THAT ONE TIME UP ON THE MOUNTAIN TOP

Sermon Notes, March 3, 2019

Rev. Garry McGlinchy

Pastor Garry’s sermon for Transfiguration Sunday was titled “That One Time Up On the Mountain Top,” and was based on Luke 9:28-36.  Jesus invites three of His disciples to join Him on a little retreat.  However this wasn’t just your average weekend retreat meant for one to unplug and rejuvenate.  This was a special “Mountain Top Experience,” one like they had never experienced before, and one they wouldn’t soon forget.  And Jesus didn’t pick just any three from His twelve disciples.  He chose Peter, James and John.

Jesus took these three men up to the top of the mountain to reveal Himself to them.  Jesus wanted to reveal His true identity: more than a carpenter’s son; more than a carpenter, for that matter; more than a healer, more than a prophet, more than a teacher or preacher.  He wanted them to see and understand His identity as God’s Son, the promised Messiah!

While they were up on the mountain top praying, two party crashers showed up: Moses and Elijah.  This is particularly interesting on many levels.  For starters, both of these men were dead.  Dead, dead.  All the way dead.  Not only that, but both of them had something incredible happen at the time of their death.  Elijah was taken straight up into heaven, and one could argue that he never really died, that he merely left the earth. (2 Kings 2:3-9)  And according to Deuteronomy 34:5, Moses was buried by the Lord.  Both of these biblical giants were representations of Faith.  Moses represented the Law of God.  And Elijah represented the Prophets.  Then Jesus had an interesting conversation with His two friends from the past about His departure from Earth.  I always have this picture of friends planning a road trip whenever I think about this scene.

While they were discussing Jesus’ travel plans something amazing happened.  God showed up!  And here is the very reason Jesus brought Peter, James and John in the first place.  God begins to speak up, singling out Jesus as the ONE TRUE long-awaited Messiah, the One who possesses divine authority over everything!  And it’s through Jesus, the Messiah, that the Law and the prophecies are fulfilled.

While all this is going down, the three disciples, who were starting to doze off, (big surprise,) they wake up and Peter, being the good Jew that he was, offers to make shelters for Jesus, Moses and Elijah.  It’s likely that he was thinking of the Festival of Shelters when he saw Moses and immediately thought to build the shelters.  The Festival of Shelters, for those of you that don’t know, is a festival that is meant to commemorate Israel’s exodus out of Egypt.  It is also possible that Peter wanted to build the shelters to prolong his experience there on the mountain top.  We can understand this; after all, no one wants to come down from their mountain top experience.  If we had a choice to come home and face our reality or stay in those times when we are seriously dwelling with God, we would choose the latter every time.

From Peter’s perspective, building the three shelters not only represented the Exodus of Egypt, but the cornerstones of true faith: The Law, The Prophets, and The Messiah.  Later, in 1 Peter 2:6, he would proclaim that Jesus, the Messiah, is the only cornerstone necessary for true faith.  Peter had matured in his faith, and realized, acknowledged, that Jesus was the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets.

So God identifies Jesus, saying, “This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to Him.”  Whoa!  We have another time when God pointed out that Jesus was His Son, in Luke 3:21-22, when Jesus was being baptized by John.  Here God not only identifies Jesus as His Son, but God identifies Christ’s authority, over everything.  As the Son of God, Jesus has the Power and Authority of God.  Therefore, His word should be the final word, our final authority.

There are a few things I want to pull out of this passage.  The first is this: We all need Mountain Top experiences.  It is in these moments where we are renewed and strengthened for everything that life has to throw at us.  It is in those moments on the mountain where we grow into the spiritual giants God calls His people to be.  When we don’t get away and have those mountain top experiences, we can become spiritually stale, or like a spiritual couch potato.  Your drive to do God’s will fades away, and before you know it you begin to feel spiritual depression, and you just can’t even get up off the couch.  You go through the motions of Christianity, but there is no depth to what you are doing, and sooner or later you just stop following altogether.  Following Christ requires action.

No matter how much we want to stay up on the Mountain Top, we must come down.  Peter, James and John had an incredible experience that day up on the mountain top, and like any of us, they probably didn’t want it to end.  When we have experiences like this it is tempting to want to just stay there, in that place, in that moment, leaving the reality of our daily lives behind, escaping all our problems, our stress, our anxieties.  Knowing what awaits us in the valleys of our life isn’t really a good selling point for wanting to come off the mountain.  The reality is that we want to stay on the mountain top as long as possible.  But here’s what happens when we stay up on the mountain top for too long.  We miss the opportunities to minister to those that desperately need it.  Know this to be true: if you are a follower of Christ you, yes you, are called to be the Spiritual Giants of society, not the Spiritual Dwarves.  Staying up on the mountain top for too long can lead to a spiritual self-centeredness that is absolutely toxic to the mission of God, and deadly to the Church.  It is a cancer.

Jesus extends invitations for you to come up to the Mountain Top.  He loves spending time with you, especially when He can pull you away from all your daily distractions for just a moment.  And, He wants to invite you to the Mountain Top so that He can reveal Himself to you in new and exciting ways. 

As we move into the Lenten season, it is imperative that we make time for the Mountain Top Experience that God is inviting us to.  It is during this time leading up to Easter where God needs our full attention, where we can draw close to Him and allow Him to reveal Himself to us.  But let’s not forget that we must come down into the valleys of life, because that is where He will use us for His mission.