This morning, in Roman Catholic, Anglican and Protestant churches around the world, people are reading the same lessons we’ve just heard. Every year on the Last Sunday after Epiphany, either Matthew 17:1-9 or Mark 9:2-10 or Luke 9:28-36 is proclaimed from the center of the church. And each one of these passages tells the story of Jesus’ transfiguration on the mountain. On the Last Sunday of Epiphany, on the last Sunday before Lent, we hear how Jesus takes Peter, James and John and goes apart from all the other disciples and apart from all the worries of the world and goes up the mountain to be closer to God.   Before Jesus turns his face towards Jerusalem and sets out on his final days, he goes to the mountain top to draw nearer to the divine, to shorten the distance between his will and the Father’s will, to breathe in the thinner air between heaven and earth. Jesus goes to the mountaintop for a concrete, inescapable, obvious encounter with the Creator.

He needs some assurance. He needs some clarity. He needs some courage and confidence. He needs a “burning bush experience.” Before he heads into danger and disaster, Jesus wants to make sure he has understood his mission correctly. He wants, he needs, a sign. And so he goes to the place he is most likely to meet God and perceive his message accurately. On the mountaintop, away from distractions, on the mountaintop there is good reception.

Jesus knows where to go because he knows his Holy Scripture. He’s been taught and he’s been schooled. He knows that God reconfirmed his covenant with Abraham on a mountain. God first came to Moses on a mountain, telling him to go into Egypt to free his people from Pharaoh. Jesus knows God called Moses to the mountain top again to give him the Law and the Commandments, to keep the people safe and righteous in their exodus journey.

Jesus knew, the ancient Hebrews knew, and we know that there are times in our lives when we are particularly vulnerable and we want to be as close as we can get to God. We want his clear direction above all other things. We crave his all powerful, all encompassing presence around us. We want to be transported, touched, changed, and marked in some obvious manner so we won’t forget the reality of our encounter with God.

We long for and so appreciate mountaintop experiences! Many of us have had them. Some of us are more adept at recognizing them. Some folk begin connecting with God in this very close and personal way when they are quite young. You hear of people deeply moved by their time away at summer church camp or on renewal weekends. Youth conferences, silent retreats, mission trip experiences draw some into relationship with God in ways they never expected and have difficulty explaining. Holy time, Holy ground comes upon us when we experience a well spring of serenity and a sense of absolute acceptance. 

Mountaintop connections occur in the moments of our greatest joy: the birth of our children, the exchange of wedding vows, and the unforeseen accomplishment of someone we love. We’re on the mountain in the presence of God when everything around us seems to be absolutely perfect. Time is suspended. We are both in the moment and apart from it. We smell the smells, we feel the breeze, we hear the sweet voices, but we also sense nothing except the sensation of perfection. We know that in this time, reality is altered. God is very, very close. These encounters are moving and mystical and too holy to describe or hold on to.

Because standing in the near presence of God is so heady, so euphoric, we have a natural inclination to claim those experiences as the standard. We tend to think God only gives the important directives when we’re apart like that, standing on the mountain, and wholly dedicated to his presence. We almost demand really big dramatic signs – like shrubbery on fire – all ablaze. We want a booming voice coming out of a cloud. If God made himself known in such obvious ways all the time, faith would be so much easier. If every time we talked to God, he made our faces shine like the sun, and turned our clothes dazzling white, we’d be praying dawn to dusk. We’d never wander from the path. We understand grand gestures. We accept the obvious. We feel sure and safe on the mountaintop. We see God clearly there and when we perceive God clearly, we have less trouble following. 

In many ways we are simple, immature creatures. We want our interactions with God to mirror our interactions with humans. We want a physical, not metaphysical relationship. We want to encounter God in straightforward predictable ways. We find faith hard when God moves in elusive ways and so, like the ancients, we try to confine him. We try to set God on the mountain and look for Him working out his plan and grace locked down there. 

