As it falls in the church calendar, this Sunday was a celebration of the Transfiguration, that time on the mountain when three of Jesus’s disciples witnessed a scene in which they saw Jesus in a new light.
As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. He was ethereal and radiant. Two men, whom the disciples took to be Moses and Elijah, were talking to him. It is probably from this Bible story that we get the expression “mountain-top experience,” the topic of Sunday’s sermon by our associate priest, Shana, Trinity’s Canon for Cathedral Life.
It caused me to think back on the mountain-top experiences in my spiritual life when I saw Christ in a new and sometimes ecstatic way. As a kid, summer church camp was always one. My brothers and I would come back from camp singing the songs we had learned, excited about the friends we had met, and newly resolved to be a faithful follower of Jesus. Another experience, about thirteen years ago, was hearing Elaine Harris talk about the Cornerstone Community and the Rule of St. Benedict. I was deeply moved and felt God’s call like few other times in my life. My times with the monks in New Mexico was also like that, experiencing God in a new way—a quiet experience, but profoundly moving nonetheless.
The challenge about mountain-top experiences is that you have to come down from the mountain. Peter didn’t want to; he wanted to set up three tents and stay awhile. As Shana said in her sermon, the mountain top is where you go to pray, not where you go to stay. We have to go back down to the valley and do the hard work required as members of the kingdom of God. Just before Luke’s account of the transfiguration, Jesus tells his followers about his coming suffering and death. Then he said to them, “If any wish to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”
When challenges in my life make me question the strength of my faith, or I simply become tired of sticking with a spiritual discipline, I think back on my mountain tops, those times when God was very real to me. Often it is those inspiring memories that keep me going. It is also good to look for those occasions in our ordinary day-to-day life when Christ appears in a new way to us.
Improbable Benedictine 