Sermon Seeds: On the Mountain to Pray

Sunday, March 2, 2025
Transfiguration Sunday | Year C
(Liturgical Color: White)

Lectionary Citations
Exodus 34:29-35 • Psalm 99 • 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2 • Luke 9:28-36, (37-43a)
https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts/?z=e&d=23&y=384

Focus Scripture: Luke 6:27-38
Focus Theme: On the Mountain to Pray
Series: Posted Sentinels (Click here for the series overview.)

Reflection
By Cheryl A. Lindsay

Climbing a mountain is hard, careful, and long work. In full transparency, I have never climbed an actual mountain, but I have climbed hills and mountains can only be worse. Driving up a mountain can be treacherous so going up one using only the function of your limbs requires strength, agility, and courage.

The brevity of the gospel narratives often gives the impression that things happen like magic. One moment, Jesus and the disciples are doing one thing, then Jesus decides to go to the mountain to pray, invites his frequent trio to join him, and ascends to the top without delay or toil. That’s not realistic and while the story is full of miraculous occurrences, there is nothing to suggest they levitated or magically appeared on top. They had to make that trek up on foot and could also look forward to the return trip down. Neither would have been easy.

The terrain works against the traveler. Higher elevations provide decreased levels of oxygen, which can lead to altitudinal sickness. There was risk of injury from falls, weather shifts such as high wind or significant temperature changes, or encounters with wildlife.

When we read the gospel accounts, one may get a sense that Jesus and the disciples were entering a smooth, safe, and welcoming environment. But, what if they struggled to get there? What if the height of the mountain greeted the small prayer group with discomfort and disorientation alongside the radiant and transcendent encounter with the holy? What if the journey was not easy as the lack of detail in the written remembrance allows us to believe?

I follow a YouTuber who travels large distances over perilous terrain in order to chase unique experiences in extraordinary places. Their video journals reflect the length and depth of commitment to overcome obstacles in order to reach these destinations as well as their beauty. At the same time, it is worth noting that the time to enjoy the destination is a fraction of the journey to get there. When we consider the encounter on the Mount of Transfiguration, we would do well to consider that the journey to get to the moment involved some degree of hazard, peril, and certainly significant effort. It’s a foreshadowing and reflection of the trajectory of Jesus’ incarnational ministry.

The setting is familiar: Jesus at prayer on a mountain, removed from the crowds clamoring for his attention below (v. 28). The scene is far from ordinary, however; the mountain becomes the site for an extraordinary revelation to three of the disciples (as in 8:51 they are Peter, John, and James). Heaven endorses Jesus’ declaration of the meaning and goal of his messianic vocation, with his two greatest predecessors among Israel’s prophets chiming in. All signs point toward his mission’s finale in Jerusalem, the first indication that his destination is the Holy City, where as a youth he first found his voice in the narrative (as Son of God). Jesus will decisively initiate this change in directions (9:51), from then on resolutely making his way to the city where he will meet a prophet’s fate (13:33). His exodos (departure), evoking the memory of Israel’s liberation from slavery, may be a journey effecting deliverance, but only as part of a ministry that is wholly directed toward that aim. Yet it is also an exit from life itself, his death—confirming the prophetic announcement in 9:22 but now making explicit that Jerusalem will be the location for that rejection by the powerful.
John T. Carroll

Jerusalem is a specific geographical location. At the same time, Jewish, Christian, Islamic, and world history more than suggest that Jerusalem has held more significance than surface area on a particular place on the earth. Jerusalem serves as a symbol holding spiritual, religious, cultural, political, and ethnic significance. It is known as the “Holy City” or “City of Peace.” Contemporary readers with a historical perspective will recognize the irony, or perhaps aspiration, of naming a place that has experienced centuries of extraordinary conflict with the attribute of peace.

Jerusalem, and particularly for Christians New Jerusalem, does reflect an unrealized hoped-for future. When Jesus, Peter, James, and John reach that mountaintop, they receive a representative vision of the ultimate destination or end of the embodied ministry of Jesus. They receive a glimpse of restoration, recreation, and jubilee. It is a promise that the coming struggle, like their trek up the mountain, will yield a breathtaking destination that will be worth the sacrifice, suffering, and terror the work of redemption and reconciliation will require.

For the first time Jesus has shown the disciples the future that awaits him as God’s Messiah, encompassing both suffering and glory, and for a larger audience he has begun to spell out the implications for the life of the disciple. Alone with Jesus while he is praying on a mountain, three disciples now witness an extraordinary scene of revelation. A voice from heaven affirms Jesus’ identity as Son of God and, with assistance from Moses and Elijah, ratifies what Jesus has just disclosed about his role and destiny. Looking over the disciples’ shoulders, the Lukan audience, too, witnesses a preview of the future glory that Jesus will enter through his “exodus”—suffering, death, and exaltation—at Jerusalem.
John T. Carroll

Jesus’ companions were amazed. Peter, with a reputation of speaking and acting without much thinking, suggests staying there; however, this time he develops a preliminary plan. He will erect tents to contain the glory he has witnessed. It seems simplistic, but I wonder if that also arises more from the sparsity of the narrative than Peter’s intention. Building multiple tents would require a lot more work and potentially more trips up and down the mountain to acquire needed supplies. Peter wants to make the glory his home and he’s willing to work for it, and that’s not far off from the hope of heaven as a reward for a life of toil and trial.

