Readings here

The Transfiguration is an experience of Christ’s glory, and the disciples’ vulnerability. 

While Jesus is “wonderfully transfigured, in raiment white and glistening,” the disciples are exhausted from the long hike. While God’s voice booms from a cloud, “This is my Son,” the disciples are “terrified.” 

In the presence of Christ’s divinity, the disciples are more aware than ever of their fragility.  

And this is a very good thing. 

And it isn’t the only time something like this happens. God seems to have a thing for the mountains. Several times in our Scriptures, vulnerable humans are compelled to follow God onto steep and difficult trails.  

They are called to experience God on the mountaintop. 

God appears to Moses to give the Ten Commandments, and Moses’ face literally shines like the sun for days afterward. Elijah runs away from a blood-thirsty king, and God whispers peace to him in a gentle breeze. The disciples, of course, see the glory of God in Jesus Christ. 

These mountaintop stories help define what it means when people talk about having a “mountaintop experience.” 

When we talk about “the mountaintop,” we tend to mean: a moment of clarity, abiding peace, and often, a direct experience of God. When we’re on the “mountaintop,” we may feel that we have a birds’ eye view all of a sudden. We have a sense of who we are and what we are meant to do. We may also feel a sense of relief or wonder.

Importantly, though, the mountaintop moment is never an occasion for OUR glory. We don’t get to an experience of God by our own efforts. And it’s not about the adrenaline rush of a job well done. 

In fact, the mountaintop moment almost always comes in the midst of hardship, when things aren’t going well at all. After all, Moses had been wandering around the desert with a whole bunch of complainers for years, Elijah was fleeing certain death, and the disciples had inadvertently taken up with a rabble-rouser. 

And down the mountain, there’s no guarantee that we won’t find ourselves in hardship again. 

Still, the mountaintop experience stays with us, because it is a place of God’s glory and our vulnerability. Up there in the clouds, we find our greatest peace, because we surrender to the fact that we are not in control. And when we look back on the experience, we are comforted to remember that God sometimes feels very close. 

Though we are terrified, we can say, like Peter, “It is good for us to be here.” 

— 

In the interest of vulnerability, I think it’s time to tell you about my own mountaintop experience. Now, anyone who witnessed it would say I was in the valley of the shadow of death. Or – at least – Daniel was. 

But I know that Christ was revealing himself to me. 

Early last year, my family and I took a leap of faith, when I signed the contract to become Grace’s curate.  

I had never been to Houston, I have no immediate family in Texas, and we had always thought we would move back to Virginia, after I finished seminary. 

But the Lord works in mysterious ways… 

— 

April turned to May, and I graduated. 

A month later, we loaded up the U-Haul and started the 2,000 mile journey from Connecticut to Texas.  

Daniel hadn’t been feeling well for weeks, but we didn’t think it was anything serious. But, two days into the three-day journey, he woke up in the middle of the night, doubled over in pain. He could barely tell me what was wrong.  

I rushed him over to the hospital in Slidell, Louisiana and, after hours of waiting and dozens of tests, the nurse looked at Daniel with concern and said: “You are very sick.” 

Daniel had a perforated colon. We didn’t have health insurance. The U-Haul was due back tomorrow. The cats were tearing up the curtains in our hotel room. Daniel might have to have surgery. There might be complications. I was supposed to meet the movers at our house. Daniel was very sick. How would we pay for all this?!! Why would God make me move to Texas, if this was going to happen?! 

At this moment, we were not on a mountaintop. 

We were six feet above sea level in Slidell, Louisiana…

—

But then, like Ezekiel’s dry bones, God started re-membering the Body of Christ. And the body started moving.  

Like diligent worker bees, people started descending on us from near and far.  

Without even asking, the local Episcopal priest showed up at Daniel’s bedside. It turned out that a friend in New Jersey sent him our way.  

Within hours, hundreds of people were praying. Within days, dozens had given us money to tide us over. 

The people of this congregation – total strangers at the time – had already raised enough money to pay our up-front medical bills. Two bishops from the Diocese of Texas called to check in. 

A parishioner and his family spent Father’s Day driving from Houston to Slidell to pick up the U-Haul. The rector coordinated with the movers, and pretty much everything else. 

The diocese figured out how to backdate my insurance, so that it would cover our hospital bills. 

While all of this was happening, the surgeon was insistent that Daniel would need surgery, which in hid case, could lead to sepsis, and even kidney failure. 

But, the air around his hospital bed was buzzing with the voices of prayer warriors, near and far. The surgeon let him wait one more day. And one day later, the infection was clearing, and the perforation was closing. A day after that, he was discharged.  

On the sixth day after his hospitalization, we were at home in Houston. 

On the seventh day, we rested.  

It was good for us to be here. 

— 

While we were in the valley, without us even noticing, the Body of Christ had carried us, up and up, until we were on the mountaintop. 

A place of God’s extravagant glory and our profound vulnerability. A place of healing, and fear, and peace, all mixed in together. A place of bounty, a place of grace. 

Everything in our life was suddenly transformed and transfigured, not because we had done anything to “get right with God,” but because the Body of Christ – in the people of God – had done everything to lay us at the feet of Jesus, where healing could be found. 

— 

Through months of transition for my family, not to mention for this parish, the mountaintop has sometimes been hard to hold onto. 

But then I remember the way we were carried. 

And I thank God for teaching me, at the beginning of ordained ministry, that my vulnerability is for God’s glory. That I don’t need to be perfect or put together to do the work of God. And neither do you. 

And this is the lesson of the mountaintop, I think: 

That Christ calls us into his body to use our own bodies to care for one another,  to advocate for the oppressed, the grieving, and the overburdened. to keep tender hearts in the midst of the world’s hardness. 

That Christ calls us to share the good news that a transformed and transfigured world is coming, and is already here, present in the prayer warriors and prophets and sages. In other words, all of us – regular, vulnerable people called to come down the mountain and shine with the light of God’s glory. 

And, the lesson of the mountaintop is that Christ calls us to go to the valleys. He calls us to carry the valley-dwellers through the desert and over the rivers, away from death-dealers and liars and abusers and cartels, into the warmth of one another’s arms, as we seek higher ground together. 

Together, we climb the mountain.

And when we get to the mountaintop, we lay ourselves at the feet of the Jesus, where healing is happening every day.