"Different Mountains" | The Rev. Heidi Thorsen | February 15, 2026

Sermon Preached: Sunday, February 15, 2026 at Trinity on the Green

Last Sunday after the Epiphany (Year A): Exodus 24:12-18 | 2 Peter 1:16-21 | Matthew 17:1-9

May I speak in the name of God, who is to us Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

On this last Sunday after the Epiphany, we read the story of the Transfiguration. Jesus leads a small group of the disciples up a mountain, by themselves. There at the top of the mountain Jesus is revealed as something more than human– God in human flesh– and his face shines like the sun.

When I think of that mountaintop in scripture, my mind immediately connects with all those literal mountains that we see in the natural world around us: the craggy peaks of Mount Whitney in California, the smoky summit of Mount Mitchell in North Carolina, and our closest famous peak, Mount Washington in New Hampshire– a mountain that I know primarily through those white bumper stickers with red and blue words on them: “This Car Climbed Mt. Washington.”

But beyond those literal mountains, my next closest association with mountains is much more niche, and it goes back to my days of study in seminary. When I first went to seminary, my focus was not preparation for ministry but rather studying different religions, a passion that I had found in college when studying around people of many different faiths. As a person trying to follow the way of Jesus Christ, I found myself curious about the ways that God is present in these other traditions.

In the field of interreligious studies, there is a popular metaphor that helps people conceptualize different understandings of how God is at work in other religions– it is the metaphor of the mountain. If we think of God as the pinnacle of the mountain, the question is– how do you get there? Some people believe that there is only one pathway to the mountaintop: one pathway to God; one pathway to salvation. In the theology of religious diversity, we call this exclusivism. On the other hand, some people believe that there are many different paths to the top of that mountain– for example, a Christian path, a Muslim path, a Buddhist path, and so on. In this approach, called pluralism, all religions are meaningful pathways to the top of that mountain. There is a third view that lands somewhere in between these two. In this view, there is one pathway that is the most direct path to the top of the mountain– Christians would say this is the way of Jesus Christ. Other religions are on longer, more meandering paths, and they will ultimately get to the top. But they will get there ultimately through the work of the Holy Spirit, operating in and through these other traditions. This final view is called inclusivism.

I have preached about these three models before– in part because I think they are helpful ways of thinking about this religiously diverse world that we live in. These are topics that we can argue about in a classroom, sure. But they are also topics that we can meditate on, and pray with, as we each seek in our own way to be deeply connected with God.

But there is, actually, a fourth category that I would like to explain to you today– possibly at the expense of being too academic, but bear with me here. Some theologians go beyond exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism to introduce a third category: particularities. If you’re getting lost in all the terminology, let me simplify things in this way: The first three categories assume that there is always, only one mountain that lies beneath the foundation of our world religions. But the fourth category, particularities, asks this question: what if there are different mountains that each religion is climbing? What if the Christian view of salvation is categorically different from the Buddhist goal of enlightenment– let alone the subtle differences in the understanding of God in the different Abrahamic faiths? In this fourth view, the divine is not a single mountaintop– instead the divine is present in an entire mountain range of possible summits, each of them meaningful and significant and good.

Why am I talking about theologies of religious diversity this morning, you might ask? Let’s bring it back to our Gospel passage for today, and that particular mountaintop where Jesus revealed himself in glory to Peter, James, and John. The transfiguration is a touchstone in our Christian faith. We read this text every year on the last Sunday before the beginning of Lent. The reason this scripture is so important is that we human beings need reminders of those times when we have seen God clearly, in our own lives. These moments of clarity, these moments of closeness to God are nourishment for the journey; they are the fuel that keeps us going. The mountaintop is our lighthouse, when the world is churning like a storm. The mountaintop is our north star, when we feel personally lost in wilderness. The mountaintop is water in the well; water that we can dip into whenever we need to refresh our faith. The mountaintop is the composite of all those moments in your life when you have felt the presence of God in undeniable ways; all those moments when you have understood God in a clearer, deeper way.

My mountaintop is not the same as your mountaintop. The touchstones of faith that you hold onto will, inevitably, be different from the ones that I carry, and the ones of the person sitting next to you today– but they are all holy, nevertheless. They are mountaintops that point towards a still higher peak– that kingdom where God’s presence reigns, unfiltered by our partial human perspectives. 

But what if– what if some of us are climbing different mountains? In this case, I am not thinking of other religious traditions. I am thinking of other Christians, other people in the world who profess the faith of Jesus Christ. Most days, I am not troubled by the diversity of other religions– a diversity that I see as holy, mysterious, and good. But I am deeply troubled by the diversity of belief that I see within our own faith. I see people claiming to be Christian, and then claiming that God loves guns more than people, a position that is foreign to the peace-preaching Jesus of the Gospel. I see people claiming to be Christian, and then claiming that you don’t actually have to love your neighbor as yourself, if your neighbor speaks a different language– if your neighbor is just a notch too different from you. 

What mountaintop are these Christians climbing? 

The point of the mountaintop is that it is a place where we see God clearly. And yet I don’t recognize the teachings of Jesus in these sayings. It’s as if we are following a different Jesus. It’s as if we are climbing a different mountain.

What mountain are you climbing, today? On a certain level we can’t control what other people do, or think– what mountains they are climbing. But we can check in with ourselves. We can pause, take stock of our surroundings, and make sure that we are on the path that Jesus himself charted in the Gospel. We can look to the heart of our faith, the teachings of Jesus. Let those teachings be your map; let those teachings be your guide. What mountain are you climbing? How about the mountain of wisdom that Jesus teaches in his Sermon on the Mount, elsewhere in the gospel of Matthew. How about the mountain of self-emptying love, where Jesus was crucified for the salvation of all.

The mountaintop isn’t just about that ecstatic feeling of being close to God. The mountaintop is also a revelation. Our mountaintop moments contain information about who God is, and who God is calling us to be. Think about those mountaintop moments in your life– what is it that made those moments possible? Was it closeness to nature, the beauty of creation? Was it the harmony of many voices singing as one? Was it the surprise and wonder of seeing the face of God in someone completely different from you? Was it the love of a friend, a family member, a pet?

When we take those mountaintop moments, altogether, I think we will discover that the places where we encounter God are places of peace, places of unity, places of diversity, places of justice, places of mercy, places of unconditional love. These are mirrors of the kingdom that Jesus preached. These are the trailmarkers showing us that we are going in the right direction. Keep going! Keep climbing that mountain. 

Each one of us can course-correct everyday, as we navigate the twists and turns of our lives, and the world. Each one of us has so much potential to draw closer and closer to God. Some people may be climbing a different mountain– a mountain of personal gain, or ego, or cultural supremacy, or protective falsehoods. But I pray that we will all find our way back to the mountain of truth, to the mountain where Jesus revealed himself to the disciples as the face of God, and it was good. Amen.