Today’s question is another personal one – one for you to think about for a moment; one that calls upon your memory. My question is this: What event in your life is one that you wanted to last? It could also have been a major turning point in your life. It could have been brief in reality or it could have gone on for years. But it’s one you wanted to preserve.
For some it might be a very romantic event. The time you were dating a very special person. The time of your wedding and honeymoon. It could be the birth of your child, a time of joy. It might be a special trip or vacation. Four days in Disney-world. An island cruise. A trip to Mexico. Or perhaps, a few days in Colorado or even in Galveston or San Antonio. It could even be your first really-good job, a time when you were respected and appreciated for what you were doing. A time that held all you thought you really wanted out of life.
Each one of us, if we think about it, can recall a time when everything seemed to be perfect; when our life was completely “all-together.” Each one of us had, for a brief moment, our own Camelot. If only we could have preserved it. Put it under glass. Protected it, so that it would still be with us, every moment of our lives.
Saint Peter was like that. We heard all about his feelings in our gospel reading for today. We also heard his own recounting of that glorious experience. He wrote about it in what is called “the Second Letter of Peter.” A passage was read from this letter as our Second Reading for today.
The events we recall in our own lives are probably not as dramatic as the one Peter, James and John witnessed there on the mountain. After all, we seldom hear, directly, the spoken word of God. They did. For Peter wrote: “… we were eyewitnesses of [Jesus’] sovereign majesty. He received glory and praise from God the Father when that unique declaration came to him out of the majestic splendor: ‘This is my beloved Son on whom my favor rests.’ We ourselves heard this said from heaven while we were in his company on the holy mountain.”
It was there, where Jesus and his friends had retreated to pray, that Moses, the lawgiver, the founder of Israel, and Elijah, the prophet, the restorer of Israel, met with him. On Mount Sinai, Moses had received the Law, the Ten Commandments from the Lord God. On Mount Horeb, Elijah had seen the Lord God, himself, not in storm, earthquake or fire, but in a gentle, whispering breeze. And now on this holy Mount Tabor, they spoke with Jesus about his own “Exodus,” his own “passage” which would occur in Jerusalem.
And what was Peter’s immediate reaction? He said: “Master, how good it is for us to be here. Let us set up three booths, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” In effect, what he was suggesting was: let us preserve the memory of this great event. Let us erect monuments so that it will be visible to us and others for the rest of our lives.
There are many of us who are like Peter. We want to preserve in some physical way the major event in our life. We wish we could freeze-frame it with a push of a button on our video recorder. There are also some who do not merely remember the past, but rather, try to take the past with them into the present. There are classic stories of the high-school football player who still lives out the faded glory of that winning touchdown.
There are not-so-classic stories of others who try to say that the past is not really over; that today is still the same as yesterday. There are those who have erected booths upon their mountaintops to preserve a magnificent event. And over the years, the simple booth became a temple and then a fortress to keep out all new changes, all new thoughts and ideas.
But Jesus did not want to have booths erected for his particular encounter with the past. In the transfiguration stories found in the Gospels of Mark and of Matthew, Jesus tells Peter and the others not to speak of this event until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead. Here, in Luke’s account, it reads: “the disciples kept quiet, telling nothing of what they had seen at the time to anyone.” They had just heard the voice of God say: “This is my Son, my Chosen one. My Anointed one. The Christ. Listen to him.” And they were to tell no one of this event.
As I said, Jesus did not want them to perpetuate his encounter with the past, his meeting with Moses and Elijah. Rather he spoke to them of his future, his suffering, his death and his resurrection. It was these events he wanted them to remember and to celebrate. And so, they did. And so do we.
Each Sunday we gather together here at Eucharist to remember and to celebrate. And to enter into tomorrow. For this is the focus spoken to us by Jesus the Christ. As great as the events of the past might be, as necessary as they are to making each one of us the person who exists right now, it is even more necessary that we move onwards. We must come down from our mountaintop and re-enter the world of suffering, of death, but death coupled with resurrection and joy.
Mountaintop experiences give us strength and conviction for our journey; but they are not the journey, itself. There is more to life than living in the past. Having heard the voice of the Lord God spoken from the mists and clouds that surround our mountaintops, we now must listen to the word of God made flesh, the word of God who is transformed into the body and blood we eat and drink at this celebration. The word of God who tells us to go forth and be Eucharist for others. We are asked not to preserve the past in physical structures. We are not to live on the glory of our past accomplishments. Rather we are to join in the new Exodus, the new journey. We must come down from the mountaintop and continue our journey into the kingdom of God.
Transfiguration of the Lord: August 6, 1995
Dan 7:9-10, 13-14; 2 Pt 1:15-19; Lk 9:28-36