Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, "Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah" - not knowing what he said. While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said, "This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!" When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

There's an old story you've probably heard about a pastor who, during a worship service, calls the children forward for a talk. When they all gather around, he says to them, "This morning, children, I'm thinking of something and I'd like you to guess what it is. It's grey. It has a bushy tail." The children were silent. "It lives in the forest. It eats nuts." He gives a number of hints but the children all remain quiet until one boy hesitantly raises his hand and says, "It sounds like a squirrel, but I think I'm supposed to say Jesus." Bright boy.

If you hang around church long enough, eventually you'll figure out that Jesus is the answer to most of the questions we ask. Jesus is the heart of our faith. He is the love of God made flesh. He is "God's Valentine," to a hurting world, and the message on the inside of the card is, "I'm sending you my son so that you will all know how precious you are to me." Today is not only Valentine's Day, here at church it is also Transfiguration Sunday, the last day of Epiphany, the season in which we celebrate the light of Christ coming into the world. Depending on where Easter happens to fall, the two aren't always on the same day like they are this year. But they do go well together, don't you think?

The story of the Transfiguration is one of my favorites. Peter, James and John follow Jesus up the mountain and have an extraordinary spiritual experience. It is as though they saw both the divinity and the humanity of Jesus brilliantly displayed together right before their eyes, with the voice of God pronouncing a blessing for a soundtrack. Peter later made a big deal out of that experience. I was there on the mountaintop, he said. I am an eyewitness of the majesty of God. Our message is not a myth, as some have been saying. We ourselves heard the voice from heaven.

I have seen the majesty of God. What a great line. Some people seem to feel that anything in the Bible that sounds remotely out of keeping with our normal, rational human experience probably didn't really happen. But I don't have a problem believing this story. People really do have transformative experiences. I have. Lots of people have. I've always felt that the best evidence for the resurrection is that the lives of the disciples were so dramatically changed. They went from running and hiding to heroically proclaiming their faith in the face of persecution. You just don't do that for something that didn't really happen. I'm sure the way the story comes to us, some of the details have been exaggerated. But I do believe Peter had a real vision that changed his life.

Peter saw the majesty of God. Majesty is an interesting word. There are basically two meanings. The first is splendor or glory, which is what we mean when we sing, "purple mountain majesties." Sunshine after a freezing rain, the Space Shuttle lifting off from Kennedy Space Center, the ringing sound at the end of the Hallelujah Chorus - lots of things in our lives have that quality of majesty. What comes to my mind is the view from the top of Half Dome in Yosemite Valley. It's just stunning, especially after all the trouble it takes to get there.

In the view of the Bible, these things are not glorious in and of themselves. They are glorious because they are lenses through which the majesty of God can be seen. That's the idea behind what Paul says in Romans, when he talks about how people outside of the faith can still know God. "Ever since the creation of the world [God's] eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been seen and understood through the things he has made." (Romans 1:20) This has always been the position of the church. Whenever we see something glorious, what we are actually seeing is the majesty of God shining through the things of the world.

Glory or splendor is one meaning of majesty. The other meaning is Authority; the majesty of a King or Queen. You may remember the Queen from "Alice in Wonderland" saying to Alice, "When I address you, you are to say, 'Yeeeeeeeeesssssssssss, your Majesty." Clearly, the Queen was an ego maniac who enjoyed throwing her weight around. She was forever shouting, "Off with their heads," at the slightest provocation. But the point is she wanted her every whim to be obeyed without question. It's funny, until you realize our earthly sovereigns often haven't been all that much better. Living in a Democratic country, we don't take the authority of Kings and Queens very seriously. But in the Bible, democracy, like the separation of church and state, is an unknown concept. Kings and Queens are sovereign over countries and God is sovereign over all.

Of course, even in the Bible, not everyone understood this. There's a great story from the book of Daniel, in which King Nebuchadnezzar is shown walking on the roof of his royal palace in Babylon filled with pride for all his accomplishments. "Is not this great Babylon," he says, "which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty?" (Daniel 4:30) God, the story says, is not amused and decides to take him down a peg. "While the words were still in the king's mouth, there fell a voice from heaven, 'O King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is spoken: The kingdom has departed from you, and you shall be driven from among men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field; and you shall be made to eat grass like an ox…" (Daniel 4:31-32) That's a pretty clear message. God says, when it comes to majesty please try to remember, I am and you're not. In the Bible, all majesty is of God; both the majesty of authority and the majesty of splendor.

