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SERMONS

Last Sunday after the Epiphany
February 3, 2008

By The Rev. Sylvia Czarnetzky

Exodus 24:12, 15-8
Psalm 99
Philippians 3:7-14
Matthew 17:1-9

It is November in Israel. It is cold and blustery – a day kind of like today. It rains off-and-on all day long. John and I get rained on we make our way by car all the way around the Sea of Galilee. Towards the end of the day, we drive half-way up Mount Tabor, the place where it is believed that the transfiguration took place; And as we get out of the car, we see that the rain has stopped.

Mount Tabor lies about six miles east of Nazareth. It is a dome-shaped mountain a little over 1900 feet tall. (Fodor’s 241) It is the highest mountain in this part of Galilee, so you can see it from a long way off. There is a taxi stand half-way up the mountain, and that’s where we stop, so that we can get a ride the rest of the way up the mountain. The taxi stand lies between two Bedouin villages that are pretty ratty-looking – the Bedouins were nomadic herders until fairly recently when they gave up their nomadic way of life and settled here. John and I get out of the car and head over to the clump of Arab taxi drivers hanging around the gift shop.

My husband goes up to the taxi drivers and negotiates with one of them until they settle on a price. And once the deal is struck, the taxi driver brings the minibus around, and opens the door for us to climb in. Even though his taxi has room for 15 or more people, there are just the two of us, so we take the seats on the back row. I notice that this vehicle has definitely seen better days, and that the rearview mirror has a pair of fuzzy dice dangling from it – not something I really expected to see here in the Holy Land, but o.k. Whatever.

Our journey up the rest of the mountain begins. It is the single most harrowing taxi ride of my life. The road is extremely narrow, featuring hairpin turns, one right after the other, the whole way up the mountain. (Z) There isn’t much room for error here – if you happened to miss the turn on the wrong side of the road, the drop off was pretty steep.

Anyway, as we navigate this series of switchbacks, the driver is carrying on an animated conversation with us by way of the rear view mirror and I am thinking to myself, I am so wishing he would stop talking to us and concentrate on his driving, but, alas, no. The conversation continues all the way up the mountain. I finally just close my eyes and hang on to the arm rest for dear life the rest of the way up the mountain.

Blessedly, we arrive at the top of the mountain, and the driver let us off in the parking lot adjacent to the Church of the Transfiguration and zooms away.

It’s a little before 2 p.m. I mention the time because the Church of the Transfiguration closes for lunch from 12 to 2! I guess the monks who run the place have to eat too! So there we are, standing by ourselves in the trash-strewn parking lot of the Church of the Transfiguration, waiting for the gate to be unlocked. I notice a couple of things as we walk across the parking lot. First of all, it is significantly colder on top of the mountain, than it was at the taxi stand. Second, the top of the mountain is completely enshrouded in fog! We can’t really see anything, because we are completely fogged in. I don’t mind telling you, it’s a little eerie.

And as John and I wait at the gate to the church, in the cold and the fog, out of the fog comes the sound of a bell tolling twice, and shortly after that, out of the fog beyond the gate emerges a monk, ambling in our direction. in no particular hurry. He is a little overweight, and wearing the brown habit of his Franciscan order, but he’s also wearing a North Face jacket over his habit. He unlocks the gate with his key, then turns without a word to us, and heads off into the mist, presumably in the direction of the church. We follow him, even though we can’t see anything but fog, and as we follow him, we begin to see the faint outline of an iron gate and a church in the distance. And as we continue to walk forward, we see the church itself emerge from the cloud. It’s really quite dramatic, and we are the only ones there to see it.

Now one of the advantages to going to the Holy Land in what I suppose you could call the “off-season” is that the crowds at the holy sites are much smaller. Whereas in the summer, the parking lots in these places are jammed full of buses, in November, when we are there, the parking lots aren’t crowded at all. So every now and then, John and I would find ourselves by ourselves at a holy place. That’s what happened here -- John and I had this church and its grounds and its gardens completely to ourselves, well, except for the surly monk, but he continues to ignore us.

So John and I walk around in silence, in the cold and the fog, looking around the church and the gardens, aware that the ground on which we walk is holy ground, where generations of Christian pilgrim feet have walked. And it is quite an amazing thing – there is no traffic noise, no conversational chatter of any kind – it is completely silent in this place, except for the sound of the wind! All we can hear, as we stroll around in the fog is the sound of the wind, whistling between the rocks and through the shrubs and trees in the garden. It was kind of mournful. It’s difficult to describe the sound – I suppose the sound that day on the mountain was similar to the sound of the windstorm on Tuesday night – remember? When the wind was blowing to beat the band and gusting up to 40 miles an hour? I could hear that wind whistling in the trees and around the fence as I tried to go to sleep that night. That’s probably the best I can do, to describe the sound.

