People Jesus Met Along the Way: Moses and Elijah
People Jesus Met Along the Way: Moses and Elijah by Rev. L. John Gable
February 19, 2023
Have you ever had an experience that was so real it was undeniable, yet so unbelievable it seemed to defy all description? One of those experiences that you hesitate to even try to tell anyone else about because it is so hard to put into words, and chances are they’d never believe you anyway? A number of years ago one of our adult education classes read a book titled Faith Stories, short stories about people’s encounters with God. One story in particular stood out to me of a Presbyterian minister who was standing in his backyard one afternoon when suddenly he heard God speak to him, clearly, distinctly, undeniably. The story unfolded in a very well told way that he didn’t know what to do with that experience. He thought if he told others what had happened to him they would think he had had a psychotic episode, but being a man of faith he also knew that God had in fact spoken to him. He was faced with a curious dilemma. Attempting to describe the indescribable or explain the inexplicable has always been a challenge.
Many today would say that what we do here, the Christian faith, or any sense of the living presence of Jesus Christ, is nothing more than illusion, even wishful thinking. So, my guess is each of us have been faced with the challenge at one time or another of trying to explain our faith or our reasons for believing to someone who doesn’t share our worldview, and perhaps thinks we are a bit crazy for having it. Our most closely held beliefs have always been hard to explain or defend because, quite plainly, they are so unbelievable.
That must have been the frustration the disciples felt as they tried to explain what happened to them on the mountain with Jesus in our Gospel lesson this morning. What they encountered there was so real it was undeniable, yet so unbelievable it defied all description.
Mark tells us it was “six days later”. Later than what? Later than Peter’s famous confession in Caesarea Philippi that Jesus was “the Christ, the Son of the Living God”. Despite the rumors that others thought Him to be a mere prophet, the disciples now believed Him to be the promised Messiah. This is an important turning point in the Gospel story. So now, six days later, Peter, James and John are standing with Jesus on a mountain when suddenly He was “transfigured before them”. What does that mean? Well, my guess is, the disciples had some trouble coming up with a word that adequately describes what they witnessed. “Transfigured” comes from the Greek word which means “metamorphosis”. Like what a caterpillar does to become a butterfly, Jesus was metamorphosized or to use the more common word, He “morphed” right before their very eyes. As they watched, Jesus underwent a complete change of appearance and His true, glorious, divine nature was revealed to them. But it wasn’t merely as surface change. He was changed from the inside out. There He stood like a stained glass window with the sun beaming through it, His face shining and His clothes dazzling white. Jesus was brilliantly transfigured! In Caesarea Philippi the disciples confessed what they thought about Jesus; on the Mount of Transfiguration their confession was confirmed as Jesus’ true nature was revealed as the Son of God in human flesh.
As if that weren’t enough for one day, suddenly they saw Moses, the great lawgiver, and Elijah, the great prophet, talking with Him. Two people we didn’t expect Jesus to meet along the way. And then, as if that weren’t enough, suddenly a cloud rolled in and a voice in the midst of the cloud spoke, saying, “This is My Son, the Beloved, listen to Him.” When they looked up, the cloud was gone, as were Moses and Elijah, and there stood Jesus, alone.
Now, how would you like to try to explain that to your next door neighbor? We can only imagine the challenge it was for Peter, James and John to try to describe to the others what they had seen and heard on the mountain, and to convince them it was real. It was so beyond words that Mark settled for trying to describe it in only 7 verses. It is hard to describe the indescribable or explain the inexplicable. It is fortunate they had one another to corroborate or they might not have even believed it themselves.
Perhaps not to this magnitude, but at one time or another, we’ve all known the frustration of being unable to find exactly the right words to explain to someone else how meaningful a personal experience was. Words alone can’t begin to carry the weight of the message or touch the impact of the experience. And to make matters worse, our words tend to sound suspicious because it is human nature to be skeptical of anyone else’s experience, especially those of a religious kind, unless or until we’ve had a similar experience ourselves.
So, what of us? How do we respond to this kind of story, we who are people of faith? Are we any less skeptical? We, of all people, know that there are realities that go beyond our senses. John Baillie writes, “Faith is not believing in something without evidence. It means believing in realities that go beyond the senses…for which a totally different sort of evidence is required.” We, of all people, should be most open to the possibility of God breaking into our world and into our lives in unexpected ways, for that is exactly what He has done in Jesus Christ.
Martin Luther once wrote, “All great religion begins with the personal pronoun” (I). By this he meant, if faith is to be genuine it must at some point become personal. There must be a point at which the Christian story becomes my story; where the experience of the Church and of other believers becomes my experience as well. The Christian faith is more than mere intellectual assent to certain truths about God that we can keep at arm’s length. Genuine Christian faith is the experience of a personal relationship with the living God. We enter into that relationship not by intellectual argument alone, but by trusting in the reality of His presence in our own lives today, a reality that goes beyond our sense of sight and sound, a reality that is more than illusion, though we may have difficulty trying to explain it to others.
