Transfiguration – March 6, 2011

            You can view this week’s Revised Common Lectionary texts here: http://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts.php?id=22 (right-click the link to open a separate tab or window).

            The last Sunday before Lent – and the last of the season of Epiphany - is always Transfiguration Sunday, owing to the general location and function of this story in the gospels.  That is, it’s a big, powerful revelation of Jesus’ identity before the events leading to his passion and death.  As the Epiphany season commences with a voice from heaven at Jesus’ baptism identifying him as “my beloved son,” so it closes with that same voice again identifying Jesus and telling his inner circle of disciples, “Listen to him!”

            I’ve always thought the Transfiguration story was one of the strangest episodes in the gospels – to me it’s always seemed to just come out of nowhere, this big interruption in the flow of the narrative.  Truth is, though – and maybe it has something to do with its strangeness – it’s one of the best attested stories in the gospels.  It appears in Matthew, Mark (9:2-10), and Luke (9:28-36), in each following Jesus’ prediction of his coming death.  It’s referred to in 2 Peter, as we see in the week’s Epistle reading.  Even John includes a story with some odd similarities in 12:28-30: Jesus is speaking about his death and there’s a voice from heaven, which the crowd thinks is just thunder (cf. the “cloud” in the other gospel accounts??).

            As I read the story now, the occurrence of the Transfiguration in Matthew’s narrative makes a little more sense to me.  Since Jesus’ baptism, he’s been calling and teaching and working with his disciples, they’ve seen him heal and feed and calm storms, and the time comes in ch. 16 for a serious conversation about who he is – what you might call the first semester final exam, which must be passed before they can go on to Discipleship 102.  “Who do you say that I am?” Jesus asks, and Peter has the answer: “You are the Messiah, the son of the living God.”  Jesus then hands Peter his A+, commending him at some length in a bit (vs. 17-20) that the other gospels don’t include.  Then in 16:21, they jump right into the second semester material: “From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering…”  The learning curve is too much for poor Peter, who just can’t get his mind around this new concept: “God forbid it, Lord!  This must never happen to you.”  To which Jesus replies, “Get behind me Satan!” and then tells them all that if they want to be his disciples they must deny themselves, take up the cross, and lose their lives.

            And that’s the point at which the Transfiguration occurs.  It’s as if, here at the beginning of the second semester the disciples – maybe Peter especially – need a refresher on who Jesus is.  What’s interesting to me about this story is (1) the way it ties together past and future, and (2) the way it’s both similar to and different from Jesus’ baptism. 

On the first point, obviously the vision of Jesus chatting with Moses the lawgiver and Elijah the great prophet (and traditionally the forerunner of the Messiah) ties Jesus to Israel’s past and makes plain that he’s on par with these other figures.  Matthew seems particularly intent on echoing the story of God giving the Law to Moses in Exodus 24 (see this week’s OT lesson).  In that story, Moses takes just Joshua with him, they go up Mount Sinai, the “cloud” of God’s glory covers it, and God speaks to Moses.  Here, we see Jesus taking just his “inner circle” of disciples up a “high mountain,” where a “bright cloud overshadow[s] them” and God speaks.  (Note: here God speaks not to Jesus but to the disciples.)  Matthew also has the added bit (v. 2) about Jesus’ face “shining like the sun,” which recalls Moses when he came down from the mountain (see Ex. 34:29).  This bit about Jesus shining like the sun also clues us in that this is a vision of Jesus’ future as well: earlier in his story (13:43) Jesus said that “the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of the Father. Let anyone with ears listen!” 

On the second point, this story is certainly similar to Jesus’ baptism in its focus on Jesus’ identity; in its location here at the beginning of Act II (as the baptism started Act I); and in the voice from heaven identifying Jesus as “my son, the beloved; with him I am well pleased.”  The significant difference here is the command to “Listen to him!”  The idea being, I think, “Listen to what he’s saying about suffering and death and the cross and losing your life, or you’ll miss the point entirely.”  There’s also, it seems to me, an urgency to the “listen to him!” like “don’t lose focus now because things are only going to get harder from here on out.”

Which brings us back full circle to the place of Transfiguration Sunday in the Christian year.  We’re reminded that the season of Lent that we’re about to enter is really important, as it leads up to the events and the mysteries that are at the very heart of our faith.  As if God is saying to us too, “Pay attention!” 

Works Consulted:

Dennis Duling’s notes to the Matthew text in the HarperCollins Study Bible