I wonder, did Jesus get sheer joy out of climbing to the top of the mountain with Peter, James, and John? Or, maybe, out of revealing, fully, who he was? Or out of planting a seed of hope for the rest of the journey to the cross?
Luke 9:28-43a
March 2, 2025
Dr. Todd R. Wright
Why do people climb mountains?
When people asked George Leigh Mallory why he wanted to climb Everest, he replied, “Because it’s there!”[2] Everyone remembers the flip answer, but he elaborated, eloquently:
“People ask me, 'What is the use of climbing Mount Everest?' and my answer must at once be, 'It is of no use.' There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever. Oh, we may learn a little about the behaviour of the human body at high altitudes, and possibly medical men may turn our observation to some account for the purposes of aviation. But otherwise nothing will come of it. We shall not bring back a single bit of gold or silver, not a gem, nor any coal or iron ... If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that [it] is the struggle of life itself, forever upward, then you won't see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy.”[3]
I wonder, did Jesus get sheer joy out of climbing to the top of the mountain with Peter, James, and John? Or, maybe, out of revealing, fully, who he was? Or out of planting a seed of hope for the rest of the journey to the cross?
Let’s explore each of these in turn.
Robert Dunham, a presbyterian pastor in Chapel Hill when I was first starting out, throws cold water on the notion that climbing the mountain would have been sheer joy. He writes,
“There are many sacred texts that speak of mountains as holy spaces where one might encounter the living God. Now, I've climbed mountains of varying heights and degrees of difficulty before, and I have to say that there's more to it than [texts like Luke] suggest.”[4]
As proof Dunham points to Bill Bryson’s account of his first days hiking the Appalachian Trail:
“I was hopelessly out of shape. The pack weighed way too much. I had never encountered anything so hard, for which I was so ill prepared. Every step was a struggle. [And] the hardest part was coming to terms with the constant dispiriting discovery that there is always more hill. Each time you haul yourself up to what you think must surely be the crest, you find that there is in fact more hill beyond, and that beyond that slope there is another, and beyond that another and another, until it seems impossible that any hill could run on this long. Still you stagger on. What else can you do?”[5]
Not a whiff of joy in that description, is there?
I can testify that every beautiful summit vista demands a heavy toll for passing that way!
But there is joy, like Mallory says, in getting to the top, and even more so when you do it in the company of friends!
So maybe the hike Luke describes started out as just a joyful outing with friends!
Or maybe, for Jesus, the deeper joy was in revealing to a few trusted confidants the full glory of being the Son of God!
So far he has given them glimpses of his divine power: healings and exorcisms, cleansing a leper, even raising, in separate incidents, a boy, and a girl, from the dead! It culminated with Jesus feeding 5,000 men, plus women and children, with two fish and five loaves of bread!
When Dallas Jenkins put that scene on film, he showed Jesus smiling throughout – like a grandma sharing from a bottomless cookie jar! His joy is infectious! Soon, everyone is smiling!
Is that the mood on the mountaintop?
Does Jesus smile as he chats with Moses and Elijah and catches the trio’s stares?
He is so much more than a carpenter from Nazareth!
Do Peter the brothers exchange grins when their Lord’s face and clothing starts to glow?
He is exactly what his words and deeds promised!
Do they experience a flush of joy when the cloud covers them and God’s voice booms?
He is everything they dared hope!
Maybe there is joy on the mountain top, but some might object that he could have revealed all that anywhere, without the hike.
But could he have? Or was the hike a necessary reminder of how hard life can be?
Dunham writes, “When we are young, our lives may seem like level paths, smooth-going with scarcely a tree root or an icy patch to trip us up. But as we grow older and our lives get more complex, [the plots and treks] of our faith are more often defined by the hills we must climb, by the sweeping upslopes, the sometimes steep and rocky mountain paths we must take, fraught with perils and pitfalls. There are times when not only reaching our destination, but even our survival is in question. [And] in our advanced years, the climbs may seem relentless, wearying.”[6]
Life is hard. But maybe Jesus is reminding them that they do not journey alone and that no matter how hard the future, they can trust the Son of God!
As I read this passage, I found myself thinking about the journey this church has been on for 75 years. Just raising the funds to get started and recruiting the charter members was an uphill climb! And teaching the faith to generations of kids, and charting a course through society’s upheavals, and keeping up a building that was struck twice by lightning were exhausting! And then there were the perils and potholes of COVID and a ransomware attack and a shrinking membership in a shrinking community.
And yet, over and over the saints in this place saw, and were sustained by, glimpses of God’s glory! Of God at work in people’s lives, of prayers answered, of goals met or exceeded!
As we approach the anniversary date, it would be easy to want to bask in the moment; to celebrate all we have done, and rest on those accomplishments. But Luke’s account draws us back down into the valley, for that is where the hard work of ministry awaits.
That is what we will be doing the day after we wash all the dishes and sweep up the confetti!
For our journey is not just about sheer joy; it about sharing hope!
Poet and sometimes prophet Wendell Berry writes about hope. Here are a few of his lines:
“It is hard to have hope.
It is harder as you grow old, for hope must not depend on feeling good.
[Still,] the young ask the old to hope. What will you tell them?
Because we have not made our lives to fit our places,
the forests are ruined, the fields eroded, the streams polluted, the mountains overturned.
Hope then to belong to your place by your own knowledge of what it is that no other place is,
and by your caring for it as you care for no other place.
Belong to your place by knowledge of the others who are your neighbors in it:
the old man, sick and poor, who comes like a heron to fish in the creek,
and the fish in the creek, and the heron who manlike, fishes for the fish in the creek
and the trees that keep the land they stand upon as we too must keep it, or die.
Speak to your fellow humans as your place has taught you to speak, as it has spoken to you.
Listen, silently, to the voices that rise up from the pages of books and from your own heart.
Be still and listen to the voices that belong to the streambanks and the trees and the open fields.
Found your hope, then, on the ground under your feet.
Your hope of Heaven, let it rest on the ground underfoot.
Be it lighted by the light that falls freely upon it
after the darkness of the nights and the darkness of our ignorance and madness.
Let it be lighted also by the light that is within you, which is the light of imagination.
It lights, invariably, the need for care toward other people, other creatures, in other places
as you would ask them for care toward your place and you.”[7]
Seventy-five years ago, we were planted on this spot, so we could bring hope to our neighbors. It has become our place – to listen, to share what we’ve learned, to be a light in the dark. May we care for our neighbors with love and imagination, with joy and gentleness! Amen
[1] Detail from “The Transfiguration,” by Aidan Hart/Donald Jackson, for The Saint John’s Bible
[3] From Climbing Everest: The Complete Writings of George Mallory
[5] From A Walk in the Woods, page 35
[6] Also from that same podcast of his sermon, “Always Another Climb”
[7] From “A Poem on Hope”
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