Thomas J Parlette
“Flat on Their Faces”
Mark 9: 2-9
2/14/21
It’s always interesting when a secular holiday coincides with a Sunday – especially today when we have a religious holy day to celebrate. It’s impossible not to acknowledge that today is Valentine’s Day. I hope everybody remembered that. You’re probably in trouble if you forgot. If you’re not sure, perhaps you’d be interested in this list that someone compiled and posted online called “How to Tell if You Forgot Valentine’s Day:
1) Hallmark calls, offering discounts on apology cards.
2) Your kids tell you Mom “went to bed early” … and “locked the door” … while you were taking out the trash.
3) You wake up with a florist’s ad taped to your forehead.
So I hope you remembered Valentine’s Day. But in church life, the liturgical calendar takes precedent – and today we celebrate the Transfiguration. Today we journey to the mountaintop with Jesus and three of his disciples where they have an unforgettable experience.
The Transfiguration is one of the central stories of Jesus’ life. All three synoptic Gospels tell this story, in remarkably similar ways – although I confess, I do prefer Matthew’s telling. In Matthew, the disciples fall face down on the ground because they are so terrified at hearing the voice of God speak. I’ve always loved that little detail, but Mark doesn’t mention it. Mark just says they looked around and didn’t see anyone. A little anti-climactic, I think. I like the falling flat on their faces reaction. That seems more in line with the moment.
An unknown author tells about another mountaintop experience. A group of mountain climbers set out to conquer a tall mountain. One member of their group was making his first really big mountain ascent.
The climb was a tough one, but at last they reached the small plateau at the top of the mountain. The inexperienced climber was so excited that he immediately sprang to his feet, raised his arms in the air and shouted, “I did it.”
Just then a strong gust of wind nearly blew him off the mountain. The experienced climbers had a good laugh at this, then explained to him that when you get to the top of a really high mountain, you never stand straight up, rather you drop to your knees to avoid being blown off the mountain.(1)
That’s a good lesson when it comes to mountaintop experiences – go to your knees, or maybe, fall flat on your face.
Chapters 8 and 9 of Mark’s gospel contain some of the most important events in the New Testament. Chapter 8 starts off with the feeding of the 4,000 and ends with Peter declaring that Jesus is the Messiah – and then Jesus predicts his own death.
The disciples were shocked and confused when Jesus said he must suffer and die. This wasn’t what they were expecting at all. So at the beginning of Chapter 9, Jesus gathered his inner circle of Peter, James and John and up the mountain they went – to get a little private time, and maybe the disciples thought they could get a better explanation out of Jesus.
There was no way the disciples could have prepared for what would take place on the top of that mountain. The Gospels tell us that Jesus was transfigured, in the presence of his three closest disciples, according to Matthew, Jesus’ face became as bright as the sun, and Mark tells us his clothes became dazzling white and Luke relates each of those details as well.
As if this weren’t enough, the disciples saw Jesus talking with Moses and Elijah, both of whom had been dead for hundreds of years. These two great figures of Israel represented the Law, and the Prophets, the sources of authority in Jewish life.
Peter, as usual, has something to say. All three Gospels tell us that Peter said, “Rabbi it’s good for us to be here. Let’s put up three shelters – one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.”
Then a cloud rolled in, covering them all – and a voice speaks, identifying Jesus as God’s son, and instructing the disciples to “listen to him.” And the disciples were so overwhelmed with fear and awe that they fell flat on their faces.
It was such a striking experience that the disciples would remember their time on the mountaintop for the rest of their lives. Years later, Peter wrote in his second epistle, “For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. He received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory… We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.” It’s not hard to imagine what an impact this mountaintop experience had on the disciples. They were kneeling in the presence of God’s Son, and the voice of God spoke.
Jon Tal Murphree in his book, Made to be Mastered, tells about the impact that walking on the moon had on two of America’s astronauts. For one of them he says, “Moon walking had been his greatest goal in life, and he labored tirelessly toward achieving that goal. But once it was attained, he explained, there was no higher goal and he became disillusioned. He lost his ambition and his drive. Finally, he suffered an emotional breakdown.”
For another astronaut, however, the moon visit meant something totally different. In his autobiography, To Rule the Night, James Irwin wrote, “As we flew into space, we had a new sense of ourselves, of the earth and of the nearness to God. We were outside ordinary reality; I sensed the beginning of some sort of deep change taking place inside me.”
Irwin continued, “The ultimate effect has been to deepen and strengthen all the religious insight I ever had… On the moon the total picture of the power of God and his Son Jesus Christ became abundantly clear to me.”(2)
Who could not be affected by walking on the surface of the moon? And who wouldn’t be affected by being in the presence of Christ as his divinity came into focus?
But the time came for Jesus and his three disciples to come down off the mountain. As Peter, James and John descended, they pondered the significance of what they had just experienced. I like to think they walked along in silence as they processed everything they had just witnessed.
On the way down, Jesus instructed them not to tell anyone about this time on the mountain, at least not now. Save it, says Jesus until the Son of Man has risen from the dead.
The time to share this experience would come – but just not yet. The time wasn’t right. Keep it to yourselves for now. Jesus knew that he and the disciples still had work to do. That’s why they couldn’t stay on the mountain.
Theologian Henry Drummond says, “God does not make mountains in order to be inhabited. God does not make the mountaintops for us to live on the mountaintops. It is not God’s desire that we live on the mountaintops. We only ascend to the heights to catch a broader vision of the earthly surroundings below. But we don’t live there. We don’t tarry there. The streams begin in the uplands, but these streams descend quickly to gladden the valleys below.”(3)
Dwight L. Moody, an American evangelist in the 1800’s, once wrote about meeting a man who testified that he had “lived on the Mount of Transfiguration” for 5 years. I suppose he meant that he had lived in the presence of Jesus for that long.
Moody asked him, “How many souls have you led to the healing light of Christ?”
The man said, “I don’t know.”
“Have you saved anyone from the pit of despair or the sting of death?”
“I can’t say that I have,” said the man.
“Well, that’s not the kind of mountain top experience that makes any difference,” Moody said. “When we get so high that we can’t reach down to other people, there is something wrong.”(4)
Jesus told the three disciples with him on the Mount of Transfiguration that they were to keep silent about what they had seen until after he was resurrected from the grave. Then, there were to tell everyone. After the resurrection, the streams of the Holy Spirit would quickly descend and gladden the valleys below.
And that’s where we are this morning. In our time together today we’ve been with Jesus and those three disciples on the mountain top. In our minds and hearts, hopefully been flat on our faces as the disciples were. Now that we are leaving this time of worship, it is our turn to witness with our lives as well as our speech that we have been in the presence of the transfigured Christ – the Son of God, the Savior of the World. Immanuel – God with us.
May God be praised. Amen.
1. Dynamic Preaching, Vol. XXXVII, No.1, p32.
2. Ibid… p34.
3. Homileticsonline, retrieved 1/26/21.
4. Dynamic Preaching, Vol XXXVII, No1, p34.
