Luke 9:28-36

     Sorry, this is going up a day later than usual.
     Jesus took three of the disciples, Peter, John and James, with him as he went up into the hills to pray. What they saw was what we call the transfiguration. His clothes turned dazzling white and something about his face seemed different, although we have few details. Moses and Elijah came to him and spoke of what he was going to do in Jerusalem. The disciples had been asleep at first (not the last time they’d be sleeping when Jesus prayed) and were astounded at the sight.
     As Elijah and Moses were moving away Peter, with typical lack of imagination, asked if they should make three shelters for Jesus and his visitors. Before Jesus could answer, they heard a voice saying ‘this is my Son, my chosen, listen to him.’ When the voice was silent, Jesus seemed to be alone again.
     Luke tells us that the disciples did not at that time say anything about what they had seen.
     There was a popular belief that Moses and Elijah had never died and that they would come again to herald the messianic age. There could have been a sense that the direction of Jesus to Jerusalem was in a sense a new exodus.
      It is hard for us to understand or interpret the transfiguration. What seemed interesting, and somewhat humorous, is the reaction of Peter, who seemed ready to camp out on the mountain. The scholars from the Cambridge Bible Commentary suggest he was making Jesus just one more episode in the history of Israel, while Jesus was a new event. This is interpreting the making of a shelter as trying to reenact the feast of Tabernacles, in which the Jews lived in temporary shelters as a way of remembering the wandering in the wilderness of their ancestors.
      The simplest explanation could be that Peter wanted to linger in the moment. Mountain-top experiences are wonderful and religious folks sometimes become addicted to them. But the work of Jesus was down among the people, in the gritty reality of occupation. He knew that his path would almost certainly lead to his death, but he went forward. To him, this moment was likely less about exultation and mountain top experiences than it was seeking the direction of God upon the path he was following.
     In some ways it seems strange that the disciples apparently kept quiet about what they’d seen for a long time. it could have been because Jesus himself asked them to (though people usually didn’t follow his requests). It seems possible they wondered if they’d be believed, or that they questioned the reality of what they’d seen. After all, they woke up to see it, so might have wondered if their midns were befuddled by sleep.
      It is true that any spiritual experiences are difficult to explain. In the call to witness, we may speak of God’s activities in our lives, of our love for God, a sense of God’s leading, etc. But more unusual experiences, such as visions, voices, etc., may be as real as anything we’ve ever known, yet are difficult to explain without our words being inadequate to describe them. We may fear to have them misunderstood, or we may simply know that some things are private and meant to be so. At some point the disciples sorted out what they thought about that day and decided it was appropriate to give an account.
     

Have you ever experienced something out of the ordinary in which you knew God was involved?
Have you ever shared it with others, and how did they react?
In the rational world in which people try to find alternate reasons, how would you define a true experience of God?