Luke 9:28-36
Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, ‘Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah’—not knowing what he said. While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said, ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’ When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.
There is a place in Central America where many people have traveled as pilgrims, attempting to experience something of the divine. It is a place that has often been described as a meeting place of heaven and earth. In the country of Peru, some 2000 feet above the rambling Urubamba River, are the ruins of Machu Picchu-- an ancient Incan city thought to have special spiritual and ceremonial significance. One of the primary sites at the top of the mountain is called the Intihuatana Stone-- otherwise known as “the hitching post to the sun.” According to legend, when a sensitive person touches their forehead to the stone it opens their vision to the spirit world. It was thought to contain the energy of the Gods themselves. And even though Machu Picchu was eventually abandoned upon the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors, it remains to this day a place where-- even amidst it's ruins-- people claim to experience something mystical and transcendent.
Machu Picchu is what is deemed by some in the religious world as a “thin place”-- a place where the earthly meets the spiritual, where human meets divine. Throughout the centuries, people have claimed the existence of such thin places--whether in the ruins of Machu Picchu, the mountains of Nepal, the redwoods of California, or within the walls of the Sistine Chapel. Thin places could be anywhere, though they are most often associated with locations in the natural world. Essentially, they are places where we experience the divine in a way that is unusual or extraordinary. Places where we can become particularly aware of God’s presence within or around us-- where the boundaries between the material and the spiritual become "thin," or seem to melt away entirely. Places in which the world around us is transfigured-- and the ordinary becomes the extraordinary, the mundane becomes mystical.
The disciples have such an experience in our Gospel reading this morning. Peter, James and John follow Jesus up to the top of a mountain to pray, and as they pray, something extraordinary happens. According to the story, Jesus’ appearance changes-- his face seems to shine and his clothes become dazzlingly white. At the same time, suddenly the disciples and Jesus are no longer alone on the mountain. Two men who are assumed to be Moses and Elijah appear and begin talking with Jesus. The text tells us that the disciples have been, up until this moment, “weighed down with sleep.” Perhaps they’ve been up on the mountain for a long time, or perhaps they just got bored, but this certainly wakes them up. Peter, in particular, is stirred into action. Excitedly, he says to Jesus and the others gathered, “This is incredible! We should build a dwelling so that we can remain here on the mountain with Moses and Elijah!” But that was apparently not the right thing to say, because as soon as the words are out of his mouth, immediately a cloud seems to overtake them. And then, just as quickly as the experience began, it was over. Jesus and the disciples are once again alone on the mountaintop and the world is back to the way it had always been. The mystical once again becomes the mundane.
The story goes on to say that the disciples spoke of their experience to no one in the days ahead. Perhaps this is because they weren’t sure it had really happened. Perhaps they thought they may have dreamt it, and so they kept quiet, not wanting to sound crazy or fanatical to the other disciples. And maybe we can relate to this particular part of the story. Because we hear this tale with our 21st century ears, and perhaps we wonder if the disciples dreamt it as well. We wonder-- did it really happen this way? Are we really meant to take this story literally? Is this story true?
It’s hard for us to embrace the mystery and ambiguity of texts like this one because we live in an age where in order for something to be true, it must be literal and factual. To say that a story is true means that we have verified it, fact-checked it, and found the witnesses to be reliable sources-- all things that are difficult to do in a story like this one. Theologian Marcus Borg, in reflecting on whether or not we Christians should consider this story to be a literal, historic event in the life of Jesus, argues that actually, at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter. He writes that “whether this literally happened is not in any way decisive for it’s meaning.” In other words, no matter how we understand this story, whether we believe it happened exactly this way or not, it still holds meaning for us in our lives today.
And so perhaps the question we really need to be asking, is not “did this really happen?” But rather, “what does it really mean?” And in order to answer that question, I believe that we must first turn our attention to our good friend Peter.
