March 7, 2004
From the Mountain to
the Cross
(Luke 9:28-26)
One way to look at the famous episode of the Transfiguration is to see
there the three stages of the spiritual life: going up the mountain with
Jesus; being on the mountaintop with Jesus; and going down the mountain
with Jesus, and I want to ask you, “Where are you in this story?
Where are you on the spiritual journey of Christian discipleship?”
In the first part, we could say life is like going up the mountain of
God with Jesus. Throughout the Bible, mountains are important. They are
the place where you meet God. So Moses climbs Mount Sinai and meets God
in the Burning Bush and receives the Ten Commandments. Every one of us
has to climb the mountain to God, to seek God, to search for God, to find
where God lives. So we go with Jesus up the mountain. We may not know
where he is going, and we may find it a hard journey, but if we want to
seek God, we have to follow Jesus up the mountain.
In the second stage, you could say that some point in your life you are
on the mountaintop with Jesus, and like the disciples, at some point,
you suddenly realize that you are in the presence of Christ and that God
is speaking to you. I think we are all like the disciples, sound asleep,
sleep-walking through life, half asleep and we don’t even know it,
but at some point, there comes a moment in life, when we wake up to Reality
and recognize the presence of the Christ and we see the glory of God around
us. It’s not that we’re transfigured, but that we wake up
to reality and witness the transfigured Christ. We recognize Christ, and
the presence of saints and prophets, like Moses and Elijah, talking about
“his exodus,” his going to the cross to free humanity from
slavery to sin and violence and death, and like Peter and the disciples,
we want to stay in that comfortable place with God and build tents on
the mountaintop and remain far above the problems of the world. On the
mountain, God says to us, “This is my beloved, listen to him,”
and we learn to listen to Jesus, to let him be our guide, to do what he
tells us, and if we listen to Jesus, we hear some simple, beautiful words:
“I love you, I am with you, I want you to follow me and love one
another, serve one another, forgive one another, and be at peace with
one another.”
The Gospel could have ended there, with the disciples on the mountain
in the presence of the Transfigured Christ. In many ways, we all wish
we could stay in that safe, peaceful place with Christ, but instead, he
goes down the mountain, and at some point, in the third stage, we too
need to leave that comfortable mountaintop experience and walk down the
mountain with Jesus to face the cruel world of violence and walk the road
to Jerusalem and confront systemic injustice and take up the cross and
risk being arrested, jailed, and killed and follow Jesus on the path of
suffering, compassionate love, giving our lives for others. We don’t
want to go with Jesus to the cross, we don’t want to carry the cross,
we don’t want to suffer, but that is what we are called to do, to
follow Jesus down the mountain. Each one of us has to confront the horrific
injustice and institutionalized violence of our nation and our world.
We have to walk to our own modern-day Jerusalems, denounce our government’s
warmaking, and accept the consequences of our active nonviolence.
So I invite you to see where you are in this story. Do you find these
days that you are climbing the mountain of God, or are you sound asleep
on the mountaintop, or are you seeing the glory of God around you or are
you listening attentively to Jesus, or are you going down the mountain
with Jesus to the cross, confronting our country’s horrific wars
and injustice, following Jesus on the path of nonviolent, suffering love?
The good news is that as we come to the altar, like the disciples, we
will wake up and realize that we are in the presence of Christ in the
bread and the cup, and we will hear the voice of God tell us to listen
to Jesus, so we can go forth from here, down the mountain with Jesus,
as his disciples, on the way--to the cross.
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