But God cannot be restricted and God refuses to succumb to our puny expectations. The Almighty, omnipotent, omnipresent One comes to us in grand, mystical mountaintop moments but, He is also present in the muck and the mire off the mountain. Down on the plain, in the flatlands, God looks after us, comes after us, guards and provides for us as well. In our Old Testament passage this morning, there is an earlier transfiguration on the mountain. God calls Moses to come up to receive the stone tablets.

But God is not only on the mountain. See his hand at work with the people Moses leaves behind. Before he sets out, Moses calls all the elders together and is inspired to give them direction. “While I’m away, Aaron and Hur are in charge. They will handle all the disputes.” Moses is inspired to create a contingency plan. The hundreds of families on the desert are not left to their own devices. They have leadership. They have a process to keep them safe. God knows peace and harmony will not abide once Moses leaves the camp. The good man has difficulty maintaining order while he’s on site. So, Aaron and Hur are appointed. They will watch over and care for the people in the interim. 

As Moses makes his way up the mountain, Joshua goes with him. God knows the journey is dangerous and long. He wants to keep Moses safe so an assistant, a helper is brought along. Joshua carries the food. Joshua picks the path. The voice coming out of the cloud, the fire settling over the mountain, these are mighty and clear signs of God’s presence. But they are no more real indicators of God’s active participation in human lives or the world’s day-to-day events than the calling of Joshua to walk with Moses or the lifting up of Aaron and Hur to take on the burdens of temporary leadership. 

Too often we look for the obvious and miss the sublime. In his whole life, Moses, the liberator of the chosen people, was only called to the mountain four times. In his whole life, the Son of God went to the mountain no more than that. Mountaintop experiences with God are the rarity, the exception. God makes himself known to us in mundane, simple, pedestrian ways. He sends us Joshua’s to help us on our way. He sends us Aarons and Hurs. He sends us to be Joshuas and Aarons and Hurs for others.

We look for the blazing bush, the dazzling robes and miss God’s ever faithful presence in the people he sends us and the “normal” circumstances he sets up.

We are not in the practice of seeing God right beside us, in the guise and actions of others. We are not in the practice of recognizing God, incidents rather than coincidence. Few of us are in the habit of enumerating where we saw God working in our lives at the end of each day. Few of us say to our partners or our families, “Guess what! Today at the office that irritating co-worker fixed by spread sheet. God clearly sent him to help me.”

At the dinner table, after a quick recitation of the things we learned in school or the best and worst event of the day, we rarely continue with how God used us as instruments of peace and goodness. We don’t instinctually share who God sent across our path to make a positive difference. We don’t seem dedicated to seeing God’s hand intimately at work in our day to day existence. We need practice in changing our orientation.

It is an established truth that the most spiritually mature people are those individuals who have trained themselves to notice the presence of God in the routine and the commonplace. People who are deeply connected to God, people who are habitually centered and non-anxious, clear-headed and compassionate, virtuous, pleasant to be around are folk who expect to find God participating, guiding, orchestrating, moving all through their lives, every day. 

These folk actually recognize the help God sends them and they gratefully acknowledge his care. These folk understand how they’ve been used to further God’s good purposes.

This awareness, this gratefulness, this confidence comes as a result of practice. Mountaintop experiences are wonderful and they should be savored but they are not sustaining. God calls us apart momentarily and infrequently in this life. He intends for us to live in the mess of human community. He comes to us there.  

He means for us to see him clearly in the ordinary and routine. He means for us to recognize that he is constantly raising Aarons and Hurs for us. He is always sending Joshuas to carry our food and help pick our paths and He is using us as help for others.

As this season of light ends, as the season of reflection and intentionality begins, let us commit ourselves to seeing God present in the here and now, in the low lands.

Let us make a personal declaration and institute a real plan to remember before the setting of the sun each day those places God has worked his way in our lives. 

In this practice of seeing God ever present to us, we too shall be transformed and transfigured. Our faces shall shine, lit from within with the knowledge and love of the Lord.