“From on High”
February 15, 2026
Rev. Rebecca Migliore
For the last two weeks we have been listening to Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount.” His words from on high. And today we have the ultimate mountaintop experience—the transfiguration of Jesus—shining bright, conversing with Moses and Elijah (“the law and the prophets”), hearing God’s words “This is my Son, the Beloved. With him I am well pleased. Listen to him.”
We understand the idea of mountaintops. We are sited on a mountaintop (and have the Pilgrim’s Cross at our front door to remind us that people were hiking up to this place long before St. Cloud was ever conceived). We move up and down on this ridge that overlooks NYC. We marvel at the sight of that metropolis. Many of us went to Eagle Rock Reservation to look down on what had happened after 9/11. And we still go, to look down now and remember that day, and those people who were lost.
Mountaintops give you perspective. You can see more. And maybe it makes you think that you know more. You feel like “king of the world” to quote that famous scene from Titanic. And this is not a new phenomenon. Humans from the earliest times have known the power of a mountain. Mountains are common in the Bible. Just to mention a few: there is the mountain that Noah finally landed on after the flood; there is Mount Sinai where Moses went to speak with God face-to-face while the Israelites were traipsing around in the wilderness for 40 years; there is the mountain cave where Elijah hid and where he heard God speak in a still, small voice; there are the mountaintops that Jesus seems to go to when he wants to pray.
So mountaintop experiences aren’t new, and they aren’t old either. As I was thinking about a more recent mountaintop experience what came to mind was the iconic “Blue Marble” photograph, taken by the Apollo 17 crew in 1972.
It crystalizes what astronauts call the “overview” effect—seeing our planet as a whole, without any boundaries. Or one could think of any of a number of speeches by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.—“I Have a Dream” from 1963 and famously, his last speech in 1968 called the “Mountaintop Speech” where he seems to be looking over the history of civilizations, the history of African-Americans and this country, and even gets a glimpse into the future, a future he muses he may not get to see.
So when Jesus goes up the mountain with Peter and James and John, all our “spidey senses” should be tingling. And sure enough, Transfiguration! I want to remind us that we are on the precipice of Lent (Ash Wednesday is this week). So as we look down from this mountain, we can see (in hindsight) where Jesus is heading. And if we had been marching through the gospel of Matthew in order, we would know that Jesus’ ministry, his healing, his teaching, his parables, his life, is arrayed behind us. And right before going up on the mountain, Jesus has told the disciples that the future is not rosy. There will be suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes and he will be killed and on the third day be raised.
If we were to draw a picture of Matthew’s gospel, the Transfiguration would be a high point, and then would come the descent, moving towards Jerusalem, towards Holy Week, towards Passion, towards the tomb. And eventually, towards something even more revelatory than a mountaintop, Resurrection.
This is the season of Epiphany, the revealing of who Jesus is, to us, to God, to the world. We began with Wise Ones coming from the east to worship. We witnessed Jesus being baptized (and were even let in on the private words to Jesus that sounded from the heavens at that event). And now, those words are repeated for Peter and James and John to hear (but not to share until after resurrection).
So what are we meant to see, to hear, to know about Jesus from this story? We probably aren’t supposed to get too wrapped up in the minutiae, we probably aren’t supposed to make it all about us (as Peter kind of does when he tries to respond by suggesting making three booths, one for Jesus and Moses and Elijah). I think we are supposed to focus on what God is saying. Epiphany is about revealing—and God wants to make sure, over and over, that we get the message. It’s not about what happens to Jesus’ body. It’s not about who we will get to talk to in the heavenly realm. It’s not about power or adulation. It’s about Love.
“This is my Son, my beloved. I am well pleased—I’m pink with pleasure. He’s got the message. Listen to him.” And let’s just remember how this love, this God love works. God expresses love of Jesus before Jesus has done one hour of ministry. God continues to express love even when things get murky, even when there seems to be no good ending. It is God’s love that Jesus hints at in the parables of the kin-dom, in his healings, in his sermon from the mount. God’s love that then invites us to love not just God but others in return.
Listen to a brilliant author, Toni Morrison, as she talks about Love in her novel Paradise (I acknowledge that this example was suggested by Rev. Matthew Boulton from SALT).
“Love is divine only and difficult always.
If you think it is easy you are a fool.
If you think it is natural you are blind.
It is a learned application
without reason or motive
except that it is God.
You do not deserve love
regardless of the suffering
you have endured.
You do not deserve love
because somebody did you wrong.
You do not deserve love
just because you want it.
You can only earn — by practice
and careful contemplations —
the right to express it
and you have to learn how to accept it.
Which is to say
you have to earn God.
You have to practice God.
You have to think God-carefully.
And if you are a good and diligent student
you may secure the right to show love.
Love is not a gift.
It is a diploma.”
+ Toni Morrison (from Paradise)
Epiphany is a time when we get to hear again what God thinks is important. And what do we see this year? We see a world that is not us and them in God’s eyes. We hear a recurring message of Love—and if we love, do we not want justice and peace for each of us? We can aspire to mountaintop vistas, but we know that we are called to also be in the valleys of shadows and horror. We marvel at God’s love that is not just for Jesus for also for us. We shake our heads at the thought that we are to be the body of Christ in our world, we have been given the awesome work of being love in God’s name.
In our world, often when you talk about something coming “from on high,” it is often disconnected from the people, often is out of touch, often is authoritarian in nature. From on high is often “because I said so.” But we are not to live only in our world. We have been invited into the kin-dom of heaven, into the world that Jesus wants for us, and for our neighbors, and for the stranger in our midst.
And in that world, in the realm sprouted by God, called into being with God’s voice, and populated with us, treasure isn’t gold and silver, it is the manifestation, the enfleshment, of God’s love in our lives.
So what does Transfiguration mean for us? I heard a story this week that made me smile, and made me proud to be a human. It is a story of resistance. It is a story of amazing wisdom. It is a story of love. It is a story of seeing things maybe in a different light than you have ever seen them before. It is a story out of Minneapolis. And it goes something like this.
As the people of Minneapolis were struggling to figure out how to respond to the incursion of masked, armed people creating pain and fear and chaos in their city—there was someone, and this someone was a white male, and this someone had an idea. He, and maybe some of his buddies, noticed that certain people were being targeted—because of their skin tone, because of the language they spoke, maybe even because of what they drove. And this someone, maybe for the first time, realized that he, a white male, wasn’t in that target audience.
But he wanted to help. And so, he and his buddies decided to be decoys. To put a wrench into the system. And he and his buddies got flags from Mexico, and Columbia, and other places. And they put those flags on their trucks and drove around places where people had been picked up. It was a sport they called “Ice Fishing.” It was what I think was a response to epiphany—to seeing just a little more clearly what this thing called Love is all about.
May we be as courageous. May we be as creative. May we demonstrate our love for others as well. May it be so, Alleluia, Amen.
