The story of the Transfiguration is baffling in many respects. First of all, it seems like an Easter story, a revelation of the glory of the risen and victorious Lord. There is even a hint of this at the end, as the few, selected disciple-witnesses descend the mountain, Jesus commanding silence about what they have seen until he should rise from the dead. To boot, these uncomprehending disciples deliberate what that would mean. The disciples were in fact baffled by what they had seen.
So could we be baffled also. Isn’t the story totally out of order here? The vision of Jesus bathed in heavenly glory granted to Peter, James and John appears in the middle of his earthly journey; indeed, it comes at the critical turning point in it. Jesus has resolutely turned his face to go up to Jerusalem, there to be rejected, to suffer and die and be buried and at last raised again. What are we to make of this perplexing order of events?
Here’s a clue. The Transfiguration is observed by the church on the last Sunday of the Epiphany season. It concludes our remembrance of Jesus’ ministry of healing and forgiveness in Galilee, a world hurting with world of hurt, how he dwelt there to reveal God’s glory as the Great Physician of human body and soul. In the church’s year, the Transfiguration thus marks the transition from the action of Jesus as healer to his suffering as one afflicted, by torture and fatal wounds, yes, but also by betrayal, denial and abandonment; from his merciful words of forgiveness to his condemnation as blasphemer and rebel; from adulation to rejection, climaxing in the death of the holy One of God in our unholy midst hung upon the shameful cross. This passion of the Lord we call to mind in the season of Lent beginning on Ash Wednesday, three days hence. The Transfiguration thus marks this turning point in Jesus’ story. The mighty Son of God who like Joshua or David of old came as deliverer from the anti-divine powers of devil, death and sin ends up hanging forlorn, truly dying on a Roman stake, finally defeated, laid lifeless in a tomb. What a turn of events!
To understand this turn of events, we need to recall that Jesus’ mighty action as the One who heals in God’s name provoked opposition which questioned his authority. Why? The healthy have no need of a physician, he says. I have come to call sinners, not the righteous. And so he excludes the self-righteous who see no need of healing and despise mercy. He proclaims the nearness of God to the godless; he makes fellowship with lawless people before they ever change their ways; he embraces those filthy with contagious disease; he sovereignly overrules the very Law of God, not to mention the laws of nature, in order to show mercy to frail and needy humanity; he silences the shrieking devils but elicits the loud, unquenchable thanksgivings of those whom he has delivered from their cruel grip – who is this Jesus? Who in his every deed, with his every step, provokes the question: Where have you come from? By what authority do you do these things? Are you a true prophet or a pretender? Do you cast out devils by the prince of devils? Who are you, you stranger come into our midst? You man of grace, you man of mercy, you man of healing – what are you doing in this dog-eat-dog world of ours!?
In the Transfiguration story, the curtain draws back to show not my opinion about Jesus or yours or any other human’s, whether friend or foe. These great questions about Jesus are now being answered. Answered not by not by disciples, nor by evil spirits under assault, not even by Jesus himself. But on this mountain top, in an act of divine revelation, our eyes too are made with the disciples to focus on Jesus alone, singled out from Moses and Elijah, Jesus on whom the heavenly spotlight shines, brilliant with divine light. Are you looking now? Do you hear -- the command of the heavenly voice: This one to whom Moses and Elijah bear witness, this one is my beloved Son! Give ear to him!
This command from heaven validates the preceding ministry of Jesus against the opposition, which had questioned his credentials. But it also corrects the misapprehension of disciples who were thinking of a Messiah without a cross. They might naturally expect then that Jesus, fortified in this glorious moment of divine accreditation, will descend from the mountain, gather himself an army, call down the angels and march on Jerusalem to bring in God’s kingdom by force. Such were, don’t you know, the typical messianic expectations of that day and age.
But Mark’s story takes a surprising twist. Jesus indeed heads for the capital city, where the crowd greets him as the new David entering his soon to be restored capital. Yet as quickly becomes apparent, Jesus’s purpose is not to take the throne by force, but rather to cleanse the Temple. That twist bring things to a head. Delivered by the will of God into the hands of sinners, submitting to God’s uncanny purpose, silently he goes to his cruel fate. All the greater our bewilderment when we recall the Transfiguration, realizing then the Lord who lays aside divine glory, who leaves behind the divine light in which he was bathed on the mountain, who descends from that high point down into the dark valley of the shadow of death, obedient even to death on a cross. For He has come not to be served but to serve and lay down his life a ransom for many.
