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     On the Mountain Top
a sermon based on Matthew 17:1-9 & Exodus 24:12-18
by Rev. Richard Gehring

            As a child growing up on the plains of Kansas, I had relatively little experience in the mountains.  About every other year or so, my family would take a vacation where we would spend a few days in the Colorado Rockies or the Ozarks of Missouri and Arkansas.  Then, when I was in high school, I spent some time at a church camp in the Rocky Mountains.  Each afternoon during the week-long camp sessions, we spent time mountain climbing.  Each day the hikes grew longer and a bit more difficult until Friday when we spent the entire day hiking up a 12,000 foot peak known as "The Sentinel."

            During those times in the mountains, I saw and experienced things I never would have in Kansas.  I drank cold water from clear mountain lakes and streams.  I walked through snow in the middle of July.  I stood on high peaks and looked out over miles and miles of tree-covered rolling hills, grassy valley meadows and rugged outcroppings of rocks.  Those were special times for me—those "mountain top" experiences.

            In our scripture passages for today, we read about probably the two greatest figures in the Bible, Moses and Jesus, as each of them had their own "mountain top" experiences.  We begin in Exodus with Moses being called to go up to Mount Sinai to meet with God.  This is the same mountain where Moses had earlier encountered the Lord in the burning bush.  At that time, God had called him to go to Egypt and lead the people of Israel out of  slavery.  Moses had been faithful to that call and now was called back to Sinai to hear from God once again.      This time, God delivers to Moses the Law, the covenant by which the Israelites are expected to live.  Because the Lord has delivered them out of bondage, God now expects them to live in a new way.  And the details of that covenant are spelled out to Moses as he returns to Mount Sinai.  In the chapters immediately preceding the one that Jim read for us this morning, Moses has already been to the mountain and come back to deliver the Ten Commandments along with a variety of religious and social laws to insure that the people treat one another and God with justice and respect.  Now the Lord calls Moses back to the mountain top to continue delivering him the Law.

            For forty days and nights, Moses has the unprecedented opportunity to converse directly with God, the Creator of heaven and earth, the one who called Abraham and Sarah and promised to make of their children a great nation, the one who had been faithful to that promise by leading Moses' own people out of captivity and rescuing from the most powerful military force of that time.  Moses spent almost six weeks enshrouded in the cloud of fire that signified God's presence.  He listened intently as God outlined what was expected of the people.  And when the time was over, he brought back to the people two stone tablets on which God's own hand had inscribed for them what they were to do.

            It must have been a very exciting time for Moses.  He had the opportunity to do what no one had ever done before and what many Jews and Christians have sought in vain to do ever since—to spend time entirely enveloped by the presence of God; to learn directly from the Lord what God's people needed to know.  It was no doubt a very glorious and completely unforgettable experience.

            Hundreds of years later, Matthew tells us about an experience that Jesus also had on a mountain top.  While his experience was far more brief than Moses', it was no less dramatic.  Jesus went up on a mountain with his three closest disciples:  Peter, James and John.  Luke says that the four of them went up to pray and that it was while they were praying that the miraculous events recorded in the gospels occurred. [continue]