If you look around this room, you’ll see that there’s something a little bit different here this morning. Notice it?

Let me be a little bit more precise. There’s something different about me, and it’s not that I got a haircut this week.

Right. No glasses!

About, oh, almost half a lifetime ago, I noticed that I was having some problems with my eyes. I’d be studying at the library, and when I left to walk back to my dorm room I could barely recognize who people were saying hello to me without squinting. My dad wears glasses, and my two sisters were glasses, so I came to the conclusion that I, too, might need glasses. So about eighteen years ago, I went and got my first pair of glasses.

At first, they were kind of a cool fashion option for me. My eyes weren’t too bad, and I didn’t really need them. I usually wore them when I wanted to look intelligent.

But as happens, I got a little bit older. And optometrist’s appointment by optometrist’s appointment, my eyesight became worse. I’m not far-sighted, I’m near-sighted. I don’t wear contacts. And now, I need these glasses. Today, if you ever see me without my glasses, I have no idea who you are. I wear them all the time. The first thing I do in the morning is reach over to my bedside table and put my glasses on. I wear them when I read, I wear them when I write, I wear them when I’m at the gym. If you should ever happen to see me in the car without my glasses on, get off the road, because if you can see me like that, I can’t see you. The worst mornings follow evenings when my bedtime routine has been interrupted, and I have put my glasses someplace and can’t remember where. When that happens, I’m helpless, and I’ll bellow forth "Has anyone seen my glasses?" And I know that if I can’t find them, I’m done for. I am incapacitated without my glasses. There are a few things that would make me stop and change what I have planned for the day, and breaking or losing my glasses is one of them. If that happens, everything stops for me. Because without them, everything is a blur. I can fake it, but I have no idea what, or who, I am looking at.

The internal combustion engine is one of the greatest inventions of the modern age. So is the personal computer. We can heal diseases that once would kill us, and have cameras so sensitive that they can tell whether a coin is heads or tails from 1,000 miles away. But what I’m grateful for, is glasses. Because it is a horrible thing to not see clearly. If you have bad eyesight, you know what I mean. There are lots of ways to describe what happens for me when I don’t have my glasses, and they all tell the truth: everything is fuzzy; I can’t see clearly; I don’t see what is there to be seen.

Well, in this story we hear today, what we have is a case of not seeing clearly. This story has a name, and it’s called The Transfiguration. It’s kind of an odd story. It comes in the middle of the gospel, and is one of two places where God speaks directly: "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!" Halfway through the story, it’s like a booster shot. God reminds us of who Jesus is. It’s a significant event in the gospel, and it’s so significant that in our tradition there is a day set aside during the year when we observe the Transfiguration. August 6 is the Feast of the Transfiguration. It is one of those days during the year when we are expected to worship, and this summer, when we’re in our own home, we’ll have a service on that day, which this year is a Friday.

But true to form, the human beings present for this event don’t quite get it. They don’t quite see clearly. Peter, James, and John are with Jesus on the mountain, and see Jesus transfigured. They see him transformed. He dazzles. His face shines, and his clothes are like burning magnesium, they’re so white. Next to him stand Moses and Elijah. Moses is the character who represents the laws of the Old Testament, Elijah is the one who represents the prophets of the Old Testament. The Law and the Prophets, right there. These aren’t just any characters from the Old Testament, they’re the big two. This isn’t Millard Fillmore and Warren Harding. It’s George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

The indomitable Peter, never at a loss for words, has an idea. "Lord, it is good for us to be here," as if the presence of the disciples is an act of grace toward Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. As if Peter, James, and John are doing them a favor, rather than the other way around. "How about if I put up three booths? One for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah!" "Let me.....Let me, personally, build the three of you dwelling places. Let me build you three tents, three booths, three shelters, where you can dwell."

Now, I’m going to let you in on a little secret. There are some things in scripture that no one really understands for sure. People may act like they do, but they really don’t. There are some things that people just can’t come to agreement on, so we just give best guesses. Why Peter wants to build three shelters for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah is one of those things. And I don’t know, for sure, why Peter wants to do this, but I’m going to give you my hunch, and it demands a little bit of Bible time.....

You see, on Sunday morning, we take the Bible and cut it down into bite-size chunks so that we sometimes lose the context. And this is a case when it’s helpful to know what happens in the gospel immediately before this story: Immediately before Jesus, Peter, James, and John go up the mountain, Jesus tells Peter and the other disciples for the first time that his destiny is a cross in Jerusalem. "Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life." That’s what it says.

And I don’t know about you, but if I’m honest with myself, I’d rather see Jesus as one who can be locked up in a tent, all nice and pretty and holy.....with Moses and Elijah next to him.....than I would seeing Jesus stuck in the muck and dirt and blood of real life, and stuck on the wood of a cross. And I think that’s what Peter wanted. What he can’t see, and what he doesn’t want to see, is that the life of Jesus isn’t lived on top of the mountain in all safety, surrounded by the heroes of the faith in their heavenly robes, singing sweet hymns, but that it’s lived in the valleys, where there is pain, and sadness, and tragedy, and blood, and horror.

