Matthew 17.1-9
Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. Then Peter said to Jesus, ‘Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.’ While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!’ When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, ‘Get up and do not be afraid.’ And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone.
As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, ‘Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.’
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I have grown up in a world that is pretty much purely secular. God has left the consciousness of daily life of wider society. We think of human things in terms of psychology rather than spiritual, we think of the world as purely mechanical rather than in any way purposeful or designed with a particular end in mind. I remember attending a lecture when the lecturer said, that in the past if you asked the question, why does a giraffe have a long neck, you would answer ‘to reach the leaves at the top of the trees.’ But these days you would explain it in a very different way speaking about random mutation and survival of the fittest and Darwinian evolution.
These purely physical or scientific explanations explain a lot, but they leave out an awful lot. They leave out the conscious experience of the individual creature or being. The leave out the ‘feeling’ of life and the ‘me-ness of me’. If you’re in love for example, you can explain all the physical aspects of what it is like to be in love. The body getting warmer in the person’s presence, the pupils dilating etc. but it cannot explain the feeling of being in love or what it means to be in love.
Love itself, is a spiritual word, it speaks of an inseparable bond between two people which cannot be reduced to physical processes, such a thing is innately spiritual.
So, we need spiritual knowledge and scientific knowledge, we need a uniting of the two, body and Spirit; human and divine. This answers the human need for purposeful need and that sense that ‘there is more to like than just the physical.’
It is only as I am getting a bit older that I am beginning to appreciate mystery, appreciate things that we can’t understand and really begin to see the Spiritual dimension of life.
Our passage from the gospels unites the human and the divine in Jesus Christ, in Jesus Christ a human being is united with pure Spirit, God himself. Jesus goes up the high mountain and is transfigured before his disciples, shining like the sun. And the disciples get a glimpse of the profound mystery and indeed glory that is in Jesus Christ.
High places are important in the ancient world, for the higher you go ‘up’ the closer you are to the ‘heavens’ where God dwells; it’s actually more nuanced than that, and ancient people were more sophisticated than the modern caricature of God being a big man with a beard who lives in the sky.
There is a sense of great mystery about this passage, rightly so, it’s a strange thing to have happen, somebody ‘changed’ before you. It’s tempting to go down the road of presenting this passage as a showing nothing but jesus’s glory and his divinity. This makes sense and indeed I think it is true, but more is happening here in the context of the passage.
I think we can look at it in a couple of ways. The first way we can see it from the ‘heavenly view’ that is, just as Elijah and Moses, great paragons of the faith, of such high and almost mystical reverence in the Jewish faith, so too is Jesus, standing there with the same, if not more, heavenly authority. These are, I suppose, the ‘special ones’ the ones who are in complete communion with the divine.
‘This is my son, the beloved, listen to him,’ the voice from heaven says. Unlike at Jesus baptism where Jesus is simply affirmed in who he is, here the voice says that his disciples, and therefore us as well, must ‘listen to him,’ learn from him, and do as he says.
Jesus is the teacher par excellence. The Jews at the time had the teachings of Moses (or in other words, the law) and the teaching of Elijah (or in other words, the prophets). But now we have Jesus speaking with authority, who says things like:
‘It was said of old, “an eye for an eye” but I say unto you, turn the other cheek.”
A couple of weeks ago about how I spoke about how Jesus fulfils all the law and the prophets, we need to listen to Jesus because in him and his actions is what the fulfilment looks like. This isn’t like just ‘listening to a teacher’ and learning what you need to learn to pass a test or getting as much data into your head as possible; no it’s about abiding with him. it’s about being united with him, mind, body and soul, it’s about true wisdom. It’s about seeing that in Jesus, is life itself, and to live life as he would have us live is how we experience life and life in all of its fullness. It’s about having a spiritual connection with him.
But there’s also another way that we can see this passage, The second way in which we can see this is in terms of what Peter James and John see. They see Jesus, the God-man, the Word made flesh transfigured before them, and who stands at his side, but Moses and Elijah, human being just like them, standing up there in glory. So here as well we see humanity’s destiny for the followers of Jesus; a restored humanity, a glorified humanity. Our place is with Jesus , standing by his side in the heavenly places, we see humanity lifted up to reach divinity.
In Jesus we have that promise that, if we love him, though we age and decay, we will be restored to be with him on the last day. That is why at the moment of committal during a funeral service, and we commit the person who has died ‘earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust’
Yet we do this ‘in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life
through our Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our frail bodies that they may be conformed to his glorious body, who died, was buried, and rose again for us. To him be glory for ever.’
In the transfiguration of Jesus, we don’t just see his glory, we don’t but rather we see our glorious future. A restored world, and our restored bodies.
Have faith in Jesus Christ, follow him, keep following him, trust him, because in him, all our hungers, wants, needs and desires are satisfied. In him, we have eternal life, both here on earth, but also at the end of the age.
Amen.
