And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James, and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light. And behold, there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. And Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.” He was still speaking when, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” When the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces and were terrified. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Rise, and have no fear.” And when they lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only.
And as they were coming down the mountain, Jesus commanded them, “Tell no one the vision, until the Son of Man is raised from the dead.”
Beloved in Christ, there are vast segments of Christianity that believe that to be a good Christian you must be seeking one kind of glorious experience or another. They might not all agree on what that experience must be, but they agree that a Christian should be living a wonderful and victorious life. For some that means having frequent mystical experiences of oneness with God. For others it means speaking exuberantly in tongues. For still others it means living in a state of perfection without any trace of sin. Whatever it is that they think is a glorified state of being, they believe that we should be experiencing it fully right now.
However, those Christians who embrace a sound, biblical way of thinking will not draw the same conclusion. For us it is the cross that is front and center. It is the suffering and death of Jesus on the cross that is foremost in a Christian’s life. The cross of Jesus reminds us of the enormity cost of our sin. The cross calls us to repent of our sins, but it also proclaims that we are saved by the death of Jesus. It isn’t our glorious experiences that will save us, but the death of the Son of God. And thus we should not expect glory in this life. But doesn’t today’s gospel seem to refute us? Here is glory in abundance. Here is nothing but pure, unadulterated glory. It is a mega dose of glory, enough to knock the disciples nearly unconscious. Where are the cross and the suffering and the shame? They are nowhere to be found. Here is nothing but glory.
Of course, it was a glorious day for the disciples. No one should think otherwise. We too experience our moments of glory, just as those three disciples got to see the glory of Christ on the mountain. We emphasize the cross instead of glory, but don’t think that there will never be glorious occasions such as this. In fact, we look forward to experiencing glorious moments such as this for all eternity. The three disciples had a glimpse of Christ’s glory, a vision of the glory to be, such as we will always see in the resurrection life. All Christians agree that in the life to come there will be only glory. But the question remains: during this life should we expect to experience only glory or should we expect to experience the cross of suffering and sorrow? Should we focus only on accumulating moments of glory or should we rather expect our Lord to place a cross upon us? And how do we handle moments of glory and moments of the cross?
Peter didn’t handle this glorious situation well. Jesus was speaking, but Peter was so overcome by his emotions that he interrupted Him. Furthermore, his comments showed that he really didn’t understand the situation. He offered to build three booths, one for Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elijah—as if all three were equally prophets before God. Peter was so confused in what he was saying that God the Father had to cut him off. He drew Peter’s attention to Jesus and said to listen to Him, for He was the Father’s beloved Son. It is not that Peter could not listen to Moses or Elijah, but that instead Peter should listen most attentively to Christ—even if Christ was speaking about “[going] to Jerusalem and [suffering] many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and [being] killed, and on the third day [being] raised.”
If you’re tempted to be too hard on Peter, you should realize he did what any one of us would have done. In fact, I wonder if he might not have done better than most of us. When we are put in a situation of great glory, we can easily become spiritual infants. We forget whatever we have previously learned. We babble nonsense as Peter did. And then when we are reprimanded as Peter was, we fall in fear on our faces. Glory turns us into blithering fools.
Why is that? We always had been blithering fools. We just didn’t know it until the thoughts of glory drove away any restraint. When things are going grand for us, we are tempted to show off the pride that resides inside of us. But “pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” Our arrogance causes us to stumble. That is why glorious moments are dangerous to us. There is nothing wrong with the glorious moments themselves. Jesus even basked in such glory. But He could handle it without falling into sin, whereas we could not.
And thus the problem is our sin, not the experience of glory. And that is why the best news that we can hear is that we have a Savior, who rescues us from our sin. He could have enjoyed nothing but glory forever, but He knew that we needed to be saved. And so He went off to die on a cross. He endured that most painful and shameful death because He cared about more than Himself or a little glory. He cared about us. But—irony of ironies—it is precisely because He cared more about us than His own glory that He is now exalted and glorified for all time. He doesn’t cling to that glory in a selfish way, which is why it is more than appropriate for Him to have it.
We Christians cannot make sense of glory unless we are willing to walk in the way of the cross. Peter talked foolishly because he looked only at the glory of the moment and didn’t want to hear our Lord’s instructions about His death. That is why our Lord told him as they were coming down the mountain, “Tell no one the vision, until the Son of Man is raised from the dead.” Only when Christ had been crucified and raised from the dead would Peter be able to put everything into its proper context. Only when we see God’s greatest work in the cross of Christ will we be able to understand the ups and downs of life.
Oh, yes, Peter’s experience was an up moment. He was given a real privilege to be one of the three chosen to see this vision. And God gives us glorious moments now and then, too. They are to be treasured as gifts, for they remind us of an even greater glory to come. Perhaps we are moved by seeing a perfect sunset. We are being reminded of a time when God and the Lamb will be our sun that never goes down. Perhaps we are honored at our job or in our community. We are being reminded of a time when God will honor all His faithful people at a banquet that will never end. Perhaps we are just having a great time with our friends and it seems to be a perfect day. We are being reminded of a time when we will enjoy a never ending fellowship with all the saints.
And so our glorious moments are to be cherished as visions of the glory to come. But Peter couldn’t spend the rest of his life on that mountaintop and neither can we. Experiences like those are glimpses of the future glory, not the full package. And thus we thank God for those experiences and we consider how best to make use of them. Perhaps the most important truth that we can learn is that we won’t be learning the most during our mountaintop experiences. Yes, we may think about them later on and draw some conclusions later, but we will often lack that wisdom at the time. Peter talked like a fool on the mountain, but years later, as he knew his death was drawing near, he wrote, “We have something more sure [than the vision], the prophetic word, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” Peter understood the importance of the prophecies of Scripture by that point, but he had been too busy yakking on the mountain to pay any attention to Moses or Elijah, let alone Jesus.
It was only by going down into the valley and paying careful attention to the words of Jesus and following Him all the way to Jerusalem and to the cross that he learned what that glorious vision had meant. It was only by seeing himself not as a success—one of the hand picked individuals chosen to hobnob with Moses and Elijah—but as a failure, a person who denied Jesus and ran away from Him, that Peter came to understand who Jesus was. It was only when Peter knew that he was a forgiven sinner that he could be an apostle. It is only when we are willing to go into the valley of sorrow that we learn what we should have learned from our glorious moments.
So let us not be frightened by the fact that we have to leave the mountain, for Christ is with us in the valley no less than on the mountaintop. Christ is at the heart of our life, wherever we are. Whether He is transfigured before us or simply plods along to the cross, He remains faithfully by our side. And therefore we are not frightened by the way of the cross nor will we cling mindlessly to glory. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
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