The Mountaintop: A Reflection on Mark 9.2-9

Friday’s post here marked the end of a series on the nature of authority in Christianity. That series reinforced for me an old truth: that Tradition is applying the wisdom of the past in the new circumstances of the present, for the sake of the future. When it’s working well, Tradition doesn’t just look backward, but is also fully engaged in the present and looking forward to anticipate what may come. This means that Tradition, and religious traditions in particular, will always show continuity and discontinuity. These thoughts were in my mind this week as I read the readings for the last Sunday before Lent, which commemorate the Transfiguration, a pivotal moment in Jesus’ earthly ministry when his closest disciples witnessed a Theophany in which Jesus shone with the divine light and was met on a mountaintop by Moses and Elijah. In the past, I’ve tended to see this primarily in terms of reinforcing the continuity of Jesus’ message with what came before him. But today, I can’t help but wonder if it’s just as much about his discontinuity with these two figures.

Of the two, Jesus’ connections to Moses are a little plainer. Matthew in particular paints Jesus as a kind of new Moses, a second Law-giver, and even goes so far as to arrange Jesus’ teachings into five sections just as the Torah is arranged into five books. And Jesus insisted that he was not about abolishing the Law, but fulfilling it, saying: “until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished” (Matthew 5.17-18). But it isn’t quite as simple as that. For Jesus was widely understood in his day to be a Law-breaker: Certainly he didn’t follow common customs surrounding the Sabbath and he completely rejected the idea of ritual purity (see, for example Matthew 15.11). And, he often contradicted the letter of the Law (”You have heard it said … but I say to you…”), but he did this in order to radicalize it, not reject it. So really, Jesus’ mission was in creative tension with what Moses had done: The Law made a people, Jesus wanted to make a new creation; The Law was written on stone, Jesus wanted it written on people’s hearts. He didn’t reject what Moses had done, but saw it as partial and incomplete, and as needing a renovation after what groups like the Pharisees had done to it. As I put it in last year’s post about the Law as a biblical genre, “the Pharisees constructed fences around the Law to prevent [people] from doing wrong, Jesus wanted to go back to the blueprints of the Law in order to do right.”

Jesus’ relationship to Elijah is less straightforward, both because of who Elijah was as a man and because of the place he had come to hold in the popular Jewish imagination of Jesus’ day. Elijah was a giant within the prophetic tradition, a status cemented by the fact that, according to the story, he did not die, but was rather taken up to heaven by a fiery divine chariot (2 Kings 2 — This story is actually the Old Testament reading assigned to today and I may one day need to do an Integral Reading of it because it’s pretty wild.). This led to a popular belief in Second Temple Judaism that Elijah would return some day to restore Israel. This is, of course, why, when Jesus asked his disciples who people said he was, one of the popular answers was Elijah. And it is in this capacity as a symbol of the Prophets that Elijah appears on the mountain with Moses and Jesus. Jesus certainly fits well within the prophetic tradition: in a lot of ways, Jesus’ teachings can be thought of as a fresh application of the Prophets. So Elijah makes sense as a symbol of continuity between the teaching of Jesus and the Jewish past. And yet, it’s not quite that simple. For if there is a prophet Jesus echoes, it is Isaiah not Elijah. All of the prophets — the New Testament prophets of John and Jesus included — were confrontational figures, unafraid to speak truth to power no matter the consequences, but Elijah took this to extremes. He famously challenged the priests of Ba’al to a duel, in which he called down fire from heaven. But even though he wins that battle, he finds himself on the run, and eventually alone on a mountaintop. God meets him there but more to rebuke him than to comfort him: God is not to be found in a series of terrifying wonders, but in the silence that follows (1 Kings 19). After that moment, Elijah’s ministry ceases to be about high-stakes miracles and political confrontations and simply has him wandering through Israel and its neighbours doing quiet work. So he’s both the hero of the story and a rather ambivalent figure. How does this legacy connect to Jesus? It’s interesting because the New Testament offers something of a parallel to Elijah’s greatest moment. When, in Luke 9, a Samaritan village refuses to offer Jesus and his disciples hospitality, two of the disciples suggest they “call down fire from heaven” as a punishment. But rather than follow Elijah’s lead, Jesus rebukes them (and gives them the ironic nickname “The Thunderboys”). In fact, far from Elijah’s example, Jesus never addressed any of his criticism to foreigners or followers of other gods. He was far more concerned with the hearts of those who follow Israel’s God. So, as much as he follows in Elijah’s footsteps as a great prophet, Jesus is also kind of an anti-Elijah. Far from slaughtering his enemies, he taught and practiced to “turn the other cheek”. Far from sacrificing others in the name of purifying the faith, Jesus allowed himself to be sacrificed. So, in terms of what Elijah meant to Jews of Jesus’ day, his appearance on the mountaintop with Jesus is a symbol of continuity; but in terms of who Elijah was and how he went about his work, he stands in incredible contrast to Jesus.

In the story of the Transfiguration, Peter is so excited that he wants to stay there on the mountain and build three shelters there for the three holy men. While in the context of the story, this was likely connected to keeping the feast of Sukkot (in which the faithful stayed in temporary shelters as a reminder of the harvest and of their dependence on God), it’s clear that he has something more in mind: “It is good for us to be here!” But his machinations are interrupted by a heavenly voice saying, “This is my Son, the Beloved: Listen to him!” And on that note, the whole thing ends as suddenly as it had started. I generally interpret this as a lesson about Peak Religious Experiences: It’s only natural for us to want to stay on the mountaintop forever, but that’s not what ‘mountaintop experiences’ are for. We always need to come back down into the world to live out and apply what we’ve experienced, for the life of the world. As true as that is, today, I’m wondering if there’s something else going on here too. Peter wanted to stay with Elijah and Moses forever, but the voice from heaven tells him to listen to Jesus, not them. It’s good and important to remember and honour the past. But we can’t stay there. As much as we might empathize with Moses’s legacy and want clear rules of ‘right and wrong’ that we can not only live out in our own lives, but enforce in others’ lives as well, that’s not the way of Jesus. As much as we might empathize with Elijah and want God to send down fire from heaven to destroy those we consider ‘wicked’, that’s not the way of Jesus. (And if the news is any indication, both of these un-Christian temptations are certainly alive and well among many who call themselves Christians!)

Either way, the story of the Transfiguration tells us that we can’t stay on the mountaintop forever. Whether that mountaintop for us is a Peak Religious Experience, or some vision of the past, our calling as Christians is to go back down, into the mess of real life, into the complexity of the present, and to do so hand-in-hand with Jesus. Clear boundaries of right and wrong, holy and profane, pure and impure are always easier, but the murkier, more nuanced way of Jesus is better. Seeing our opponents as enemies to be destroyed is always easier, but the way of Jesus — the way of grace, of love, of compassion — is better. The old ways are easier; that’s why Christians have done such a bad job historically of moving past them. But that’s our calling today as much as it was for Peter two thousand years ago.

So, as we approach the Lenten season that is to come, may be brave enough to let go of the past and ‘the simple ways’ of easy religion, and move forward in the challenging and revolutionary ways of Jesus.