“Shine Bright”

Matthew 16:24-17:8

Feb. 19, 2023

Sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

There’s something about mountains, isn’t there? Maybe it’s just that I’m a born-and-raised Kansan, but I confess that I find them to be a bit magical. When you’re driving west on I-70 for, oh, 342 hours, you eventually start to see something off in the distance, right? Might be a cloud. Might be a floater in your eye. But it MIGHT be a mountain. Finally! My mom says that when she was a little girl and they would make that drive every summer, her dad would exclaim from the driver’s seat, “Look! It’s the mounties!”

Yep. That joy is how it feels. No matter how many times I’ve made that drive, my heart still skips a beat when I see the mountains up ahead, getting bigger and bigger. 

It’s so fascinating to me how you can see the discrete mounds when they’re far off, but once you’re in the foothills you can’t quite get a sense of where you are in space. Like, are you ON the mountain yet or not? It can be hard to tell. 

There’s something about mountains that can feel disorienting. They sneak up on you. Here in Manhattan we’re at about 3000 miles above sea level. By the time you reach the Colorado border, you’ve climbed about 2500 feet but you’ve hardly noticed. When you make it to Denver, you’re a whole mile above sea level. Keep going and the mountains that have been arriving gradually will suddenly start to feel HAPPEN. 

Mountains are beautiful but also a force to be reckoned with. They inspire awe but also discomfort and fear. I can remember taking our kids on vacation to Colorado when they were  younger and praying they wouldn’t notice the bear guards on the outdoor trash cans because I knew we’d never get any sleep if they were worried about bears breaking into our Airbnb all night long! 

I don’t personally have the best luck with mountains. When I was a teenager, I tried my hand at skiing, only to find myself tangled up in a couple of trees. I’ve been quite grumpy when stupidly planning a spring break trip to Colorado only to be surprised by a foot of snow. And I have a hard time sleeping in Winter Park because the elevation is so extreme my lungs start to feel constricted and I get panicked. 

So when the disciples have this experience with Jesus that is memorable, mystical, awe-inspiring, and perhaps a bit terrifying, I suppose we shouldn’t be too surprised that it happens on a mountain, huh? Those of us who are familiar with the Bible know that mountains are places where God is expected to show up and maybe even show off. 

Noah and his family finally get off the ark after washing up on Mount Ararat. Abraham, of course, had a harrowing experience with Isaac on Mount Moriah and heard God’s voice clearly there. Moses traipses up and down Mount Sinai to receive messages to share with the Israelites. Many years later, Moses looked down upon the promised land from atop Mount Nebo, seeing that yet-to-be-fulfilled promise that he had been chasing his entire life. Elijah had some high drama Mount Carmel, facing off against the prophets of Baal. And later, Elijah fled to Mount Sinai where he heard God’s voice in the silence while hiding in a cave. 

Jesus also knew the mountains. He was tempted on a high mountain, looking out over the expanse of the world below. He called his disciples on a mountain. Jesus taught and fed the multitudes on mountains, too. He retreated to the mountains when he needed to be alone with God. 

Today Jesus is on another mountain. Peter, James, and John are with him. They’ve just heard Jesus warn them about the upcoming challenges they are about to face. The scene feels heavy, perhaps even a bit hopeless. 

But then something happens. And it’s breathtaking in all the good and scary ways. Jesus is somehow transfigured before them. His face shines like the sun, or, perhaps, if you still have Rihanna’s Super Bowl Halftime show stuck in your head, he was shining “bright like a diamond.”

This is not the first shiny mountaintop situation in the Bible. We are supposed to immediately think of Moses here, whose face shone after meeting with God on Mt. Sinai. 19th century preacher Charles Spurgeon describes Moses as the moon to God’s sun - reflecting the light that he absorbed when in the presence of the Holy One. [1] Moses’s face was so bright that he made people uncomfortable. And so he wore a veil when he was down among the people and then removed it when he went back up to talk to God. Kind of like a little solar panel, I guess, absorbing God’s energy and then releasing it in little bits to the people as they could handle it. 

