Following Jesus Down the Mountain

Rebecca Sheridan
Sunday, March 2, 2025
Luke 9:28-36

Last week during the Presidents’ week break, our family was able to go on our first ever ski vacation together in Vermont for a few days.  Our girls have been skiing on day trips in the Poconos or at Hunter Mountain half a dozen times or more, but this was their first big mountain, multi-day ski trip.  We had enrolled them in a beginners’ class, but due to the extreme cold that first day, the lifts and trails were open but ski school was canceled.  We decided to try it on our own and see how the girls did.  I’m happy to report that it went amazingly well!  We took plenty of breaks to warm up, and by the afternoon, we were on the top of the mountain to do a big green trail.  We didn’t get very far before one of our daughters fell going down (not too hard, thankfully) and refused to go further.  She took her skis off and walked down a little bit.  We told her it would take all day if her plan was to walk all the way down the mountain, and it would be easier to try skiing rather than carrying her skis.  There really was no other way to get down the mountain.  “You can do it!” we encouraged her.  “It’s scary, and difficult, but we will be with you all the way.” Rich told her to follow him and do what he did, making wide, slow “s” turns.  I went behind the group to help if anyone fell again.  We got down the mountain without any further falls, and guess what? She got in the lift line to do it again. “That was fun!” she said.  A mom knows when to not say, “I told you so,” but I really wanted to say that!
    On this last Sunday of the Epiphany season we join Peter, James, and John with Jesus on the mountaintop before we journey with Jesus and the disciples down the mountain to the cross in the season of Lent.  “Transfiguration” is a big word we don’t often use, but if we are at all familiar with this story we’re probably familiar with the idea of the “mountaintop highs” of faith compared to the “valley lows” of life.  However, if we look more closely at this gospel passage, Peter, James, and John indeed have an amazing, awesome mountaintop experience but being up there with Jesus and Moses and Elijah also seems to be confusing and a bit frightening.  “They were terrified as they entered the cloud,” Luke tells us.  Peter doesn’t know what to do or say and proposed making three dwellings so they can stay awhile.  Like my daughter, he doesn’t want to go back down the mountain.  
All of us face challenges in our lives as some point or another that may paralyze us from moving forward in faith.  Even if our faith is strong, we may catch a glimpse of what we think God is calling us to do in a situation, and then feel that everything is cloudy and confusing again.  Whether we are struggling with a health concern, worried about our financial well-being, wondering about a next step in our career, or weighed down by fears about the world – war and rumors of war, economic and political uncertainty – many things in our lives cause us to be afraid and wonder if God can be trusted.  What does following Jesus down the mountain, through the valleys of our lives, really mean for us?  IS Jesus really still there for us, in both the good and bad times of our lives?  God encourages the disciples, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him.”  Jesus will show them what to do.  Jesus will help them follow him down the mountain, to the cross.  The road they are called to go down will not be easy, but Jesus will always be with them.  So they go back down, to continue following Jesus, even though they STILL don’t know always what to say or what to do.  Their job is to listen to Jesus, to look for signs of God’s glory and presence around them, and to follow in Jesus’ footsteps.  This is our job, too.  To listen, and to look for God’s presence with us always, no matter what.
If you have been following along in our gospel for the last few weeks, you know we’ve jumped from chapter 6 to halfway through Luke 9 this morning.  Our gospel begins, “Now about eight days after these sayings…” So what has Jesus been saying a week before this amazing Transfiguration event, that would make the disciples both eager to join Jesus up on that mountaintop with Elijah and Moses but also confused and terrified?  Well, Peter has a moment of lucidity and understanding. He confesses that Jesus is the Messiah of God. He gets one thing right.  But then Jesus teaches them that his mission as the Messiah is to “undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”  Then Jesus calls them to “deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” Ummm, what? Why can’t worshipping God almighty, creator of heaven and earth, just be hanging out on the mountain top trying to live by the rules of the law and the prophets with Moses and Elijah?  Can’t we just sing praises, faces shining like Moses when he encounters God on Mount Sinai, enjoying the pure glory of God?  What does it mean to take up our cross and deny ourselves?  What does it mean that the Savior of the world must suffer, be rejected, and killed? Yes, I think this Transfiguration event was as confusing for Peter, James, and John as it is for us.  Maybe even more confusing for them, because we know the Easter ending promise of resurrection, and for these disciples, that promise was in an uncertain and distant future.  But we still, like Peter, clearly see God there for us in good times, shining in the light of his glory, and struggle to see God’s presence in times of suffering.  We do not want to hear about the suffering of the Son of Man, or of the world, or of our own mortality, much less go down the mountain to enter into it.  We may find ourselves pretty reluctant to go back down the mountain to try to learn alongside Jesus what it means to go to the cross.
Here's where my analogy about skiing with my kids being like learning to follow Jesus breaks down:  my kids may almost certainly one day be braver and better at skiing than I am.  In revealing his full glory even for a moment up on the mountain AND in his teaching about his impending suffering and death on a cross, Jesus shows us that he does what we cannot do for ourselves.  We will never be Jesus. We follow Jesus to learn from him and follow in his way, but we are not called to be Jesus.  We are called to be a reflection of his glory, but not Jesus himself.  Jesus dies so we don’t have to, and we find Jesus’ divine power both in his shining glory on the mountaintop and in his sacrificial suffering and death on the cross for us and for our salvation.  Our job is to listen to God’s voice in the cloud, when we are confused, when we are afraid, when we are joyful and hopeful and when we are not – listen to Jesus, and reflect his glory as often as we can, with the help of the Holy Spirit.  We cannot stay paralyzed and hiding in tents of fear on the top of the mountain; we can journey with Jesus down in the midst of the world’s suffering. We can be witnesses to all that Jesus has done for us, especially in marveling at his death for our sakes.  And we can explore together the fullness and mystery of what it means for Jesus to be our Savior and Lord in his glory and death on the cross.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.