The Last Sunday after the Epiphany; March 2, 2025
Exodus 34: 29-25; Psalm 99; 2 Corinthians 3: 12-4: 2; Luke 9: 28-43
In the reading from Exodus we hear that when Moses came down from Mt. Sinai the skin of his face shone. He had been on the mountain talking with God and receiving the Ten Commandments. The reaction of the people was to be frightened, scared to come near him. Such was the change in his face. It became necessary for Moses to veil his face so that the people could interact with him. Literally Moses had a mountain-top experience and it scared the hell out the people around him.
I remember listening to the director of a soup kitchen speak about the people who came to her for food and sometimes counseling. One of the regular guests spoke to her about wanting a job but he didn’t know how to find one. By chance, she was able to get him some part-time work raking leaves. She saw him the next day and he was grinning from ear to ear, glowing you might say. “Anne,” he said, “the lady you sent me to said I did a good job raking her leaves.” In this midst of skepticism about the poor wanting to work, here was a man who did and had a positive encounter that enhanced his self-esteem.
One Friday night, Trinity Church’s volleyball team took to the court. This is Trinity, Alliance not Trinity, London. To the surprise of the opposing church league team – and to the surprise of the people of Trinity – we won. It was the first game we had ever one after about 10 losses. The church league was a “just for fun venture” and none of us from the Episcopal Church were in great shape. There would be a second game after that first one and we all felt confident.
In the Gospel, Jesus with Peter, James and John go up on the mountain to pray. During this time of prayer, the appearance of Jesus changes. His clothes become dazzling white. He shone. Then the disciples see two men talking with him whom they sense are Moses and Elijah.
This is a lot to take in. Even today the meaning of such an event is open to interpretation. You could that Jesus, who will be the savior of his people, stands with Elijah, the pre-eminent prophet, and Moses, the one who started it all and brought the law (the 10 commandments) down from Mt. Sinai. Maybe this explains why Peter wants to build three dwelling for Jesus, Elijah and Moses. He wants to stay in this mountain-top aura, preserve it, enjoy it, make the most of it.
We all can understand this. We have had these experiences in which time itself seemed suspended, each and every event was important and welling up inside of us the desire to “feed” on that experience for ever. A special summer camp. Your first love. A graduation day. A wedding, a birth, a vacation, the day of your first job. In our lifetime we climb many mountains to the top and we realize that we shine in so many ways because of that experience. Just a glimpse, or a look back, is enough to give any of us a radiance.
Yet we cannot stay on the mountain-top forever. Shelters or booths are just pipe dreams. Mountain-tops beg for a descent into the valleys below. This is where life at its best and worst lies. And time in the valleys of life alert us to the need to rest and refresh ourselves on the mountain. Life is lived mostly in the valleys, in the mundane, in the often ho-hum existence of paying bills, cleaning out the refrigerator, moping the floor.
Mountain-top experiences get translated into everyday life in the valley. Or, they really don’t transfigure our lives or the lives of anyone else.
As the Gospel relates, the next day Jesus with Peter, James and John came down from the mountain and were met by a large crowd. Then there is the father whose son is sick.
All the people began to wash around Jesus and the disciples like an ocean of need.
Moses down from the mountain still had to deal with a stubborn group of people who questioned whether being free in the desert was really better than being slaves in Egypt with enough food to eat rather than the tasteless manna. The man from the Soup Kitchen, who found some worth in short-term work, was back in the valley of being homeless where he was seen as a bum and people turned their faces away from him and saw no radiance in his countenance.
Trinity’s volleyball team turned that one victory into a gigantic defeat. The other church that had lost the first game asked for a time out. They gathered in a circle and prayed out loud that God would give them the victory in the next game. Now they did not say anything bad about Trinity or Episcopalians but it unnerved Trinity’s team. One parishioner looked at me and said: “Can they do that? Can they pray to win?” All I could say was that it was bad form to do so in what was supposed to be a game for fun. Trinity’s volleyball team was so unnerved we could only score one point in that game.
We could look at every Sunday as a mountain-top and the rest of the week as a kind of valley in which we seek to incorporate into our weekday lives our Sunday values. We could look at the transition from Epiphany to Lent as the same movement up into a place where discern the light of Christ shining through our own lives. We could look at our lives as movement from mountain-top to valley over and over again until we come to our end.
There are patterns that scripture presents to us and we miss the point if we think they are just stories of Moses, Elijah or Jesus. They are our stories. Those patterns repeat themselves in our lives and we can trust them. Both wisdom and hope come to us when we see them. Mountaintop and valley is just one of these patterns. All this movement in our lives has meaning and leads us on to our final transfiguration.
The Rev. Dr. George Glazier
Vicar, Trinity Church, London