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Atop the Blue Ridge Mountains not far from where I grew up in Waynesboro, Virginia there is a tourist attraction known as Humpback Rocks. It is a rather large outcropping of rocks that delivers a spectacular view of the Shenandoah Valley. The climb up is one of the steepest and most strenuous one-mile hikes you will come across, but it’s worth it. If you get out on the edge you of the rocks, you can have that Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie Titanic “King of the World” sensation. Unfortunately, since my 20’s I have found being out on the edge of anything just a little too terrifying. If you fall off, it’s about a fifty or more-foot drop just to get into the tree tops below. It’s a place you need to be careful, but the view is worth it. It’s “good”.
I’ve been up on Humpback a couple of times on rainy-ish days when the clouds are blowing by. It’s awesome to watch a cloud coming at you, billowing its way along the ridges, engulfing everything along the way and then…it engulfs you. I have been up there when you couldn’t see but a few feet in front of you. If you’re not familiar with the rocks, you’re best to just sit right down and wait it out. In those fogged-out moments it is not “good” on Humpback. It’s terrifying.
I think of those experiences on Humpback when I read this story of the Transfiguration. Peter, James, and John go up on a mountain with Jesus to pray and it’s good. But then comes the cloud and they find themselves engulfed by it. It’s terrifying. Yet in their case, it’s not the fog that terrifies them. It’s that they have found themselves in the presence of God. What shall we say about that?
Well to start, what we have here in this story of the Transfiguration is one of those rare moments in the Gospels when God fully reveals himself and to the consternation of many, God reveals himself as Trinity. There’s Jesus the Son, the voice of God the Father, and the Holy Spirit showing up as the terrifying cloud. Something similar happened at Jesus’ baptism when he began his ministry. Jesus, the Son was in the water. God the Father spoke from heaven. The Holy Spirit came on him like a dove. That was the beginning of his ministry and now it happens again this time as Jesus begins his journey to the cross.
Well, I’m going to apologize to you for what I’m about to do next. I’m going to get a little theologically heavy on you and talk about the Trinity and what prayer is. To do that it’s best we don’t start by trying to do the math: you know, 3-in-1, 1-in-3. It’s better to think of Trinity as the relationship in love of the persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They are three persons who are in a relationship of mutually giving, unconditional love and this relationship of love is what they each are in themselves. It’s like me saying “What makes me “Me” is all the significant relationships I’ve had in life.” Sure, I’m uniquely me, but I am not “me” without those significant and formative relationships. As persons, we aren’t islands to ourselves. We are persons in relationships. The Father isn’t the Father without the Son and the Spirit, nor the Son without the Father and the Spirit, nor the Spirit without the Father and the Son.
Since Trinity is this eternal relationship of love, we must note that communication is always happening between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In essence, this is prayer. We ask what does a Triune God in all eternity do in his very self? Well, God talks among himself…God prays. God in God’s self as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is always praying. The book of Hebrews says that Jesus is ever-standing before the Father in the Spirit praying interceding on our behalf which also implies that the Father in the Spirit is always listening and answering. Jesus is always praying for us and the Father is always listening and answering for us and the Spirit carries it out.
Now here’s one more to wrap your head around. The Holy Spirit due to his abiding in us and bonding us to Jesus the Son, he brings us as God’s beloved children into that eternal praying of the Son to the Father and the Father’s hearing and answering his beloved Son. The Apostle Paul tells us in Romans 8 that the Holy Spirit is always in us praying and when we don’t know what to pray, especially when we are deeply hurting and cannot put words to it, the Holy Spirit is in us praying with sighs too deep for words. Our praying is participating in the praying that God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit does within Godself.
I bet you never thought of prayer that way. We are inclined to think of prayer as our talking at God from a vast distance and God from a distance hearing and maybe from a distance answering at us. But the truth is, prayer is our participating in the communication that goes on within the Trinity in such a way that by the work of the Holy Spirit our prayers become Jesus’ prayers and his ours. When we pray Jesus is in us and us in Jesus.
Well, your theological moment is done, but let me make use of that basic thought about prayer – that prayer is our participation in Jesus’ own praying in the midst of the life of God the Trinity – let me use that to set the stage for what is going on here in Luke. You see, what we have here in Luke’s account of the Transfiguration is a moment when certain of the disciples entered into the “cloud” of Jesus’ praying. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell this story of the Transfiguration, but Luke tells it from a different perspective. He is the only one to put the Transfiguration into the context of prayer. It happens while Jesus is praying and his disciples are attempting to pray with him.
