Mountaintop Encounters with God

As a pastor, I am sometimes asked, and you may wonder too, “Why don’t people experience God anymore, the way that we hear about people experiencing God in Scripture?” My answer often starts with how we interpret our experiences- our perspective  now is different than the perception of people in Biblical times. Now, if I cut my finger and it gets red and sore, I wash it well with antibacterial soap and water, put some Neosporin on it and a band-aid, and by the next day, it’s healing up. I understand bacteria and infection, cleaning and treating…I don’t think it’s a miracle when the next day I take the band-aid off and the skin is nearly knit back together. We live in a time of scientific explanations, of seeking understanding through reason and repeatable outcomes. We also live in a time of noise – my grandparents had the radio on all the time, then my generation had a TV in every room, now we rarely go anywhere without our phone. And, if we are waiting, we don’t have to be alone with our thoughts, we can answer an email, or send a snap, or scroll, or play a game. We very rarely sit quietly, without distractions. Would we hear God’s still, small voice, if God was speaking to us?

And sometimes, that’s all the explanation the person wants. But other times,  the person is hoping for more, for a “mountaintop encounter with God” and they ask me how to pay attention, how to be open to experience God’s presence, how to listen for God. Then, I get to share that God wants to have relationship with each of us and we all have pathways that open us to encountering God. Hiking up a mountain and looking out at the valleys below might be your pathway, for someone else, though it might be singing in worship or praying in a quiet place that causes your heart to soar. Or it might be that as your hands are active in service, you look up and see God there at the margin. Or you might feel God close as you take action to change an injustice. You might experience God as you engage your mind, exploring the meaning of a Hebrew word and its other uses, or reading theology or as you engage with others in intentional relationships of community. All of these are ways that we open ourselves to noticing God’s presence, to listening for God’s guidance, to responding to God’s call. And we might describe those moments as “mountaintop moments.”

But, what Peter, James, and John witnessed on the mountaintop with Jesus was nothing like what we might experience. They had been with Jesus about 3 years, but it was just 6 days prior that Jesus had asked if they knew who he was, really knew. Peter had answered with an understanding beyond his own. As the words sounded, it was almost as if he was learning what they were even after they came out of his mouth, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Then, Jesus had explained to them that he was going to suffer and he had to be killed, that the chief priests and teachers of the law and the elders would do this to him, and that on the third day he would be raised to life. Peter could not believe what he was hearing. He took Jesus aside and rebuked him. “Don’t talk like that! That shall never happen to you!” Jesus’s response stung, “Get behind me, Satan!”

The events on the mountaintop were much more in keeping with what Peter expected when he blurted out that Jesus was the Christ. Suddenly, Moses and Elijah were there, their names synonymous with the Law and the Prophets, both of whom encountered God on a mountaintop and both of whose deaths were shrouded in mystery. Moses, who led God’s people out of slavery in Egypt and around the wilderness desert for 40 years, as they came to the end of their wandering, laid his hands on Joshua to lead, God showed him the promised land, he died and God buried him. The Israelites stayed there and mourned for 30 days but never knew where he was buried. The prophet Elijah was preparing Elisha to take his mantle. They were walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind. Now, Jesus has said he will die and be raised and he is emanating light and Moses and Elijah are there.

I can so easily put myself in Peter’s shoes. He’d gotten it so right – Jesus, you’re the Messiah! Then he’d gotten it so wrong. Get behind me, Satan! He wants desperately to get it right! “Lord, it is good we are here!” I can just imagine trying to think of some way to make my presence make sense. We can build three shelters, shrines to honor this moment, for people to come here and remember. But God interrupts him, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” The same words God spoke at his baptism, only now God adds, “Listen to him!”

Confirmation. Confirmation of who he was. Confirmation of what he told them was to come. And preparation. Preparation for what lay ahead, back down the mountain. Later, scholars would write about the contrasts between this mountaintop and the hillside to come. Here, his clothes are dazzling, there they will be stripped off with soldiers gambling for them. Here, he is with the heroes of the Jewish faith, the representatives of Law and Prophets, there he is with criminals on either side. Here Peter is aghast with how astoundingly wonderful this all is; there, Peter will be hiding in the shadows denying he even knows him. Here, a bright cloud envelops the place; there, darkness will shroud the land. Here God declares him his son, there a Gentile, Roman centurion will exclaim, “Surely he was God’s Son.” N.T. Wright suggests that “Perhaps we only really understand either of [these moments] when we see [them] side by side…Learn to see the glory in the cross; learn to see the cross in the glory…”

Perhaps we only really understand encounters with God when we see that God is present on the mountaintop and on the hilltop. We are very much like Peter, we would like to learn those pathways to experiencing God’s presence and build a shrine there so we can know just exactly where to go whenever we want to meet God. But instead, God gives us his Son and tells us to listen to him. Jesus has good news to tell us.

Lent begins this Wednesday, and our Scripture is Jesus’s parable of the great banquet – the good news that God invites all, everyone, no one is left out, everyone is invited to come, to experience God’s love and grace, to live as God’s beloved community, to have life abundant. Every year we are invited anew, because we can’t build shrines here and just come and expect the same thing to happen year after year as we get ashes on our forehead and take on a Lenten discipline, as we hear the stories of Jesus’s life and listen to what Jesus is telling us even now, as we open ourselves to encountering God along life’s pathways. Listen, Jesus has good news to tell us as he offers and receives extravagance, as he feeds and restores and welcomes, as he teaches and is obedient, as he dies and as he is raised and is alive in the world. Listen, you might just have a mountaintop encounter with God.