The Other Nine

Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray [Luke 9:28].

In all three annual cycles of the Revised Common Lectionary, the Gospel reading for the last Sunday before Ash Wednesday is the Transfiguration story. This year, Year C, gives us Luke’s version [Luke 9:28-36, (37-43a). More or less consistent with the versions found in Mark and Matthew, Peter, John, and James witness Jesus transformed in glory. They see Him speaking with Moses and Elijah and, peculiar to Luke’s version, they hear the very voice of God affirming Jesus as beloved Son. It’s a moment that has captured the imagination of believers across centuries. The scene is immortalized in art, liturgy, and the church calendar.

But what of the other nine?

While Peter, James, and John climbed with Jesus that day, nine disciples remained below—Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James (son of Alphaeus), Simon the Zealot, Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot. Scripture doesn’t record how they spent those hours, doesn’t tell us their thoughts when their companions returned with astonished faces and stumbling words.

These nine had also left their nets, their tax tables, their former lives to follow Jesus. They too would walk the road to Jerusalem, face the cross, encounter the risen Christ, and become witnesses to the ends of the earth. And like many of us, they would do so without having witnessed the particular confirmation of Jesus’ glory on the mountain.

Their continuing journey with Jesus—mountain-top confirmation or not—mirrors a pattern we see throughout the story of faith. Consider Timothy, that early church leader whose faith first lived in his grandmother, Lois, and his mother, Eunice [2 Timothy 1:5]. No Damascus Road experience for Timothy, no burning bush, no blinding light—just the steady witness of faithful women who passed down what they had received. This passing of faith from generation to generation, this quiet but persistent testimony, has always been at the heart of God’s work in the world.

My paternal grandmother began working in a textile mill in 1896, her formal education cut short by the need—in her poor family—for everyone to pull their weight, even an eight-year-old. While she struggled in her reading throughout her long life, the Psalter lived in her heart—memorized verses that she shared freely, a testimony to faith’s power to transcend the written page. My other grandmother— Elizabeth Crawford Grier, “Miss Lib” to generations of Sunday School students—taught the scriptures week after week for 59 years, creating space for others to encounter God in both ordinary and extraordinary moments.

These two women, so different in their circumstances and expressions of faith, both showed how the steady flame of belief can illuminate lives without dramatic spiritual experiences. Their faithful witness found continued expression in the next generation. Our father, at the time of his ordination, became the youngest elder in Olney Presbyterian’s history. He lived his faith with quiet, but steady conviction. My mother, though wrestling deeply with accepting Grace, held to her faith with determination. Together they made the church’s rhythms part of our family life—Sunday morning worship, evening prayer services, Wednesday night gatherings—creating patterns of faithfulness that would shape our understanding of what it meant to follow Christ.

What I’m trying to say here is that we all drink from wells that we didn’t dig. The nine disciples drew from the witness of their three companions who saw the Transfiguration glory. But they too were digging wells of their own—wells of faithful presence, of continuing trust, of steady service that would nourish future believers. When they faced the demon-possessed boy at the mountain’s foot [Luke 9: 37-43], struggling with their own limitations and perhaps questioning their ability to serve, they were learning lessons that would sustain countless believers who would face similar moments of challenge and doubt. They might not have seen the transfigured Christ on the mountain, but their insistent faith despite that absence has refreshed countless believers who recognize their own journey in these unnamed hours.

Not all of us experience Transfiguration moments. Only three of the original twelve had that privilege. Yet the nine who remained below that day weren’t merely waiting for their companions to return—they were living out their own calling, participating in their own way in God’s unfolding story. Their experience, perhaps more than the dazzling vision on the mountain, speaks to the heart of discipleship.

This pattern echoes through generations of faithful witnesses. Jane and I have walked this path for 53 wedded years, our faith shaped not by dramatic moments but by steady communion, regular worship, and the witness of those who walked before us. Like most believers through time, we’ve found God’s presence more often in the valley than on the mountain—in weekly gatherings, in quiet prayers, in the steady rhythm of faith lived out day by day.

In our journey of faith—yours and mine—we rarely get to choose between mountain and valley experiences. The rhythm of faith encompasses both, and both are authentic encounters with the living God. Some, like John Wesley, who experienced his heart “strangely warmed” at Aldersgate Street in London on May 24, 1738, or countless other believers who can name the exact moment of their own transformation, experience God’s presence in dramatic revelation. Others, like the nine who continued their faithful service below the mountain, encounter God in the steady rhythm of discipleship. Neither path is superior; both are gifts of grace working in different ways to draw us closer to God.

Even Jesus, who shone with divine glory on the mountain, spent most of his ministry in the valleys—teaching, healing, sharing meals, walking dusty roads with his followers. The nine disciples who didn’t witness the Transfiguration would later see the risen Christ. Peter, who wanted to build dwellings on the mountain, would soon enough find himself in the valley of denial before experiencing his own restoration.

This interweaving of ordinary and extraordinary moments shapes the church’s journey through time. When my grandmother, Lilly Robinson, who repeated the Psalms from memory in her mill village home, was that not its own kind of transfiguration? When Miss Lib opened the scriptures week after week for fifty-nine years, were there not moments when glory shone through her steady teaching? The nine disciples remind us that faithfulness itself—showing up, staying present, continuing to serve—can transform both us and those around us.

The nine who remained below that day could not have known that their experience would speak so clearly to believers across centuries. They simply remained faithful to their calling, like my grandmother voicing her Psalms in the midst of daily labor, like Miss Lib opening scripture’s truth week after week, like countless believers who have kept faith without dramatic revelations.

We find ourselves mostly in their company, walking paths illuminated not by sudden glory but by steady faithfulness. Yet this too is a kind of Transfiguration—the slow transformation that happens through patient dedication, through continuing to serve even when the path seems ordinary. The light that shone on Jesus’ face atop the mountain still filters into our valleys, appearing in unexpected moments, in quiet acts of faith, in the steady witness of those who keep walking.

The nine disciples drank from wells they did not dig. Through their faithful presence, they dug wells from which we drink today.