Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:
https://soundcloud.com/hapearce/reflection-for-february-7-2025
Mark 9:2-9
The Transfiguration
2After six days Jesus took Peter, James and John with him and led them up a high mountain, where they were all alone. There he was transfigured before them. 3His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. 4And there appeared before them Elijah and Moses, who were talking with Jesus.
5Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” 6(He did not know what to say, they were so frightened.)
7Then a cloud appeared and covered them, and a voice came from the cloud: “This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!”
8Suddenly, when they looked around, they no longer saw anyone with them except Jesus.
9As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus gave them orders not to tell anyone what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead.
Yesterday’s Reflection was based on a passage in which Jesus asks the disciples who people said he was. As you might remember, the disciples gave answers like John the Baptist or Elijah or one of the other prophets. Then Jesus asked who they thought he was, and Peter said he was the Messiah. (Which, as we said, was the first time any of them had identified him that way.) And as you might also remember, Jesus then revealed to them that as the Messiah, he would have to die at the hands of the nation’s leaders before rising from the dead on the third day. And there was more bad news: Those who follow him should be prepared to lose their lives, as well.
That reading we thought about yesterday provides the background for the mysterious event known in Christian tradition as the Transfiguration – the event that’s the subject of our reading for today.
Jesus goes up on a mountaintop with three disciples who seem to have been the members of his ‘inner circle’ – Peter, James and John. Up on the mountaintop, Jesus suddenly begins to glow with a strange light, and Moses and Elijah appear and begin to talk with him. It’s reasonable to ask how the disciples knew it was Moses and Elijah, and the answer is that we don’t know. But Elijah was known to wear strange and distinctive clothes, so that might have helped to identify him. Moses was known as the one who brought the commandments down the mountain from God, so he might have been carrying a stone tablet or something. But that’s just speculation on my part.
The important thing about those two figures, it seems to me, is that they were the embodiments of the Law and the prophets. And as you might remember, that was how the people of Israel thought of themselves – as the people of the Law and the prophets. So in a sense, Moses and Elijah represented links to the history of the covenant people. Jesus said he came into the world as the fulfillment of the law, and his coming was foretold by the prophets. So in a powerful symbolic way, the appearance of these two figures from out of the history of the covenant people signified that Jesus was in fact the one whose coming had been foretold and awaited.
It seems significant to me also that the two are said to be talking with Jesus. I can’t help thinking that we’re meant to see that Moses and Elijah are alive in the heavenly kingdom. It’s not just statues or pictures that the disciples see before them.
In the story of the transfiguration, Peter offers to build shelters for the three. He says he was just so scared he was babbling, and he has been criticized by many Bible commentators for his suggestion. But that seems a little unfair: those shelters had a specific connection to the faith traditions of the Hebrew people. They symbolized the expectation of the coming of the Lord. So it seems possible that Peter sensed that the transfiguration had some connection to the ‘day of the Lord’ that had been foretold.
The group is then enveloped by a cloud, and out of the cloud a voice understood to be God’s identifies Jesus as his beloved son, and commands that he be listened to.
We should probably stop to remember that in the history of God’s relationship with his people, many of the closest contacts between them had taken place up on mountaintops. And in many cases, when God had chosen to speak into the world, he had spoken out of a cloud. So combined with the mysterious white light coming out of Jesus, it seems to me these were all signs that Jesus was a supernatural being – one who was specifically being claimed by God and invested with God’s own authority.
In yesterday’s reading, the disciples realized that Jesus was the Messiah, but they didn’t understand what that meant. They still held to their people’s expectation that the Messiah would be a patriotic liberator to drive out the Romans and make the country great again. But in the Transfiguration, they were being shown that Jesus the Messiah was not of this world. If a human being said he was going to die, then rise from the dead, there would be some question about how trustworthy his statement was. But if a supernatural being said he would die then rise from the dead, the disciples could follow him with confidence, trusting in his promises of resurrection and new life. And that would be especially true if they had heard the voice of God identify that supernatural being as his Son. They could follow him faithfully, and confidently teach others to keep his teachings, knowing that they were doing what God himself had commanded them to do.
The Transfiguration is an important event because it’s an occasion on which the disciples were shown who they were really dealing with. And it’s an important story for us to read and think about because it reminds us that Jesus was not just an insightful Jewish rabbi – he was and is a figure from beyond this world who speaks with God’s own authority.
Let’s pray. Lord, keep before us the truth that in Jesus, you acted in human history and took on human form to walk among us and teach us by your words and your example. Open our hearts and minds to listen to him, and move us to live out our faith in such a way that others hear him in our words, and encounter him through our obedience. Amen.
Have a great weekend, and worship God joyfully on Sunday,
Henry
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