Last Sunday after the Epiphany
 
2 Kings 2:1-12
Psalm 50:1-6
2 Corinthians 4:3-6
Mark 9:2-9
 
"Peter said to Jesus, 'Rabbi, it is good for us to be here.'"
 
Yes, Peter, it is good for us to be here, on the mountain top with Jesus, this Last Sunday after the Epiphany. And it is good to be with Moses and Elijah, too.
 
People often say that here Moses represents the law and Elijah the prophets and let it go at that, but remember that this Moses was not an ordinary legislator. He was a rebel, an organizer, who led his fellow slaves to freedom and gave them a particular kind of law -- a law for a people who could never forget their liberation: "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of bondage in Egypt. You shall have no other gods but me."
 
When it was at its best, the law protected the weak and the defenseless, and sought to guarantee -- through the Year of Jubilee, the Day of the Lord -- that impoverishment and oppression would not be passed down from generation to generation.
 
And Elijah, that strange, wonderful, and sometimes terribly violent man , a holy nuisance if there ever was one. Ahab's prophets would tell the king what he wanted to hear, because that, of course, is what court preachers are paid to do, now as well as then. And along would come that pest, Elijah, to tell that Ahab what he needed to hear and to take action when terrible injustices were committed. I have a hunch that if Elijah were not a biblical character and therefore, by definition, respectable, somebody would be tapping his phone right now -- or worse. But that's the role and vocation of all the prophets., even if they are not whisked up in a whirlwind with chariots and horses of fire.
 
That Jesus is talking with Elijah and Moses, is perhaps, symbolic of the fact that Jesus has all of that behind him; he speaks from within a long tradition committed to liberation and justice, and his teaching cannot be fully understand apart from it. Jesus is shown as the fulfillment of the just law and the indignant prophets; in him both find their highest expression, radically transformed, but never repudiated.
 
As the disciples watch, Jesus is transfigured before them, and his clothes become dazzling white. In a kind of symmetry with the First Sunday after the Epiphany -- the Baptism of Jesus -- there comes a voice, "This is my Son, the Beloved."
 
All through the season of Epiphany we have been exploring theophanies, revelations of God in Christ, watching the disciples gradually coming to a conviction of the Incarnation, a conviction that will not be fully explicit until after Jesus' death, resurrection, and Ascension, and after the early Church has had time to reflect on its experiences. What Incarnation means is not only that God emptied himself to share our humanity, but also that our humanity is lifted up, transformed, restored in his. Here on the mountain today we can see our own humanity and that of every human being, however lowly or despised by the powers of the present age, taken up and carried in the humanity of Jesus, transfigured and shining, clothed in garments of dazzling white.
 
Jesus has been speaking to his disciples about the Reign of God which was at the heart of his teaching. In the Transfiguration it is as if he gives them a glimpse of the glory of that divine Commonwealth, a foreshadowing of "an eternal and universal kingdom: a kingdom of truth and life: a kingdom of sanctity and grace: a kingdom of justice, love and peace." "Here [in the Transfiguration] are the beginnings of the age to come," writes the 7th century abbot Anastasius of Mount Sinai, " here we see it reflected as if in a mirror."
 
Saint Anastasius invites us to rejoice in it:
 
"Let us listen to the holy voice of God which summons us from on high, from the mountain top. There we must hasten -- I make bold to say -- like Jesus . . . There, with him, may the eyes of our mind shine with his light and the features of our soul be made new; may we be transfigured with him and molded to his image, ever becoming divine, being transformed in ever greater degree of glory . . . Since each one of us has God within him and is transformed into his divine image, let us cry out in joy: 'It is good for us to be here.'"
 
Yes, it is good to be here. I cannot agree with some who seem to think that Peter had it all wrong, that the mountaintop is somehow a distraction from the work that needs to be done in the valley. They do have a point. To become like Jesus it is not enough to have a high opinion of him, or to flatter him with cries of "Lord, Lord" on our lips. It is also necessary to follow him, even if that following leads us up the steps of Calvary and beyond. "This is my Son, the Beloved; Listen to him."
 
There is struggle ahead and, as Ched Myers points out, the dazzling white garments will reappear as the robes of the martyrs . That knowledge, I think, only makes us need the mountaintop even more; without it a Christian life is only half lived.
 
We must learn to return there again and again, in worship, sacrament, meditation, and prayer, taking the vision with us in all our doings, infusing our struggles with its light and joy, rather than facing them with the gritted teeth and grim countenance that too often is mistaken for the Christian way.
 
We need our mountaintops, if only to keep hope alive, to keep our eyes firmly fixed on the prize.
 
Some of the great saints were able to attend to the affairs of the world without ever leaving the mountaintop, able to take it with them wherever they go. "It is good for us to be here with Jesus and to remain here for ever," says Anastasius.
 
Most of us, though, are not there yet -- at least I know I'm not. We go back and forth, now dazzled on the mountaintop, now struggling in the valley. So it is with the Christian year, the liturgical calendar; after one last fling, Lent awaits us, and we begin to prepare, with prayer and fasting, for the observance of the great Paschal Feast.
 
We, in the Western Church, will lay aside our Resurrection cry of "Alleluia", not taking it up again until the Great Vigil of Easter. In the late middle ages some popular additions to the liturgy marked this transition. In some places, a banner or scroll with "Alleluia" beautifully written on it would be displayed and then hidden away at the end of mass, not to be found until Easter, and hymns were composed which contained as many "Alleluias" as the ingenuity of the hymn writer could fit in -- a kind of reluctant farewell, for now, to the chant that will be on our lips for all eternity.
 
We'll do some of that here today, and at the end of mass we'll all go down the mountain rejoicing and singing Alleluia, bringing with us our last year's palms to be quietly burned, when the alleluias are ended, to make the ashes for use at the Ash Wednesday liturgies.
 
We will leave the mountaintop, but only for a while. May our faces, even as we fast, shine with Jesus' light. "May the features of our soul be made new; may we be transfigured with him and molded to his image, ever becoming divine, being transformed in ever greater degree of glory."
 
Alleluia.
 
Ted Mellor
February 26, 2006
Trinity Church, Los Angeles