When I was a boy, we lived in Kansas . .
. a flat, windswept land that brimmed with wheat and corn and blue-gills, that
sprouted cattle on the hillsides, and in the summer it’d be hot and sultry, and
my parents would head Northwest out of Wichita through Hutchinson – it was back
before the freeway – and we’d make a bee-line for the Colorado border. I remember the towns along the way, you
actually went through them in those days, and when we got to Goodland – stark
white silos etched against the sky – we knew we were almost there, and coming
down off the highlands into Limon you can begin to make them out – first Pikes
Peak’s black slab, then the rest materialize like smoke on the horizon, and at
Limon we’d pick up U.S. 40 and head on into Denver and then up into the
mountains, and stay in a little motel just East of Berthoud Pass. The air would be cool and thin, and the trees
would change shape, and up on Trail Ridge Road you could see forever . . . up
in that thin air, with the fierce hot sun, you felt close to heaven, close to
God . . .
And of course, it’s no accident that
Moses got his marching orders up in the mountains, and Elijah met God there . .
. and Jesus went up onto a mountain to
pray . . . and the symbolism wouldn’t have been missed on Matthew’s readers any
more than it is on us . . . you are closer to God in the mountains, or
so it is believed, and odd things happen there as well . . . weird things go on
in those hollers, strange women with second sight, apparitions walking the
moonlit desert . . . the transfiguration itself – not exactly something you see
every day – happens up there in the rarified air. It’s a perfect setting for a little piece of
holy theater, and of course, that’s what it is, complete with special effects –
the mountain-top location, the whiter-than-white raiment, and over in Mark,
though not in this version, an impressive black cloud. It’s vivid and real, you can almost smell it,
taste it . . . think about all the times you’ve been in the mountains . . . the
sharp pine-tang, the catching of your breath in the not-quite-thick-enough air
. . . if you get high enough, it’s hard to get enough oxygen, and you have to
work hard, and you’re huffing and puffing from the climb up to the top, and
then Bam! all of a sudden, your beloved teacher is changed, he’s
transmogrified, and you don’t quite know what hit him – or you – and the white of
his raiment burns your eyes, it’s so bright, it’s whiter than anyone on earth
could get them, whiter than the best five-star clothes-washer could do, and you
can’t hardly see it’s so bright, but you can just make out – by
shielding your eyes – a couple of other figures there with Jesus . . . yes! Sure enough, it’s those old mountain men
Moses and Elijah, and they’re talking to Jesus, just as sure as you and I are
talking, just as sure as I’m standing here in front of you.
Now, it’s pretty obvious what you’re
supposed to think, when you look back on it, but at the time you’re babbling,
you just don’t know what to think or say, because here’s Jesus talking to the
two greatest prophets of all, and not just a cat, but a whole animal act’s got your tongue, and
instead of saying nothing like you should, instead of keeping your mouth
shut—and I can certainly
understand that—you blurt out some idiocy about making three
little huts – you could just shoot yourself – three shelters, one for Moses and
one for Elijah and one for Jesus – you actually name them one by one, and
you’re mortified that it’s all you can think of.
And looking back on it, it’s easy to see
what the tableau meant, it’s easy to see what you’re supposed to get out of the
set piece . . . here Jesus is, hobnobbing with Moses and Elijah, three peas in
a pod, it’s clear what the take-home lesson is – Jesus is one of a kind
with those other two, he’s right up there with the two greatest prophets in
Israelite history, in fact he is a prophet – here’s this guy you’ve been
running around all over Judea with, doing miracles, healing the lame, riling up
every religious authority you can find, so you know he’s special, and now you know just how much. And you just had to open your mouth .
. .
And . . . from somewhere comes a voice,
and you know who it is without being told, and it’s funny . . . for
years afterward, if somebody asked you to describe it – and you were
asked, over and over – you had a hard time doing it. Somebody’d say “Was it loud, and booming?”
and you’d say “No . . . not really” . . . “Well, then, was it soft and musical”
and you’d scratch your head and say “Not exactly,” and the truth is, you have
no idea what it sounded like, you just know it was God . . . whether it
was loud or soft or harsh or musical, whether it crashed through the heavens
like thunder, or floated like a gossamer thread, you couldn’t say to save your
life . . . like God, it just was.
The voice says “This is my Son, the
Beloved; listen to him!” And the
words prick at your memory, at something floating around the edges of your
mind, and then you have it . . . you’ve heard that one other time a voice from
heaven identified Jesus that way, and that was at his baptism, and although you
weren’t there to hear it, you know it by heart, it’s been passed down to you
from the source . . . when John the Baptizer poured water over Jesus’ head, a
dove fluttered down out of the heavens.
That time the voice had said – directly to Jesus! – “You are my Son, the
Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
And you can’t help but catch the drift . . . this time, God’s talking
directly to you, you and the other disciples . . .
But there’s one addition: God admonishes
you to listen. Here you are,
hiking all over Galilee, observing miracles and wonderments, witnessing
healings and exorcisms, seeing the lepers made clean and the paralyzed
walk, and now you’re being asked to listen, to hear . . . in the
aftermath of the most dazzling display of special effects you’ve ever seen
– Spielberg would be proud—you’re told to listen.
