In my last year of seminary I got to take a trip to Israel and the Sinai.  One of the places we went to was Mount Tabor…the traditional location of the transfiguration.  There on the top of that lone hill was a church…the church of the Transfiguration… go figure eh?  And in that church there are chapels … one for Moses…one for Elijah…and the main chapel.   

There are a lot of Peter’s out there I think.

Peter is an action/reaction kind of guy…a leap before you look…speak before you think kinda guy….and that doesn’t mean he’s wrong or bad…he just says what he thinks.

The Transfiguration of Jesus was a fairly momentous and fairly traumatic event for the disciples.  Moses and Elijah were long dead…I would say dead and buried, but that is one of the weird things that connect Moses and Elijah …they weren’t buried they were taken up to heaven without leaving a body here on earth…or at least that is the understanding. 

Moses and Elijah were major players in Israel’s salvation history and people who had an exceptional relationship with God…so for the disciples to see their own Rabbi, Jesus, standing with these two, transfigured and glorious, would have been quite the shock.

And for Peter, as it would for many of us I imagine, it inspired a response. “ Then Peter said to Jesus, "Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah."”

This makes sense …erecting altars,… memorials,… shrines… at places of revelation was not that unusual … recall all those rocks piled up and coated with oil that dot the Old Testament landscape…places like Beth-El where Jacob saw his vision of the ladder to heaven.  There Jacob took the stone which he had used as a pillow and anointed it as an altar of remembrance and sanctified that place.

So, it isn’t so odd to propose monument, a place of worship, after experiencing the transfiguration…quite a typical reaction.…after all we’ve got a church there now!

It makes sense to react, and Peter is great at reacting…

There is a practice called Ignation meditation, prayer of the imagination where you meditate on a passage of scripture by imagining yourself in the scene and I can just place my self as one of the disciples watching all this transpire.

 Peter excited beyond measure speaking of fabric swatches for the tents, thinking up the best priests and Levites to offer sacrifices, turning to the other disciples to encourage them to form a committee… What do you think Jesus…how about the Sacred Moment Shrine…or the Jesus memorial center…eh?  Oh wait! We’re gonna need a fundraising committee…

Fortunately, Peter is cut off before he can start organizing the bake sales. 

The voice of God cuts through the dazzle of the transfiguration and the gut responses of Peter to proclaim “This is my son, Listen to him!” 

Then it was quiet…the disciples, including Peter are cowering on the ground and Jesus is there alone…comforting them.

The dazzle and the awe is gone…it’s just their Rabbi with them and if I were one of the disciples I’d be wondering if the fish I had for lunch was off…or perhaps if there was something odd about this mountain.

After all there are places around that seem different.  Places that merit an altar or shrine.  The Celts, amoung others, called them ‘thin places’ places where the distance between the divine and the mundane seem not as distant.  Where the barrier between heaven and earth seems thin.

Thin places are places where one can sense holy things happen here or have happened here and they are places where people have often responded by building shrines, or pilgrim centers or hermitages.  Places where you are tempted to stay and bask in the sacred air as it were.

For all the difficulty that churches seem to be having attendance wise, thin places or places that claim to be …are thriving.  Pilgrimages, spiritual centers and monastic hospitality houses are very popular…people want the mountain top experience.  They want to gaze on the transfigured glory and have some of it rub off on them…or have it bottled to take home to open when needed.  Perhaps it was something like that which Peter could be proposing… a place where you can go and hear the story of the Transfiguration, see where it happened and worship, maybe buy a relic before you go.

But this isn’t what God is proposing.

Jesus isn’t calling us to stay on the mountain and maintain vigil over what has been, but rather to go back down the mountain…towards Jerusalem…and all the turmoil and triumph of Holy Week.

The passage of Transfiguration, is preceded by Jesus teaching about what it means to be his disciple.  By this point in his ministry Jesus has turned his focus towards Jerusalem and to the cross…and he’s tried to tell his disciples this…to prepare them for what is ahead.  Not only for Christ, but for all who follow in his footsteps.

“Then Jesus told his disciples, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it”

This passage has many layers and for some of those who heard it initially the foremost layer was literally true.  Some of the apostles did die on a cross as Christ did and lost their very lives for proclaiming Christ crucified.  However, that isn’t the only meaning here.  Jesus and his disciples couldn’t stay on the mountain top, they had to come down…Jesus had to continue his journey.

