On the Mountain and in the Valley

Transfiguration C25
March 2, 2025

Jesus got up early. He took with him Peter, James, and John. It was a day like any other. It was a day just like today. What happened next sounds like a scene from a Hollywood movie. He led them up a high mountain where Jesus’ face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightening. Moses and Elijah appeared. They spoke with Jesus about his departure, literally, about his ‘exodus,’ which he was about to accomplish in Jerusalem. They were overshadowed by a dense terrifying cloud from which they head a heavenly voice saying, “This is my Son, my chosen; listen to him!” (Luke 9: 28-30; 34-35)

Perhaps Peter speaks for all of us when he suggests they build someplace nice to linger there in comfort. Wouldn’t that be the perfect Hollywood ending to Jesus’ story? Popular religious imagination dictates that our faith journey will lead upwards. We strive toward the mountaintop of glory until we arrive at the pearly gates to sit around and shoot the breeze with Moses, Elijah, and all the other saints in light. Peter’s instinct, upon experiencing this spiritual high, was to hoard it. His plan to “make dwellings” sounds like so many other misguided attempts to contain, domesticate, protect, and possess the sublime. But God had other plans. God has a more excellent way, the way of love.

No. The gospel did not end on the mountain of the transfiguration. This magnificent scene is not the ultimate but the penultimate, not the end but the beginning. The way of Jesus leads down the mountain to deepen faith. Jesus leads us into the world. He steers us closer to those who are suffering. For reasons only love can explain, though he was in the form of God, Jesus did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped but came down, was born of human flesh, and lived among us, full of grace and truth. (Philippians 2:6 & John 1:14). St. Paul quotes these words of an ancient Christian hymn and urges us to “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.”
This is the never-ending story of God’s miraculous embrace of the world which now includes our own poor lives and the flow of history around us. In the arms of God, we undergo our own transfiguration, as we journey downward with God and walk the way of Jesus’ cross.

I wonder, what moments come to mind when you knew your life was transfigured? Are there days you found yourself standing on a new horizon? Your life changed in some fundamental way? Perhaps it was upon the death of a loved one? The birth of a child? A new job? The loss of a job? The end of a relationship? Falling in love?

Faith in Christ Jesus is one such transfiguration. Perhaps, for you, faith happened all at once. Perhaps your faith grew steadily over time. No doubt, faith continues to evolve and mature throughout our life. As St. Paul points out, through faith we may remain on the mountaintop and follow Jesus into the valley. Here at the font, at the table, and by the Word we are being remade. Mind and body, body and soul become one. We are becoming the never-before-to exist person God created us to be. Through faith, we follow Jesus down the mountain and into life’s valleys without leaving the comfort of the mountaintop.

Through faith we slowly learn to embrace mystery and awe along with reason and doubt. In the cloud of unknowing we learn that faith is not intellectual assent to creeds or doctrines but rather trust in divine love. To trust in love is to trust in the availability of fresh possibilities relative to each situation; to trust that love is ultimately more powerful than violence; to trust that even the galaxies and planets are drawn by a loving presence; and to trust that, no matter what happens, all things are somehow gathered into a wider beauty. This beauty is the Adventure of the Universe as One in Christ.

Franciscan priest and mystic, Richard Rohr challenges “mountaintop” religiosity. That is, a religiosity that divides the sacred and special from the secular and ordinary: “We have created an artificial divide or dualism between the spiritual and the so-called non-spiritual,” Rohr writes. “This dualism is precisely what Jesus came to reveal as a lie. The Incarnation proclaims that matter and spirit have never been separate. Jesus came to tell us that these two seemingly different worlds are — and always have been — one.”

Here, in the sacred space we create together, God is revealed as both immanent and transcendent—incarnate and mysterious. As close as our next breath, and present in the farthest corners of the universe. Incarnation is the ultimate journey downward. Christ is fully, finally revealed, not on the mountain of glory, but on the cross at Golgotha. The cross is where we learn that nothing, not even our most evil deeds, can break our bond with the indwelling and life-giving grace of God. Not even death can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. God has chosen what we would not. God chose us. Thanks be to God.

In the mystery of faith and the unity of body and soul and of glory and the cross, our life becomes is like a guitar string strung tightly between mountaintop moments with God and daily life in the world. They go together even as they are held apart like the opposing anchors of a stringed instrument. Held in this tension our lives produce such beautiful music.

See, the veil between us and God is lifted. St. Paul writes, ‘we are being transformed by the image of God, from one degree of glory to another by faith. (1 Corinthians 3:18). Our journey with Jesus, is an unveiling of the gospel, so that what is inmost and truest about who we are, may to some degree become manifest in us—upon our faces, in our eyes, our hearts and minds –and in the community we make in family, community, society and the wider world.

This Lent I invite you to journey down the mountain with Jesus while cleaving tightly to the glory and fire of God’s ever-present grace. Let this grace give you courage to choose what God has chosen. As living members of the body of Christ let us with unveiled faces reflect the glory of the Lord Jesus, and be transformed into his likeness, walking in union with Christ following him down the mountain to bear the light of God’s grace into a dark and weary world. Amen.