Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.” And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone. As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, “Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”
(Matthew 17:1-9)
The Lord is king; let the peoples tremble! He sits enthroned upon the cherubim; let the earth quake! The Lord is great in Zion; he is exalted over all the peoples. Let them praise your great and awesome name. Holy is he! Mighty King, lover of justice, you have established equity; you have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob. Extol the Lord our God; worship at his footstool. Holy is he! Moses and Aaron were among his priests, Samuel also was among those who called on his name. They cried to the Lord, and he answered them. He spoke to them in the pillar of cloud; they kept his decrees, and the statutes that he gave them. O Lord our God, you answered them; you were a forgiving God to them, but an avenger of their wrongdoings. Extol the Lord our God, and worship at his holy mountain; for the Lord our God is holy.
(Psalm 99:1-9)
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I have to stand in front of you today and confess that basically I always struggle with what I’m supposed to do with the Transfiguration of Jesus. If you follow the Lectionary, the story comes up every year on the Sunday before Lent starts. Last year, I confess that I took the easy way out and just ignored the story completely. I didn’t want to do that two years in a row, though, so I was left with the question that always comes to me – what to do with the Transfiguration of Jesus? It’s a strange story; baffling one in some ways. What does it mean for us today? What does it add to our faith? The Lectionary this year includes Psalm 99 as one of the other readings for today. The Psalms are often used as reflections on the theme for that particular Sunday, so I chose to look at Psalm 99 in that vein. Several times in Psalm 99 God is referred to as holy, and that is in fact an important word to use in connection with God. “Holy” is a word that’s used to emphasize the difference between God and humanity. God is pure; we are not. God is eternal; we are not. God is perfect; we are not. God is more than we are. The Creator is always more than the creation. As I read through this Psalm, what I see in my mind is an image of a God who is enthroned in heaven in such a way as to demonstrate divine authority, and yet – as powerful as God is, and as different as God is from creation – the Psalm affirms that God is not limited to heaven. While Psalm 99 stressed God’s transcendance, the author is also very deliberate in assuring us that the gap between God and humanity has been bridged – that God is not only transcendant, but also immanent. God reigns over us, but God is not remote from us. The Creator is not isolated from the creation. Instead, God is present with us and God rejoices when we approach. The Psalm tells us that God is “great in Zion” - which means that God’s authority is not exercised only over us, but also with us and through us. And it’s from within the midst of those who love God – you and I – that God’s grandeur, God’s holiness and God’s love reaches out to the whole of the world. If God is enthroned in heaven and surrounded by powerful cherubim, then God is also encountered on earth and surrounded by humble souls who accept the invitation to come near. This encounter we have with holiness is the centrepiece of our faith, because Christian faith is not just a set of beliefs, it’s an experience – a relationship of love with an Almighty God. And if that’s the commentary offered by the Psalm, then how do we see this combination of transcendance and immanence shown in the strange events of the Transfiguration of Jesus. This is where I want to go back to the gospel reading that Karen and I shared at the start of our service today, because that story illustrates both transcendance and immanence through Jesus.
It struck me that the story of the Transfiguration begins with the words “after six days.” I had never thought of that before, but for some reason as I read the story earlier this week those are the words I began to focus on. They reminded me of the story of creation in the Book of Genesis – that God created in six days until all was complete. A lot of the Bible is symbolic, and numbers are very important in the Bible. Maybe I was making too much of this – it could, I suppose, have been a coincidence – but I do think there’s a point being made here. In John’s Gospel, the very first words of the Gospel are “in the beginning.” That seems to fulfil the same purpose – it ties Jesus to the story of creation. He was there, in the beginning, John tells us. In Matthew, it’s the Transfiguration that gets tied to creation. What’s the connecting point? Obviously, the story of creation is about the creative work of God. God has brought about something new. God has brought order to chaos. God has created everything from nothing. In a way creation itself is the most basic revelation of God that there is. Is the same point being made about the Transfiguration? Is this strange and baffling event the start of something new? Is it a turning point? Are the disciples suddenly confronted by a new revelation of God? I would say that the answer is “YES!” The Transfiguration – perhaps as much as anything – makes the point that Jesus is not just a rabbi or itinerant preacher or worker of miracles. Jesus himself is the revelation of God – God’s love suddenly active and present in the world; God’s glory suddenly revealed; God’s word suddenly made flesh. Because of Jesus, God could never be seen in the same way again.
