The bad winds we had this week sure blew in some childhood memories.  Thursday afternoon in Plains, Texas, on the Texas-New Mexico state line, just fifty miles due west of my hometown, the winds were clocked at sixty-three miles per hour, only twelve miles per hour shy of hurricane force!  When the wind blows that hard in west Texas the sand storms are horrific.  This time of year, with the last of the cotton harvested in late fall, the fields lie dormant until about early March when the next crop goes in.  Even then, it’s well into June before there is enough foliage to keep the dirt from blowing. 

We have a 16mm home movie of an early spring windstorm shot from inside dad’s car.  The blowing sand is so thick it’s barely possible to see past the hood.  I found the reports very believable this past Thursday that the sand was blowing so badly it caused a thirty-car pileup on highway 84, just south of Lubbock.  Two people were killed and dozens injured.  One truck driver said, “At times it would clear up . . . then you couldn't see 50 feet because of the wind and blowing dirt (“Two dead as dust storms wreak havoc,” Friday, February 20, 2004, CNN on line).”  If you’re driving in a blinding sand storm, it’s just as dangerous to stop as it is to drive forward.  Someone coming from behind is likely to run you over.  When blowing sand is so thick you can barely see the front of your car, you literally live for those very brief moments when things clear up, just for a while, so you can keep moving forward.

This particular moment in the gospel story is one of those very rare moments when earth’s dust clears for just a moment and reveals heaven’s glory.  It is preceded by a scene in which Jesus makes a seemingly overwhelming demand, a dire warning and a rather spectacular promise.  The demand:  “‘If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me (Luke 9:23).’”  The warning:  “‘For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it (Luke 9:24).’”  Then, the promise:  Some of the folks who were standing with him in that very moment would actually live to see “‘the kingdom of God’” with their very own eyes (Luke 9:27).For just a moment, things would clear up and what was normally invisible to the naked human eye would become visible.  They’d get a glimpse of God’s heavenly kingdom, of what it is like on what we tend to call “the other side.” 

Have you ever wanted to see what that might look like?  We all know we’re going to die someday.  The knowledge of our own mortality distinguishes us from all of the other animals in God’s earthly kingdom.  It quickens our step, sobers our dreams and keeps us creatively curious about what happens on the other side of our last breath.  Jesus invited three of his disciples, Peter, John and James, to follow him up on the mountain to pray.  It would be up there, up on the mountain where they had followed Jesus, that earth’s dusty cover would clear for just a moment and they’d see, just like Jesus promised, “‘the kingdom of God.’”  Anyone else interested in seeing what Peter, James and John saw? 

Our walk with Jesus has brought us, on the Christian calendar, to “Transfiguration Sunday,” the last Sunday in the season of epiphany. Epiphany is a beautiful word; it sounds almost musical.  An epiphany is a moment when what is otherwise mysterious is illuminated, when we’re able to see the very nature of the unseen, making what is visible take on a new meaning.  That’s easier explained than experienced.  It’s a moment when, like he did for Peter, James and John, God surprises us, even overwhelms us with his very presence.

For me, this is one of the most mysterious passages in all of scripture.  I’ve never quite had a moment like Peter, James and John did when, having followed Jesus’ invitation, for a brief moment in time their eyes were lifted above earth’s dust to see what awaited in heaven’s glory.  In other words, they got a glimpse of the bigger picture of who God is and what he is up to in this earthly moment.  Wouldn’t it be nice to have that?  Just a little glimpse of who God is and what he might be up to in our lives in this earthly moment?  If you can’t see past the end of your own nose in the blowing sand, it makes both moving forward and sitting still very frightening.  Just trying to figure out whether to go straight or turn to the left or to the right is a roll of the dice.  In the middle of making a living, raising kids, trying to make marriage work and, somewhere in the middle of all of that right now kind of stuff and planning for the future while hopefully finding some modicum of meaning and joy, wouldn’t it be nice if the dust cleared for just a moment and we were able to see the bigger picture?  Wouldn’t it be nice, just once, to hear God say to us, in words unmistakably clear, what our purpose in this life is?  Anyone interested in that?

