I remember one morning years ago, when my daughters were still in elementary school. They had just run out into the backyard together, laughing and chasing each other without a care in the world. I stood at the window watching them, and for a moment I was overwhelmed with gratitude. We were immigrants. English was not our first language. I was raising these girls as a single mother in a country that was still unfamiliar to us in so many ways. And yet there they were, simply happy. I remember thinking that if I could stay at that window and hold that moment forever, I would ask for nothing more.

I think Peter knew that feeling on the mountaintop.

When Jesus was transfigured before him, when his face shone like the sun and his clothes becoming dazzling white, when Moses and Elijah suddenly appeared beside him and the voice of God spoke from within a cloud saying, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him,” Peter did what many of us would do. He reached out to hold the moment. “Lord, it is good for us to be here,” he said. “Let me build three tents so we can stay.”

Peter was not wrong to feel what he felt. The moment was holy and radiant. Who could blame him for wanting it to last?

We all know mountaintop moments in life: The job offer that changed everything, the moment of falling in love, holding a newborn child for the first time, hearing the doctor say the cancer is gone, watching a refugee family we prayed for finally arrive safely in Canada. In moments like these, life seems to declare itself good. Heaven and earth feel close, and we wish time would stop.

But it never does. Time moves on, life turns, and we are always called back down into the valley.

This is precisely what the Transfiguration teaches us. Throughout the season of Epiphany, we have been following Jesus on a journey of revelation. We began with the Magi at the manger. We stood by the Jordan River where God first named Jesus Beloved. Now we stand on the mountain, where that same voice speaks again.

Matthew tells this story in conversation with the story of Moses in Exodus. Moses went up the mountain to encounter God. His face shone, and God spoke from the cloud. Now Jesus ascends the mountain, and Moses and Elijah appear beside him. Both Moses and Elijah faced rejection from the very people they were sent to serve, and both were sustained by God alone. Their presence points to where Jesus is headed, toward Jerusalem, toward suffering and death, and toward resurrection.

The glory on the mountaintop is not the destination. It is preparation.

And the descent is hard.

When Jesus comes down from the mountain, he is met at once by a desperate father whose son is suffering terribly. The boy is seized by forces beyond his control, thrown into fire and water, slowly wasting away while his father watches helplessly. Jesus heals the boy and returns him to his father.

That movement matters. From glory to suffering. From revelation to compassion. From the mountain straight into the pain of the valley, and then into healing.

We know this valley well. And last week, we have seen it again. In Tumbler Ridge, a close knit community in our province, young lives were lost in a tragic act of violence. Families are grieving children who will not come home from school. First responders carry what they witnessed. A whole town stands in shock. This is the valley. This is what it looks like when joy is shattered and ordinary life is interrupted by sorrow.

When something like this happens, we may feel small. What can we possibly do from here? Life in that community will never be the same. We cannot undo what has been done. We cannot take away their grief or mend every shattered heart.

But Jesus does not ask us to control the valley. He asks us to enter it.

So we do what we can. We send a condolence card as a community, not because paper and ink can heal, but because even across distance, our presence and care matter. We offer our prayers, not because words can erase pain, but because love must be spoken. In these small acts, we are saying, “You are not alone.”

This is what discipleship looks like in the valley: not grand gestures or dramatic rescues, but faithful, compassionate presence.

Like Peter, we long to remain where God feels close and everything shines. But Jesus walks with us down the mountain, into place where hearts are heavy and healing is needed.

The voice from the cloud says, “Listen to him.” And what Jesus shows us with his life is this: the kingdom of God takes shape wherever compassion meets suffering. It takes shape when we stand with the grieving, when we speak mercy into violence, and when we choose solidarity over indifference.
We do not go down the mountain alone, and we do not go down unchanged.

The Transfiguration is not only something that happened to Jesus long ago. It is also something God is doing in us as we follow him. The same voice that named Jesus Beloved at the Jordan and on the mountain speaks over us, too. We are held by that voice even in the valley, and we are sent not by our own strength, but as people being transformed by a transforming God.

As we enter Lent this week, we follow Jesus down the mountain and toward Jerusalem. The mountaintop moments we have been given are not trophies to preserve. They are gifts meant to strengthen us for the journey downward, into the valley where healing begins, often in small and quiet ways.

We come down from the mountain and carry the light with us. We carry it in our prayers, in our condolence card we send, and in the compassion we show. For the God who transfigured Jesus on that mountain is still at work transfiguring us, even here and even now.

Thank be to God. Amen.