Down the Mountain

Six days after Jesus first spoke plainly about his death, he takes Peter, James and John up a high mountain. There, Mark says, he is transfigured before them. His clothes become whiter than any launderer could bleach them. Moses and Elijah appear and talk with him. It is the most visibly glorious moment in the Gospel before the resurrection, and it is over quickly.

Peter wants to keep it. He offers to build shelters. Mark is honest enough to add that Peter did not know what to say, because they were terrified. The impulse is understandable. When something good and holy finally becomes visible, you want it to stay. You want a structure around it.

But the cloud comes, the voice speaks, and then the disciples look around and see no one except Jesus. The glory withdraws. What remains is Jesus, in ordinary clothing, walking them down the hill. On the way he tells them not to speak of what they saw until the Son of Man has risen from the dead, and they argue among themselves about what rising from the dead could mean.

The one idea here is that the mountain is for the valley. Jesus does not give his closest friends this sight so that they can live on the mountain. He gives it so they can walk into the coming weeks, which include arrest, denial and a cross, having once seen who he is. The vision is provision for a road they have not yet traveled.

Most of the Christian life is the walk down. You may have had a season when God felt close and the Scriptures seemed lit from inside. If that season has passed, you have not been abandoned. You have been sent down the hill with Jesus, who is still beside you, still talking, still leading toward something he has already told you about. The memory is not meant to be a shrine. It is meant to be fuel.

And at the foot of the mountain, in the very next scene, there is a crowd, a desperate father and a boy who needs help. That is where the glory was always headed.