Jesus understands that impending work will be required to reach the promised ends, and while Peter’s impulse may not be entirely misguided, the disciple lacks critical insight. He will be building something…but not through supernatural encounters or on that particular mountain. The construction project will manifest in human interactions on the plain.

While Peter, James, and John had a preview of the end, the other disciples practiced the ministry demonstrating the spiritual hike they would undertake.

Meanwhile, disciples at the foot of the mountain fare poorly. Jesus enabled them to cast out demons and cure (9:1-2). Now they are unable to heal another only son. Could Luke’s audience discern who is included in Jesus’ address to a faithless and misbelieving generation”(9:41)? The specific charge in the second person plural to people who are present may include the father, certainly includes the disciples, but not Jesus’ contemporaries generally. Again, Jesus is the enabler who heals, and restoration to family and community is explicit.(9:42) Luke 9:43 again characterizes Jesus by his functions in relation to God.
Robert L. Brawley

Observers of these two connected narratives may be tempted to believe that Peter, James, and John received special treatment. There may be some truth to that. It may also be that the disciples group was divided to give both mutually important experiences to inform their collective understanding and responsibility for the kindom. These dual perspectives may guide the church in efforts to respond to the current moment as well as every time in human history when forces of evil and oppressive systems rise against the common good, radical compassion, and radiant love endowed by the Spirit of the Living God.

When considering the difficulty in mountain climbing, it is a curious choice as a place of prayer. All that effort, one might wonder, when there are other places closer and easier to access. It isn’t that one must suffer in order to pray or even encounter challenges. Obstacles to prayer generally are not pursued or commended. So, why does Jesus choose the mountain?

Perhaps, it’s about the perspective gained from the elevation.

Posted sentinels would also have positioned themselves with an elevated view in order to survey the landscape, identify threats, and to account for the people and material resources within their responsibility. Earlier in Luke 9, Peter, James, and John had been sent out with the others with the authority to heal, deliver, and proclaim the kindom. In their participation in the journey and destination of the Mount of Transfiguration, they also witnessed a glorious manifestation of the kindom to propel them to keep climbing through all the risks to life and limb. It strengthened them, increased their agility, and made them more courageous. And, that’s why Jesus invited them on the mountain to pray.

Reflection from Voices of People of African Descent
The 33rd General Synod adopted a Resolution to Recognize the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent (2015-2024). As part of its implementation, Sermon and Weekly Seeds offers Reflection from Voices of People of African Descent related to the season or overall theme for additional consideration in sermon preparation and for individual and congregational study.
I have holes in my eyes. About a year ago, a doctor said it as plain as that. You know about the holes? I did not.
Apparently they are not uncommon, but I have enough of them that the doctors are all concerned. I am concerned. No one wants to think of decay in themselves.
There I lay—scratchy grass and soft earth wriggling around my little body as I looked up at the sky. Slow and chubby, there wasn’t a game of tag I could keep up in. In the middle of the game, I would lurch over to the other side of the yard and collapse like a dead thing as the other kids ran around me, skipping over my motionless limbs. My eyelids would come awake slowly, finding the sky as I was resurrected. And I’d look up and just stare.
Then one day I learned to move my eyes in and out of focus. As I did so, it felt like I was witnessing a mask rip from the cosmos. In focus: clouds and blue, perfectly beautiful and ordinary. Out of focus: hundreds of minuscule clear floating bubbles suspended in the space between. I thought I was seeing air.
I wrestled my sister to the ground. Look, there. She squirmed and squinted. Tell me you see the air. She did not, which made me think I had special powers, and maybe I did. I try not to let the knowledge of my eye holes steal this magic now. For in actuality, I was simply seeing my own eye—floaters and shadows and flashes of light. It was still beauty to me. Now, a solemn magic. Some wonders have a way of holding us even in the deterioration of our present world. We must protect this.
—Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories that Make Us

For Further Reflection
“The Lord is more constant and far more extravagant than it seems to imply. Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don’t have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it?” — Marilynne Robinson
“God places us in the world as his fellow workers-agents of transfiguration. We work with God so that injustice is transfigured into justice, so there will be more compassion and caring, that there will be more laughter and joy, that there will be more togetherness in God’s world.” — Desmond Tutu
“Faith in action is love, and love in action is service.
By transforming that faith into living acts of love,
we put ourselves in contact with God Himself, with Jesus our Lord.”” — Teresa of Calcutta

Works Cited
Brawley, Robert L. “Luke.” Gale A. Yee, Ed. Fortress Commentary on the Bible: Two Volume Set. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014.
Carroll, John T. Luke. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012.

Suggested Congregational Response to the Reflection
Consider your community and what prophetic actions your ministry may offer in solidarity to the vulnerable in your midst.

Worship Ways Liturgical Resources
https://www.ucc.org/worship-way/transfiguration-sunday-c-march-2/

The Rev. Dr. Cheryl A. Lindsay, Minister for Worship and Theology (lindsayc@ucc.org), also serves a local church pastor, public theologian, and worship scholar-practitioner with a particular interest in the proclamation of the word in gathered communities. You’re invited to share your reflections on this text in the comments on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SermonSeeds.

A Bible study version of this reflection is at Weekly Seeds.