Mark 9: 2-9
In today’s passage, Jesus led Peter, James, and John up the mountain and was transfigured before them; Elijah and Moses appeared to them.
However, at the mountain, the disciples were puzzled when they encountered the contrast between what was unfolding on the mountain by seeing this spectacular transfiguration and what is about to happen in Jerusalem, the forthcoming journey to the cross.
The disciples should have been ready for this. Yet, the disciples were not. They were terrified when they heard what was about to happen to their leader, so much like a Gethsemane story, not an Easter story.
Isn’t it true that we prefer to read the happy ending part while we overlook the transforming process?
The problem is that we, as the ones who know the whole story from the beginning to the end, may have a tendency to read only few verses of the story, focusing on the happy ending of the story. That is why we sometimes become blind to the word of God.
We all may have our own mountaintops where we experience God’s splendid presence. And we all know that it seems discouraging, frightening, or hard to climb the mountaintop again, and going back down has its own challenges.
Here are the most important applications to today’s lesson - what the disciples did next when they were sent back to be ready to take up the cross.
This week, as we start the Lenten journey on Wednesday, we will continue to practice how we recognize God’s presence which seems to be veiled, but to be unveiled and to be revealed by God’s people.
This journey is the way out of comfort and the safe zone, and the way to give up self-assurance and our selfishness, all the way to the cross.
Remember where an Easter story will start in the end of this Lenten journey; it is not in the glorious light of a resurrection appearance, but in an empty tomb by a solitary woman announcing his resurrection and return to Galilee.
If we think, or if we wish we could be on the mountaintop, it is time go back to the bottom of the mountain, a place that we need to spread the good news for the oppressed, possessed people, crowds, and crosses waiting for us.
Amen.