Coming Down the Mountain

Matthew 17:1-9

My first question is this: how would Peter, James, and John known what Moses and Elijah looked like? It’s not really an important question to the message of the sermon, but it’s been bugging me all week. Now it’s going to bug you, too. I’m sorry.

This passage raises many questions, but I’m of the belief that “raising questions” is the purpose of the gospel. The Gospel ultimately gives us a vision with which we can question what we see in the world around us. It’s a vision of who God is, where God is at work, and what God’s hope is for creation. It’s on account of this vision that I look for the image of God in others. It’s on account of this vision that I am able to raise questions about the importance of kindness despite the overwhelming presence of cruelty in this world. Peter, James, and John receive a vision in this passage, a vision that continues to raise questions about who Jesus is, questions about his purpose, questions about what he must do. The question that I want to look at today with you, however, is this: Why didn’t Peter want to go back down the mountain?

“Lord, it is good for us to be here,” he tells Jesus, ready to go, with his Lord’s permission, and build three dwellings there. Why so eager? Let me share a few bits of background information on where this story falls in the grand-scheme of Matthew’s Gospel, and then I’ll ask you this question again.

Chapters 16-20 of Matthew connect Jesus’ ministry around Galilee and his passion in Jerusalem. This section of Matthew “focuses on Jesus’ preparation of the disciples for what is to come.”[1] Just six days before this transfiguration scene, Jesus asks Peter “Who do you say that I am?” “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God,” Peter proclaims to Jesus’ blessing and approval. “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it!” High praise. Then, in similar fashion to the ending of today’s passage Jesus “sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.”

“From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” In response to this teaching, Peter speaks up again, but there is no praise from Jesus this time. Peter says, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” Honestly, that’d probably be how I’d respond to a friend telling me that he felt his destiny was to suffer and die. But Jesus shuts Peter down, “Get behind me Satan!” he declares. The one who just earlier had been blessed, and renamed, has been renamed again: Satan. “You are a stumbling block to me.” The rock upon which Jesus would build his church has become a stumbling block. “You are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

There’s enough going on in that exchange for an entire sermon series, but to sum it up: Peter proclaims that Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ; Jesus tells the disciples that, as the Christ, he must go to Jerusalem to be persecuted and crucified; Peter doesn’t like the sound of that.

Now, back to today’s passage, and my earlier question: Why didn’t Peter want to go back down the mountain? Perhaps, as Douglas Hare suggests, “this detail is intended to suggest that Peter wants to rejoice in the ‘heavenly Jesus’ rather than go to Jerusalem to watch his master suffer a painful death.”[2] What Peter’s behavior in this story helps me to remember, is how a normal human being would act. It’s easy to take for granted how differently I read and understand much of the Gospel because I already know how it ends. Peter reminds us, however, of the typical human response to not knowing, to not being in control, the typical human response to mystery.

The “high mountain” in this story “has traditionally been identified as Mount Tabor in Southern Galilee, a hill that rises only a few hundred feet above the surrounding plain.”[3] This hill, this “mountain”, serves more as a metaphor in this story, it “symbolizes the border zone between earth and heaven, between the material and the spiritual.”[4] The high mountain symbolizes a place of mystery, of unknown, of wonder. When we speak of our own “mountain top” experiences we speak of those times in our life when we encounter the presence of God, when God grants us permission to cross over the threshold of mystery and to stand, if only for just a moment, with some sort of certainty about the goodness of God.

Just as soon as that certainty is granted, it is taken away, and we find ourselves being called back down the mountain, back into a world where suffering, and pain, and the unknown lie before us and our friends and family. I suppose the real question is not: why didn’t Peter want to go back down the mountain, but why don’t we?

Every month, when we gather at the communion table, we are given a glimpse, a vision, of the heavenly kingdom. We are allowed, through the sacraments, to cross over the threshold of mystery and feast in the presence of God, to taste and see that the Lord is good! But then, as soon as the moment comes, it goes: a bite, a sip, and then we are sent back into the world to serve the suffering.

Communion is our opportunity to receive a God-given vision, an opportunity to witness the transfiguration of Christ, and an opportunity to respond to the questions raised by this vision: What does this vision teach me about who God is? What does this vision reveal about where God is at work in this world? What does this vision reveal about God’s hope? Where is this vision sending me to share that hope?

We enter the season of Lent this Wednesday. We begin a season in which we, as followers of Christ, are called to sit in solidarity with suffering. We, who know the end of the Gospel, ultimately know the radical location of God’s hope: in the full-participation of the divine with the deepest experience of human suffering. The cross. The cross reminds us that Jesus left one mountaintop in order to be crucified on another. The cross reminds us that God does not hide from suffering, but joins it. The cross reminds us of the hard work of reconciliation, the ministry to which we are called.

Amen.

Lent is a season of mystery. A season to sit with the questions of the cross. Give yourself time to sit with the questions that the cross raises for you.

[1] Hare, Douglas R.A., “Matthew” from Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. Louisville, KY. 1993, Westminster John Knox. P 188.

[2] Ibid. 199.

[3] Ibid. 198.

[4] Ibid.