Mount Sinai, site of the revelation to Moses and source of the ten commandments. Mount Tabor, site of the Transfiguration we just heard about. And shortly, we’ll enter Lent and journey towards Golgotha, hilltop site of Jesus’ crucifixion. Mountain after mountain after mountain… our Judeo-Christian ancestors clearly love stories that take place on mountains! And of course, it’s not just these three: remember Mount Ararat where Noah’s Ark came to rest; Mount Gerizim, where the Samaritans worshipped; Mount Moriah, where the Jerusalem Temple was built; the Mount of Olives, and so many more. And these are the good mountains, so to speak: the ones with names. There are also numberless and nameless “high places” mentioned, generally disdainfully, in the Hebrew Scriptures. They were hills or mounds upon which pagan gods were worshipped.
Little wonder hills and mountains are significant in the sacred geography of our tradition: from high places, the visual obstacles and few and the air is thinner. Things actually do appear brighter there. A friend who has spent some time at the New Camaldoli monastery on the Big Sur coast described how even the clouds appear bright, watching the fog lift from her hillside vantage point. So if we’re looking to see God’s revelation robed in dazzling light, climbing to the top of a mountain is not a bad place to start.
I’m the daughter of an astrophysicist, so I grew up on tales of mountaintops too, albeit not necessarily the Biblical ones. There’s Cerro Toco, in Chile, site of the Atacama Cosmology Telescope. Mauna Kea in Hawaii, home to over a dozen major research telescopes. Mount Wilson and Mount Palomar in southern California, and of course our own Mount Hamilton, site of the historic Lick Observatory. These are hard places to build complex scientific installations from an engineering perspective, but from an optical perspective, the effort is worth it. The light and air pollution are significantly less, so if there’s heavenly glory to be seen, mountains are the place to see it.
So many stories to tell of mountaintop sights and insights, but today I want to focus on just three. Mount Sinai, Mount Tabor, and Golgotha. We could call this sermon a tale of three mountains: an appropriate theme for a cathedral called Trinity. And of course today’s Gospel is itself a tale of a revelatory threes. Three disciples—Peter, James, and John—followed Jesus up Mount Tabor to witness three prophets gathered in glory. Imagine that scene in your mind’s eye. “Lord it is good for us to be here,” Peter said. Good, yes, but perhaps a bit unnerving. Because the next time we see Jesus with another two on a hilltop, they are being judicially executed outside of Jerusalem.
But I’m getting ahead of the story. Let’s go back a few years. Like maybe 1300 years before Jesus, to the time when—according to Jewish tradition—Moses led the Hebrew people out of slavery in Egypt, and into the Sinai desert. Where it was became was hard for them to see, and not just because of desert storms. People were blinded, to a certain degree, by their understandable doubt and by fear. God knows, it can take a long time—forty years, even—to overcome that kind of blindness. And even Moses, visionary though he was, had to wait on the mountain six days before he could enter the glory of the Lord and learn.
Six days later—later than exactly what Matthew does not tell us— Jesus led them up a high mountain. As in Moses’ story, there were obscuring clouds on Mount Tabor—the site of the Transfiguration of Jesus—and then Jesus shone like the sun. Or maybe even shone like the devouring fire that the people saw on Mount Sinai. Linger for a moment with the Old Testament and Gospel lessons in your bulletin. Notice how Matthew is deliberately echoing elements of the Exodus story. Unique among the synoptic Gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—Matthew goes to literary lengths to portray Jesus as a new kind of Moses, a liberator come to free God’s people from the Roman imperial pharaoh of their own time.
From Moses’ mountaintop encounter with God came the ten commandments—the Law—that would give the community an ethical framework within which to live as a free people. And in typical Matthew fashion, Jesus also brought the law from the mountain—in a manner of speaking—when he preached the Sermon on the Mount. For what it’s worth, the location of that sermon is believed to be a rather small hill in northern Israel known as Mount Eremos, which is a humbling reminder that preachers don’t get as much elevation as astronomers. But what came down from Mount Tabor with Jesus and his three disciples? This is where the direct analogy between the Exodus mountain and the Transfiguration appears to break down. The disciples were to tell no one about the heavenly vision. Tell no one… until.
Until, in Matthew’s story at least, Jesus has ascended Golgotha, the last mountain of his earthly life with two companions chosen for him by Pontius Pilate’s court. Until his lifeless body was carried down and sealed in a tomb. Until an angel robed in dazzling white with an appearance like lightning told two terrified woman to “go quickly and tell the disciples that he has been raised from the dead.” Until the law that was first given from a mountain—in order that enslaved people be free—found its ultimate expression in the promise of freedom from death. That’s a long historical and theological leap, I grant you. But it’s Matthew’s Gospel, so it’s impossible to ignore the parallel teachings.
In the fourth century, St. Gregory of Nyssa likened Moses’ ascent of Mount Sinai to an act of obedience which is transformed by grace into a vision of glory. Step by faithful step, God transforms us. Mountain by dazzling mountaintop, God gives us to see more clearly. Lesson by lesson we are taught to tell God’s story. Until the last of our fears are stripped away; until we can no longer keep silent, until we can say with the women “he has gone ahead of us to Galilee; there we will see him.”
Speaking of what we see and where we see it, my son the amateur astronomer has visited many of the same mountaintop observatories where my father did his best science. But Aaron prefers to show off the glory of the skies to urban kids living in Oakland, so he hauls his telescopes to nighttime street festivals in the city. He knows the view is not nearly as clear, but he reminds me that the city is where most people will see the stars, if they are to see them at all.
God punctuates our spiritual journeys with glorious mountains, thank goodness. Hold on to that clear vision when it comes to you. And God also accompanies us in valleys and deserts and even in darkened tombs. It’s a complicated landscape, and I know that some of you are passing through the valley of shadows right now, as I myself am with a very sick child. So on this precipice that precedes Lent, I invite you to pause and enjoy the view from the mountaintop. But don’t lose sight of the fact that Galilee was not located on any kind of mountain, geographical or spiritual. The Temple wasn’t there and it was surrounded by Samaritan territory. It was a kind of multicultural mess, like our own city.
After whatever view we get from the mountain, these are the places we all come down to. The places we must come down to. What came down from the mountain with Moses was the holy law that taught us how to live together. What comes from the mountain with Jesus is the assurance that the community we live within right now is holy. Lord, it is good for us to be here.
