It was six days later that they made camp at the foot of Mount Hermon, by one of the springs at the headwaters of the Jordan River. The previous day, they had gone into Mizpah to replenish their supplies, but, for the most part, they had been avoiding the cities and villages, keeping almost entirely to themselves. The disciples, though they discussed it much among themselves, couldn’t think what to make of it. “Has he gone into hiding then?” Judas muttered.
“What else could he be doing so far north?”
They built a fire that night and sat around it in a circle until nothing was left of the fire but glowing embers. “I’m tired,” Peter said, and, as he stretched, his joints popped like the knotted pine they had burned in the fire.
“Going to bed?”
“To sleep like the dead,” Peter said. He wrapped himself in a blanket and lay down with his head pillowed on his arm. The others were still talking when he fell asleep.
The stars were out, glinting in a sky as dark as pitch, when Jesus shook him awake. “Peter,” he whispered. “Peter.”
Peter rolled onto his side and looked up, seeing Jesus only as a shadow already moving away from him. When he had gotten to his feet, he saw that Jesus was not alone, but that Zebedee’s boys, James and John, were with him.
“What is it?” he whispered, sensing the secrecy of the moment. “Where are we going?”
“Up onto the mountain to pray.”
“That mountain?” He pointed. The snow-capped ridge of Mount Hermon was faintly luminescent against the night sky.
“Where better? ‘My soul is cast down within me,’” Jesus said, quoting from a psalm ascribed to the sons of Korah. “‘Therefore I will think of you in the land of Jordan, on the heights of Hermon.’”
“‘Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls,’” James said. “‘As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God.’”
Jesus and Peter looked at him.
“Mother’s favorite,” John said.
In the darkness, Jesus chuckled. “It seems I’ve chosen the right companions for this adventure,” he said.
They hiked long into the night, winding up the southern slope of Hermon. The mountain marked the northern-most point of Joshua’s conquests. It was a natural boundary. As Peter walked, leaning into the incline, he wondered why he had been chosen for the adventure, as Jesus had called it. His arms and his legs were heavy with fatigue, and he had no poetic associations with Mount Hermon to inspire him. To him, it was a mountain, a steep one, and increasingly cold. At first leaves crackled under his feet, then the trees thinned and disappeared, removing the last protection from a biting wind. The crickets and locusts had long since fallen silent. Still they climbed on.
Strangely, as the cold increased and the climb became more difficult, Peter’s lethargy increased as well. It was almost with surprise that he realized they had stopped, that James and John stood beside him on the blank face of the mountain, and that Jesus had gone on ahead of them, mounting a outcropping of barren stone. Jesus was no more than a shadow against the mountain above and beyond him.
“Father,” he said, his arms outstretched at his sides with his palms facing upward. He continued, but Peter lost the sense of what he was saying, realizing only that he was speaking ancient Hebrew rather than Aramaic. As Jesus spoke he became less shadowy and more distinct, almost as if illuminated from within. He was speaking in liquid syllables, the words themselves incomprehensible, and his clothes and his face seemed to shine with a white light.
Peter blinked. He felt numbed, stupid with the need for sleep. He wondered in passing whether James and John were seeing what he was seeing, but he stood transfixed, unable to shift the focus of his gaze.
Light flashed, obscuring Jesus in what might have been a ball of lightning, and Peter fell to the ground, landing on a numb shoulder, a shoulder that might have belonged to someone else for all the feeling he had in it. The light pulsed once, and Peter held up a hand to shield his face.
There were three men on the side of the mountain rather than one. For a moment Peter thought James and John had climbed up to join Jesus, but he felt James’ hand on his arm and felt John crowding close. There were three men above them, one recognizably Jesus, but with his face and garments whiter than the snow that clung in patches to the rock around him. The other two were similarly glorified, one with a full head of white hair and a long, curly beard lying full on his chest, the other with shorter, rough-cut hair and a cloak made from camel-skin.
“Elijah,” John breathed beside him.
Jesus and the men with him were conversing in Hebrew, and Peter could understand no more than the isolated word or phrase. He felt himself on his feet, no more in control of his actions than if in a dream. He himself recognized the third man — or recognized rather the stone-tablets that blazed in the crook of his arm with the radiance of the sun. A golden cloud had descended on the mountain top, and the mist was filled with a flickering incandescence supernaturally reminiscent of fireflies.
“Master,” he heard himself saying, his voice shaking with fright. “Master, it is good that we are here.” His words seemed to him nonsensical, coming out of his mouth without conscious thought. “We can build a shelter for you, a shelter for each of you. We can make camp here tonight and start down the mountain again tomorrow. We —” His words cut off as Jesus looked at him, the gaze so piercing and direct that Peter found himself held by it, unable to breathe. The fog thickened, blinding Peter with the dancing lights and obscuring Jesus.
Suddenly the fog was gone. Stars shone again in the night sky. Jesus, alone, was coming toward them, once more little more than a shadow in the night. The three disciples regarded him in dumb wonder.
Jesus reached out a hand to Peter, another to John. He shifted a hand to James. “My friends,” he said. “My good friends.”
“What did we just see?” John said. “Was that . . .” He trailed off.
“Was that Moses and Elijah?” James said.
“You have seen a great thing,” Jesus said.
Peter said, “Yes, but what have we seen, exactly?”
“Me. Me as I really am. You must not tell anyone, though, not even the rest of my disciples, until the son of man has risen from the dead.”
“I thought you were the son of man,” Peter said.
John said. “You summoned them, Moses and Elijah? And they came?”
Jesus moved his head toward the path and began leading them along the path that twisted down the mountain. “They came,” he said.
“How?”
“Why?” Peter said.
“They brought needed counsel,” Jesus said.
Peter said, “Is that what the teachers of the law were referring to, when they say Elijah must come first?”
“No. Elijah has come, and men rejected him, and they did to him as they wished.”
“The Baptizer.”
“John. In just the same way, men will reject me.”
“No,” Peter said.
“Yes. Whoever would save his life must lose it. Whoever gives up his life —”
“Isaiah said God’s servant would be raised and lifted up and highly exalted.”
“Yes. The day is coming when you will remember that phrase and will actually understand it.”
“Why Moses and Elijah?” John said again. “Because they symbolize the law and the prophets?”
Jesus laughed out loud. “Partly,” he said. “Both are great men, especially as they are now and coming from the Father. Each is a source of valuable counsel — but just as important, each was available.”
“What do you mean, sir?” said James, on the other side of him. “You mean both are living?”
Jesus shook his head. “All those with God are alive. Not all can be summoned back into this world.”
“And Moses and Elijah?”
“Special cases. Elijah, you will remember, was taken up into heaven in a chariot of fire. Like Enoch, he walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him away.”
“He didn’t die in the body.”
“That’s right. He didn’t die in the body.”
“And Moses?” John said. “What of Moses?”
“What does the Torah say of his fate?”
James said, “‘The Lord buried him in Moab, but to this day none has been able to find his grave.’”
“Ah,” Peter said.
They looked at him.
“Almost all of scripture takes on new meanings when you’re around,” Peter said to Jesus.
When a demon enters a person’s body, it seems to do so through the central nervous system. In control of that, the demon can control the person’s movements, what he says, what he sees and hears — even, perhaps, the images in his mind. It is precisely because the nervous system is the point of attack that the symptoms of demonic possession sometimes parallel those of various nervous diseases.