Like so many other important events in the Bible, the events of this week’s gospel occur on a high mountaintop. Mountaintops were places of special and dramatic encounter with God and the disciples’ experience of the transfiguration is clearly no exception! In this instance, the disciples suddenly see Jesus’ power fully revealed but they fail to fully understand what is going on. One might think how much more obvious could God be about trying to reveal Jesus’ identity to the disciples, but still they don’t really catch on. Peter thinks he has caught on to the message. When the great prophets Elijah and Moses appear beside Jesus, Peter understands Jesus to be part of the line of prophets in the Hebrew tradition. He believes he has had a great insight and is so impressed that he wants to remain on the mountaintop – setting up tents in honour of Jesus, Elijah and Moses. In essence, Peter has still only partially understood who Jesus is. He thinks he is the Messiah, but a Messiah in the same mould as the prophets of old, a prophet of the old tradition. He has not understood that Jesus is breaking that mould and creating a new vision, a new tradition – one that is endorsed by the voice of God on the mountaintop.

Rather than allowing the disciples to set up tents and remain in the ‘high’ of this experience, Jesus immediately leads the boys back down the mountain. This is perhaps the greatest message of this passage: that life is not lived on the mountaintop but back down in the valley. Although the mountaintop experience may have provided some new insight and new energy, it is back down in the valley that the world waits; that the real work needs to be done; that the sick and the poor are crying out for God’s love and mercy.