Mark places this account at the center of his gospel, at the turning point between Jesus’ ministry up in Galilee and the beginning of his journey to Jerusalem and the fate that awaits him there.

Up until now, there has been a sense of mystery about who Jesus is. Immediately before this passage, Peter has declared that Jesus is the messiah – but he completely misunderstands what kind of messiah Jesus really is. Now, six days later, he and James and John get more than a sense of the sacred – they get a glimpse of Jesus in his full glory.

Peter, James and John have no trouble seeing the one mountain. It is the experience of a lifetime. An original “mountaintop experience”. Part of a privileged, inner circle, they are selected by Jesus for a private revelation, an experience of the sacred that must have been beyond their wildest imaginations. Knowing their scripture and tradition, they would have grasped the import of what they were seeing. They would have remembered that Moses, when he had been on Mount Sinai receiving the law in God’s presence, had his face transfigured; they knew that Elijah had also experienced God’s presence on Sinai, and that his return was said to announce the coming of the Messiah; they realized that the shining garment worn by Jesus was emblematic of one who had triumphed through martyrdom; they understood that this changing of appearance by Jesus proved that he was both human and divine. So when Jesus is transfigured, when he shines brighter than the noontime sun on a clear day in mid-summer, they sense the very presence of God with them.

Many of us have experienced our own “mountaintop experiences,” although perhaps not with the comprehensive intensity experienced by Peter, James and John. Sometimes these moments have come as we have been intentional about carving out space from our busy daily lives to make particular room for them to come – we go on retreats, seeking to escape the usual routine and the pressures and demands that often seem to consume our attention and energy; or we come to worship here on Sunday, hoping that if we set aside an hour a week for God an illumination or sense of peace or healing may come our way; or we use a daily devotional reading to center ourselves in the rush of the everyday, and a truth suddenly resonates within us and we have one of those “aha!” moments. At other times, these moments have come to us in the ordinary rounds of the day, in our relationships at home, in a walk on the beach, even at our places of work or schooling.

These sacred moments often just catch us completely unawares. I think that was so last night for many of us who came out on a winter’s evening expecting a lovely home-cooked Cajun meal lovingly prepared by Rebecca Scott and Anne Wildman – which we got – and the fellowship of some 60 or so folk from West Parish and the wider Cape – which we got – and the satisfaction of knowing that it was for a good cause, to raise some money for the rebuilding of homes and lives down in Katrina-devastated New Orleans – we got that as well, raising close to $800.

But I think many of experienced even more. I think of the Rev. Fred Meade, the newly-installed pastor over at the North Falmouth Cong. Church, who came to tell us of his ten years as pastor of a UCC church in New Orleans, and how over that time he was evacuated four times. He was well-spoken, informative, interesting, as he described Katrina and its aftermath – until he got to the part where he teared up and had a hard time continuing, when he told us how volunteers who came to New Orleans to held in the rebuilding would be stopped on the street by New Orleans residents – and hugged for their compassion and generosity.

And I also think of how it came to be that Cajun Bob and his five piece band came to play for us. Seems that Friday evening about bedtime his wife had read in the Cape Cod Times that West Parish was having a fund-raiser to help rebuild New Orleans, and she wondered aloud why they, until recently life-long residents of that city, had not put on such a fund-raiser themselves. Next thing you know Bob is picking up the phone, calling Lily Tu, and volunteering to come play at the dinner for free. Cajun Bob told us that story before launching into a rousing version of that New Orleans Jazz staple, When the Saints Go Marching In, but he didn’t take any credit for being there – he just gave God the glory, telling us that he knew God was calling us together to help his family and friends back in his old home town.

Henri Nouwen, priest and author of some forty books on spirituality, writes of these moments when we are granted a sense of the sacred:

“At some moments we experience complete unity within us and around us. This may happen when we stand on a mountaintop and are captivated by the view. It may happen when we witness the birth of a child or the death of a friend. It may happen when we have an intimate conversation or a family meal. It may happen in church during a service or in a quiet room during prayer. But whenever and wherever and however it happens we say to ourselves: ‘This is it . . . everything fits . . . all I ever hoped for is here.’”

Nouwen then connects up our experiences of the sacred with that of the disciples. He continues:

“This is the experience that Peter, James and John had on the top of Mount Tabor when they saw the aspect of Jesus’ face change and his clothing become sparkling white. They wanted that moment to last forever. This is the experience of the fullness of time. These moments are given to us so that we can remember them when God seems far away and everything appears empty and useless. These experiences are true moments of grace.” Henri J. M. Nouwen, Bread for the Journey: Reflections for Every Day of the Year (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996, p. 391).