Let’s follow Jesus up on the mountain.  Let’s see where that leads.  We’ve already followed him this far.  We watched him blessed at his baptism, go head to head with his mom when she presumed to tell him what to do with his life, only to go back home and disappoint all those who’d watched him grow up.  We’ve been deep-sea fishing with him and then dried our feet only to find him standing on our level with us.  Now, let’s follow him up on the mountain.

We don’t have to go.  We could just stay home and take a nap.  Peter, James and John were tempted.  They “were weighed down with sleep.”  It would have been easy to just take a nap, and miss the show, like when Nancy and I rent a movie and I have to ask her how it ended.  She tries to tell me but it never really works.  If you don’t stay awake and watch for yourself, no one else can really tell you what you missed. 

Jesus invited Peter, James and John with him up on the mountain for the same reason.  Some things he could tell them, some things they had to see for themselves.  Like when you skip church and watch it on television, when someone else edits the program for you.  As wonderful as it is that television can broadcast the gospel into homes that otherwise wouldn’t hear it, there’s just nothing like being there yourself, to see and hear with your own ears and eyes that unique moment when worship happens and life makes just a little more sense. 

What if the disciples had taken a nap?  What would they have missed?  Even when Luke wrote it all down for us, he was reporting what Peter, James and John told him about what they saw.  No wonder this passage is so mysterious, when “the appearance of (Jesus’) face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white.”  We weren’t there.  We’re left to our imaginations about what that must have looked like.  If Jesus’ words and example are our pattern, this is what we are left to know despite what we cannot understand.  If we will make ourselves available, God will make himself known. 

This is a fundamental principle of Christian faith.  We believe that God has made himself known and wants to make himself known to us.  “Since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from what is made . . . (Romans 1:20).”  This place we live for now is not just a tent to shelter us from the wind and the rain and the cold.  It is a portrait of the very God we worship.  Every piece of creation reveals something to us about who God is and what he is like.  In the animals, the trees and flowers, in the rising and setting of the sun, even in the changing of the seasons, and, beyond that, the incalculable distances between us and the stars, in all of it, there is something about God being made known to us. 

It was on top of a mountain that Jesus made himself available to God and it was literally a transforming, transfiguring, experience.  Isn’t that what prayer is, nothing more and nothing less than just making ourselves available to God?  Josh Groban sings it this way.  “When I am down and oh my soul so weary, when troubles come and my heart burdened be, then I am still and wait here in the silence, until you come and sit a while with me.  You raise me up so I can stand on mountains.  You raise me up so to walk on stormy seas.  I am strong when I am on your shoulders.  You raise me up to more than I can be.”  If we won’t be afraid of the silence and we’ll sit very still, we may be surprised to find that God comes to sit with us for a while and, then, raises us up.

Do you think that is why the month of January meant so much to so many of us?  For one month, we set everything else aside and, as a church family, made ourselves available to God.  Not that we don’t try to make ourselves available to God at other times as well.  Not that we don’t do that as individuals and families and as a church every time we gather for worship.  It’s just that, for one month, as a family of faith, we made ourselves available to God in homes all over this city and it has had a transforming effect on our church, wouldn’t you agree?  I’ve heard some speak of moments of epiphany, when the dust cleared and, just for a moment, they saw more clearly what God was up to in their lives and in our church.  You can’t create those moments, you can’t conjure them up, you can’t whip them up with over-emotionalized and highly engineered worship.  You can only make yourself available, get very still and listen.  It might surprise you what you hear.

