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THE GLORY ON THE MOUNTAIN
About once a year Pat and I fly over to France to spend about a week with our son, Jim, and his wife and kids in Poissy, just outside of Paris. It's a delightful event, and Pat gets her grandmother fix on this annual excursion. Side trips in Paris or the environs are an additional treats, and the last time we were there we visited Chartres cathedral, a 13th-century masterpiece of Gothic architecture. When we entered the massive front doors, our eyes were immediately drawn to the magnificent chancel and altar, but I found my eyes soon drifting up to the vaulted arches and ceiling. There one can see nothing, only the sacred darkness. I am told by those who know of such architectural delights that this darkness is intentional, meant to convey that there is a certain sacred mystery to the faith, depicting the unknown, the wonder, and the awe that is part of the Christian religion.
I have grown to love narratives in the Bible that are like that cathedral's vaulted upper reaches, filled with mystery, wonder, and awe. Narratives depicting a hovering cloud and a voice coming from the cloud filled with power and meaning, numinous events like a whirlwind followed by a still small voice. I guess I'm attracted to such Biblical scenes because the narrators of such scenes never try to explain them. They leave that to those of us who are only products of the so-called enlightenment, where only what is rational, provable, logical, testable, verifiable, and explainable are seen to be valid and true. My biggest problem with this conflict happened in my first year of seminary, having come as a chemistry major in college, and was therefore a child of the enlightenment, to a field where truth can be conveyed also through poetry, parable, story, psalm, not necessarily historically verifiable events, and that maybe even the Middle Ages have a lot of truth to convey. The only problem with enlightenment reasoning is that it leaves out the mystery of life, a sense of awe, the sacred void where we just can't see what is there, and the more one lives, the more one is convinced that is what life essentially is. I find myself increasingly in love with what I like to call supra-historical mystery.
Like the Scriptures for this morning, this event recorded in Exodus with Moses on the mountain top, a narrative upon which surely the Mount of Transfiguration story is based. In both we have a massive mountain, a massive cloud, a massive voice, a massive brightness and glory. At the core of the Judeo-Christian faith is an overpowering unutterable disclosure that gives access to the awesome holiness of God that moves us in the direction of contemplation, wonder, mystery, and grateful awe.
We are up there on the mountain with Jesus. Jesus is on His way to Jerusalem and the cross. The singular and only question he is asking is, "Is this, my God, what You will for me to do?" So Jesus went to the mountain to listen for the voice of God. Of everything, Jesus asked one question and one question only: "Is it God's will for me?" And this is what He was asking on the mountain.
Into this luminous, numinous, supra historical scene, two figures appear. Moses and Elijah. It is fascinating to see in how many respects the experiences of these two great servants of God matched the experience of Jesus. Both Moses and Elijah have their most intimate experiences of God on a mountain. It was to Mount Sinai that Moses went to receive the tables of the law. It was on Mount Horeb that Elijah found God, not in the wind, not in the earthquake, but in the still small voice. There is something mysterious and awesome about the death of both Moses and Elijah. As for Moses, the text reads as if God himself was the burier of the great leader of Israel. "And God buried him in the valley in the land of Moab, but no one knows the place of his burial to this day." As for Elijah, he took his departure from the astonished Elisha in a chariot of fire. Moreover, according to the Luke account, these two great men talked with Jesus about HIS departure which He was to accomplish at Jerusalem. The Greek word which is used for departure is EXODOS, which is exactly the same as the English word exodus. The word exodus is the word which describes what we might call the most adventurous journey in human history, a journey in which a whole people in utter trust in God went out into the unknown. This is precisely what Jesus was going to do. In utter trust in God, He was going to set out on the tremendous adventure of that journey to Jerusalem, a journey beset with perils, a journey involving a cross, but a journey issuing in glory.
Moses was the greatest law giver of Israel. Elijah was the greatest of all the prophets. These two men were the twin peaks of Israel's religious history and achievement. It is as if the greatest figures in Israel's history came to Jesus, as He was setting out on the last and greatest adventure into the unknown, and told Him, "You are on the right road. Go on!" In Moses and Elijah, all history rose up and pointed Jesus on His way.
But not only the greatest law giver and the greatest prophet assure Jesus that He was right; the very voice of God came telling Him that He was on the right way. "This is my Son, whom I love; with Him I am well pleased. Listen to Him!" IT WAS THE EXPERIENCE ON THE MOUNT OF TRANSFIGURATION WHICH ENABLED JESUS INFLEXIBLY TO WALK THE WAY TO THE CROSS.
Just prior to this whole event Jesus asked His disciples, "Who do you say that I am?" Peter answered, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." To which Jesus answered, "Blessed are you, Simon, for flesh and blood have not revealed this to you, but My Father in heaven." Much of our faith is more than is not human wisdom. It takes a revelation, an awesome, luminous, numinous, inexplicable, rapturous moment and event to understand some things. At the center and core of the Christian faith is mystery, and isn't it wonderful not to be able to explain everything, but just to listen, and hear and stand in awe. Like looking up to the vaulted ceiling of Chartres cathedral, knowing there is awe and mystery at the heights. As the last verse of the hymn has it:
And faithful hearts are raised on high, by this great vision's mystery, for which in joyful strains we raise, the voice of prayer, the hymn of praise.