Moses woke up.
The last thing he remembered was dying.
Slavery was long behind them, the Promised Land just within reach after all those years, and he had died. It was like falling asleep.
He had died wondering where God was going with this exodus out of bondage? Where was God going with these commandments? Why didn’t he live to see it? Where was God going with all of this?
Dying and not knowing, having not arrived, would have been a painful disappointment if he had not felt so tired after all those years in the wilderness.
Now he was awake, well rested, and on the mountain again, pure light and clouds swirling around him…again. Just like at Sinai when he had to walk into the fire of God’s glory all by himself, he still remembered holding his breath as he took those first blind steps into the cloud to receive the Commandments from God, the Ten Words, the Decalogue. But this time he was not on Sinai… and this time he was not alone.
Apparently he had been dead a very, very long time.
Long before these other two came along.
There was Elijah, a prophet who had never died, but was carried up to Heaven in a flaming chariot, he looked even more confused than Moses.
And then there was Jesus.
They talked.
And Moses saw where God was going with all of this.
This time, before he fell back into that sleep he laughed.
Elijah came back to earth.
And he could see.
He had not seen since that chariot of fire had carried him away, its blaze growing and growing into a consuming glory, blinding, lifting into pure brightness.
It had only been a moment ago, yet it had been hundreds upon hundreds of years.
All those years of all out war against …what could he call it…darkness? All those pagan prophets and wizards with there child sacrifices, magic and perversion. Then the Queen trying to get him as well. Then that night on the mountain, fire and earthquakes and then the silence of God.
All those years wading through dank darkness, blood and decay had made him feel…dirty and tired. Its not easy to make a wild man feel dirty and tired.
And God’s people were no better to show for it, still selling their souls and bodies to what ever degrading lie came along.
When that chariot took him away just a moment ago he had been almost desperate, all those years, and so little to show. Where was God going with all this? Where was God taking them? Why this constant conflict with false gods and darkness?
The pure brightness had cut all that short, and burned away his filth and fatigue.
Now he could see again.
He was back on the mountain top again. But, this time he was not alone.
He saw Moses, looking like he just woke up.
And he saw the Pure Brightness, who was a person, who had a name, Jesus.
And they talked.
And Elijah saw where God was going with all this.
This time as the brightness took him again he was very quiet.
Peter, James and John they were ready for a nap. Jesus was taking them on a very long walk up a very high mountain and they were tired, perhaps they had been out in the sun too long.
That was when everything quit making sense.
There was a sudden disconnect and the sound and the light, the ground, the air… they were suddenly different, brighter, sharper, more connected to each other.
Jesus was on fire.
Moses and Elijah were there. Where’d they come from?
There were clouds, then the voice calling Jesus the Beloved, saying to listen to him.
Then their knees gave out.
The next thing they knew it was quiet, normal again, and Jesus telling them to get up and to not be afraid.
As they walked down the mountain Jesus said not to tell anyone about the vision until after the Son of Man was raised from the dead, which made about as much sense as everything else that had happened that day. A vision. A vision of God on the mountaintop. A Vision that called attention to Jesus but not until after he was dead and raised.
Mountain top experiences. Moses, Elijah and Jesus, the three proverbial mountaintop experiences of God.
It is interesting that none of their mountaintop experiences could be described as wonderful, they were in fact better described as terrifying.
Often today we hear of how desirable mountain top experiences are, how hard they are to come down from, they are wonderful affirming retreats.
But when I read these stories of the original mountain top experiences of God I get the distinct impression that they were not so much sought after as they were forced upon and that in fact everyone was more than happy to get back down the mountain as quickly as was possible fearing for their life and their grip on sanity.
Theophany is the classical term for mountaintop experiences, it means God –Showing.
When God shows off God’s self, a revealing.
And what this always means is a reorientation and reordering of life that does not seek to escape from the world but to rather engage, embrace, confront and contradict the world.
Theophanies are rarely comforting things. They sound comforting because they affirm that God lives, that God is real and involved, that is what we so often long to know and believe in. The down side is that they come with expectations. Moses was given the Ten Commandments and several decades of wilderness wandering. Elijah had to confront an evil monarch who was out to get him. Jesus had to come down the mountain and face the religious and civil authorities and the cross. Peter, James and John had to face their own denial and abandoning of Christ, their own shame and weakness, the power of sin in their lives.
We finish this week the Christian season of epiphanies and Theophanies. On Wednesday we begin the season of ashes and repentance, the season of Lent. We have shared in the delights and terrors of the mountaintop experiences of God’s people. On Wednesday we begin what comes next, the reorientation and reordering of life that does not seek to escape from the world but to rather engage, embrace, confront and contradict the world.
To see God is to change.
I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent.