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Finding God on the mountain top



Climbing mountains has always been to me something of a mystical experience, from walking through and above the clouds on Ben More on the Isle of Mull, to the palpable sense that the atmosphere has changed, to the altered perspective that one inevitably gains, accompanied by the sheer effort and (if one is lucky) the mysterious isolation of the mountains, are all suggestive of ‘the other’. I remember climbing Schiehallion in Perth and Kinross as a teenager, having left my parents behind, gaining height and breaking out in spontaneous singing. It is sheer delight, after the effort, to see and gaze upon the world below.

The Feast of the Transfiguration is on the 5th August, but between the end of the Epiphany Season and the wait for the start of Lent we are treated to the story of the Transfiguration in the lectionary. The story is accompanied by a corresponding story from Exodus – the story of Moses receiving the 10 commandments from God, with a mysterious change in his appearance. The stories have similarities – both Moses and Jesus go up a mountain and it is on the mountain that their faces are changed.

Moses came down from Mount Sinai. As he came down from the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant in his hand, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God.   When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, the skin of his face was shining, and they were afraid to come near him.                                         
 Exodus 34, 29-30

Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. …….. a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said: ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’                                                        
  Luke 9.28-29, 34-35

The transfiguration story quite rightly appears at the end of the Epiphany Season because Christmas and Epiphany are about the Incarnation: the manifestation of God’s glory on earth through Jesus, His Son. Whilst Moses had to receive the Word of God on stone tablets, and even cover his face since the people couldn’t face the reflected glory of God, Jesus’ transfiguration is of a different order. St Paul puts it quite clumsily in his letter to the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 3:12-14) judging and blaming the Isrealites for having faces still veiled – but the point is not that the people nor Moses failed, but that never before had God dwelled with man, as man. This revelation is of a different magnitude. It is the difference between the sun which shines and blazes with its own light in contrast to the moon, which is only seen because it reflects the light of the sun. Moses is like the moon – he reflected God’s light, whilst Jesus is the sun, he is the light.

God as Man communicates himself, his law, his nature in a new way – in such a way that we are invited to gaze on God’s glory and not avert our eyes. In the Old Testament, Moses was not able to see the glory of God, to meet God’s gaze (Exodus 33. 21-23), but in Jesus we are invited to do just that. It is still for some a stumbling block, an outrage, a radical reality that cannot be received. How is that we can gaze on God and still live? In God’s great generosity such a gift has been realised. We are invited to receive the truth of God in Jesus and be transfigured in the process. Rather than follow the Law, we are asked to follow Jesus - who is the incarnation of the Law, its summation, its practical realisation. And we are invited to become like Jesus through eating him – we therefore are able to shine inwardly with the son’s glory, because he has enabled us to be partakers of his very nature. We who eat his body and blood should honour the purification which has occurred through him and purify ourselves through love and service. When we eat and drink the body and the blood imagine we are eating magical puffs of light, given to us so that we might shine like the Son with the glory of the Father! Amen 

'And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.'   2 Corinthains 3:18

Lectionary Readings, Exodus 34:29-end, 2 Corinthians 3:12-4.2, Luke 9:28-36

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