Mountains are such astounding places to be. Somehow being surrounded by huge land masses that hold a profound majesty, and grandeur, inevitably evokes a sense of smallness, humility, and wonder.
As most of you know, Simon and I are keen walkers. We have done the walking with crampons and ice axes (not doing that any more!), and the long distance walks (still love them!), and we first carried and then enticed our children up many hills through varied weather conditions, but always with good snacks, hot drinks, chat, singing, and games along the way. We’ve walked through all weathers, and all emotions! When the cloud comes down, and a compass is needed along with a map to ensure that you don’t walk off a precipice, the danger of being up there dominates. Then when the clouds break open, the sun bursts through, and the surrounding hills are suddenly revealed surrounding you on every side, it is absolutely a place of wonder. And just once, we plodded through cloud for many miles of climbing, to suddenly find ourselves walking into bright sunshine, under the clearest blue sky, looking down on the cloud through which we walked. Extraordinary.
Important events take place on mountains throughout Matthew’s gospel. Jesus gives his first great teachings on a mountain; the sermon on the mount. It is also on a mountain, the mount of olives, that Jesus gives his last great teaching, and again, at the very end of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus’ final sending out of the disciples is on a mountain. The transfiguration is given the same symbolic significance, taking place on a mountain; Matthew wants there to be no doubt: this mountaintop transfiguration is important and we should pay attention to what it means. But before we delve into the Gospel I’d like us to take a closer look at our reading from Exodus.
In this first reading Moses discerns a call to go up the mountain and wait for God. So, along with Joshua, his friend and helper, they go. When they get there, thick cloud covers the mountain for six days. Finally on the seventh day the voice of God calls to Moses from within the cloud, and Moses enters the cloud, and stays on that mountaintop for forty days and forty nights. During these days he is given the law and commandments. During this time, to the people below, the mountain appears like a devouring fire.
Being on a mountain, in a cloud, for forty days and forty nights! I want to say it’s impossible to imagine. But given the rain and low cloud that has been Scotland’s story over the last few weeks, perhaps it’s not so hard to imagine being in a cloud for days on end. Hopefully for Moses, it wasn’t like being on a Scottish mountain top, enveloped by cloud, and fearful of becoming so lost up there that you walk into great danger.
There are important elements in this story that we should notice. A mountain. Six days. Enveloping cloud. A voice from the cloud. The revelation of the Law and commandment of God. And something strange that happens that changes how something looks; in this instance, the glory of the Lord is like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain. The parallels with our gospel passage are strong, and this is quite deliberate.
So to our gospel…
Matthew chapter 17 begins by telling us that this thing we are about to read about happens ‘six days later’ (like Moses’ 6 days waiting on the mountain before God’s voice is heard). Jesus we are told, goes up a high mountain with three of his disciples, Peter, James and John; ‘And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became bright as light.’ At this point there is no mention of clouds. The change in Jesus’ appearance, the transfiguration, is starkly visible before them. It is a visual revelation of Jesus’ divine nature. They see him and know him to be Jesus Son of God. They also see two others talking with him, Moses and Elijah. Moses represents the Law (revealed to him in our first reading), and Elijah represents the Prophets. Remember that important element of teaching in the whole gospel of Matthew – Jesus is the fulfilment of the law and the prophets. And here we see him transfigured, and speaking with representatives of the law and the prophets.
But this is one of those days, so familiar to those of us who live in Scotland, when the bright sun suddenly disappears, obscured by dense racing clouds. Suddenly Jesus, Moses and Elijah are no longer visible. They are enveloped in the cloud, and instead of seeing the transfigured Jesus, the disciples hear a voice from the cloud telling them who he is: “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased.” In place of the sense of sight, Jesus’ divinity is revealed to them through sound. They hear these words; words that tell again, using exactly the same words as used at his baptism, that Jesus is the Son of the One who is speaking in the cloud, the one we name God. And the voice says ‘This is my Son; I love him and delight in him.’ And then we have an added, short, sentence; ‘Listen to him’.
Listen to him… This instruction given to Jesus’ disciples, becomes poignant and weighted with complex emotion if we remember it in the weeks ahead. At the end of this passage Jesus and the disciples walk down the mountain. They lead us into Lent, and Jesus’ journey towards his Passion and death. In the weeks of Lent we witness the disciples frequently failing to really listen, or at least failing to understand what they are hearing.
Henri Nouwen suggests that God wants the disciples to see Jesus’ glory, fully human and fully divine, so that they can “cling to that experience” through the coming days, perhaps in a similar way to the Ten Commandments, given to Moses, offering the people a strong anchor to which they could cling. But I wonder whether this experience in the clouds, where everything shifts and changes all the time, might have taught them (and us) something about letting go. For the disciples, journeying through Jesus’ Passion, and then into Easter and the resurrected Jesus, they have to repeatedly let go of Jesus, and not cling to him.
Today’s Gospel concludes with Jesus coming to the disciples in their fear, and touching them – his humanity enables him to use a third sense, that of a gentle healing touch. And he speaks words that lead them on into the next stage of their journey, ‘Get up,’ he says, ‘and do not be afraid’. In this human touch he shows love and pastoral care to his closest friends and followers. ‘Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead,’ he says. It seems he is asking them to let go, even to let go of this vision and return with him to the other disciples, and walk together with him into all that lies ahead.
Clouds are ever changing; fast moving or gently drifting. They are predictors of weather, things of beauty, at times ominous and threatening, at others creating a depth and complexity to sunlight. And try as we might, we cannot cling to clouds. In all this variety of ways, clouds are perhaps a wonderful metaphor for the revelation of God.
As Julian of Norwich, a medieval English mystic wrote of God; “And thus I saw God, and I sought God … I had God and I lacked God.” This paradox; both seeing and seeking, both having and lacking, is she says, not something to trouble us, but is instead “the common working of this life.” We glimpse God, and then the clouds obscure God. In this way, we learn to love rather than to cling.