It seems that this reflection of God’s electric countenance is something to be handled carefully. It certainly freaks the disciples out. They see Jesus shining bright like a diamond and then, suddenly, in case we missed the connections to Moses and Elijah, the Spirit makes sure they’re abundantly clear, with visions of Moses and Elijah appearing beside him. All of this is a bit too much for the witnesses. Peter, overwhelmed, says the only thing that pops into his head, “Lord, it’s good to be here. If you’d like, I can make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”

Poor Peter has taken a lot of flak over the centuries for his reaction. After all, if Jesus has these supernatural qualities, he’s probably not really much in need of a roof over his head, right? And certainly Moses and Elijah, who must be ghosts or spirits or somesuch, also don’t need cover. BUT the word Peter uses there isn’t just any old tent or dwelling. It’s a word that evokes the holy tabernacle of God - a place where the Divine lives. And in this way, what Peter says makes perfect sense to me. He’s aware that something truly amazing is happening and he wants to honor it by marking it as holy. I also can’t say that I blame him for wanting to stay put. Here he is, up on a mountain with three of the greatest teachers and prophets the world has ever known. Can you blame a guy for wanting to press pause?

But these mountains - man, they just don’t quit. They aren’t meant to be places of comfort and ease. 

No one even answers poor Peter’s question. Instead, the story goes that they hear a voice booming from the heavens, “This is my Son, the beloved. Listen to him.”

Careful listeners might recognize these words. Any takers? 

That’s right. Those are the same words we’re told came from the heavens when Jesus was baptized. But this time with one addition: “Listen to him.”

And what does Jesus say right after that admonition? He looks at the disciples, who have fallen to the ground in a heap of awed shock. He says, “Get up and do not be afraid.”

The disciples are going to need all the courage they can muster. Just as Jesus was sent forth from blessing into the wilderness at the beginning of Matthew’s Gospel, the disciples are coming down from this mountaintop experience into a time of chaos, pain, violence, and agony. They are going to need all the certainty of faith they feel in this moment to make it through the challenges that are coming next. 

This is one of those stories that might seem like it’s from a long ago time and far away place. Perhaps you’re scoffing a bit because you’ve never seen anyone shine as bright as the sun and you’re not much into ghosts. Maybe you’ve never heard a voice boom out of the heavens so you’re not sure what to do with that information. 

But maybe, just maybe, you’re a person who can find a bit of resonance here, whether you’d admit it out loud or not. Maybe you wouldn’t quite call it mystical, but you’re not exactly a stranger to puzzling experiences that leave you wondering. It may have been a still, small voice inside rather than a booming voice from the sky. Maybe you saw someone exuding a light that seemed truly awe-some, even if it wasn’t quite as shiny as Moses. Maybe you’ve simply felt something significant when the breeze and warm sun touched your shoulders while you were sitting by a mountain stream. 

I don’t pretend to know enough about how God moves to understand why some people have these visceral experiences of a Divine presence often while others may never have them at all. I do know that, at this point, I’ve heard enough stories of people experiencing God’s presence that they don’t shock me. They just make me smile and lean forward in curiosity. 

Maybe Charles Spurgeon had it right: the Spirit continues to shine like the sun and, if we’re lucky, we catch glimpses of the light reflected in the world around us. 

And maybe Rihanna is right too, “You and I, you and I - We're like diamonds in the sky.”

And so, as we move from this season of Epiphany into Lent - a time of seeking - my prayer is that we will all keep looking for the light, keep shining bright, and never stop seeking the Spirit in our midst. We pray this, hopefully, in the name of the one who came to shine a light so bright that the darkness has not overcome it. 

Thanks be to God. Amen. 

 NOTES:

[1] https://www.spurgeon.org/resource-library/sermons/the-shining-of-the-face-of-moses/#flipbook/