Last October, Nancy and I traveled to Virginia where I spoke to some students at Mary-Washington College in Fredericksburg.  We stayed in the home of my friend who had invited me to speak.  One morning I got up to check my email.  Buried in all the spam was a surprise like none I’d ever received, ever.  It was an email from Griffin.  Just one of those priceless gifts you can’t conjure up, whip up or manufacture.  This is part of what Griffin wrote.  “Dad, you always ask me if I know that you love me.  Well, Dad, the question I have for you is, do you know how much I love you, and Nancy as well?  It's hard for a seventeen year-old guy to show it, but I love you both so very much, you and Nancy mean the world to me.  And Nancy, don't think for a second that because you're my step mom I somehow love you less, because that is NOT true.  I love you very much, and your support means more to me than you could understand.  I think Dad would agree with me when I say that we're blessed to have you be a part of our family.  I love you Nancy.”

Mercy!  I don’t have to tell you what that email meant to me, or why I made certain that I saved it.  It is truly priceless.  For no other reason, than the reasons love always makes, Griffin expressed the depth of his soul to us, and it had a transforming experience on our entire family, like love always does. 

For no reason other than the ones love always makes, God made himself known to his son that day up on the mountain.  First, through Moses and Elijah, who “appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.”  It was about to get really tough on Jesus.  (We’re only weeks away from his passion here.)  So, just before the winds of suffering began to blow hurricane-force, God brought Moses and Elijah along to speak to Jesus about the meaning of all that was about to happen at Jerusalem.  Jesus would need to keep the big picture in mind when things got tough.  No matter how dark it gets, no matter how hard it is to see, you can always take one more step, struggle one more moment, live one more day, as long as, just once in a while, things clear up and you can see the bigger picture.

The moment was about to end.  Epiphanies don’t last long but they are overwhelming.  Peter wanted to institutionalize it, build something permanent, three shrines, one for Moses, Elijah and Jesus, so he could revisit the moment anytime he wanted.  God had something else in mind.  Down below, there were lives yet to be transformed, healing to be done, hungry people to be fed, a gospel to preach, a death to die and a resurrection to celebrate.  Just before they left, though, God had a special word just for the disciples.  Luke recorded it for all Jesus’ disciples, because it is a message for all of us.  A cloud covered the top of the mountain, kind of smothering Jesus and the disciples.  From inside the cloud, they heard this voice.  “‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’” 

Who could blame Peter for wanting to build a sanctuary and stay up there on the mountain?  It’s just that, life isn’t lived permanently up there.  More often, it’s lived on down the mountain, where people get sick and suffer and die and husbands and wives argue and children run away and people get fired and life can get very confusing.  So, just as God brought Moses and Elijah along to encourage Jesus, he gave the disciples a special word, too.  Listen to Jesus.  Follow him.

We’ve been warned.  We don’t have to.  We can follow our own instincts and keep driving blind.  Then, our life will be only what we can make of it.  We’ll only be able to keep what we can save.  In the end, what kind of life would that be? 

Things were about to get rough in Jerusalem, for Jesus and the disciples.  Peter, James and John couldn’t have known how rough just yet.  Up on the mountain, this is what they heard.  “Listen to what Jesus says.”  What Jesus had just said to them, just before they went up on the mountain, was, “‘For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it (Luke 9:24).’”

At the end of a very distinguished career, Henri Nouwen gave the last years of his life serving the mentally disabled.  His journey to that moment of self-surrender led him to this discovery, something like what the disciples learned when the cloud of God swallowed them whole.  “God’s love is a jealous love.  God wants not just part of me, but all of me.  Only when I surrender myself completely to God’s parental love can I expect to be free from all the endless distractions, ready to hear the voice of love, and able to recognize my own unique call (Henri Nouwen, The Road to Daybreak, Image Books, 1990, p. 74).”

Only when I surrender, when I make myself available to God’s loving voice, will I recognize my own unique call in life.  This can be just another fascinating, mysterious story in the Bible that has no relevance whatsoever to the life we’re living now.  Or, it can be a personal invitation to each of us to make ourselves, maybe for the very first time, completely and wholly, available to God.  Up on the mountain, down in the valley, wherever we find ourselves, God’s voice will find us when we make ourselves available.  What do you think we’ll hear God say when we do that?