The gospel of Luke tells us that Moses, Elijah and Jesus were speaking of what was to come. It must have been refreshing for Jesus to be with them.  To converse with men who knew what he knew, who had lead before, who were with God in unique ways. 

And it must have been frustrating to have Peter break up this holy gathering…I wouldn’t be surprised if, human as he was, Jesus wished he could stay up there on the mountain top with Moses and Elijah.

Besides, think what he was experiencing, learning, being while there… the ultimate spiritual retreat...an invaluable opportunity for growth.

But, however glorious … it had to end.  There were bigger things at stake and Christ wasn’t here to grow as a person…he was here to die as a person…so that we could live as sons and daughters of God and heirs with Christ.

It is tempting, as any who have gone on retreat know, to not come back.  Even I, who generally can’t stop chattering on…dreads coming home from a silent retreat.  Though I have a loving family, a wonderful parish and full life…it is just so peaceful, so uplifting, so easy to relish in God’s presence while remaining in silence at a retreat center…breathing in the thin air of sacred space with no interruptions… no responsibilities…nothing to do, but remain in contemplation and prayer.

But although retreats are necessary and healthy for me to recharge, refocus and renew myself…they are to a point,  for my personal benefit … and to remain there when I have a calling elsewhere is just pure selfishness.

"If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. “

Now it may sound like I’m saying that caring for a crying toddler or any other number of day to day frustrations are just another cross to bear…but that’s not what I mean… this passage goes deeper.

One understanding of what it means to deny yourself and take up your cross is to live out your mission and calling as a Christian person with a specific task.  We have to come down off the mountain tops…to look beyond what is serving us.  Beyond who we are and who or what we wish to become.

So much of our culture’s idea of personal growth is focused around self help…who am I?, what can I do to be a better me?, What is my purpose?  These are good questions, but they shouldn’t be an end to themselves…they are questions that keep us focused on our self.  What is our vision?, who do we want to be?, where are we going?

To deny ourselves… is to let go of the need to define ourselves and let go of our cultures tendency towards introspective narcissism. “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.“  If we spend all our time looking at who we are, we loose sight of who Christ sees us as.  If we wish to become all we can be, we have to let go of the delusion that we can figure it out for ourselves…. We have to lose ourselves in Christ. 

It is good to be on the mountain, it’s awe inspiring, renewing and can even help us to refocus on Christ but we cannot stay there.  We have to come back down and not just to share our transfiguration experience with others…but to become the ones transfigured.  To change beyond what we could imagine. 

The disciples struggled the entire time they were with Christ to understand what he was doing.  They experienced the transfiguration, many miracles and benefited from personal instruction with Christ Jesus…but still they were limited by their self centeredness.  Not selfishness,

but their inability to see beyond what they already knew.  They had already decided what a messiah was…they were still bickering about who would sit on Christ’s right side in heaven… and who was and wasn’t allowed to speak with Jesus.  They had trouble letting go of themselves, their dreams and their understandings… but when they did.  They were transfigured. 

Normal everyday fellows concerned with where their next meal would come from and their status within their group of intimates were changed into preachers that traveled across the known world without thought of provision.  Into leaders who went against every convention and social norm to be Christ’s hands and feet in the world.  The were transfigured into people who let their own selves die and so that they could live as members of Christ.

It would have been much easier to sit in a tent and sell tickets to the site of Transfiguration and tell people of their experience with Moses, Elijah and Rabbi Jesus.  Easier…but not better.

After all the shining bits of the transfiguration had ended, the disciples were shaking on the ground…stunned and silent.

“But Jesus came and touched them, saying, "Get up and do not be afraid."”

These words may be the most important in the whole gospel reading today… we are called by God to listen to Christ… to deny our own ideas of what is and should be…to live for and as Christ… and that could easily leave us petrified and prostrate.  Too scared of what the possible consequences could be to think let alone begin.  But just as Jesus stood transfigured in triune community, we too are transfigured surrounded by the Trinity…like the disciples, we may be scared.  But also like them we are not alone.

Get up…go down that mountainside…get back into the world…and do not be afraid.