This morning you have heard our story. What happened that day. It began with a walk and ended with a secret. A long walk. Up from the lakeside, past the last of the villages, then up to top of the mountain following goat tracks.
You do know who I am, don’t you?
You should know who we all are. Standing next to me – well, you recognise him of course. The one holding the key. That was another of the Master’s jokes: like calling him Petros, the Rock. Maybe a rock in an avalanche, a stone clattering down a hillside. Impetuous Pete. And then there’s my brother John of course. Boyish John. The one with all the charm. There were three of us with the Master that day.
The Master was fond of nicknames: he called John and I‘the sons of Thunder’. That was after our mother made her famous little speech: ‘My boys, James and John, may they sit at your right hand and at your left hand, after you’ve come into your kingdom’ Some say we put her up to that. What slander! Of course we didn’t. That’s just mothers for you.
Anyway, let’s get back to that day, the day the four of us climbed the mountain together. We reached the top at about midday, after we’d set off at first light. A five hour walk. There was nothing like a pinnacle. No peak. It wasn’t that kind of mountain. It was flat and stony. It was also cold – low-cloud, patches of mist swirling around – it was rather gloomy up there. We huddled together to eat. We had some bread and cheese, a few skins of water, a handful of dried figs. But the Master – he didn’t eat that day. He wandered off to an outcrop of rocks nearby. He wanted to be alone. To pray. To think. The way he often did. And while we were eating, the clouds lifted. It was one of those moments when you wouldn’t just say the sun ‘came out’; it was ‘turned on’, like stepping up close to a giant stove. No wonder we slept.
And then we woke. Do you expect me to say that what we saw was like a dream? A shared vision? Not at all. It was the realest thing I’ve ever seen. The Master standing there on the rocks, facing us. He shone. It wasn’t the sun. His face was shining. His robes were dazzling. We thought of Moses, who had to cover his face with a veil, because his face shone so brightly. After all, we knew our scriptures. We thought of Elijah, who was not allowed to look on Yahweh face to face, but who only saw Yahweh after he had passed by – isn’t that the only way we glimpse the Almighty? In retrospect; after he has passed through our lives? But this was not the face of Yahweh, nor of Moses: this was the face of Jesus, the Master.
Do you know, I think about that day more than any other. Odd, isn’t it? Even more than the day they killed him. Or afterwards, when he walked with us again, talked with us again, even ate with us again… For sure, I think about those moments too, all the time. But it is the day on the mountain top that makes sense of it all.
How, you ask. Why was that day so important? I’ll try to explain.
First of all, it was the way he appeared that day: radiant, more than human. So much more, even, than the extraordinary man that we had we been following for the last three years. When we saw him on that mountain top, a few months before we travelled to Jerusalem, we saw him exactly as he was to become after they killed him. This Jesus, the transfigured Jesus, is also the resurrected Jesus. That’s how we knew him when he stood among us again. Peter, John, and I – we knew immediately. We had no need to touch his flesh, to examine his wounds.
And that was when I realised why he’d done it – why he’d taken us up the mountain that day. ‘Do not be afraid’, he said. He was always telling us not to be afraid. Not that it helped. Why, just the week before he had told us that he was going to Jerusalem to be killed. We were terrified. We were dejected. Showing himself like that – seeing his glory – was meant to brace us for what was to come. But it didn’t. It just confused us.
The day they wrenched him from us, the day they killed him: I was hardly thinking of our mountain-top experience then. Do you know what I was thinking? About my mother. Her words came back to haunt me the day they crossed him up. I was skulking in the bushes, watching from the hillside opposite. John got closer. I didn’t dare to. It was then that I saw who was really with him, at his right-hand and at his left. It wasn’t John and I, not his ‘sons of thunder’ – just a couple of crooks, they were at his side – not me. Did I want to change places with one of them? Could I drink His cup? Not likely! Not then, at any rate.
Do you know the strangest thing of all? That there were only three of us. He chose to reveal his glory to just three people. And who were we? Three ex-fisherman from the Lake of Galilee. Yet we three were enough to inspire the twelve. And the twelve carried the good news to the nations. That’s the way the Good News spreads: not through councils and doctrines and doctors of the church – but through one person modelling Christ’s light to another.
Why are you here? What brings you here week after week? I’m sure it’s down to one person, or maybe two or three, who revealed his light to you: maybe it was a grandparent, or someone at school, or a chance companion on the way, who pointed out Christ’s light: his lamp to guide your footsteps. Someone very ordinary, like me, like yourselves. It’s like one candle passing on light to another. That’s the only way to point to the great light, the light of the world, to the Master as he revealed himself on the top of the mountain this day: one candle passing on light to another…