Tag: mountains

This is a reflection on the transfiguration the Sunday before Lent (Year B). The text is Mark 9:2-9. I had a congregation in rural Warwickshire in mind as I prepared this (and learned so much in the process).

It is the last Sunday before Lent and already the gospel for the day leads us to a liminal space, taking our eyes, hearts and minds to a high mountain to be with Jesus, Peter, James and John and apart from the busyness of everyday life.

From Wednesday we come back to earth. We become ashen faced with our faces smeared with the ashes that remind us that we are but dust. From dust we came and to dust we return. We come back to the earth of the wilderness, where life is full of temptations, everyday life in which we are so often bothered and bewildered.

But for now, we are taken apart from all of that as Mark deliberately takes us, as disciples of Jesus, up a high mountain. We don’t just get the buzz of climbing high. This is a spiritual high that Mark leads us to, though not for long. For a few short verses we are there, and then we are gone.

Alongside Peter, James and John we see Jesus transfigured, his clothes becoming impossibly white. Moses and Elijah are there, one on either side of Jesus. It is quite the picture. We could perhaps imagine this as a stained glass window. Jesus central, Moses on one side, Elijah on the other. Moses being “the law”. Elijah being “the prophets”.

You can see it set in stone, as Peter did. He wanted to build three dwellings there so that they could stay in that moment, on the mountain, in their spiritual high.

How wrong Peter was. Mark explains that he didn’t really know what he was saying because they were terrified. There was no staying there. Just as there was not staying there for them, so there is no staying in our spiritual highs for us.

Jesus takes them down from the mountain top down to earth.
That’s where his love takes them,
away from the rapture and into the political realities of everyday life,
away from the tameness of the mountain top experience into the wilder-ness where it’s dog eat dog
down the mountain Jesus leads us into the valleys overshadowed with death.

That is where we find Jesus and his disciples, not separate, apart, high and mighty, down to earth as the dust of the way everyone walks, one with us in wilderness.

Peter may have had his designs on a stained glass window with its three panels – Jesus at the centre, flanked by Moses and Elijah, but Peter is used by Mark as the lead disciple who represents the misunderstandings of all Jesus’ disciples. 

James and John seem to have had a similar design in mind. They pictured glory with Jesus enthroned in the centre with one of them on his right and the other one on his left.

Mark is the one who sees and understands Jesus’s design.

It is the way of the cross. It is the way through the heart of the people he loves. Mark’s gospel leaves us with Jesus crucified in the way criminals were then, with a criminal crucified on one side of him, and a criminal crucified on the other.

And that is Jesus’ design for us as he leads us from the safety of the spiritual high into the valleys overshadowed by death, as he leads us to politically engage in the conflicts of everyday life, showing us the way to live through them with love.

So, a very different stained glass window, a very different pattern to follow: Jesus cut, naked, bruised at the centre, flanked by two criminals on their crucifixes who join the mockery of Jesus.

This is what Mark wants us to fix in our minds. Not the three dwellings Peter wanted to build on the mountain top, but the picture of the three crosses as the way of salvation. How strange this picture is to us, how strange this hanging the church has been showing us down the centuries.

It’s strange because like Peter, James and John we have other ideas of what a messiah looks like. Collectively we have been led my many of them down the centuries – and misled by them – charismatic leaders, many of whom have been tyrants, many of whom have led their followers in ways of violence and retribution in pursuit of peace.

Peter, James and John grew up with the idea that the Messiah would come triumphantly to overthrow the political rulers who overruled them so cruelly and unjustly. Jesus chooses another path – that way of the cross. Not a triumphant way, but a loving way, as servant of all. Mark highlights the mistakes and misunderstandings of Peter, James and John. It is no wonder they got him so wrong.

But they are not judged for their mistakes. Instead, God talks to them, there on that mountain. Mark pictures those three. To them alone he points to Jesus. His voice comes from heaven, and he says “This is my Son, the beloved. Listen to him”.

“This is my Son, the beloved. Listen to him.” This is the way to understand Jesus – by listening to him. This is God’s call to those disciples. Their vocation is to listen to Jesus. Another word we use for listening is following. Are you following me in what I am saying? Following Jesus is hearing what he says and acting on what he says.

We hear many people talking about what God is saying to them. I’m sorry – but a lot of what they say bears no resemblance to what Jesus says. We hear many people putting themselves in the roles of saviours, but what they do is often diametrically opposed to anything Jesus said. We see mighty leaders with their armies of followers but they are nothing more than tin-pot dictators dictating what they’re forcing their followers to hear.

We follow so many in so many ways. We are tricked, seduced and groomed. We are tempted to take the easy way, the heartless way, the violent short cut rather than the long road, the harder way less travelled, the braver way, the costlier way of patience and endurance.

This is the challenge when we come down to earth from our spiritual high. How are we going to make our way through the political realities of the here and now? Who are we going to follow? Who are we going to listen to?

There is so much noise around us – but through it all the church hangs on to the vocation – the call from heaven, to listen to Jesus’ words all the way to his crucifixion by the powers that be – one of three: Jesus flanked by those two thieves.

Mark 9:2-9

Six days later Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus, ‘Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.’ He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!’ Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.
As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.