There’s something to be said for climbing to the top of a mountain. I’m no mountaineer, but I have been to the summit of a few 14,000 foot peaks in my lifetime, here in California and in Colorado. I’ve experienced the silence, the solitude, the rare light of the highest places, so I think I understand why so many of the world’s cultures think of the mountaintop as the dwelling-place of God. But the most meaningful mountaintop experiences of my life have probably been the ones where I climbed a peak in the vicinity of my home. These have not been particularly tall mountains—I’m thinking of place like Camel’s Hump, in the Green Mountains of Vermont, just over 4,000 feet high, or Mt. Junipero Serra, the tallest peak in Monterey County, just under 6,000. But to climb mountains like that, to look down on the valleys where I was spending the rest of my days, was to gain a new, more encompassing perspective on the world I lived in. It was to get a new vision of my life.
If we think of Mark’s gospel as a landscape, this story of the Transfiguration of Jesus is the mountain peak from which it all comes into view. The voice speaking from the cloud reminds us of the baptism scene at the beginning of the gospel, where a voice from heaven says to Jesus, “You are my beloved Son.” And on the way back down the mountain, Jesus orders the disciples not to tell anyone about their vision until he has been raised from the dead. In this way the story points forward to the gospel’s end. The Transfiguration is the center point of the gospel, the pivot on which Mark’s narrative turns.
But it is more than just the structural high point; it is also the contemplative heart of the gospel. It is the moment at which the disciples, and we, their successors, are left speechless in awe. It is the moment when all the different aspects of what Jesus says and does, as healer, as teacher, as victor over evil, and liberator from oppression, converge. It is where all the colors of the spectrum combine in the simple purity of white light. Peter says, "Rabbi, it is good for us to be here!” and he is right—Jesus wanted them there, wanted them to see this vision of his glory. But when Peter adds, “Let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah," he appears ridiculous. This is the moment when it is enough just to be there—there is nothing to do but to see, and to hear.
And for all its spiritual grandeur, this is not a private mystical experience. Peter, James, and John see the vision together. In this way the Transfiguration is a preview of the life of the church, in Mark’s time and also in ours. For we are a community bound together by a shared vision of glory. Not that we all see the same details. Not that we all interpret the vision in the same way. We may not be conversant in Christian doctrine, we may not be able to articulate our spirituality, we may not have a conversion story to tell, or even to be comfortable calling ourselves “Christians,” but these things do not matter so much. We have all seen brightness so dazzling that you can’t look directly at it. All of us are here this morning because we are drawn to the gospel of the glory of Christ, a light that mere human invention could not have made.
The mountaintop is not just a place where we get a majestic vision. It is also a place of quiet. All the noise of everyday life and activity in the world below dies away to a distant murmur. If we hear anything it is only the sound of the wind and the silence of the vast spaces. And the Transfiguration is not just about seeing, it is also a story about hearing. The voice from the cloud tells the disciples, “Listen to him.” But at that moment Jesus is not speaking. This is a command to an ongoing work of listening. It reveals to us the one we should be listening to, and there is an implied message in this revelation—the one you see here, the person you see now, will continue to speak to you.
There is a way of reading the Holy Scriptures that treats them as a material object. They are a historical artifact to study, an enigma to be decoded, a puzzle to be solved, and we go to work on them. We hold them up this way and that and examine their structure. We pull them apart to see how they work. We break them down and put them back together again to make them serve our needs and our purposes. We want them to tell us what to do. We want them to tell us a story we can believe in. We want them to describe a world for us that makes sense.
But there is another way to read them. It works best when we hear them read aloud by ourselves or by others. It’s not something that we can make happen by effort of will. We have to allow it to happen, and this requires us to forget ourselves for a moment. Sometimes, when we let go of our needs and desires and give ourselves completely to the act of listening, we hear something in the scriptures that is more than the words being read. We hear a voice, speaking. I remember a Sunday morning in San Francisco about fifteen years ago, sitting listening to someone read the gospel lesson for the day, when for a moment I was no longer hearing the oral reproduction of a written text. For a moment I heard, coming through the person reading, through the printed page, through the centuries of transmission, translation, analysis and commentary, through the act of writing down the oral tradition, through the passing along of the conventional form of the story, I heard Jesus speaking.
A glimpsed reflection of glory; a voice heard speaking through the text—such are the mountaintop experiences that have sustained countless Christian souls on their pilgrimage through this world. Some of these souls have been so saturated with the light of the Transfiguration that they themselves become a source of that light for others. Some have conversed so long and so deep with the master that their own mouths speak with his voice. Most of us make do with a glimmer here and a whisper there. But there is always the possibility of seeing more. Any moment we might hear another word from his mouth. A mountain is not easy to climb, but we keep at it. We keep coming here, to get encouragement from other climbers, to urge each other on.
And who knows, maybe there’s someone here this morning who is spending a little time resting at the summit. Maybe one of you will see a little bit of glory here today. Maybe one of you will hear a voice speaking here this morning that grabs your attention and echoes deep inside you with a life and a purpose that are not your own. Maybe one of you will go away from this place today feeling like the horizons of your life have opened out a little wider, like you have a better sense for the place where you are and how all the features of your landscape fit together. Maybe so. Maybe not. Maybe today. Maybe next time. But here is the place where we affirm for each other that the light of God’s glory is always shining. Here is where we celebrate the voice that is always speaking. Let’s keep coming back here. Let’s keep climbing the mountain together.
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