Transfiguration

Peter said to Jesus, ‘Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah’ – not knowing what he said.

Today the Feast of the Transfiguration, the 6th of August, falls on a Sunday – so we are keeping the feast at this Eucharist.  We’ve just heard Luke’s account of this remarkable event.  The story appears in all three of what are called the ‘synoptic gospels’ (Matthew, Mark and Luke) with, as these things go in the gospels, remarkably little variation in detail.  

In fact, all three accounts pre-mountain top are preceded by Peter’s ‘confession’ that Jesus is the Christ and then by Jesus’ stern warning that anyone who wants to be a follower of his must be prepared to ‘deny themselves and take up their cross’.  And the three accounts are all followed post-mountain top, by Jesus’ healing of a boy enduring painful and life-threatening convulsions.  This intense spiritual experience, this ecstatic vision, this Glimpse of Glory we call the Transfiguration, may take place on a mountain top but it does not sit above, or in isolation, from the person and work of Jesus Christ.  Jesus does not become for those few minutes – or was it hours – who knows? – something that he wasn’t already.  He is who he has always been; but it is his disciples who see him in a new way.  To put it another way, the experience on the ‘mountain top’ is firmly grounded in who Jesus is.

So, what’s happening in our Gospel this morning?  Jesus has been engaging in his ministry for some time at this pointin the gospel narratives.  His ‘staff team’, his disciples, have been trooping along with him for a while:  hearing him teach; seeing him heal; angsting over the way he hangs out with the wrong people (like, you know, women, or people outside the church); getting a buzz from, but also being anxious about, his heat seeking missile capacity for deflating the clergy.  They think they know him.  Okay, he’s a deep cove the lad from Nazareth, you know, but his disciples think they are on top of his Message, fully with the Programme, in command of the Agenda.  

After all, Peter has just brought home a First Class result a few verses before.  When the lad from Nazareth quizzes his inner circle of disciples, his Senior Leadership Team (that’s how we like to talk these days in Church of England) about who folks say he is, they respond:  well, (I’m paraphrasing) according to our recent polling some say, ‘John the Baptist; but others Elijah; and still others, that one of the ancient prophets has arisen’.  Ever the perfect educator, Jesus presses them:  but what do you think – ‘who do you say that I am?’  Peter nails it:  ‘The Messiah of God’.  

But before this theological slam dunk can be enjoyed with a victory lap, the stern warning comes not to tell anyone, and that the Son of Man must ‘undergo great suffering’, fall foul of the very religious leaders who are supposed to be the shepherds of God’s people, be brutally executed, and on the third day, ‘rise’ – with no indication of what that might mean.  And furthermore, anyone who wants to be a follower of mine, he says, must be prepared to ‘deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me’.  So much for being fully with the Programme and in command of the Agenda.

We come to this morning – remember in the gospel narrative, we are at a half-way point, or hinge point, in Jesus’ earthly ministry.  Jesus takes the most intimate members of his Senior Leadership Team, Peter, James and John, away to a mountain top to pray.  The disciples, who have a charism for falling asleep at the wrong time, manage to stay awake this time and experience Jesus ‘transfigured’ – changed in appearance but still Jesus.  They see him in conference with two of the most significant figures in the Hebrew Bible (remember that’s Jesus’ Bible, their Bible), Moses and Elijah.  They see him differently; they see him in Glory.  In Matthew’s account, they are terrified.

Peter responds, ever so understandably but ever so wrong:  that it is a jolly good thing to be here, Lord.  In fact, it is so remarkable that we should build three dwellings for you, Moses and Elijah – or booths or tabernacles in some translations.  Peter wants to preserve the moment – who wouldn’t?  But that desire to capture the experience is also about controlling the experience:  to ‘Theme Park’ it.  They thought the Glory could be ‘managed’; that the learning could be ‘captured’.  But even God is getting a bit tetchy with the disciples and, as at Jesus’ baptism, finds a cloud to speak out of and says (I paraphrase):  look you blockheads, this Jesus is not the peer of Moses and Elijah, great as they are, he is ‘my Son, my Chosen’.  So, start paying attention!  No wonder they keep silent about what they had seen.

And almost immediately coming down from the mountain, Jesus’ first encounter is with a distressed parent and their child suffering from severe convulsions.  No time for faffing around building a few tabernacles to preserve the feel-good spiritual glow; to ‘capture’ the ‘experience’.  Jesus restores the child to health.  In the Work of Christ, there is no disconnect between the spiritual and material.

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​If I sound hard on the disciples, it is because we are so like them – or I know I am.  We think we know Jesus; some of us have been working away at being Christians for quite some time; some of us are in the early days of exploration or developing commitment.  We think we know him.  We’re with the Programme.  And then, something happens, and we are astounded by a sense of how much more there is in knowing Jesus.  

It happens in many ways.  Sometimes it is even in the Eucharist – this celebration which for some reason, for good reason, for no reason, becomes a place where we glimpse the dazzling and the luminous.  And for just a bit in our ordered lives, we are overwhelmed by the loving and accepting presence of Christ – just as we are.  Sometimes it is the unlooked-for compassion of strangers or in the love and strength of friends – people we thought we knew but, for a moment, we see them transfigured in new ways.  

And we can’t chase these experiences or manufacture them; let alone control or capture them, however many booths or tabernacles we try to build.  Like the disciples, we are ledto the mountain.  And like Peter, with all we get wrong, we get something right too.  When, like Peter, we really don’t know what we are saying, we do know that, ‘Lord’, it is indeed ‘good to be here’.  Amen.