We started our Epiphany series with Jesus’ Baptism and God declaring, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” We explored all our senses through these reveling accounts of God’s glory made real through Jesus. Today we will hear echoes of these senses in Matthew’s emotionally sensitive account of Jesus being transfigured.
The definition of transfigure is “transform into something more beautiful or elevated.” We just heard Moses go up a mountain to receive the Ten Commandments from God. Commandments that will transform people’s behavior and lives. Moses experienced the glory of the Lord for 6 days before entering the cloud of God’s presence. Mountains are where God’s presence is often revealed, experienced. Elijah also experienced God’s presence on this same mountain (1 Kg. 19:8). As we prepare to hear our gospel lesson, it is good to know that Moses represents the Law, the Ten Commandments, while Elijah speaks for the prophets. READ Matthew 17:1-9.
I bet you noticed that God’s words at Jesus’ baptism were the same here at Jesus’ transfiguration. “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” Words that we heard twice as readers of Matthew’s gospel. But these are new words to Peter, James and John, because they were not there at his baptism. Jesus had not yet called them. They are hearing God’s revealing words for the first time. They are seeing God’s glory for the first time. Now of course, Peter, James and John have seen Jesus heal many people, have tasted food with Jesus, have heard him teach in the synagogue and on the Mount, but this is the first time they see God’s glory, God’s presence made real in Jesus. All of their senses are exploding with revelation. Dazzling light reflecting off Jesus’ clothes. His face, his skin, radiant like the sun. Then they must have wondered if they were seeing things when Moses and Elijah appear before their eyes! These two men were pillars of the faith, speaking with Jesus. This luminant, divine, overwhelming sight might be why Peter wants to build altars, wants to do something, anything! When you have felt overwhelmed, have you wanted to distract yourself and do something? The situation is beyond you, family dynamics, aches and pains, and all you want to do is do something else. But God interrupts Peter, redirects him while he is still speaking and then identifies Jesus as God’s beloved Son, before ultimately directing the disciples to LISTEM TO HIM! Listen to Jesus!
“This week, I came across something that Paul Tillich said. ‘The first duty of love is to listen.’ When we think about it, listening is the first requirement for making any real changes in life…
Listening requires making a personal connection to someone else. Listening requires opening ourselves and stopping long enough to really see and hear what’s going on within us, and around us. Listening requires us to shelve our answers. When we refuse to listen, we put all our energies into remaking the world in our own image. But when we really listen, we risk being changed ourselves” (Sermons.com, Edmund L. Hoener).
“Laurel A. Dykstra, a scripture and justice educator wrote the following in an article for Sojourners Magazine: ‘My first night at Guadalupe House, a Catholic Worker ‘transition house’ where I spent nearly 10 years, I sat at the wobbly-legged table amid a circle of men’s faces, black and brown and white, and looked at the peeling linoleum, tattered sheer yellow curtains, broken couches, and roach-filled corners. I had never seen a place so ugly. After a week of hospitality, laughter, community, and connection, I sat in the same seat and caught myself thinking, ‘What a kind and homey room this is.’ Transfigured.
‘So I wonder: In Matthew’s story of the mountain, was it Jesus who changed or was it that John, James, and Peter could now see the face of God shining in the man they knew? Did the thin air and the elevated perspective contribute to their clarity of vision? When they came down from the mountaintop, did they take their new capacity to see into the low places and crowded city streets? Can we? And when we see the face of God shining through those who are familiar to us, do we truly, deeply listen to them?’” (Sermons.com, Laurel A. Dykstra).
Epiphany is the time between Christmas and Lent, a season about light, about illumination, about revelation. Seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, God’s reality in Jesus. The transfiguration is the climax of this journey, when the disciples see for the very first time the true glory of God in Jesus Christ. When Jesus is transfigured, he is transformed into something more beautiful and elevated. Jesus is no longer simply a wise teacher, a prophet, and a healer, Jesus is now God’s Son in the eyes of the disciples. The disciples now see him as more beautiful and elevated, dazzling and bright.
“In the comic strip Peanuts, Snoopy’s brother Spike, the one who lives in the desert, is sitting with his back against a cactus, writing a letter that says, “At night the sun goes down, and the stars come out; and then in the morning the sun comes up again. It’s so exciting to live in the desert.” We’ve gotten used to sunrises and sunsets, mornings and evenings, the moon and the stars. We’ve gotten used to music and art, friends and family, joy and sorrow. We too easily grow accustomed to the wonders that surround us. (Blinding) us from seeing the flashes of brightness” (Sermons.com, Brett Younger).
But when the disciples saw the brightness, the glory of Jesus, and heard God’s voice, they fell to the ground, terrified. Their entire bodies reacted to this revelation, this divine brightness, this holy voice. Then Jesus, their friend and companion, Jesus the Messiah and God’s revelation, feels their fear, their holy awe, and touches them. Jesus’ gentle touch offers them comfort and compassion, and Matthew is the only one to record this tender and powerful moment. Reaching out his hand, Jesus touched the disciples and said, “Get up.” But as one commentator writes, Jesus “commands them not just to stand up but literally to “be raised!” (Through Jesus’s compassion and their connection, the disciples are raised.) Jesus then commands them not to speak of this event until he himself has been raised, this time from death. There is something about this day, this event, that can’t be understood until after the resurrection” (Working Preacher, David Lose).
You see Jesus had just told the disciples of his suffering, death and being raised on the third day (16:21). And if we see the Transfiguration as foreshadowing Christ’s death and ultimately his resurrection, the final sentence of this sacred moment is elevated and more beautiful. When the disciples “looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone” (8) the moment elevated. On one level that means the disciples no longer see Moses and Elijah. But if we think of the Transfiguration as foreshadowing Easter, this is a promise that Jesus will remain. When all is said and done — “when Moses and Elijah are gone, the voice is quiet, Jesus’ face and clothing have returned to normal, and the disciples are left in holy awe — all that is left is Jesus. Whatever all these signs and symbols may have meant, the disciples are once again with their Lord, their teacher, their friend…Jesus, the one whose clothes and face shone like the sun, the one equal to Moses and Elijah, the one whom the very heavens proclaim as God’s own beloved Son, will not leave them” (Working Preacher, David Lose).
Jesus will not leave us! Jesus remains with us through communion. Jesus is seen, tasted, heard when we break bread together. Jesus is here with us. In this meal, Jesus is more beautiful and elevated in our remembrance of his death and resurrection. We listen to Jesus and are changed when we take bread and dip it into the sacred cup. May we see the brightness, may we taste this holy food, may we see the world more beautiful and elevated when we come to Christ’s table and remember him. In Remembrance of Me Eat this Bread. In Remembrance of Me drink this wine. Because Jesus will not leave us, Jesus remains with us and transfigures us. Amen.
