Luke 9:28-36 – Transfiguration
Jesus is unequalled and the one to lead us out from death
Years ago, when I was doing a lot of tramping, I began to get interested in landscape photography. At first, it was just a record of the amazing places I’d enjoyed walking in. But as I started to learn more about the craft of ‘painting with light’ I came to see how light completely transformed a scene.
Taking a photo of a mountain on a grey overcast day was technically easier. There were no shadows and highlights to keep under control. No bits too bright or too dark.
But many of my photos taken this way were disappointing. They somehow didn’t capture the grandeur of the scene as I was experiencing it.
But taking photos just at sunrise and sunset, the landscape was bathed in a glorious golden glow. The low angle of the Sun brings the drama and features of the landscape, capturing the depth of the scene, and adding mystery, beauty and intrigue.
The way the light played brought out the true details and beauty of the landscape, transforming the way you saw and experienced it.
In our reading today, the light of Christ also changes the way the disciples see the world. We come to see that Jesus is unequalled and the one to lead us out of death and into life with God.
Jesus’ Glory is God’s Glory
In verses before our reading, Peter has confessed Jesus as the Messiah, and Jesus had told his disciples “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.”.
Now, he has gone up a mountain to pray, taking only Peter, James, and John with him. It seems like it is late in the day, or very early, as the disciples struggle to keep their eyes open.
I wonder how they were in that moment. As they waved farewell to the other disciples at the bottom, maybe they felt chuffed or important that Jesus asked just them to accompany him on the upward journey to the top to his intimate place of prayer.
Or maybe they wondered to themselves why Jesus persisted in praying at times when really, everyone else was catching some well-deserved sleep. Keep it short Jesus, my pillow is calling.
But as they watch Jesus praying, only half attentive in the gloomy light, something super strange begins to happen.
They are not sure they believe what they are seeing. Are they actually asleep and dreaming or is Jesus changing?
They must be awake, it can’t be a dream, the aura of light around him was too dazzling, too bright. Like when someone turns on your bedroom light in the morning and it hurts, even through your eyelids. You know you’re awake even if you don’t want to be.
Then you become aware that Jesus is not alone, but he’s talking with two people. Something about them seems strange, like they are from another time and space. Yet, also familiar. You feel like without meeting them you know them, or at least know who they are.
Moses and Elijah, two of the great prophets of Israel who led Israel, were not unfamiliar with the divine presence. Elijah, who scripture said was taken into God’s presence, swept up in a chariot of fire. Elijah, who was said to be herald of the end, when God’s kingdom is established once and for all.
Moses, who was the only one called up the mountain into the cloud of God’s presence, Moses, to whom God’s presence passed by and to whom was revealed God’s name and divine character. Moses, who led God’s people in their Exodus out of slavery in Egypt.
Moses, whose face, after communing so intimately with God, would reflect the glory of his presence. A reflection and radiance that left the people in no doubt of the awesome presence of God.
But as intimate as Moses’ relationship was with God. The glory radiating from his face was only a reflection, a residual effect of basking in the light of God’s presence. Maybe, we could say crudely, like a divine suntan.
But the Gospel author would want us to see that Jesus isn’t reflecting the Glory of God, but that this transfiguration is a window, a pulling back of the curtain, allowing the disciples to glimpse something of the mystery of who Jesus is.
A glimpse of this Son of God, this chosen one. That does not bring the law, but a new order, a new way of being in the world, of relating to God, to others.
Jesus is not just another Prophet, not even another prophet as great as Moses. Not another great person of history.
The glory that shines is the Glory of God that somehow Christ emptied himself of and laid aside, but is part of his divine nature.
The disciples have glimpsed the God of Moses and Elijah, the God of Israel’s ancestors. Their God. Our God.
The same God who in Jesus meets with us in our armchair, or on our morning commute. When we see Jesus we see God.
Linger or Follow Down and out
Our reading also has other allusions to who Jesus really is from Israel’s history.
Moses and Elijah are talking with him about, as many translations term it, his departure, which he was about to fulfil in Jerusalem. Which we may just think means his death, which Jesus has just predicted, or if we’re looking ahead further, we may think of his ascension. But our Bibles tend to have a footnote here indicating that they were speaking of “his Exodus”.
A word that carries so much more freight for us. Whatever was going to happen, in Jerusalem was going to be Christ’s own exodus.
After their deliverance from the armies of the Pharaoh, the Israelites’ journey with God in the Sinai wilderness. Relying on divine provision and leading.
Later generations recalled this formative event by celebrating the Feast of Tabernacles or Tents or the Festival of Booths as it’s sometimes also called, where the went camping in tents for a week, as a way of them inhabiting that cultural moment and participating in it, keeping it alive, and in doing so anticipating God’s ultimate deliverance.
Peter sensing the significance of the occasion, suggests three shelters, and three tents. Let’s preserve this moment. Let’s linger here, Jesus, this is special, let’s keep it going. Encore. Jesus. Encore.
I’ve not been to many big concerts. But there was this one time Teresa and I went to see Fleetwood Mac play at Dunedin’s stadium. There’s something about music, especially your favourite music, that can take you to another place can’t it? When you’re listening, really listening, it’s like time evaporates, you forget your surroundings, and the music carries you away somewhere else, maybe somewhere inward. When we experience that and the music fades, the radiant stage lights begin to dim, you may find you have this hope that it would keep going, that you can linger in the beauty of the music a while longer. You may even find yourself standing on your feet shouting ‘encore’,
But this hilltop experience, this transfiguration, this spiritual revelation is not the event to linger in. The exodus. The cause for celebration is still coming.
