Matthew and the Mountains

Aerial view of Masada in the Judean Desert with the Dead Sea in the background. Andrew Shiva / Wikipedia / CC BY-SA 4.0

​This morning, our pastor mentioned that just as Jesus’ ministry in Matthew’s gospel begins with teaching on a mountainside, so does his last week of ministry end. The first teaching we know as the Sermon on the Mount—“Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him” (Matthew 5:1)  and the last is known as The Olivet Discourse—“As  he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” (Matthew 24:3)
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Hmmm, I thought, I wonder if there’s something in the middle, say, around chapter 15. So I flipped the thin pages of the pew Bible but my eye fell on chapter 17 instead of 15, and there it was, the third mountain, the Mount of Transfiguration.

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