Transfiguration: Matthew 17
I love the mountains. They are sacred to me. The sounds, the views, the sense of grandeur they convey; science has only increased their beauty, showing us how they formed over thousands of years, millions of years ago from receding glaciers. There are people in Tibet that consider some mountains the location of the gods, too sacred to ascend. They pray to the mountains. For thousands of years people have gone to the mountains for holy moments. Mountains are not full of natural resources to exploit, they are full of the awesome presence of GOD. Mountains are often the sites of holy encounters. Have you ever seen something inexplicable? Something so strange that you could hardly describe it? Have you ever been so awe struck by something that you saw that you had to tell others, maybe even written down the details so as not to forget it? The Transfiguration of Jesus is a hard story to swallow. It sounds like Loch Ness monster spotters meet UFO devotees. And even more important, It sounds too much like other stuff that happened before in the bible. It sounds like the gospel writers are busy trying to prove Jesus’ identity with a story that is so sort of supernatural that we modern skeptics can’t possibly believe it is true. As if the resurrection were not enough.