As Nouwen writes, Peter wanted that mountaintop moment to last forever, and in his enthusiasm – Pete is always the enthusiastic one, always the one ready to jump into action at a moment’s notice – Peter acts to preserve that special moment, proposing that they build three tents for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah, that they might dwell together right there at the site of that wondrous revelation. Here once again is Peter at his most endearingly human – who wouldn’t, like Peter, want to remain on that mountainside with Jesus?

The spiritual life is often pictured as a pilgrimage towards God, a journey to meet God, a desire to return to the garden from which we were expelled. Peter is thinking the journey is over, so why not just pitch camp?

And yet it seems that for Peter and James and John, the purpose of this sacred moment is not for their private enjoyment at all, not provided so much to comfort as to confront, not so much to congratulate as to drag into a sacred partnership. Peter’s enthusiastic proposal to build three tents on the mountainside is met by stony silence from Jesus – Peter, it is clear, still does not get it. Days earlier Peter had rebuked Jesus when he told them that the messiah was to undergo great suffering and be killed, that those who wanted to be his followers had to take up their crosses and follow him. Now, through his expressed intent to effectively imprison Jesus on the mountaintop, Peter indicates that he still wants no part of suffering and death. He, and the other disciples, still do not fully understand what Jesus is about, what discipleship entails, what the kingdom of God requires. Having proved by his action once again that Peter is just not hearing what Jesus is telling them, God chimes in with some specific instructions: “This is my Son . . . listen to him!” Jesus realizes that Peter and the other disciples still do not understand what he is all about, and so, as they come down off the mountain, he tells them to tell no one of what they have experienced until after he has risen from the dead.

And there it is, that second mountain I told you was right here in this account of the Transfiguration. Jesus is coming down off one mountain and headed straight for another, one that pokes its head out of the town dump right outside the walls of Jerusalem, a bald peak befouled by an execution detail and three blood-stained crosses. Peter wants the serenity of Mount Tabor – Jesus is intent on a road that leads straight up Golgotha.

This spiritual account experienced by Peter, James and John is granted them not for their sole enjoyment, not to give them a “spiritual high” for its own sake, not as a gift whole and complete in and of itself. It is offered to them, and to us, as a turning point; it demands something of us, it would have us ask, “What’s next?”, and “What then shall we do?” And the answer, Jesus is telling them, is not savoring the moment, not hanging around on the hillside hoping to prolong the ecstasy, not putting our feet up and hoping that Act 2 will be unveiled any time now. The “What’s next?” is to come down off that mountaintop and get to work in the valleys of despair and the streets of desperation and the homes of the hopeless. The “Then what shall we do?” is to take the risky path of confronting the powers and principalities of this world which say no to justice, which stand over against honoring the humanity of all persons, which seek to horde and grasp and deny to others the abundance which by right belong to all of God’s children.

Elizabeth Dreyer, in her book “Earth Crammed With Heaven – A Spirituality of Everyday Life”, reminds us that the spiritual life is not an end in itself. She writes, “The community’s ultimate test by which it judges a life of holiness is the fruit that it bears…. These fruits need to become visible in our self-understanding, in our relationships, in work, in the way we deal with suffering and sin, in the way we regard the universe and everyone and everything in it. These fruits are many. A sampling might include inner freedom, peace, courage in the face of suffering, willingness to act against injustice, truth-telling, kindness and compassion, and above all joy, hope, and gratitude.” (p.179)

Like the disciples up on Mount Tabor, we, in our time, have caught our own glimpses of glory, had our own sacred encounters, been privileged to experience our own brief and fragmented visions of the kingdom of God and its future reign. And like those disciples, we cannot possess that future, but instead are called to come down off that mountain to return to the ministries that await us in this world, ministries that may even call us to climb a mountain where we would just rather not go – a mountain climb that might put at risk what we hold most dear, be it personal financial security, the limited time at our disposal, even the opinion of others who would urge us to simply go-along to get-along.

But like those disciples long ago, we walk that road and climb that mountain, if climb we must, not alone, but in company – in company with each other, and with the One who has gone before us, and yet who also is ever at our side, Jesus Christ, our crucified and risen Savior.