Then the house-lights come up and Jesus
is alone, alone on his mountain stage, and you have no doubt now that Jesus is
the man, he’s the only man, entirely sufficient in his alone-ness, he
diagnoses your discomfort, knows you said something stupid, but doesn’t call
you on it—he just tells you to get up and not be afraid. And as you pick your way down the mountain
path, as you go from the mountain-top to the valley below, you do it, you
listen, and the first words out of Jesus’ mouth tell you to . . . tell no one
about any of this, not one solitary word, even though you’re bursting to run
all over Palestine with the news; you’re told not to say anything until
the Son of Man had risen from the dead, and here’s that rising from the dead
stuff again, and you didn’t get it the first time, and you don’t get it
now . . . but you don’t rebuke the master again like you did before . . . that
just made him mad . . . and suddenly, the mountaintop is behind you and the
heady time is past, and the land down here seems gray in comparison, flat and
mundane, compared to the glory you just saw . . .
After my family moved to Seattle, my dad
and I hooked up with a group of musicians centered around a guy named Dick
Dice, who was an autoharp player – and I know what you’re thinking, you’re
thinking of those instruments music teachers strum, or at least they used
to strum – do they do that any more? – anyway, this was an Appalachian autoharp,
big and golden, and it had a sweet sound forged in the Tennessee mountains,
played by the likes of Mother Maybelle Carter and her husband A.P. . . . and we
played and sang this mountain music for years until we lost touch with Dick –
and each other, really – and so I was thrilled with the movie “O Brother, Where
Art Thou,” which is wry and funny and made a ton of money, but more important,
it revitalized old-time mountain music, which sent us fans a-wallowing around
in hog heaven . . . it’s beautiful music, at its best high and ethereal . . .
it sounds like it comes from the mountains . . . and it’s strongly
spiritual, too – mention of God is never far from the surface.
And the movie begat the CD and the CD
begat the touring show of under-appreciated and under-paid musicians. It was called the “Down From the Mountain”
tour which is a good name . . . after all, the music comes from Appalachian
ridges and hollers, it’s formed there, shaped there . . . it holds all the
wistful yearning and hope of that place . . . and it’s been brought down to the
flat-landers of New York and L.A., to the movie folk and the record-industry
people, and then on to folks like you and me . . . for though it was forged in
the high places, pounded into being through lives on the brink, it was brought
down from the mountain to us, so we could relish it and treasure it and sing it
ourselves.
And after the music of God on that
mountain – this is my Son, the beloved . . . listen to him! – Jesus leads the
disciples back down, because that’s where that music is needed, that’s
where it was for. Their mission
is down in the valleys, down where the lost sheep live, not up in the lonely
heights. Peter wants to commemorate the
occasion, he wants to put up shelters, maybe stay up there awhile to bask in
the glory, but he doesn’t understand that the Christian life is not a mountaintop
experience, it’s to be lived in the world, with the people we’ve come to
serve. Although the mountains may be
right for visions, though they may be perfect to make haunting, beautiful
music, it’s down in the valley where the people are, down from the mountain
where the work is, where the mission of the church is.
In the past, I’ve studied Benedictine
spirituality, and one reason it appeals to me is that it’s very much a
spirituality of the world, of the daily grind.
Even though it was developed for life in the cloister, life in a
monastic community, it never forgets the larger picture, the poor of the world,
the wanderers. Likewise, it never
forgets the other, the people we come into contact with in day-by-day
existence. It is the Christian vocation,
Benedict says, to greet all with grace and humility, and never to
begin conflict. It is the Christian
vocation, he says, to “relieve the lot of the poor, ‘clothe the naked, visit
the sick’ and . . . help the troubled and console the sorrowing.” Hardly the
picture most of us have of monks, squirreled away in some dark hole somewhere,
fingering their rosaries. But Benedict
believed that the place of the Christian was to be apart from the world, yet
involved in it . . . to be set aside
for the work of God, which is in and for the world.
Once a week, we climb the
mountain . . . once a week we come in through those doors back there and into
the palpable presence of God. And while
we’re here – if we are lucky – we are pointed to the transcendent beauty of
Christ, whiter and more dazzling than anything on Earth . . . we hear that
lovely mountain music, that word from God, we hear it sung, we hear it prayed,
and we hear it preached, and it’s the task of Christian worship – one of them,
anyway – to point us to that white-hot reality, to direct our attention where
it belongs, to the life and death and terrifying beauty of Christ. “This is my son, my beloved!” But we can’t stay on the mountain any more
than those first disciples could . . . and whenever we’re tempted to camp out
here, to circle the wagons and build those little huts Peter wanted, Jesus will
remind us that our work is out there, it’s back out through those doors
and in our community, in our nation and in our world. Our work is among our neighbors, both
those we know and those we don’t . . . here on the mountaintop, we’re given the
word, and it’s up to us to use it properly and well when we come down.
But you know what? Jesus doesn’t stay up on the mountain,
either. Just like with James and Peter
and John, he comes down with us. When we go through those doors, he's
right there beside us. He comes into our
homes and our streets and marketplaces, walking alongside us, guiding us in the
right thing to do. His voice is
everywhere, in the trees and the wind and the rain . . . it’s in the dog,
howling in the night and the cat rubbing against your leg. It’s in the homeless guy who knocks on your
door and the SUV that cuts you off on the way to work . . . Jesus speaks in all
these things, and in all these ways . . . Jesus is God’s beloved Son . . . all
we have to do is listen to him.
Amen.
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