And maybe he can’t and won’t see it because he loves Jesus so much. Maybe he wants to protect Jesus.

But more likely, he can’t and won’t see it because if it’s in the valleys that Jesus really lives, rather than the mountaintops, then maybe that’s where the disciples have to live, as well. If he can keep Jesus locked up and safe in a shelter, maybe he can stay locked up and safe, too. But if it’s safety and shelter and protection that we see when we look at Jesus, then like Peter, we’re not seeing clearly. We need to put on our glasses.

I hope you’ve heard what I’m going to say plenty of times here.....that the life of discipleship is the life of Good News. I am living witness to that fact. My life is better, now, because I am a disciple. I am more of everything I am supposed to be because I want Jesus to be my Lord, and I want to follow. Far from perfect, and still filled with faults, but nevertheless closer to what God intends for me, because I seek to be a disciple. The life of a disciple is a lot of things. But in case we ever think it’s safe as a shelter, and removed as the top of a mountain, we need to know that we’re not seeing clearly. Peter sees Jesus, and I guess James and John do, also, in his heavenly garb, but he hasn’t really seen Jesus.

When I turn Jesus into something safe. When I make him something predictable. When I make him the object of something as pedestrian as my religious affection. It’s not Jesus that I’m looking at, but an hallucination of my own creation. When I stick him in heaven. When I make him sweet as syrup soup. When I want to protect him. It’s not Jesus that I’m looking at, but an hallucination of my own creation. When I sand down the rough edges of some of his words and actions. When I lose sight of the fact that he loves me before I love him. When I build him a shelter in my soul, letting him out only when it is convenient for me. It’s not Jesus that I’m looking at, but an hallucination of my own creation. When I confuse the claims of my religious tradition with the claims of Jesus, as Peter confuses the significance of Moses’ and Elijah’s presence with the significance of Jesus, I’m seeing a hallucination of my own creation rather than the real Lord of life.

Before the Transfiguration happens, Jesus tells his disciples that he’s going to Jerusalem, and we know what happens there. After the Transfiguration, he comes down from the mountain and walks into a ruckus caused when his disciples try to heal a boy possessed by a demon, and are unable to do so. That’s the next story. These things, the dirt and grit of the valleys, is where Jesus’ work is done, not on a mountaintop.

I want to see clearly, so I put on my glasses. I want to see Jesus clearly, so I look beyond the mountaintop. Peter wants to stay there, and maybe even be religious. But if Jesus doesn’t stay there, neither can Peter, and neither can I. If Jesus descends to be in the midst of life that may seem unholy, may seem dirty, may be painful, then so do I. If Jesus doesn’t run away, neither can I. I don’t know whether I like that very much. The mountaintop times in my life have been great. They’ve been blessed places of rest and re-birth. And there is something fearful about getting down and dirty, getting real, in real life. On the mountaintop it’s safe and secure, I can see what’s around and know what’s coming. But in the valleys, it’s none of those things. But that’s where Jesus is, that’s where we fully see the full Jesus, so that’s where we are to be, as well.

Every year, on the Last Sunday before Lent, we read the story of the Transfiguration. This is one of those Sundays when we always read the same story, and it’s this one. As we enter the season of preparation for Easter, it is intended to be a premonition of the transforming power of the resurrection we celebrate on Easter Sunday. But I think it’s also a reminder. Lent is that season when we are most liable to be exceptionally holy. We give ourselves disciplines, we worship more, at times we’ve done special teachings. It’s a time when, with good intentions, we set ourselves apart, and our religious lives are lived out to the fullest.

But as we go into the season that begins on Wednesday, let’s remember something: the life of discipleship isn’t lived most fully on the top of the mountain, as Peter seems to think. But is found in the valleys, because that’s where Jesus is. It isn’t something removed, it is something uncompromisingly present. It isn’t something special, lived far away in the ethereal experiences of our lives, but is lived in the everydayness of loving God, loving our neighbors, loving ourselves. The times on top of the mountain are great. And like Peter, we’re tempted to maintain them for longer than they may need to be maintained. Like Peter, we may think that’s where we really see the real Jesus. But the truth is this: we end up being more like Jesus living in the day-to-day valleys of getting the kids ready for school, or working with our colleagues, or loving those persons who are not our friends and who we don’t like, than we do living on the mountaintop. And the other part of the truth is this: it is in the eyes of those children getting ready for school, or the colleagues we work with, or the unlovable that we love, that we are more likely to see the real Jesus, than on a mountaintop.

So may God bless us with those peak experiences on the mountain. They’re great when they happen. But may we also not get stuck there. May we see clearly that the life to which we are called is not that of building booths and staying away, but that it is, instead, walking, running, or sometimes tripping, down the mountain into the valleys where life is real, and we are real, and where Jesus is real, and where we truly and really see just who this real Jesus really is.