After the Mountaintop

July 20, 2016

My 2016 Ongoing Journey: Exploring Matthew to discover what following Jesus and becoming more like him would look like.

Matthew 17:1-13 ~ A month and three days ago I promised a follow-up to the story of the Transfiguration in Matthew 17:1-13. Well, like I tell my wife, when I say I’m going to do something, I’m going to do it. You don’t have to remind me every few weeks!

The disciples who accompanied Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration wanted to stay there. It was like an old-fashioned revival meeting: God’s presence was tangible and their spirits were moved to ecstatic emotionalism! “Let’s build three shelters, one for Moses, one for Elijah and one for you. And let’s just stay here.”

But mountaintop experiences are, by nature, short-lived. Unless you have a delivery service that comes up the mountain to you, sooner or later the necessities of life make it necessary to come down.

Maybe it’s not so much that we want to preserve and relish the mountaintop experience as that we don’t want to go back down the mountain and face what we know is there.

When Jesus and the three disciples returned from the mountaintop, there was confusion and frustration (the other disciples had proven ineffectual), and there was human need. Jesus took care of the need; but the disciples were distracted by their own ineptitude. “Why couldn’t we heal him?”

Jesus response to the whole incident seems harsh: “You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you? How much longer must I put up with you?” And then, in response to the disciples’ incompetence, “Because of your little faith. For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a^[c] mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.”

He might as well have said, “You have no faith at all!” I wonder if he was saying that their faith was misdirected—that their faith was in their own abilities. I can relate to that.

We humans are an amazing creation. Our accomplishments to this point in history are too many to count or assess. But maybe your experience is similar to mine: the more I learn, the more I realize I don’t know. The more I accomplish, the more I realize remains undone.

At the risk of espousing a “God-of-the-gaps” theology, there comes a time in human experience—both individual and corporate—when we must reach beyond our human limitations to enter into partnership with the divine. I’ll not argue whether such a partnership puts us in touch with a source outside ourselves or releases what already is in us (although I lean in the latter direction).

Faith is the decision to act on the basis of what we say we believe. If I truly am to follow Jesus, I will do just that.

That's the way it looks through the flawed glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,

Jim