The Rev. David Burgdorf
St. Margaret's Episcopal Church & School
Exodus 34:29-35 | Psalm 99 | 2 Peter 1:13-21 | Luke 9:28-36
Have you ever had a “mountaintop experience”? In one sense, it means just that- going to the top of a mountain and looking around. That can be quite an experience, as on the top of Mt. San Jacinto, if you go from the top of the Tram to the top of the mountain, huffing and puffing at the end, in my case. From that perspective, you get to see more of the Valley and the surrounding territory than you do from a plane coming in for a landing. From there, the perspective is, as the kids might say, “awesome.” From there, the businesses, churches and homes we live among seem very small, if we can even find them. The place where I spend at least 40 hours per week working, for instance, is practically invisible from the mountaintop. Maybe that’s why I like going to the mountaintop- to see a bigger picture.
Even if your mountain walking days are over, it may be that you have had some mountaintop experience in another sense. Abraham Maslow, the psychologist, spoke of “peak experiences.” He meant “sudden feelings of well-being and happiness and the unity of all things.” Call it the joy of being alive or even a taste of heaven. We’ve all had them, even if we don’t describe them this way. Here’s another version, from the poet W.B. Yeats:
My fiftieth year had come and gone.
I sat, a solitary man,
In a crowded London shop,
An open book, an empty cup
On the marble table top.
While on the shop and street I gazed,
My body of a sudden blazed,
And twenty minutes, more or less,
It seemed so great my happiness
That I was blessed and could bless.
“It seemed so great my happiness/ That I was blessed and could bless.” Have you been there? Perhaps for you it was a wedding, or the birth of a child. Maybe it was just sitting in a boat fishing…then along came a dawning awareness of the overwhelming goodness of all things. Maybe it was “being way up” in love with someone or, in my case, being way down, prostrate on the floor at ordination (as we did in those days) while people prayed that we’d be worthy of the step we were about to take. If you’ve had a mountaintop or peak experience, it is usually fairly easy to remember because afterwards, things were changed, or at least we looked at the world from a changed perspective.
Today is the Feast of the Transfiguration. Who knew? Placed on August 6th, in the middle of the summer, it’s usually on a weekday, but this year on a Sunday, this feast day celebrates one of the great mountaintop experiences of the Bible, the Lord’s Transfiguration. Jesus took Peter, James and John up Mt. Tabor, according to tradition, and while there, “as he was praying, the appearance of his countenance was altered, and his raiment became dazzling white.” It was as if the veil that hid the glory of the Son of God was removed, along with the boundary between him and the great Biblical heroes representing the Law and the Prophets: Moses and Elijah. There they were, talking to Jesus about his coming death. Peter found the moment breathtaking. One priest said, “For a moment in time, a few men got to see the Son of God as God the Father eternally sees him.” It was all joy. Peter said simply, “Master, it is well that we are here.” But being a practical sort of person, and possibly fearing that this was going to be over too soon, he offered to construct three booths or temporary shelters, one each for Jesus, Moses and Elijah. He wanted to “savor the moment,” or even cling or attach to it and not let it slip away.
Then came the moment that nobody who goes to mountaintops wants to experience. “A cloud came and overshadowed them.” You don’t want this because you can’t see where you’re going. Everything becomes unclear, fuzzy, and ambiguous. You’re not in control. “They were afraid as they entered the cloud.” In the picture language of the Bible, entering the cloud means entering into the mysterious presence of God. All of what we know goes out the window and is good for nothing here. This is foreign territory. Except there is a voice out of the cloud and darkness, “This is my beloved Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” That’s the light, the roadmap, the marching orders: “This is my beloved Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”
This mountaintop experience must have taken a lifetime for Peter, James and John to reflect on. Peter later on wrote: (2 Pet. 1:16-18) “We were witnesses of his majesty…we heard this voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain.” What must have made it difficult for them to ponder was what happened next in the story of Jesus. Jesus went down the mountain, to Jerusalem, where he was crucified. It was as if Jesus who had been hiding his glory (or emptied of glory, as St. Paul says), and living a life of complete surrender to his human destiny for a moment let glory shine out on his face, on his clothing, just for a time we call Transfiguration. In Jesus’ earthly life, there were two moments that took his disciples’ breath away, both moments of God’s mysterious love- one on Mt. Tabor, where the Son of God was beautiful to see, the second on Golgotha, where he was tortured. In that second moment of glory, when Jesus is empty of all beauty, the composer JS Bach in one of his masterpieces invites us to ponder, “Behold how with blood his cheeks are riven: a wondrous vision of Heaven’s glory bright.”
Many who are here today have been drawn to the amazing glory of this self-giving love. Most of us have had our own version of peak experiences. It’s hard to let them go. I must confess that I love the mountaintops, but I’m not crazy about the valleys. Even the mountaintop has its clouds, when my way, my certainty and my plans become useless but to go in faith into the valley is to enter grief and loss. As someone who has led grief groups for many years, I know something about the experience of loss: of children, the loss of spouses, lovers and parents, the loss of careers and dreams. I know people who have struggled with letting go of an attachment that had become more important to them than life itself. And do you know something? The most amazing thing is that people who had gone through the peak experience and then the desolation have a deeper sense of God’s presence in their lives than if they had only been to the mountaintop, so to speak. Like Dorothy. Dorothy was our Altar Guild Directress at the Cathedral in Buffalo, NY, where I started out. She was exuberant. She loved big music, big liturgy, big parties and big everything. When she got bowel cancer, she stayed in a convalescent center. One day, I went to see her, and everything had gone wrong. She, who loved being in charge of big things, was now in control of nothing. In exasperation, she pointed to a crucifix on the wall in front of her and said, “Now I know what he went through for us.” That was Dorothy’s last gift to me; she died that night. What she had done, as she relaxed her control and surrendered, was to entirely unite her life to the pattern of Jesus’. As what delighted her was subtracted, she remained faithful to the one who was with her in joy and in sorrow.
The expert on this pattern of transfiguration and surrender is St. Theresa of Avila. She was the witty nun who in the 16th century complained to God after she got drenched trying to cross a stream: “It’s no wonder you have so few friends if this is how you treat those of us who are your friends!” When she died, she left a bookmark, and written on it (in Spanish) are these words- words for all of us who too easily get stuck somewhere between the mountaintops and the valleys in our lives and wish to cling to one or the other:
Let nothing disturb you / Nothing frighten you / All things are passing / God never changes / Patient acceptance accomplishes all things / Whoever has God lacks nothing / God alone suffices.
© 1998 - 2008Saint Margaret’s Episcopal Church, Palm Desert CA" All rights reserved. Please contact the church for permission to use any of this material