Jesus appeared with Moses and Elijah – enthroned in a sense between two of the greatest figures in Israel’s history: Moses, the giver of the Law, and Elijah, the greatest of the prophets. Both the Law and the prophets were revelations of God: they were God’s will for God’s people and God’s word for God’s people. They Law showed God’s people how to live and the prophets told the people where they were coming up short. And then, all of a sudden, there is this vision: Jesus, between Moses and Elijah. Jesus transcends all other revelations of God and becomes THE revelation of God. Jesus becomes the one who holds the law and the prophets together. There had always been tension between Law and prophets. Many of God’s people fixated on the written word; others were far more concerned with the spoken word. One revelation had been given once and was fixed in stone; the other was a continual process of revelation guided by God’s Spirit. We still have that problem today in our own faith: the debate between those who see God’s word as basically ink on paper and interpret it literally and those who believe that God is always revealing new things and can’t be contained by a written word. But either without the other is incomplete. The Law and the prophets; the written word and the spoken word; a one time revelation and an ongoing revelation – these are not in competition; they are complementary. The sight of Jesus between Moses and Elijah points that out. There’s the quest of science for the theory of everything – for a single theory that explains everything that exists – and there’s also a quest of faith for something that will hold everything together. Christians believe that everything is held together and that God is finally and fully and perfectly revealed in Jesus, who on the day of the Transfiguration stands between Moses and Elijah and holds the Law and the prophets together and ushers in a new understanding of God. This is what those disciples encountered. Jesus – enthroned as the ultimate revelation of God is encountered by his disciples in the light of that vision.
I’m struck by how they respond. I’m struck by it because it mirrors so much of how we ourselves respond to our own encounters with the divine in our lives. Jesus appeared with Moses and Elijah – and Moses and Elijah were long dead. How would you respond? It would be as if Donald Trump suddenly appeared with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Well. Maybe. A bit. The point is that it would be unexpected. For Peter and James and John this encounter was totally unexpected. We don’t know what they expected on that day when Jesus took them up a mountain. Maybe they thought it nothing more than a hike in the fresh air. But I don’t think they were expecting Moses and Elijah to suddenly show up. And what happened? Well, Peter was essentially speechless. Sometimes the Gospels are funny if you think about them. This is one of those times. Peter looks – he sees Jesus with his face shining as bright as the sun and with Moses and Elijah on either side of him. And, basically Peters says, “Oh. Well. Um. How ‘bout I pitch some tents for you three?” Was there much logic in Peter’s words? Was there anything especially thoughtful or insightful about them? No. Peter just didn’t know what to say and so he said whatever words popped into his head – even if they were inane. Often we don’t know how to react to Jesus, either. That’s why – if you get three Christians together – you’ll probably have at least five theories between them about who Jesus was. I have no sympathy for the idea that you have to turn your brain off to go to church. I think we’re called to learn and discern. Our brains are to be turned on. But maybe we have to learn to be satisfied – at least sometimes – with the revelation of God and the presence of Jesus, and we don’t have to have something to say about every encounter with Jesus that we have. Because half the time when we speak about Jesus – and I’m a preacher so I understand this danger – we probably don’t have anything deeper to say than what Peter offered on the mountain! So maybe we should just respond.
That’s immediately what Peter and his companions did. They fell to the ground, overcome by fear. As always in the Bible, when we see the word “fear” we might wonder whether it means to actually be afraid. In the Bible, the word usually has a sense of “awe” to it. Perhaps they are awestruck and speechless more than afraid. Suddenly face to face with the holiness of God, they simply fall before Jesus, overcome by the experience. And maybe it wasn’t just that in this moment they encountered the holiness of God; maybe it was that in the presence of God’s holiness they were also confronted by their own lack of holiness – they suddenly realized that they weren’t worthy to be there; they weren’t worthy to have had this experience; they weren’t worthy to have had this great revelation. They fell because they suddenly found themselves unable to face this Jesus whom they had been following. A barrier had been torn away and they had seen Jesus for who he really was and they couldn’t face him. But Jesus – as he always does – said to them, “don’t be afraid.” Don’t be overwhelmed by Jesus or by the state of the world or by your present circumstances or by your failings or by your past. Don’t be overwhelmed; don’t think that there’s nothing you can do; don’t fall on the ground where you’ll be useful to no one. Get up, follow Jesus, move on. Do his work.
I’m still not sure that I know entirely what to make of the Transfiguration. But I might have figured it out a bit. When we encounter God, we discover holiness and grace, justice and mercy, judgement and salvation, righteous anger and divine forgiveness – all in perfect balance; all revealed to us by Jesus. And Psalm 99 reminds us that even in those times when we feel distant from God or overwhelmed by God or circumstances – God is still with us. Prayers are still heard and revelation is still given. Psalm 99 closes with the words “the Lord our God is holy.” There’s a relationship implied by those words – a relationship of intimacy. This God – so powerful, so transcendant, so holy – is our God. God is holy but God is not ashamed to be our God. “Get up, “Jesus said to his overwhelmed disciples, “and do not be afraid.” And he led them down the mountain, where the rest of the journey – leading to Jerusalem, a cross and an empty tomb - was about to begin; a journey that we are about to join.
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