If we are perplexed by this, brothers and sisters, it is a God-intended, spiritually fruitful perplexity. From glory to ignominy. From light to utter darkness. From adoration to revilement. Why, why, why? Deeply to ponder this question is precisely the point of the Lenten season. It is a salutary, saving perplexity. It leads us to several significant insights into our own lives of Christian discipleship.
First, to know who this beautiful Savior really is, is not and can never be some clever human insight. As Paul reminds us today, It is the God who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. Our faith to see Jesus as the beautiful Savior is always the sovereign gift of God, the light of the Spirit shining into darkened minds that we too see Jesus truly, just like that light which shone on Jesus unexpected from above on the mountain. True faith that turns to the Lord Jesus, true faith that follows the Lord Jesus, true faith that bears one’s own cross because of the Lord Jesus’s cross comes from the enlightening of the Holy Spirit so that we come to see Jesus as the lamb provided for our deliverance. “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in my Lord Jesus Christ or come to him. But the Holy Spirit has called me by the gospel…” So Luther taught us to understand. Whoever believes does so in the strength of his or her own little Transfiguration, namely, the Holy Spirit making Jesus alive, real, glorious, and beautiful in human eyes.
In the second place, Transfiguration give us the confidence that everything Jesus once did in Galilee is valid still and also for us, when through the gospel he comes into our lives and we in faith welcome him into our sufferings of soul and body as our great Physician. So the addict delivered of her addiction knows in faith that Jesus still expels the demons; and the sick restored to life knows that Jesus still heals; and those reconciled after bitter fighting know that Jesus still releases troubled hearts from the crippling power and terrible burden of guilt for their offences and defenses; and the one preserved from calamity knows how the Lord who calms the waves and stills the wind is with us too in our every stormy hour, this watchman of Israel who never sleeps.
There is a third valuable instruction for us in the story. Are we to pipe up like nervous Peter with some cockamamie plan of action? No, for here in the Lenten time now approaching the Word of God must accomplish everything decisive. What we are to do is nothing but to watch and see, nothing but to hush and be still, simply, reverently, patiently, quietly give our attention to the passion of our Lord. Cease and desist with merely human speculations, nervous chatter and anxious interventions. Let the Transfiguration light shine and focus on the Son of God so that you follow him on his way to Golgotha and are changed by the sight of his passion for us and for all. Do nothing. Just be quiet. Just listen to him, watch and see.
Then we will be ready to ask: What was this thing which took place on the mountaintop before the eyes of baffled Peter, James and John who so ineptly stuttered in response to it? When the form of Jesus’ was changed, so that even his clothing glowed as purest light? Up until this moment in Jesus’ ministry people come to him, not for his own sake because of who he is, but for their own sakes, because of what they need and think to get out of him. If all we want from Jesus is his gifts, however, we do not want Jesus. We may then make up an attractive but false Christianity in which Jesus helps us get our way, rather than to be changed by true and repentant faith by which the Spirit of holiness gets hold of us and changes us and makes us God’s own people by way of union with Jesus’ awesome act of self-giving love for us. This is his true and divine glory; the glory of the God who comes down to the depths, into our dark valley and the shadow of death, there to find us, lay of hold us and never let go. So Paul wrote to the Corinthians who are thus being changed by this Spirit-given, life-changing sight of glorious Jesus: And we all, with unveiled faces, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to the next. In a true Christianity, it is we who are being changed.
In the glorious light that shone that day, God the Father celebrated his Son’s free decision, for our sakes, to lay down his life for ours as the ransom that sets us free. The revelation reveals Jesus’ unique personal act, a free and uncoerced resolve of spontaneous and undeserved love to do far more for others than any law could ever have required or extorted. So in divine light we see God’s delight in his own Son, further God’s delight in all those for whom his Son gives himself. God’s joy in Jesus and through Jesus God’s delight with us all for whom he lived and died and rose again! The veil of unfaith, fear, distrust, and darkness of death which covers us is pealed back in this glorious moment. We see into our true future, a beautiful new harmony of love that will last forever when we too with Elisha of old will cry out in jubilation, the chariots of Israel and its horsemen! That rapture of praise for the victory of the God of love is the mystery of the Transfiguration which we perceive in our beautiful savior and celebrate today.