All we could hear on the mountain that day was the sound of wind whistling across a landscape, a sound muffled only slightly by the fog that surrounded us. It is totally quiet up here on the top of the mountain, except for the sound of the wind. whipping around the trees and stones of the garden, and the walls of the stone church.

And it occurred to me later that these were just about the perfect conditions under which to experience the place where the transfiguration of Jesus took place! You’ve got the cloud, you’ve got the quiet, and you’ve got the wind. What better conditions could there be, for seeing the place where generations of pilgrims have come, believing it to be the place where the mystery of the transfiguration unfolded before the eyes of three of the disciples!

And as I walked around there, I tried to imagine what it might have been like two thousand years ago for Peter, James, and John, alone with Jesus on this very same mountain.

I tried to imagine what I might have felt like to make the climb up this steep mountain on foot. Surely it must’ve been pretty arduous, even though the disciples were used to a lot of walking. So I imagine that Peter, James and John must’ve been a little worn out from the climb by the time they reached the peak of the mountain.

And I wonder what Jesus might have said to those three disciples about where they were going and why. Was it as simple as Jesus saying to them, “follow me,” and them following, like they did when Jesus first called them? Did Jesus give them any clues about why they were making this arduous climb in the first place? Did they talk much on the way up? Did they speculate about what was going on, or bug Jesus to tell them?

I mean, by this time in Matthew’s gospel, the disciples have been following Jesus around for a while. So for at least a few months, Peter, James, John and the rest of the twelve have been following Jesus around, watching him close-up. Surely during this time they would have become used to following Jesus around, “listening to him, overhearing him speak to others, … watching him heal the sick, seeing him in every mood.” (O’Driscoll 80) And on this particular day, Jesus selected only three of the twelve to come with him up the mountain. Jesus invited only three, Peter, James and John to witness this mysterious event we call the transfiguration. “We cannot guess why Jesus selected them from among the twelve, nor can we know if there were any feelings of resentment on the part of those” not chosen. (81)

What we do know is that these three disciples found themselves alone with Jesus on a top of a lonely mountain, when some astonishing things happened. Suddenly, Jesus is transfigured before their eyes, so that “his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white.”

Suddenly, the great prophets Moses and Elijah appear at Jesus’s side. Then there is “a bright cloud overshadow[ing] them, and from a cloud” came a voice that said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” (Matthew 17:1-5)

I don’t know that we will ever fully understand what all happened that day on the mountaintop. But I think we can safely say that, Peter, James and John were “given a glimpse of who Jesus really is. A corner of the curtain was lifted and they are permitted to see and hear for a moment” this Jesus, the Christ, in all his splendor and glory. (Craddock 127) On this day, “somehow” the disciples “began to see… with blinding clarity the majesty of Jesus.” (O’Driscoll 81) “…[T]he disciples were allowed for a fleeting moment to see [Jesus] as he really was – the embodiment of the glory of God.” (81)

That day a truth was revealed to the disciples on that mountaintop. And it seems to me that the gospel of Jesus Christ is a pretty good place to look in our search for truth. After all, our world presents us with all kinds of places to search for truth – the advertisers of Madison Avenue offer us glossy versions of their truth – that buying more and more stuff, and nicer and nicer stuff, will make us happy. We could take our truth from them. Or we could get our truth from, say, politicians, who are filling the airwaves with all sorts of promises about what their election might mean. Or we can bring our search for the truths by which we will live our lives, here, in this book, God’s Holy Word, heard and discerned together herre, in this church. That is, for me, where our search for truth centers: In God’s word, given to us; In Christ’s body, broken for us; and In Christ’s blood, shed for us; until that time when we, too, shall, like the disciples, see Christ in all his glory and radiance and brightness. Amen.

Works Cited:

Brueggemann, Walter, et al. Texts for Preaching: A Lectionary Commentary Based on the NRSV -- Year A. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1995.

Craddock, Fred B., et al. Preaching Through the Christian Year: Year A. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press Int’l., 1993.

Farris, Patricia. “Memory sites.” Christian Century. January 16, 2002. 17.

Lane, Belden C. The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality. New York: Oxford UP, 1998.

Herbert O’Driscoll. “Seeing Others in a New Way.” God With Us: the Companionship of Jesus in the challenges of life. Cambridge: Cowley Press, 2002. 80-2.

Taylor, Barbara Brown. “Thin Places.” Home by Another Way. Cambridge: Cowley Press, 1999. 57-62.