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The Collect
O God, who before the passion of your only begotten Son revealed his glory upon the holy mountain: Grant to us that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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Today’s Gospel account of the Transfiguration of Jesus tells us of a powerful manifestation of the glory of God.
I think it safe to say, however, that on this day many of us are preoccupied by pondering which team will be crowned with glory at the end of the day when a certain football game comes to an end. It will be fun to see how that turns out, but for now, we turn our minds and hearts to this scene on the mountaintop with Jesus.
It happens about eight days after Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do you say that I am,” and Peter, ever quick to speak, said, “You are the Christ of God.” Jesus told him, “You’re right, but don’t tell anyone just now,
because I have a hard job to do. Suffering, rejection, and death await, and if you want to follow me, you must deny yourself and take up your cross daily.” The disciples do not fully grasp yet what the ominous prediction means, but they continue along the way with Jesus, daily taking up that cross of self-denial to follow him and learn the ways of the kingdom of God.
On this day, Jesus feels the need for a time of quiet, a time for prayer, and he asks Peter, James, and John to go with him. They ascend a mountain, some say it is Mt. Tabor, to the east of Nazareth, rising nearly 2,000 feet above the Valley of Jezreel. There is an aura of holiness already there, as the summit frequently glows with the lights of beacons that announce to the Jews of the north the beginning of holy day observances in Jerusalem. Soon the summit will be shining, but it will be the glow of an occurrence of great holiness, happening not in Jerusalem,
but on that very summit, on that mountaintop that is known even now as the Mount of Transfiguration.
This event in the life of Jesus is part of the story told, not only by Luke, but also Matthew and Mark. In their accounts, however, Matthew and Mark explicitly state that Jesus was transfigured. Luke doesn’t use the word, but only describes what happened. “The appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white.” It was a weighty scene of glory that Peter, James, and John stayed awake to see, in spite of being “weighed down with sleep.”
Not only is Jesus transformed into this glorious presence, with him also appear Moses and Elijah, two pivotal figures of the Old Testament. Moses represents the Law, the Torah of Israel, while Elijah is the prophet
who was taken up into the heavens by a chariot of fire, and for whom a table setting is always reserved at the Passover table. They, too, appear in glory, faces shining, clothes dazzling white, as befits faithful servants who have come down from that “great cloud of witnesses” to affirm that Jesus is the one who fulfills the Torah, that he is the one to whom the prophets have pointed.
The dazzling three are not just passing the time. Their conversation is about a very specific topic, “his departure, which he was about to accomplish in Jerusalem.” If we could hear this verse in the original Greek, our ears might perk up when we hear the word translated as ‘departure,’ because it sounds like ‘exodus,’and here is Moses, the leader of the first Exodus, Israel’s journey from slavery in Egypt back to freedom in the Promised Land, talking with Jesus about his exodus, the one that awaits in Jerusalem.
When the moment of dazzling white and shining faces has past, when Moses and Elijah have returned to the “great cloud of witnesses,” and it is just Jesus and his three disciples, Peter, ever quick to speak Peter, says, “Master, it’s good that we are here. Let’s make three dwellings, one for Moses, one for Elijah, and one for you.”
It can be easy to criticize Peter for being thick-headed, and Luke seems to fan those flames when he says of Peter, “he didn’t know what he said.” We might criticize Peter because it seems he wants to build a monument to the transfiguration, maybe because he wants to freeze that moment in time because it’s the nearest he has ever been
to the glory of God’s presence. Or, maybe Peter envisions himself, with the assistance of James and John of course, as the Curator of “The Shrine of the Transfiguration,” a place that will draw pilgrims, and he will be the official keeper of the story, the one who gets to “shush” people who are being too noisy, the one who gets to tell people not to touch the sacred artifacts, or that no flash photography is allowed, and to please “silence your cell phones.” Maybe that’s being a little more critical of Peter than even Luke intended.
What if, maybe, Peter is on to something? “Let us make three dwellings.” The Jewish feast that involves dwellings
is called the Feast of Tabernacles, when the Jews would build little tents and for a week would have their meals in them, as a reminder of the tents their ancestors lived in during the Exodus, their journey to freedom. What if Peter is at least clued in enough to make that connection between what Jesus is about and the Exodus? It’s probably true that Peter still has so much to learn about this man he calls ‘Master,’ but I’m willing to speculate that Peter knows deep down, that following Jesus is following in the way that leads to freedom.
Down the mountain they come, Peter, James, John, and Jesus. Nobody says a word. For Peter, James, and John,
it’s because they heard the voice form the cloud telling them, “This is my Son, my chosen; listen to him,”
and so they keep what happened on the mountain to themselves for now, because it’s time to listen.
Now it’s time for us to come down from the mountain, too, as we continue to follow Jesus along the way, perhaps now more aware of our need to listen to him, certainly more aware that we will now follow him on toward Jerusalem in the upcoming 40 days of Lent, and there we will witness, in the mystical wonder of liturgical time,
his exodus which he is to accomplish in Jerusalem. The exodus that awaits in Jerusalem is, of course, the cross. This is the freedom journey. Only, this journey will not be made by an entire people. It will be made by one man, on behalf of all people. The one who is great in Zion, as the psalmist declares, who is high above all peoples,
will be lifted high upon the cross for all to see. He who radiates a glorious beam on the Mount of Transfiguration
will stretch out his arms to be nailed to a rough-hewn wooden beam. He will be rejected, he will suffer, and he will die. And we will be free – free from being slaves to the hegemony of sin, the tyranny of self, the malevolence of evil, and the oblivion of death.
The exodus that waits for Jesus is a passage through Good Friday and the shadow of death, into the darkness of Sheol, passing through it all into New Life on Easter morning, his Resurrected Body shining with a glory
that will never fade away, glory that is his from eternity, but that he gave up for a time in order to lead us to freedom, so that he might share with us his glory, not just for a fleeting moment, but endlessly, as we are being changed into his glorious likeness.
