On the last Sunday after Epiphany we always hear the stories, from Matthew or Mark or Luke, of Jesus on the mountaintop. The mountain that has been traditionally accepted as the setting for the story of the transfiguration is Mount Tabor – a mountain all by itself in the middle of a vast plain. It’s the highest point (by far) along the way from the Galilee to the city of Jerusalem. The way up is steep and narrow and harrowing. The view from the top is amazing. The top is pretty flat, so you can see the countryside for miles around in every direction. It’s breathtaking to be able to see so much. For people who experience God most strongly in nature, a panoramic view is divine. There’s also a certain strategic advantage to a mountaintop perspective. If you’re up high and seeing for miles around, you can see what’s coming far in advance.

Mount Tabor is not a mountain one would have to climb in order to get to the other side. So I wonder if Jesus went up that mountain with James and John and Peter to get a little rest and a little distance – some time apart from the crowds – to take in the view. The Gospel of Matthew says, “after six days,” indicating that this was the seventh day – Sabbath time. Matthew doesn’t want it to be lost on us that God’s transfiguring work and Sabbath are deeply connected – and that Sabbath time – seventh day time – of refreshment and rest is inextricably tied to clarity and direction and inspiration. Perhaps their purpose included a strategy session, reviewing how far they’d come and where they were headed. I wonder how long they were up there by themselves. Were they still breathless from the climb? Had they had something to eat? Were they sitting quietly taking in the scenery? Were they making plans? Were they exchanging views? Were they napping? We don’t know. What we do know is that while they were up there something extraordinary happened to them.

Something extraordinary happened that time on the mountain that they weren’t to tell anyone about until after Jesus had been raised from the dead. Who knows how long after it was – but at some point, they started telling people about the day that their view of Jesus – the way they saw Jesus – was completely changed. They saw him in a different light. They understood something about his authority that they hadn’t grasped before. By the time the story did get told and written down in the form we have it, it had been passed down from grandparents to grandchildren about the moment that those closest to Jesus understood the importance of his identity as prophet. What exactly happened, we can’t know. Author Adam Gopnik wisely writes, “the past is so often unknowable not because it is befogged now but because it was befogged then, too, back when it was still the present.”(1)

The story gets referred to as “the transfiguration,” which is a big word we don’t use much in everyday conversation. It’s translated from the Greek word metamorphosis. It means something radically changed – changed to the root – both inwardly in form, and outwardly in appearance. In other words, this was really big – not just in the way Jesus wore his hair or a change in his facial expression. It was a change in Jesus’ whole being that seemed to come from the inside out. He could feel it and they could see it and those closest to him remembered where they were the day that it happened.

I imagine that it was something like Jesus letting the light that was in him shine through him and out of him. And when he did that, the change in him was astonishing and beautiful. It was so powerfully prophetic that it was as if he was in direct communication with Moses and Elijah – in conversation. It was spectacular. No wonder Peter thought that this would be a good place to stop – build some places to stay – settle down for a while.

Matthew says that while Peter was still laying out his building plans, a cloud moved in. Do you know what a cloud moving in means? If you’re on a mountaintop or another high place, a cloud moving in means no view. The view is closed. You can no longer clearly see where you’ve been or where you’re going. The only thing that is clear, is that you can’t even see where you are. In a thick cloud, the top of a mountain with very steep slopes is a scary place to be and you’re likely wondering why you thought it was a good idea to get up so high and how on earth you’re going to get back down. A cloud means that you don’t have the foggiest idea where to go next. And to make matters even more frightening, in Biblical literature, a cloud moving in means that God is about to speak and you can’t run for cover because you can’t even see where cover might be.
According to Matthew, the voice from the cloud repeated the words spoken at Jesus’ baptism. In Matthew’s Gospel, only Jesus heard God’s words at his baptism and apparently, until this point, they had not been shining through. Now Peter and James and John hear them too: “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” Well this was just too much for Peter and James and John. They fell to the ground. They were exceedingly afraid. They were completely overcome by fear.

“Listen,” God says. “Listen.” The central command and the central prayer of the Hebrew Bible is to listen: Sh’ma Israel – listen deeply you who struggle with God. (2) What the disciples hear in the dense fog is that listening to Jesus is what they are called to do. Listening for the voice of Jesus is all they can do when they can’t clearly see anymore where they’ve been or where they’re headed.

What happens next is that while they are listening, Jesus comes and touches them – but touch is really too flimsy a translation for what Matthew says here. Jesus came and set them on fire – he touched them in the sense of conveying a divine blessing or power and set their hearts ablaze. This is not just the story of the day that Jesus was transfigured. This is the story of the day that Peter and James and John’s hearts were set on fire.
And then Jesus said “get up” (or literally, wake up) and “don’t be afraid.” That’s what Jesus says over and over throughout the Gospels. Jesus says “do not be afraid” more than anything else he says. And why did he say it so much? Because of how afraid everyone was. Because of how much there was to fear. Listen. If people weren’t so afraid, there wouldn’t be any need to say it so often. Listen. When you’re following Jesus, wake up, get going, in spite of your fear. Don’t be afraid to let your own heart blaze, to let your own light shine right out of you. Don’t be afraid of the clouds or the dark. Don’t be afraid when the lights of others shine out. One person’s light shining doesn’t take anything away from another’s light shining. Everyone’s lights can be shining at the same time in God’s world.

So Listen. Don’t be Afraid. And there’s a third instruction here in this story. Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead. Do you all understand (Emmanuel)? Since the Son of Man has been raised from the dead, the instruction is to tell everyone about the vision. “The light in your eyes shines because of the longing in your soul”(to quote Adam Gopnik again). (3) I’m here to tell you, don’t hide the longing in your soul. Tell everyone about the prophetic glimpses you get of the vision of compassion and justice, of dignity, of freedom from enslavement, about shared resources and healing, and the possibility of new life in community with the Holy One. Tell everyone about the prophetic glimpses you get of that vision of well-being – of shalom. In her book, The Writing Life, Annie Dillard says, "The impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you.”