Jesus Transforms
Matthew 17: 1-12
Jesus Transforms
There is a love song where the singer expresses his love towards a lover by saying: “I want to stand with you on a mountain”. Mountain tops are romantic and scenic places. We all want to be there with our loved ones. On the actual mountaintops but also on the symbolic ones. The ones of achievement and celebration. Of highlights and adoration of others. When I read Matthew 17, my immediate thoughts were that it must have been awesome to be one of the ones invited to have this mountaintop experience, to be invited by Jesus Himself to share in this. Mountaintops and mountain top experiences does exist.
What happened on the mountaintop in Matthew 17 and what made it a special experience was a revelation of the depth of who Jesus was. It went along with a supernatural manifestation but what made it special wasn’t so much the supernatural that accompanied it. It was the personal nature of what happened that made it special. Jesus chose and invited three people specifically to see this. One is tempted to think they were invited because they were ahead of the others but the clumsy way especially Peter handled it, shows one they were not chosen because of merit. They were chosen on grounds of the future vision had for their lives. It is hard to imagine the Peter preaching to the multitudes without having had this extraordinary vision of Christ shining with heavenly glory and being affirmed as God’s Son from heaven.
Personal revelation in our time is a notion that could get you ended up in a mental institution should you claim to have it. It is the stuff fundamentalism is made off, this idea that revelation is a way of knowing and that it could even be personal, given to some but not to others. This passage seems to suggest that God or Jesus revealing Himself in an intimate and personal way is not only an acceptable way of knowing but the ultimate way of knowing.
If this is true, it has implications. We should expect, hope and pray for God to reveal Himself to us. He does that already through His Word and creation and his Holy Spirit but we should hope and pray that He will also do it through these things in a personal way. Because ironically, the more personal a struggle and a a revelation is, the more universal it becomes. God revealed Himself to Moses in a burning Bush and wrestled with Jacob and provided for Ruth all in very personal ways and for that very reason their stories still speak to us in a very meaningful way.
How do we pursue the same kind of personal, life changing revelation that in time so transformed Peter, John and James on that mountain?
Do the valleys before the mountaintops; do the ordinary and rejoice in the extraordinary
Kyle Strobel wrote the following. On first glance it almost contradict what this passage seems to teach us:
“Our culture proclaims that the mountaintop is the land of flourishing and is the place of life. But this is all a ruse. These mountaintops are dry, parched land. Mountaintops are lonely, windswept places where vegetation is dwarfed and gnarled. We ascend the mountain expecting to find the pinnacle of flourishing at the top, but instead we discover a place inhospitable for life. God invites us into the valley. The question is whether we will accept the invitation. The valley will always be in the shadow of the mountains. The mountains with their dramatic peaks and pillars to the clouds, will always appear more special to the world around you. Becoming a valley is truly humbling. And yet this is the place the rain soaks deep and fruit is truly produced. The valley is the place of life… It is the place of Kingdom power”
What do we make of this? It seems to be anti-mountain and contradicts some of what we just read. But I think Kyle makes a good point. Mountaintop experiences isn’t what it is all about. Mountaintop experiences is usually brief and for good reason. What makes them special is what precedes and what follows it namely time in the valley. Maybe this is why Jesus told the disciples not to share their vision with other people. Maybe that is why Jesus most often went up the mountain in solitude and why he spent most of his time with his disciples in what Kyle describes here as the valley: The hustle and bustle of daily life, the seemingly mundane endeavours and everyday dealings with people.
We got to do the valleys with Jesus if we want to do the mountaintops with Jesus. We need to do the valleys with Jesus right after we have been on the mountaintops with Him. Peter and company got to know Jesus’s glory on the mountaintop, but they got to know Jesus’s love and grace in the ordinary day to day dealings He had with them and other people. You know, the valley stuff.
Andy Stanley writes about something I sure can relate with as a pastor. He says that throughout his ministry he got two kinds of questions. The first kind is of the “Is it a sin to…” Variety. “Pastor is it a sin to smoke pot? Is it a sin to play sports on a Sunday?” He says it is the kind of questions that sometimes displays an attitude of: “what is the least I can get away with?”. A person that asks that often doesn’t desire intimacy with God but fear His wrath. It’s a start, I guess. It’s not where you want to stop though.
The second kind of question goes something like this: “Pastor, how can I experience God more intimately?” “Where can I go and to whom can I listen that will make me have an awesome spiritual experience?”. It sounds like a better kind of question but it could also betray a selfish point of departure. It is about me getting my God tonic to keep me high and coping with a life I cannot handle. When this happens no pastor or church or home cell is ever good enough, holy enough or exhilarating enough for you to commit.
It is therefore important to note that Jesus decided and invited when it was time to take the disciples to the mountain and that He spent most of His time with them in valleys. We should learn to be people that are satisfied with and romances the ordinary because what is ordinary is often extraordinary and only perceived as ordinary because God does it many times over. These seemingly ordinary miracles reveal Jesus and draws us closer to Him just as the mountaintop experiences does when we are super aware of them and in awe.
