A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to visit civil rights sites. Our first stop was in Memphis, at the museum built around the Lorraine motel, where Dr. King was shot while standing on the balcony outside his room. Glimpsing through the glass into room 306, which he occupied in his last hours, visitors enter a surreal scene that suggests he has just left and will be right back… the remains of a meal are on a tray, cups of coffee sit full in saucers, the bed covers are casually turned down… Dr. King was in Memphis to support striking sanitation workers. His last speech, given the night before he died, was titled, “I’ve been to the mountain top.”
As the speech opens, he declares: “Something is happening in Memphis; something is happening in our world.” And then he draws the listener into a vivid thought experiment, inviting us to imagine all the different times and places in which we might have lived. And he concludes that if God asked him when in history he wanted to be alive, he would choose his own present moment. He muses: “Now that’s a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around. That’s a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a way that [people], in some strange way, are responding. Something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up.” He goes on to talk about the campaign in Memphis—their moral witness, their strategy of economic non-cooperation, their theory of change.
The conclusion of the speech suggests that he felt the threats closing in, that he knew his violent death was imminent. “Well,” he says, “I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And [God’s] allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.” 1
These words of Dr. King have been ringing in my ears this week as I consider Jesus’ own mountaintop moment. Just before this scene, Jesus told his followers “that he must go to Jerusalem, undergo great suffering…and be killed.” He also warned them they would be called upon to “deny themselves and take up their cross and follow.” Indeed, the audience to which Matthew wrote, approximately 80 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, was a community facing sustained persecution at the hands of their own Jewish kin as well as the Roman authorities. Scholars speculate that the story of the transfiguration may have originally been composed as a resurrection scene, and that the Gospel writers reworked it and placed it here, right before Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem.
This moment foreshadows what is coming, not only in Jesus’ own rising, but also in the continued arising of the community of followers he brought into being. This mountaintop scene invites us to take the long view. Jesus will soon be humiliated, beaten and executed. This image of him shining and glorified, basking in the company of his spiritual ancestors, and fully revealed as God’s representative filled with God’s power to change the world is meant to offer reassurance, hope, and perspective to all of us in the trenches of a life and death struggle.
My friends, “something is happening in Minnesota; something is happening in our world.” Our community has been transfigured. This occupation has tested us, revealing who we can be and what is possible when we come together. We are forever and fundamentally changed. We have undergone a metamorphosis. Many folks are searching for words and concepts to describe what has happened in Minnesota. Adam Serwer of the Atlantic famously coined the new term “neighborism”, to describe our uprising of love, courage and community. He defines “neighborism” as “a commitment to protecting the people around you, no matter who they are or where they came from.” 2 A piece by my neighbor and friend, Professor Isak Tranvik, argues that nonviolence is what distinguishes our witness in Minnesota. “Nonviolence” he writes, “interrupts the terror unleashed by the armed, masked men while also revealing that we can live together differently, here and now. Nonviolence is less a protest than an opening up of another world and an unleashing of a different kind of power. […] While they yank people from their cars with their guns drawn, [people of faith] kneel in prayer as they are being detained; while they follow volunteers leaving food shelves, singers hold hands as they shuffle down frozen sidewalks; while they shoot constitutional observers in the back, old ladies [and people of various demographics!] stand—sometimes for hours—in Target checkout lines waiting to return their single container of salt.” 3
In these last months, we too, have gone up to the mountain. We too have looked over and seen a glimpse of the promised land—the land in which our love keeps every person and family whole, and our community is expansive and inclusive, and everyone has a place to belong and a gift to contribute, and we share what we have and all have enough. We have seen the promised land, but we are not there yet and we will not get there anytime soon. Nearly 3000 of our neighbors have been kidnapped. We need to bring them home. We need to provide economic support to those families and small businesses who have lost so much, and we need to make sure that the agents who killed our neighbors are held accountable. We must abolish ICE, and all forms of state terrorism. We must liberate ourselves from the political, economic and social conditions that are allowing authoritarianism to fester. And we must move from an extractive economy to a regenerative one.
The presence of Moses and Elijah on the mountain with Jesus and his disciples reminds us that every transfiguration emerges in continuity with the past. We work together with our ancestors who struggled and labored, suffered and died to lay the groundwork for us to shine today. I want to close with some words that Richard Lanford shared with us yesterday in our signal group. Richard is a retired UCC pastor and member of First Church. He wrote this: “Referring to those faithful who came before Jesus, many of whom sacrificed greatly, Hebrews 11 says, ‘Yet all these though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect’.”
Richard goes on to ask, “What if some of us do not make it to the victory of democracy which awaits over a horizon? What if the long haul becomes a reality? What if, when the forces of love, justice, light, health and all that good stuff push Project 2025 into the dustbin of history, some of us are gone, ‘not having received what was promised?’ Well, we keep on, because are not the whole story.[…] We are not the entire story, but we are part of it now, and it depends on us. We are not alone, not ever. He concludes: “…we are a resurrection people. As the Spirit who raised Jesus is within us and among us, so resurrection is within us and among us, animating us, shining through what we do, what we refuse to do, and how we show up. Again and again.” My friends, let us never forget this mountaintop. Let us always remember this glimpse of the promised land. And let us shine on! Amen.
1 Martin Luther King, Jr.: I’ve Been to the Mountaintop
2 Minnesota Proved MAGA Wrong
3 More than “Peaceful Protests”: The Power of Nonviolence in Minnesota