So, we have Jesus heading up the mountain to pray. Peter, James, and John are with him and as he begins to pray, of course they begin to fall asleep. Prayer would not be prayer if we didn’t have a good nap. Do I hear an amen? Oddly, they manage to stay awake and suddenly they find themselves engulfed in the “goodness” of pure light. Jesus’ face has changed and his clothes have become dazzling white. Jesus, glorified, unveiled before them in his relationship with the Father in the Spirit.
Then, they see two more people with Jesus, Moses and Elijah who are themselves no strangers to talking with God on the mountaintop. On Mt. Sinai, Moses heard the voice of the LORD and received the Commandments. Moses was also the great mediator. Up on the mountain he talked the LORD out of destroying the Israelites for their idolatry in the Golden Calf incident and convinced God not to abandon his people but to continue on with them; and not just from afar, but present with them dwelling in their midst in the tabernacle, and leading them as a whirlwind by day and a pillar of fire by night. Moses intercedes for God’s people, so does Jesus for us his beloved sisters and brothers.
Elijah also had a Mt. Sinai experience. On Mt. Sinai he, the greatest of the prophets excepting John the Baptist, heard the “still small voice of the Lord” while hiding there in a cave. Elijah was on the run, afraid for his life for he had slaughtered the prophets of Baal and offended the very wicked King Ahab. Elijah thought he was the only faithful person left in Israel, but by that still small voice God assured him he was not the only one and told him to go back to Israel for there were 7,000 still faithful waiting for him. jLikewise, Jesus was the only truly faithful one and yet he would die a death akin to the one that Ahab threatened Elijah with and yet be raised and ascend into heaven from where we await his return. In a way, Elijah’s presence here is the still small voice of assurance from the Father to Jesus that though the cross lay ahead, he will live.
Peter, James, and John find this experience of praying with Jesus to be “good". Peter’s remarks about its goodness reminds me of the Creation story and God saying at the end of each day of Creation “good”. There is something “Creation-y” in the order of New Creation going on here in this experience of being with Jesus in his praying.
Well, the moment is good and they want it to go on forever but reality sets in, if I might say it that way. We could say that Peter, James, and John were suddenly awakened from a dream-like state and confronted with God in God’s very self. The cloud of the Holy Spirit overshadows them. Things become darkened as they enter into the cloud. Their feelings of “good” turn to outright terror. “Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the shadow of death.” Then, God the Father speaks to them just as he spoke to Moses and to Elijah. “This is my Son, my Chosen One. Listen to him.” And…and there’s silence. It’s time to go to Jerusalem. They kept this one to themselves.
This moment leaves us with having to balance the goodness of being with Jesus in his praying with the daunting task of actually listening to him and doing what he says. In the cloud of Jesus praying, we discover that God is with us and experience the “good-ness” of his living and life-giving presence, the Holy Spirit, with us. In the cloud of Jesus praying, we discover that Jesus is praying for us, that he is praying for things to work together for the good for us. It is in the cloud of Jesus praying that we meet Moses, so to speak, where we are awakened to our idolatry and discover “forgiveness”. It is in the cloud of Jesus praying that we, like Elijah, hear the still small voice of assurance, that God knows our faithfulness and has a plan for us. This is especially “good” when we feel alone and even abandoned in our faithfulness. In the cloud of Jesus praying, we find the strength and direction to go on with Jesus’ ministry, his mission for us.
Being with Jesus in his praying is very good but…we still have to listen to him and do what he says. Jesus tells us we have to deny ourselves and pick up our crosses and follow him. He tells us we have to love and pray for our enemies. He tells us we have to forgive rather than hold grudges. He tells us we have to love one another as he has loved us…unselfishly, without condition…to name a few. These are difficult things to do and not only to do but to have them become who we are at the very root of who we are. Impossible tasks if we were simply left to them, but here’s your word of grace for the day. As prayer is our participation in the Trinity’s life of prayer, the more time we spend in prayer the more God’s nature just naturally rubs off on us and we become more able to listen to Jesus and do what he says. Entering the cloud of Jesus praying is where and how we become more like him, where his “Me” shapes the “me” we each were made to be. Amen.
