This is a copy of my talk given at Ayia Kyriaki and Saint Luke’s in the Anglican Church of Paphos on Sunday 11 February 2024. The Bible Reading was Mark 9:2-9.
Prayer
Heavenly Father
I thank You for Your word
By the power of the Holy Spirit
May You speak to my heart
And change my life
In the precious name of Jesus I pray
Amen.
Introduction
The Bible mentions mountains 570 times and about one-third of the mountains listed had at least one major event occur on them. The mountain in the Bible is a place of divine revelation. Think of: Ararat: Mount of Promise; Moriah: Mount of Provision; Sinai: Mount of Covenant; Gerizim: Mount of Blessing; Nebo: Mount of Hope; Hebron: Mount of Inheritance; Carmel: Mount of Fire; Olives: Mount of Prayer, to name but a few.
It starts off ordinary enough. Jesus and his three closest friends – Peter, James, and John – go up to Mount Tabor. Nothing unusual. Jesus often went off from the crowds to pray and rest. All very ordinary.
But from here on, ordinary ends. No sooner do they arrive than Jesus is suddenly “transfigured.” He “glowed.” As the text puts it: “His clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them.” Not only out of the ordinary, but absolutely out of this world – which, of course, is precisely what the story wants to convey.
And if that is not out-of-the ordinary enough, two of faith’s most honoured heroes suddenly appear by Jesus’ side. Moses, the great lawgiver, and Elijah, the prophet par excellence – the Law and the Prophets – paying respect to Jesus, in whom both are brought together.
1) A Mountain Top Experience
Tabor, the Mount of Transfiguration is both literally and figuratively a ‘mountain-top experience.’ No wonder Peter, James, and John are terrified. Of course, a little terror never stopped Peter from speaking up; for lack of any other ideas, he suggests erecting three shrines to commemorate the event!
A cloud overshadows the mountain. Then the voice of God echoes around them saying, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” Glowing face and clothes, visits from famous figures of the past, hovering clouds and heavenly voices … What a wow moment!
It was so extra ordinary that when it was all over, and Jesus and Peter and James and John were headed back down the mountain, Jesus told them to “tell no one about what they had seen.” That made sense. Who would have believed it anyway? But the three of them believed it. They had been there, and those moments on that mountain would forever mark their lives and change the way they looked at everything.
2) WOW Moments
Have you ever had a wow moment in God’s presence? I remember a few years ago attending a Christian conference called New Wine with about 20,000 other people. It was a time when a total eclipse of the sun was taking place. Everything stopped, and we just watched this amazing cosmic event taking place as we sang songs of worship and gave thanks to the God of creation. It was one of those wow moments that I will never forget.
It was the same with Peter, James and John. Up on Mount Tabor they had been given nothing less than a glimpse into the future. They saw past the suffering and death of Jesus, which he had predicted a few days before; past their doubts and their fears. For one brief shining moment God had cracked the door to the end of time and they had seen how their own, and the whole world’s history, would be worked out at the end of time. And they would never be the same again.
I wish everyone could have that wow/mountain top experience. But sometimes people are living in the valley, not on the mountain top. Things are different between the two.
That being the case, how can we continue to have those energizing, even life-changing, mountaintop experiences during the course of our life’s journey? The easy answer is that we can’t! Sorry. Peter, James, and John were there because Jesus had invited them – there were nine others who were not. I suspect the reason is that some were ready, others weren’t.
I’m sure we’ve all realised, probably the hard way, that when children are small, there are some words we can’t say at the dinner table. As soon as we say words like “cookies, sweets or cake,” our kids don’t want to eat their food anymore. They know what “cookies, sweets and cake” mean, but they don’t seem to understand the word “later.” They want the dessert now. Forget the main course.
If we let them eat the sweet stuff, we know they will not be interested in the nutritious stuff. They would never have a healthy diet.
A mountaintop experience is a bit like dessert. If that is the extent of our spiritual diet, we will be poorly fed. Our faith will be unhealthy. It will be not much more than a spiritual good luck charm, something that protects us from problems – divine cures for sickness, financial worries, the anxieties of life – the glory on the mountain top. We need some preparation before we can truly appreciate the wow!
3) Preparing For An Invitation To The Mountain Top
Do you want to be ready for an invitation to the mountain top? Let me make a few suggestions.
a) Make yourself available. Peter, James, and John were invited to climb Mount Tabor because they were already in the company of Jesus. The company of Jesus in the year 2024 is right here – the church. Those who, for whatever reason, choose to absent themselves from the ‘fellowship of believers’ will not be ready to respond to the invitation.
b) Learn all you can about your Christian faith. Bible study, midweek Bible Studies, Lent Course … All the surveys indicate that biblical literacy is at a low ebb these days. In fact, a survey by the Bible Society a few years ago suggested that 68% of church attendees don’t read their Bible from one Sunday to the next! The text does not tell us how Peter, James, and John recognized Moses and Elijah, but they did, and they knew how incredibly important these men were. Had they never heard of them, the moment on the mountain would not have been nearly so special.
c) Listen to Jesus. Only twice in the gospels does God speak – once at Jesus’ baptism, and again here. God minces no words. “This is my Beloved Son, Listen to Him.” We hear him as we worship. We hear him as we study scripture. We hear him in the voice of other Christians. It’s so easy to listen to other voices to the point of drowning Jesus out. We need to Listen to Jesus.
d) Remember where your work is. The valley. The church is the only institution I know of that exists primarily for the sake of those outside it. If we listen to Jesus, we hear him say again and again to “Go and make disciples.”
At the Synod of the Diocese of Cyprus and the Gulf this week, Revd Canon Dr Penial Rajkumar, director of Global Mission for USPG, was our keynote speaker and on Thursday he mentioned the Greek orthodox tradition of ‘the liturgy after the liturgy’ relating to our ongoing mission and ministry. That got me thinking about ‘the liturgy before the liturgy!’ What comes before the liturgy of an act of worship? Might it be that our attitude to worship can contribute to whether we have a mountain top experience or not?
e) Be Joyously Expectant. So, a final point. if you want to be truly prepared for Christ’s invitation to the mountain top, have an air of joyous expectancy.
When you come to this holy place from week to week, prayerfully begin as you walk through the doors and/or take your seat, ready, not to run into someone you would rather not see, not to sing a hymn you don’t know and would rather not learn, not to mumble through a prayer and a creed without thought, not to suffer through a sermon that somehow misses you. No. Rather come in ready to meet Jesus … in a person, a song, a word.
So, five suggestions in preparation for a trip to the mountaintop: make yourself available; learn all you can about your Christian faith; listen to Jesus; remember where your work is; and finally, attitude. Then you will be ready when the wow moment presents itself.
Conclusion
All this ‘mountain’ talk reminds me of Martin Luther King’s last sermon which he delivered on 3 April 1968, at Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee on the eve of his assassination at the Lorraine Motel. He concluded his remarks that night:
I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountain top. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
Did MLK have a premonition of what was going to take place the next day? Had he had a glimpse of his future? But it didn’t matter because he, like Peter, James and John had seen a glimpse of the future. He’d had his mountain top experience and all was well in his soul.
May that be true for each one of us in our walk with the Lord.
COPYRIGHT DISCLAIMER: The text contained in this sermon is solely owned by its author, Revd Paul A. Carr. The reproduction, or distribution of this message, or any portion of it, should include the author’s name.
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