Margie Quinn
Back in my early twenties, I quit my job in Seattle and planned a road trip that I called the “Pilgrimarge.” I spent four months sitting at the feet of pastors, farmers, writers and prophets, asking them how they became who they are, and what holiness means to them. I was in search of Holy People, but I was also in search of Holy Places. I started in Seattle, making my way down the coast of California. I marveled at the holiness of the giant Redwoods tree in Sequoia National Park. I gasped at the gaping majesty of the Grand Canyon. I stood in awe surveying the other-wordly landscape of Badlands National Park. I took in the glory of Niagara Falls in Canada. I ended my trip at Holden Village, a Lutheran Retreat Center in the North Cascades National Park in Washington. Holden is a remote mountain community. In order to get there, you have to drive to a dock at Lucerne, take a boat across Lake Chelan, get on a school bus and drive 11 miles up 9 switchbacks until you start to see chalets dotting a snowy valley. It is about as remote as it gets: no cars, no phones, no noise.
I got to Holden in February, when the dazzling mountains were capped with snow. I had never seen anything like it. I was supposed to stay for three months, but I ended up extending my time in the village, staying for six months. I loved living in an intentional community, attending nightly chapel, backpacking on the weekends and working as a staff member in the village during the week. That time in my life was, quite literally, a mountaintop experience. I wanted to stay even longer, to defer my acceptance to Duke Divinity and live in the mountains as long as I could get away with, away from the noise. But, a friend sat me down about five months into my time there and told me this: “Margie, there is a phrase we say around here—Holden is a place you leave.” No villager is allowed to live there longer than two years. You can’t stay there, tucked away in the majestic wilderness. Eventually, you have to ride the school bus back down the mountain and enter the real world again.
I thought about Holden a lot this week as I read our passage, the transfiguration of Jesus. In this story, Jesus heads up the mountain to pray with three of his most trusted disciples, his “inner circle,” if you will. These are the same three disciples who had been with him when he healed the bleeding woman and the daughter of Jairus: Peter, John and James. While Jesus is praying, the appearance of his face changes, just like Moses on Mt. Sinai, and his clothes start to dazzle. Imagine being Peter, James or John, who we find out are really sleepy, weary from all of the travel and ministry they’ve been up to, who look up and see Jesus, an ordinary person who has transfigured into angelic glory. I wonder if they were terrified.
Jesus meets them in their sleepiness and dazzles them in his glory. Not only does Jesus start dazzling, but two prophets, Moses and Elijah, appear “in glory,” talking to Jesus. The text says that even though the disciples were “weighed down with sleep,” they stayed awake and got to witness this mountaintop experience.
Of course, Moses and Elijah weren’t planning to stay on the mountaintop with Jesus for very long. They knew that the mountaintop is a place you leave. But while they talked, their subject matter wasn’t of dazzling glory, it was about Jesus’ departure, his crucifixion, as he would soon go down the mountain and start his journey toward Jerusalem.
Just as Moses and Elijah are leaving, Peter, like many of us probably would, tries to find a way to stay in this moment, to capture the holiness of it. “Hey, wait a minute,” he says, “I packed some tents…what if I go ahead and pitch those and you all stay?” “It’s good for us to be here!” Peter says. “Jesus, no one is grabbing your cloak for healing or begging for food. Our boat isn’t being rocked by a storm, you’re not crawling in tombs to exorcise demons from outcasts, no one is trying to kill you up here, we’re far away from the suffering of the world. Please, Jesus, it is good for us to be here.”
While Peter proposes his plan, a cloud comes and overshadows them. And, of course, the disciples are terrified as they enter this cloud. Relatable. Then, they hear a voice, “This is my son, my Chosen, (or Beloved), listen to him!” The same voice that speaks during Jesus’ baptism, that calls him beloved at the beginning of his ministry still calls him beloved as he braces himself to come down the mountain and walk toward the cross. “Listen to him,” our God says. That’s the last part of this awe-filled, hard-to-believe, near- to-God, mountaintop experience that we get. Then the cloud passes, the prophets are gone, and Jesus is found alone. In the blink of an eye, we go from dazzling prophets and the booming voice of God to a man standing alone, preparing for the arduous walk to the cross.
Most people think that this is the end of the transfiguration story. A lot of sermons will stop here this morning. But, this story loses its power if it does not include the moment when Jesus and the three disciples come down from the mountain. This story loses its power if we do not understand the way in which the glory of the mountain is connected to the grit of the valley. As Heidi Neumark writes, “...living high up in the rarified air isn’t the point of transfiguration…It was never meant as a private experience of spirituality removed from the public square. It was a vision to carry us down, a glimpse of unimagined possibility at ground level.” In other words, our God is not one whose glory is reserved for mountaintops and grand canyons and sweeping views and unreachable places. Our God is one who comes down the mountain and gets back to business.
Back at ground level, Jesus meets a man in a crowd whose only son is sick from an unclean spirit. His son is foaming at the mouth, shrieking and convulsing. “Please, look at him,” the father begs. “Your disciples couldn’t heal him.” Jesus responds, "You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you?” Pretty harsh words from Jesus. Not so shiny anymore. But, his frustration makes sense to me. He gave his disciples the power to heal the helpless and they failed. Maybe they were too uncomfortable by the state of the boy to heal him. There’s a reason we look away from the sick, the homeless, the ones shrieking and convulsing. That magnitude of suffering can overwhelm us. But Jesus doesn’t look away. He heals the boy.
And then, (did you catch this?), “All were astounded at the greatness of God.”
All were astounded at the greatness of God.
Not because Jesus was shiny and shimmering, no. What’s astounding is that the glory of God’s presence and the pain of a broken world cannot be separated. Grit and glory go hand in hand. God’s greatness didn’t remain on the mountaintop. It wasn’t reserved for just a few men. No, God’s holiness known in Jesus walks down the mountain again and again to be with us in the midst of our suffering, to hold our hand and say, “You are not alone. I will not stay up there forever. I see your pain and I will push through the crowd and remind you that I will never leave you.”
Church, God reminds us that wonder doesn’t just happen at Niagara Falls or in the North Cascades. Wonder, the greatness of God, can happen in the muck and mire at the base of the mountain, too. We just have to be open to seeing it, to trusting that it’s there. We need no longer climb up to some grand mountain to achieve holiness –it is too busy already reaching into the troubled dirt of our humanity to find us.
I have been dreaming about Holden Village a lot lately. Wouldn’t it be so nice to escape to the mountains at a time like this, when our marginalized siblings face deportation, joblessness, abandonment from places that swore to protect diversity, equity and inclusion? When my weariness at this broken world threatens to consume me? When nothing feels particularly dazzling or glorious down here in the gray, cold of winter? But, in this season, God reminds me to listen to the one who meets us in our pain and stands in glory. Listen to his hurried footsteps as he heads back down the mountain to meet us where we are. Listen, as he calls us out for turning away from those most in need of healing and presence.
We worship a God of dazzling glory, yes, and we worship a God who brings that glory to us, meeting us in our suffering and pain, and doesn’t look away. Our God is ready to roll up his sleeves in the dusty valleys of our lives and fulfill the words of the prophet Isaiah:
Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;
Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all people shall see it together
Amen.