After the Light Fades
Sermon from the Transfiguration of Our Lord + Pr. Sharai Jacob + February 10, 2024
Have you ever heard the term “mountaintop experience?” I heard it often at the nondenominational church I attended. It's often described as an amazing revelation of God's presence or God's will in a person's life. The idea of the mountaintop experience is that you're supposed to take what you learned on the mountain and bring it with you down the mountain and into the rest of your journey. Like Moses with the 10 Commandments! And Elijah has a mountaintop moment too…
In our text today, Jesus and the disciples go up a mountain. And at the top, they experience some really amazing things, including seeing Elijah and Moses, Jesus’ face glowing, and a voice from heaven speaking directly to them!
The story of my own mountaintop experience isn’t quite at that level. It’s my call story—the reason I became a pastor. It’s a bit of a long story, but in the 9th grade, I prayed, asking God to tell me what his plan was for my life, and I felt called to ministry. I did not want to do ministry, so I prayed every night for six months hoping to hear or feel some other call from God. At the end of the six months, I cried into my pillow and said “Okay God, if this is what you want me to do—you need to be louder about it. I need to know for sure, or I’ll second guess myself every day!” The next day I went to church and my pastor called me up and told me “a word that God has for me.” He said, “First, I want you to know that God felt every tear that fell on your pillow last night. I know you’re not going to like this but, I see you ministering to people on stage around the world.”
That was a huge moment for me! It felt like I could see so clearly that God walks so closely with us through life—that God truly deeply cares about our worries and insecurities.
Often when I share my call story—people find it interesting, but not very relatable. So much emphasis is placed on mountaintop moments—but these ‘glowing face of the messiah, voice from heaven’ kinds of experiences aren’t universal. In fact, since that moment, I have yet to experience that level of drama in my prayer life!
We spend most of our lives in situations that are more like verses eight and nine. The bright light fades, the ancestors, Moses and Elijah, are no longer visible, the voice from heaven goes quiet. Suddenly, the mountaintop experience is over. It’s just the disciples and Jesus again, heading down the mountain.
Maybe you feel like you've never had a mountaintop experience, or it’s been so long that the experience has lost splendor. But when the wonders of the mountaintop fade—that place becomes just like any other spot along the journey: just the disciples and Jesus on a mountain.
The truly powerful moments that build our faith and strengthen us for our journey don’t always happen on mountaintops. They aren’t always accompanied by heavenly light or disembodied voices. Sometimes the smallest reminders of God’s presence in our lives happen unexpectedly.
A friend of mine had one of these small moments with God recently. He was having a hard time because his closest group of friends had picked up a gambling hobby—he wanted to spend time with them but didn’t necessarily want to go to a casino every weekend. One day they all decided to play poker for fun at one of their houses—no money, just a card game. They joked together about how great it would be if they bought a poker table, and my friend thought it would solve his problem too. He could spend time with his friends without spending too much money. After the game, they all drove to Taco Bell, on their way back—what did they see being given away for free on the side of the street, but a poker table!
Now my friend said it was a sign from God, and I believe him. That’s not to say that every good or bad thing in our lives is God acting. But that particular moment meant something to my friend. Maybe your moments look different than his did. Gentle rainfall at just the right moment, a pleasant or surprisingly deep conversation with a stranger, hearing or reading exactly the words you need to hear on a hard day, or simply a peaceful silence. These quiet, gentle reminders that Jesus is here walking with us can often mean just as much as any mountaintop moment could.
My mountaintop experience was joyful, but it was terrifying too! That seems to be a characteristic of these kinds of moments—in our reading, Peter didn’t know what else to say because they were all terrified! The mountaintop experience for the disciples changed their whole reality in that moment and in every moment afterward. It changed the way they saw God and themselves. Change can be scary—even if it’s good.
The world today is full of big changes and terrifying experiences. Moments that are reminiscent of mountaintop moments—they shake up our reality and leave us journeying into a new valley, down an unknown road. Whether they are joyful or terrifying, moments like these are exhausting!
When the mountaintop experience ends in our reading, I wonder if the disciples are still terrified? Did they take time to process the strange and amazing event they had just witnessed? The text reads like they just carried on their journey! I think the secret to their willingness to press forward is shown to us in the text as well. After the light fades, Jesus doesn’t rise up into the heavens, or gain superpowers to blast Caesar off of his throne. Jesus stands on the mountain, sees the hardships ahead, and then journeys with the disciples back down the mountain into the valley below. We are entering the valley, and lent has arrived! This season, if the journey begins to weigh heavy, let the little moments remind you that Jesus is walking here in the valley too.
