Well, here we are.
February is already nearly past. The day after tomorrow is Shrove Tuesday and then Ash Wednesday, and then we dive headfirst into 40 days of Lent. We will enter the desert, that heavy journey to the cross, feeling it with us, week after week, that time of the liturgical year when perhaps we are most conscious of sharing the journey of Jesus, even more so than in Advent and Christmas, when we know him first as a rumor, an announcement from an angel, then as a newborn child, then as a toddler.
It feels like just a breath before he’s suddenly grown up and baptized and then here we are, staring straight ahead at what Jesus has come to do – miracles, healing, teaching, preaching – arrest, persecution, death – and resurrection.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Today, today we have some more time on the mountain with Jesus, in this strange, rather supernatural story of the Transfiguration – Jesus takes three of his disciples up the mountain, and something glorious and inexplicable happens. Jesus is transfigured – his face and his clothing are blinding with light – he is glorified, and the long-gone prophets Moses and Elijah are somehow right there, standing next to him.
Peter, bless his heart, is determined to say and do the right thing, but kind of as usual he doesn’t quite hit the mark. He offers to build houses for them, temples for Moses, Elijah, and Jesus to move into.
Instead, God’s voice thunders down, terrifying Peter, James, and John. They throw themselves down on the ground, hiding their eyes. When they look up again, Moses and Elijah are gone, the light has faded, and it’s just Jesus, their friend, reaching out to them, taking them by the hands, and telling them, don’t be afraid – those words we have heard since before he was born, over and over: Be not afraid.
Be not afraid. Immanuel. God is with you. I am with you. Be not afraid.
Transfiguration, in this passage, is translated from the Greek word that’s at the root of the English word metamorphosis, meaning change, suggesting that what happened on the mountaintop that day, the Transfiguration was a transformation – that the disciples saw Jesus change from one state to another. Another word we often use in connection with the Transfiguration is unveiling, which is perhaps more fitting. What Peter, James, and John saw in this mountaintop experience was Jesus’ divinity – his brilliant, otherworldly glory. And if they had any doubt, God’s very voice spelled it out for them: “This is my Son, the Beloved… listen to him!” The Transfiguration wasn’t about a human Jesus becoming suddenly divine. Rather, the Transfiguration showed the disciples what was already true – Jesus was, from the beginning, the Son of God.
It’s appropriate that we should mark this feast day, remember this event of unveiling, on the last Sunday of the season of Epiphany. Look up “epiphany” in Merriam-Webster and you’ll find these definitions – “a usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something…an illuminating discovery, realization, or disclosure.”[1] The Transfiguration was not about transformation but about perception – Jesus’ Transfiguration did not change who he was, but instead clarified and illuminated who he is – all of who he is.
And all of who Jesus was and is includes this divine, shining being who is beautiful and strange and terrifying, and it also includes the friend who touches the disciples and tells them, do not be afraid. Jesus, transfigured and powerful, at the top of the mountain, is also Jesus, human and vulnerable, at the bottom of the mountain. So Peter’s reaction to seeing Jesus, Moses, and Elijah all at once – “Let me build you each a house!” – perhaps wasn’t entirely misplaced. Peter wanted a way to hold the divine and the human together, a way to keep them close, a way that Jesus could keep one foot in heaven and one foot on earth.
You might remember, in just the previous chapter, Jesus has told Peter that he will go to Jerusalem, be arrested and killed. “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you,” Peter said, and Jesus replied with those memorable words, “Get behind me, Satan! …You are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” Peter wears his heart on his sleeve, and he rebels against the idea of Jesus’ death. No wonder he wants to build Jesus a house on a mountain.
So why do we read this story just before we go into Lent?
Partly it is because Lent is the season we dwell in, keeping one foot in heaven and one foot in the world. We see Jesus today, glorified, divine, transfigured, as a glimpse into the kingdom to come – a glimpse of the resurrection that will follow crucifixion, and as a glimpse of the promised land we continue to move and build toward. And we see Jesus today, human, reassuring, walking back down the mountain with his friends to the everyday world – as Judith Jones, a vicar in Oregon, puts it, “the story of the Transfiguration…points us down the mountain and invites us to walk with Jesus into the suffering, hungry crowds.”[2]
And that is another part of why we read this story just before we go into Lent: Our Lenten journey is not only one of the spirit, of the heart and mind, of prayer and contemplation, but also one of action. It is a journey of the body as well, a physical journey through a physical world that requires of us compassion, stewardship, love, justice. Jesus and his disciples did not stay on the mountaintop, and neither can we.
The story of the Transfiguration is a story of Epiphany, of clearly seeing the person of Christ – divine and human, powerful and vulnerable, compassionate and persecuted, teacher and healer. Peter’s wish to build a dwelling place for Jesus, to keep him close, to hold together both his divinity and his humanity, is not misplaced. For us, Lent is that dwelling place, that space we live and move and breathe in for the next 40 days, holding in our hearts and minds and bodies both the divinity and the humanity of Christ’s life on earth, and carrying on that work as the hands and feet of Christ, the body of Christ in the world – one foot in heaven and the other firmly on earth, through prayer and contemplation and through acts of compassion and stewardship and justice and love.
What will that look like for you?
— The Rev. Cara Ellen Modisett, Curate, Trinity Episcopal Church of Staunton
Last Sunday After Epiphany, Year A, February 19, 2023
Reading: Matthew 17:1-9
[1] merriam-webster.com/dictionary/epiphany
[2] workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/transfiguration-of-our-lord/commentary-on-matthew-171-9-4
