Luke 9:37-43a

Dear Luke,

That certainly is an incredible tale, wrapped in uncertainty.  Had it happened in the middle of Jerusalem on a crowded market day and there were thousands of witnesses, it would be easier to believe, but occurring, as it did, on an obscure mountain with only three witnesses, each of whom has a vested interest in the community seeing Jesus as divine, does make it hard to believe.  It’s so out of the ordinary that even I have a hard time wrapping my mind around it.  I believe that it happened, but cannot for a moment begin to understand what it would have been like, felt like, to be there in that moment.  It certainly links Jesus back to the giants of the early Jewish faith, helping us see that Jesus stands in the same faith tradition as Moses and Elijah and so many others, but it’s a wondrous scene that transcends what this feeble mind can understand.

One would think that after witnessing such a scene Peter, James & John would never be able to look at Jesus again the same way.  How do you see a man glowing with brilliant intensity, talking with men long dead, and then have a normal conversation with him days later?  What else could you talk about?  I can’t even imagine.

I think about this mountaintop experience and wonder how it changed the lives of these three disciples.  I wonder how hard it must have been not to share it with the other disciples.  Wouldn’t they have had to mention it?  How can someone have seen something like that and not tell?  I can picture the three of them gathering in secret just to discuss it, to reminisce, muttering in whispered tones about the way his face looked, about the fear in their hearts when the cloud crept upon them and the way their hearts trembled when God spoke to them.  I don’t believe there is a human heart that could contain this story and not talk about it with someone.

As life goes, the sensation of the spectacular experience did not last long before the reality of a broken and sinful world once more reared its head.  The very next day, having returned from the mountaintop and rejoined the remaining disciples, there was once more a great crowd surrounding them.  The solitude of the mountaintop must have been even more rewarding, considering that their constant experience was that of a mass of humanity pushing in on them.  I’m sure there were many shouting for the attention of Jesus, but one man’s voice managed to carry over the others, perhaps by sheer force of willpower.

“Teacher, see my son, my only child, I beg you.  He will be seized by a spirit and scream, and then his whole body will began to quake until his mouth foams.  This spirit bludgeons his body and hardly leaves him.  I cried out to your disciples, but they were unable to defeat this spirit.”

While we would expect Jesus to answer with compassion to such a situation, he does not.  Perhaps he, too, has been changed by his mountaintop experience, and he no longer sees the constant struggles against evil the same way.  Perhaps he is just tired of the incessant demands from the crowd, or maybe he wants people to see a bigger picture of faith.  For whatever reason, Jesus accuses not just the crowd but the entire generation of being faithless and perverse, and he asks them how much longer he must be with them and tolerate them.  The crowd must have been taken aback, and the man might have been just ready to leave in defeat when Jesus tells him to bring the boy to him.

As the boy came, the demon, perhaps sensing what was about to come, threw the boy to the ground and began to abuse him, but Jesus would have none of it.  The spirit was rebuked and the boy, now healed, was returned to his father.  While the crowd surely rejoiced at the sight of the tearful reunion, some must have continued to ponder exactly what Jesus meant by his rebuke of the crowd.  It must have lingered there, even as they were amazed at God’s power and greatness. 

Luke, this feels to me such an odd story to occur just after the transfiguration you described, and yet isn’t that how life so often is?  One moment we’re in the clouds, the next we’re dealing with situations that we never could have imagined, ones that drag us back down to earth.  We can’t live on the mountaintops—but we must let the experiences we have there transform us, so that when we return to the valleys we are not the same.  I will not pretend that I have had many spiritual mountaintop experiences, as I spend far more time, it seems, in the valleys of life, but I will always carry those special moments in my heart, and the memory of them keeps me going through the valleys, reminding me of the reasons that I believe and driving me onward, trusting that I will return to the mountaintop once more.

Sincerely,

Theophilus