emmaus, talking with the One whom they don’t recognize about the things they have seen and heard after Jesus’ death. Some experiences you try to unpack with anyone who will listen, and some you just tuck in your heart because they are too precious to share.

The time down the mountain must be a little like the trip home from a really intense and life-changing retreat. And then...and then...and then...come the demands of life, streaming in as a veritable flood. Do you feel that flood, when you return to work after a vacation, or to school after a break? As soon as Jesus, Peter, James, and John descend from the mountain, they are immediately faced with a desperate father and his convulsing child whom the other disciples cannot heal. Jesus is called to the rescue. “Why couldn’t we heal him?” the disciples wonder (Mt. 17:19). “This kind can only be removed by prayer & fasting,” Jesus responds (Mt. 17:20). The whole definition of prayer probably means something very different to Jesus’ inner circle after the mountain experience.

We often focus on the exaltation of Christ at the Transfiguration, but the question that holds me is this, “Did Jesus need that experience, too?” Did he go up there with his disciples because he, as well as they, needed to hear from Yahweh--whether in a still, small Voice like Elijah, a whirlwind like Job, a burning bush like Moses–or none of these? Did he, too, need a word from God or an experience with God to help get him through the Days of Darkness to come?

The transfiguration is a numinous experience. Do you know this word? Numinous implies mystery, fluidity, sacredness. And yet, as we prepare today for the Lord’s Supper, I have to say that every time you all come to this Communion Table to receive the bread and juice, it is a numinous experience for me. I look at you, and I am so amazed that God has made of us a family of faith. I close my eyes and hold you in the Light of God’s presence. I see your stories in my heart–the hard places, the joyous spaces, the growing edges. I sense that wider Body of Christ, of whom we are just a small part.

Let’s not leave the Transfiguration on the mountain; we need that vision too much. We dare not simply relegate it to church doctrine or believe it is too supernatural for our contemporary sensibilities. This transforming revelation goes on and on in the lives of God’s people as we recognize Christ in the solitude and among our close friends in retreat, as we witness Jesus working his compassion among the crowds today as well as long ago, as we pray like we’ve never prayed before and behold the miracles of divine grace. Let us celebrate the Lord’s Supper together in this spirit. Amen.