So, back to Peter, on that mountaintop he personally witnesses both the splendor and authority of God, and is completely changed by the experience. He'd already been with Jesus for some time. He had listened to the teachings and seen the miracles. When Jesus asks his followers, "Who do you say that I am?" it is Peter who, without a moment's hesitation, blurts out, "You are the messiah, the son of the living God." Jesus tells Peter that he's blessed because flesh and blood has not revealed this to him. Then, a short while later, he goes up the mountain with Jesus and experiences God's majesty first hand. Flesh and blood didn't reveal that to him either.

At first Peter is overwhelmed. He says, God's glory has touched the top of this mountain. We need to build a shrine right here! But the majesty of God wasn't attached to a place. It was attached to a person. And when Jesus went back down the mountain, he took the glory of God with him, and Peter followed right behind. Peter went on to spend the rest of his life just telling that story; just telling people what he had seen. He was a fisherman not a theologian. The two New Testament letters he wrote are not great theological treatises. They are testimonies to his mountaintop experience.

The question for us is, how much stock do we place in a 2000 year old eyewitness? Well, if Peter's story stood out there all by itself, the answer would probably be not very much. Even the people of his own day were calling his story a cleverly devised myth. His veracity is hardly improved by seeing it from the perspective of two millennia. Do you think his story alone would convince anyone the Jesus actually did live his life bathed in the majesty of God? I doubt it.

But fortunately, Peter's story doesn't stand alone. People have been having mountaintop experiences ever since. His story is one among hundreds or thousands of stories. Peter was not a lone eyewitness. He was one among what the Bible calls a "cloud of witnesses." There have been thousands of believers over hundreds of years, from Augustine, Ambrose and Aquinas to St. Francis and Theresa of Avila. From Martin Luther to Martin Luther King Jr. It is no accident whatsoever that King's famous speech on the Washington Mall included the words, "I have been to the mountain." King was remembering Peter and identifying with him. He, too, had seen the glory of God's majesty.

And of course, it's not just famous people, but common people too; nameless, countless, unremembered people. People who, by grace alone, were given visions beyond their understanding to sustain their faith and keep the story alive.

One story I like comes from a book called Footprints in the Snow. It was shared by a woman named Julia Tinkey. She had been sitting by her mother's bedside in a hospital room. Julia was trying to be a comforting presence in the last moments of her mother's life. Let me just read to you some of what she wrote.

[Mom's] eyes opened; they looked straight into mine. "The doctor told me [I'm dying, she said] and, Julia, it's all right. I've left it up to God. I'm in God's hands now, and it is so wonderful." As she was saying this, she seemed bathed in light. As I stared at her, the mysterious radiance enveloped me as well; I felt as if I were drowning in the love and joy on her face. I realized that she was smiling and I smiled back - but I could not express this awareness enough through smiles; it seemed that my body must burst with the fulness of that instant.

The instant stretched into minutes and the minutes into almost an hour as we looked at each other, exposed and filled with the living presence of God. … "It's so wonderful!" … She seemed so alert, so like her former self that in frustration I almost shouted at her. "What's so wonderful? Tell me!" "Millions and millions of people," she began slowly. "So many millions . . . So much light!"

Her eyes seemed so full of love and they never left mine. Her voice remained strong as she continued. "Things get between us and God. Tell them all not to let things separate them from God. I've been so concerned with my own little problems and desires. Tell them, Julia - the glory of the Lord - it is wonderful!" They were the last words that Mother spoke. Her eyes closed, but the smile did not fade.

What do you do with a story like that? It would be easy enough to simply dismiss it; easy enough to say it's nothing more than a cleverly devised myth. But people do have experiences like this. I know they do. I have myself, not exactly like this, but enough like it for me to know that it isn't impossible. It isn't even all that far fetched. People do experience God's majesty. And Christian people particularly experience God's majesty in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Peter may have been among the first, but he certainly wasn't the last. There is a whole cloud of witnesses who have been to the mountaintop; who have come to know Christ as God's valentine to a hurting world. "I'm sending you my son so that you will all know how precious you are to me."

Happy Valentine's Day.

Amen