Peter is the quintessential everyman in the Gospels. He is the one who always misunderstands, or reacts inappropriately, or rushes to judgement based on his emotions in the moment. And in that sense he is imminently relatable to us, because we are constantly doing the same kinds of things. And while I’m going to assume that none of us have been up on a mountain with Jesus, Moses, and Elijah, I would hazard a guess that most of us can still understand exactly what happens to Peter in this story.
Consider this: Peter has this experience up on the mountain-top that one might call transcendent. He experiences what so many before him and after him have experienced in the thin places of the world--a moment when the material world around him is somehow transfigured into something divine and deeply spiritual. God’s presence is suddenly so real to Peter that he rushes to try and freeze the moment. He wants to take action. He wants to DO something in order to hold onto this feeling of transcendence. But of course, the second he does that, the moment is lost. The second he tries to hold onto the experience, it slips right through his fingers, and the world is once again as it was.
How often does this same sort of thing happen to us? We have an experience that we might call spiritual or even transcendent, and we try to capture the moment somehow, or make some kind of rational sense of it. Yet we find that in trying to explain it or put it into words, it somehow loses it’s depth and intensity. Or when we try to recreate the experience by going back to the same place or doing the same things, we quickly become frustrated when we can’t get it back. And then perhaps, just like Peter, when we can’t explain or recreate the moment, we start to doubt whether it was real. “Was that life-changing experience I just had all in my head?” we may ask. “Was that really God, or did I just imagine it?”
Maybe some of us can think of experiences we’ve had like this-- experiences that we don’t often speak of to others because we aren’t entirely sure if we believe it really happened ourselves. Or maybe others of us are simply skeptical when we hear other people talk about having these kinds of experiences-- experiences of these so-called “thin places”-- because there’s no way to prove that they really exist.
At this point, I simply can’t resist recalling a line from one of my favorite books, a book which admittedly is not one that many people would think of as having much spiritual significance, but nevertheless one that holds some relevance on this topic. Towards the end of the very last Harry Potter book, two of the main characters are in the midst of a rather ambiguous and mysterious situation (I won’t name names in case there are still a few of you out there who haven’t read the books or seen the films), and one character says to the other: “Tell me one last thing. Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?” The other character replies: “Of course it’s happening inside your head! But why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”
Perhaps we find this kind of sentiment easier to accept when it’s in a children’s novel as opposed to when it’s put before us as sacred text. But why should that be the case? I think that as people who are both spiritual and religious, we can often do a much better job of embracing mystery and ambiguity in our walk with God. The depth of our spirituality should not be limited to what we can prove. If that was the case, there would be little reason for prayer, or church, or faith at all. And so perhaps we need to make a little more room for mystery. And perhaps one clue for just how we are supposed to do that also lies within our text this morning--when a voice from the clouds says to Peter, “this is my son-- listen to him.”
The key word here of course, being “listen.” Don’t rush into always “doing” stuff. Don’t try to freeze the moment. Don’t try to make sense of it. Don’t try to prove it. Just listen. Just be open to the experience. Because the thing is, there will always be time for practical action. Certainly, we are not meant to spend all of our lives in the “thin places” of the world. Even Jesus and his disciples eventually come back down from the mountain, and almost immediately they are called back into action-- healing, preaching, and teaching. There will always be a time and place for action. However, in our 21st century, post-Enlightenment world, in which we so often favor certainty over ambiguity, action over contemplation, veracity over mystery, it’s important for us to also take time out to listen and to simply be open to the mystery of our faith. Because it is in those thin places of life-- those times and places when we experience the world and ourselves as transfigured--it is there where we experience the overwhelming mystery that is God. And even though we may never be able to adequately explain or recreate those experiences, they are still very real, and they are still very true, because they hold within them the power to change us and to change the way we view the world. And how much more real can it get than that?
This coming week, as we enter into the season of Lent,there is perhaps no better time for us to remember to take time out to listen-- to open ourselves up to the possibilities for God’s mysterious movement in our lives. To be able to experience the thin places in the world around us. Because in doing so, we may just find God.
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