Transfiguration A

Several of our lessons talk about mountains today. Mountains were sacred to people in biblical times. Ancient people built their temples on mountains and went to mountain tops to make sacrifices. The Greeks even believed that their Gods lived on Mt. Olympus. Mountains, in the bible too, are holy places. They are places where God can be found. Where God comes to speak to the people. The book of Isaiah talks about the mountain of God being the place from which peace, justice and truth flow. Moses goes up onto the mountain where God speaks to him and gives him the covenant.

In the gospel today, Jesus and his disciples take a trip to a mountain top. They start out in a sort of valley where Jesus has been speaking about his death. Where he tells his disciples that he will die and that life will be hard for them after he does. Then he picks a few companions to follow him up the mountain and in silence they ascend, each thinking his own thoughts.

Maybe Peter was thinking that he was wrong to put all of his hope in someone who would die at the hands of executioners like a common criminal.

James and John thinking of how they could have stayed with their father fishing, of how maybe they weren't ready to give their lives. Jesus feeling guilty for dragging them all along on this and feeling like he really didn't want to go on the long, hard walk to the cross in Jerusalem.

They were dirty and tired, their faces covered in sweat and dust. Their clothes torn and brown from the road and ragged. Their thoughts troubled.

But as they walked up the mountain something happened. Jesus changed. His clothes became clean and new. Whiter than any sheep had ever been. And his tired worn body was so filled with the love of God that a new light shone from his face. And for a little while on their long hard Journey, Jesus and his disciples were refreshed and renewed and they had peace to look at what they'd accomplished so far.

A voice from heaven said to them this is my son with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.

To Peter that meant that as strange as it seemed death on the cross was the correct path for the Messiah. And James and John knew that they had come to the right place and by that light and that voice Jesus was filled with the strength and authority to start the long trek to Jerusalem reassured and encouraged.

Now if mountains are the places where we feel closest to God, where we have amazing and rare experiences then valleys are the places where spend most of our time, the everyday places and the harder places. There are the light valleys of everyday life when things are going pretty well and then there are valleys of the shadows, like the psalmist says. These valleys are hospital rooms and funeral homes, divorce courts, prisons and the like. And perhaps the fact that we spend most of our time in valleys both light and dark is the reason that we need mountain-tops.

Moses too was given a chance in the middle of a long hard trek across the desert to meet God's comfort and love on the top of a mountain. The mountain was like a sabbath rest for him and for Jesus and the disciples.

When Jesus' disciples got a taste of this sabbath, of this intimacy with God the first thing that they asked was if they could stay for a long time. Peter wanted to put up tents. But that wasn't why they were there. The light on this mountain quickly faded and everyone had to head back down. But, before they did they had a chance to linger and look forward and back and said to themselves it is good for us to be here, look how far we've come.

Any of you who have been on top of a mountain know that the thing about mountains is that when you are on the tops of them you can see for what seems like forever but things look a little different. The perspective is very unique. When I was young my father used to take me up on a mountain top near where we lived and he would point and say "over there when I was young there was a fire that took nearly a month to put out. there were firefighters from WA and ID and MT and two provinces in Canada." But when I would look the trees where he pointed were a brighter green than anywhere else because they had risen from the nurturing ashes of all of the noble old trees that had burned. Nowhere else but the top of that mountain provided so clear a view of what had risen from the destruction of that fire.

When Jesus and his disciples come down off the mountain they will start the journey to Jerusalem and the cross. That is the next thing that we will do as well. We will begin the journey of Lent, starting with Ash Wednesday, this very Wednesday, and ending with Jesus on the cross after 40 days. For us it is a time for reflection and repentance a time where we remember our baptism and think with wonder on God's presence in our lives.

In a lot of ways lent is really a time for us to live in the world. To take time in church in the presence of God to acknowledge the ways in which we are slaves to the everyday things that happen, the things within our control and the things that we are entirely powerless over. For many of us Lent will be our daily walk with present struggles. Struggles that come from losing a job and having to find new work or needing to figure out how to get more education. Struggles with addiction or illness or anger.

But we are given a gift here at the beginning.

The gift of a day to rise up above the struggles for a time to see and be reminded of how God is truly with us always. That, was what God really said to Jesus and the disciples on the mountain. He didn't say now that you're here I am with you. Instead he let them get some perspective on where they had been and he let them glimpse what was to come and then he said go back down the mountain. I was with you all along.

Today we get to stand with Jesus and the disciples in the presence of God.

And As we stand on the mountain this Sunday before lent starts, in this precious hour before our fast-paced lives start up again. We can see a bumpy road ahead but we know that we have the light of God lifting us up and the word of Christ guiding our paths and, unlike the disciples who couldn't quite see the the light of Easter from their mountain top, we look out towards the hill across the way where Jesus will be crucified and we are able to see what will rise from that destruction.

We are able to revel in what has come from the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. We can see the early budding of green growth. We see a Christ that works in our lives, raises us up out of the valleys to stand on the mountain peaks in the embrace of the Lord before we head back down into the mire. We stand on the mountain from which a light shines in the darkness and our faces shine with in the presence of God. This is good news.