But yes, there are mountaintop experiences and when God leads you unexpectedly to one you should relish and embrace it. Miraculous healings, remote conversions through dreams and unexplainable outcomes still happen everywhere. God indeed sometimes suspend the laws of nature He created for good reasons. We may, no we must thank God for them, and we may even pray for miracles sometimes. Peter’s gesture to offer to build huts comes across as clumsy and inappropriate but I can’t help seeing Jesus smiling at Peter when he made them. I think Jesus saw a man wanting to make the most of what He experience on the mountaintop even though he doesn’t quite know how to go about it appropriately.
If we follow Jesus we should follow him through valleys to mountaintops and back down again. We need His guidance in the ordinary just as much as we are exhilarated by it in the extraordinary.
Trust that Jesus is who He said He is
On this mountaintop they hear a voice from heaven confirming something. Confirming what? Exactly what Jesus said about Himself. And it is interesting Jesus took these guys up the mountaintop, not because they wouldn’t believe Him and He now wanted to convince them once and for all. He took them up because they believed him and in faith acted on that believe by following and imitating Him. Jesus did not give them a mountaintop experience so that they could believe and act on it. He gave them one because they believed and acted o it. Surely mountaintop experiences strengthens faith and resolve to act on it but it’s not something faith should be based on. To come closer to the mountaintop, we need to give the next step in faith, not refuse to give the next step until we get the mountaintop vision.
We should trust that Jesus was who He said He was and if you take his word for it, you are actually already on a mountain because it means that you get to see Jesus differently than many people around you sees Him.
It is interesting. When Peter and company got a deeper insight into Jesus identity, He also lead them into a deeper insight of other people like the prophets and John the Baptist. Maybe this is also why Paul said in his letter to the Philippians that to know Christ is all He desires. He didn’t mean that Jesus is the only person He wants something to do with. He meant that insight into Jesus gives better insight into everything else. Its like C. S. Lewis said:
“Christ is not all I see but He is the one through whom I see everything”.
Be open to experience Jesus in new places, among new people and in different ways.
Eugene Peterson wrote a book that summarize what I want to say well: “Christ plays in a thousand places”. I will never forget. One time when Steph was still baby we went on a holiday from the inland of South Africa where we lived at the time to the coast. The area where we lived was flat like Saskatchewan. We took our nanny with us with her daughter. They have never been outside the Free State Province. When we got to the mountains, we were all in awe about its beauty like we are when we travel through the Rockies. To our surprise the nanny’s daughter said it was the most ugly thing she has ever seen and she cannot believe that anybody would want to live here. To her the only thing that was beautiful and the only place where she could see beauty was the place she knew. We are a lot like her. To many of us Christ plays not in ten thousand places but just in the place we know and like
It is debatable if the mountains were an exciting destination for the disciples. Apart from the obvious exertion it took to reach the top of it, mountains in biblical times were unsafe places where the weather or wild animals or robbers could get you. That lovely psalm that reads: “I look up to the mountain, where shall my help come from?” shouldn’t be read as Heidi who adores the mountains so that she wants to talk to God when she sees it. It should be read through the eyes of a very fearful traveller in anxiety begging and hoping that God would help Him. I don’t think that it would be on a mountaintop where they would have expected to receive one of the most special revelations about Jesus. That stuff was for Moses and the prophets in their minds, most probably.
You see, Jesus needs to stay to us who He was when we met Him-the one reaching out to us in love. But Jesus also needs to transform as we follow Him. He needs to become ever bigger. We should come to realize and learn to spot Him in places where we wouldn’t normally expect to find Him. Also, in people we never though we would see Him with and in.
This story ends with Jesus telling him about yet another destination they wouldn’t not have expected to see Him. That of suffering. A Messiah they expected but the idea that a King needs to suffer for his servants was foreign to them. It was usually just the other way around. So, when Jesus spoke bout suffering, they assumed that was just something that can happen to poor old John the Baptist, not to Jesus.
Life has taught me that suffering is often the mountain about which we feel like my nanny’s daughter felt about the mountains in South Africa. Ugly places we don’t want to camp out on. But often suffering is the very mountains on which Jesus becomes bigger and more glorious to people going through it. Maybe Jesus did not want Peter to tell people what He saw on the mountain because He knew Peter will do that much better after he witnessed and seen and shared in his suffering. It is in the stories of people’s sufferings that we often get the most valuable lessons of faith, not in the triumph stories.
I read story about a South African that as a student went to work in England as I myself has done. One day he sat on a bench, tired and desperate. He was running out of money and just couldn’t find a job. He prayed, really poured out his heart on a park bench. The scripture where Jesus said that he cares for the birds and not even a sparrow will fall to the ground without Him caring. It comforted him. As He opened his eyes he saw a small coin on the ground. It happened to be a South African one cent with two sparrows on it in the middle of London and in the midst of his need. Today this man is a well-known singer but he still considers this moment as one of the most special revelations of God’s care in his life. Our sufferings are also mountaintops.
Close
I don’t know how deeply into a valley or how high up a mountain you find yourself but I can tell you this. In the valleys and on the mountaintops Jesus is who He says He is and He is up to greater good for you and others than you can even imagine.
Follow and seek him on mountains and in valleys. Trust Him in a world where so many people’s words are not to be trusted and live open and expectantly to meet Him in all circumstances.
He will transfigure before your eyes into someone awesome, wholesome and loving. And that will also transform your heart!
Amen