I said before that Moses led God’s people on the exodus from Egypt, which is true. But more true is that God led the people out and through the chaotic waters of the sea. The Presence of the Lord went before them.
The verses after our reading, lead us immediately down the mountain and back out into the messy world. It’s another hill that will be significant for Christ’s exodus. One outside Jerusalem.
Now the presence of the Lord is here again in the person of Jesus. In his life, death, resurrection, and ascension, Christ is leading God’s people out of an older and darker captivity. The captivity of our rebellion and shame, and of death.
It’s easy for us to want to linger in sacred spaces, sacred moments. For us to recall times of life and God’s provision. These are important things that inspire and sustain our faith. But to linger there, to not move on, is to forget we are following Jesus in his exodus. Christ is leading us on in our transformation, our transfiguration, our changing, our becoming more like Jesus, like the character of God’s heart.
Listen to Jesus
As Peter is speaking, this cloud of God’s presence, like the cloud that brooded over on Mount Sinai, which filled the Tabernacle and the Temple. The cloud that only Moses entered into, now descends on them and envelopes them.
Perhaps in the cloud, we see God’s answer to Peter’s suggestion. No tents are needed. No need to linger here for a moment. God has wrapped the disciples in the divine glory and presence, in the cloud and in Jesus, with whom God’s presence is associated. Being with Jesus gives them full access to God’s presence, communing freely.
The gospel writer notes the cloud because they also want to zero us in on the gravity of what comes next, they don’t want to leave us in any doubt about who is about to speak.
“This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”
“listen to him!”
The heavenly endorsement says to listen to Jesus. In Jesus, you hear my voice, my heart, my wisdom, says God. Sit at Jesus’ feet so you can learn the way to me.
As I read this story, I’ve been trying to figure out the “why” of it. Why was Jesus transfigured? Why did Moses and Elijah show up for a chat?
Why did Jesus take the disciples?
For who benefit was Jesus transfigured?
I think there are multiple answers to that question. But I think one reason has to be that in the transfiguration, Jesus is meeting the disciples in their confusion and misunderstanding of who he is, revealing something more of himself, to sustain them in the time that is coming. The peril of the days ahead in Jerusalem, his death. And ultimately his resurrection.
The disciples’ silence suggests the transfiguration was an event to reflect on, rather than highly publicise.
I wonder how the image of the transfigured Jesus played in Peter, James, and John’s minds in the midst of the enthusiastic waving of palm branches on their arrival in Jerusalem.
How did their memory of the transfiguration sit with them in the garden of Gethsemane as Jesus weighed down with grief prayed in anguish?
What did John make of the juxtaposition of Jesus’ transfigured radiance as he stood at the foot of the cross, holding Jesus’ mother, looking on Jesus now transfigured into a tortured and bloodied figure.
Or as they stood in the yawning gloom of the empty tomb. Struggling to make sense of it all. Was the dazzling image of the transfigured Jesus burning in their hearts, stirring hope and faith?
While we, like the rest of the twelve who were not there on that mountaintop, have not seen the radiance of Jesus’ glory. But these last few months we’ve been in the church season of Epiphany and we’ve had the opportunity, to reflect on who Jesus is, revealed in how he saw himself and his ministry, the hallmarks of God’s levelling reign and rule he was announcing that gives us a new identity and vocation.
This week we begin our journey into the bright sad season of Lent, a space that acknowledges the gravity of what it means for the God of the Cosmos to take on our suffering, pain and brokenness.
Transfiguration Sunday is a doorway we go through, forward into the realities of a world that is still not as it should be, with the radiant image of who Jesus really is etched into our hearts and minds.
God’s words to the disciples from the cloud are also words to us now. Jesus is my chosen, Listen to him. Listen to him.
Meditate on who Jesus is, stay close to Jesus, His glory will light the path to life, the path of our exodus from our shame, our pain, from the shackles of death, to our transfiguration, if you will, from marred and fractured images of the divine, to restored, renewed images of the God of perfect love.
The Christian faith is not about mountaintops, about religious experiences. It’s about transformation. Renewal. Change. Becoming like Christ
To become like Jesus we need to stay close to Jesus.
John Mark Comer, author of the book Practicing the Way, writes that Transformation is possible if we are willing to arrange our lives around the practices, rhythms, and truths that Jesus himself did, which will open our lives to God’s power to change.
Last week Josh encouraged us to start thinking about what Spiritual practices or practices we may consider bolstering or adopting anew in this Lenten season.
Maybe it is as simple as pausing to be still before God wherever you find yourself.
It could be that the tradition of giving something up for Lent becomes a meaningful space for reflection and prayer.
Whatever space the season of Lent is for us, the transfiguration of Jesus is an opportunity for us to reflect on how we are staying close and listening to Jesus
Jesus who exudes God’s own glory, not a mere reflection,
Jesus whose presence and glory sustain and encourage us, wants to lead us, wants to teach us to inhabit the story of the exodus, of transformation, and restoration of our true selves as images of God.
Amen.