David H.C. Read writes, “God can’t be proved by anything less than Himself” and I believe that to be true. For that reason alone, God came to us in Jesus Christ, and for that reason alone God continues to be in the business of making Himself known to us today, to each of us, in ways that are often unexplainable, yet at the same time are undeniable, even as was the disciples’ experience long ago.
Why does God continue to do this for us? For some, it is in order to awaken us to faith and to call our attention to the reality of His presence. God is able to speak in and through even the routine events of our lives in extraordinary ways, as if to say, “Hey, wake up! Open your eyes! I am real!” For others, such experiences are the means of confirmation and encouragement for us to press on in the life of faith, particularly when times are tough. The how and the why of any religious experience is always a mystery, and so it should be, but one thing is certain: God comes close to us in order that we might come closer to Him. God never intends these kinds of experiences to be ends in and of themselves so that we can point to them and say, “Look what happened to me”. Rather, these kinds of encounters are always intended as a means to a greater end, that of drawing us into a closer relationship with God.
Let’s look again at what transpired on the Mount of Transfiguration. Jesus appears with Moses, the great lawgiver, and Elijah, the great prophet who was to re-appear right before the coming of the Messiah. Why these two? Because both the Law and the prophets, the two great authorities in the Jewish tradition, had been given in order to point beyond themselves to their completion and fulfillment in Jesus Christ, the Messiah.
Peter, in his ecstasy, says, “Lord, it is good that we are here.” He loved the experience, and who can blame him, any of us would, so he wanted to build three little huts or booths so that they could stay there. He didn’t want the moment to end. He wanted to freeze-frame it so that they could revisit that mountain top experience whenever they wanted. But that isn’t how it was intended to be. That experience, like all religious experiences, was intended to be the means to a greater end, that of identifying Jesus, so the voice of God from the cloud, says, “This is My beloved Son…listen to Him.”
Do you hear the shift in emphasis, away from the experience itself on to Christ Himself? Recall at the end of this experience Jesus is standing alone. He is the focal point of this story. Everything is pointing to Him. This is God’s intention in our encounters with Him as well: to point us to Jesus.
Through the years I have had many conversations with folks, ordinary folks like you and me, who have told me of extra-ordinary experiences of faith they have had. More than once I have had someone say, “I’ve never told anyone this before because I thought they’d think I’m crazy but…” and then they’d pour out their stories of visitations of angels, of life after death experiences, of seeing Jesus with their own eyes, and other experiences that sound very much like what the disciples experienced on that mountain long ago. I will admit to you, as I confess to them, that there is much about these experiences that is outside the bounds of my own experience that I simply do not understand and cannot explain. However, I always assure them that I do believe them. I always believe them because I know they believe them to be undeniably true themselves. I believe God is able to reveal Himself and work in people’s lives in ways far beyond my understanding or explanation or experience. So, I encourage them, and each of us, to see our experiences of faith, as extraordinary and unbelievable as they at times may be, as God’s means of getting our attention and drawing us closer to Himself.
My guess is there are many of us who can recall a time when we felt the presence of God in an “extra-ordinary” way, in a way that we would like to be able to capture and relive whenever we want. Perhaps not in visions or visitations, but in ways we cannot deny. I believe those types of encounters are “moments of grace” given to us, not in order to prove anything to anyone else, but simply to remind and assure us of God continued presence with us. Like faith itself, these kinds of experiences are intensely personal, but they are not intended to be private. As they are shared they also arouse and inspire, confirm and encourage faith in others. What the world calls illusion is simply a different kind of reality. So, the Apostle Paul writes, “We learn to walk by faith not by sight”. We learn to trust in realities that go beyond our sense of sight or sound, even beyond our own experience and understanding.
Living the life of faith means being open to the unexpected in-breaking of God into our lives. It means living in anticipation and expectation of when and where we will see Jesus among us. The real message of the transfiguration is not simply that Jesus revealed Himself to three of His disciples in an extraordinary way on a mountain top long ago and far away, but that He continues to reveal Himself to us today. You see, this is not only their story; it is our story as well. The blessing and promise of God is that as we come to worship, to study, to fellowship, to prayer, to serve the least and lost and lonely among us, we will encounter the living Christ in ways beyond our expectation or imagining, and that is what is truly extraordinary.
Let us pray: God of majesty and mystery, open our ears to hear Your calling. Open our eyes to see Your guiding hand. Open our hearts to welcome anew the living presence of Jesus Christ. Open our mouths to gladly tell the Good News of Your presence among us. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
Rev. L. John Gable
Tabernacle Presbyterian Church
Indianapolis, IN