NL 129: Transfiguration

image: Icon of Transfiguration by Alexander Aliksandar, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Matthew 16:24-17:8

Initial Thoughts

  • Sermon the Mount is every 3 years - Transfiguration is every year

    • Time to embrace the mystery of the divine incarnate and accept the invitation to be transformed ourselves

    • Complete transformation - how has the promise of Christmas transformed you? Are you prepared for Lent?

  • Transfiguration Sunday: Why is this a thing?

  • End of Epiphany

  • The ordinary made extraordinary

    • The human made divine

    • F Buechner: “Even with us something like that happens once in awhile. The face of a man walking with his child in the park, of a woman baking bread, of sometimes even the unlikeliest person listening to a concert, say, or standing barefoot in the sand watching the waves roll in, or just having a beer at a Saturday baseball game in July. Every once and so often, something so touching, so incandescent, so alive transfigures the human face that it's almost beyond bearing.”

  • UMC Discipleship article gives two reasons:

    • “We celebrate the revelation of Christ's glory "before the passion" so that we may ‘be strengthened to bear our cross and be changed into his likeness.’ The focus of the Lenten season is renewed discipline in walking in the way of the cross and rediscovery of the baptismal renunciation of evil and sin and our daily adherence to Christ”

“In the biblical context, the synoptic gospels narrate the Transfiguration as a bridge between Jesus' public ministry and his passion. From the time of the Transfiguration, Jesus sets his face to go to Jerusalem and the cross.”

  • “In the East, the Festival of the Transfiguration has been celebrated since the late fourth century, and is one of the twelve great festivals of the East Orthodox calendar. In the West it was observed after the ninth century by some monastic orders, and in 1457 Pope Callistus III ordered its general observance. At the time of the Reformation, it was still felt in some countries to be a "recent innovation," and so was not immediately taken over into most Reformation calendars, but is now found on most calendars that have been revised in the twentieth century. A recent tendency in the West is to commemorate the Transfiguration on the Sunday just before Lent, in accordance with the pattern found in the Synoptics, where Jesus is represented as beginning to speak of his forthcoming death just about the time of the Transfiguration, so that it forms a fitting transition between the Epiphany season, in which Christ makes himself known, and the Lenten season, in which he prepares the disciples for what lies ahead. Whether observing the Transfiguration then will affect the observation of it on 6 August remains to be seen.” Society of Archbishop Justus

Bible Study

  • Take up your cross

    • BEWARE: This text has been misused to justify slavery, oppression, violence and domestic abuse by telling those oppressed to simply “bear their cross”

    • Mitchell Reddish, Feasting on the Word: “The condemned criminal who carried the horizontal bar of the cross to the site of crucifixion would have been subjected to taunts, humiliation, rejection, and shame before finally enduring an agonizing death. The disciple who "takes up the cross" is one who is willing to surrender pride, ego, status, comfort, and even life for the sake of the kingdom of God.

    • What does it mean to take up our cross and follow Jesus?

      • sacrifice? When was the last time you preached on sacrifice?

      • This is not about daily annoyances. The term “this is my cross to bear is not to be used flippantly (or used to keep people in subjugation). 

        • “To take up one’s cross thus means to accept ridicule and hostility from those who thinking reflects this world, not God’s… Bearing one’s cross and take up Jesus’ yoke are complementary: we learn from him how to remain obedient to God in a disobedient world.” (Hare, p. 196)

      • New life only comes through death - we often offer new life but are loath to invite people to die- how can we do this while retaining the joy of the Good News?

    • “Jesus' scandalous call then, to take up the cross and follow is a call to martyrdom, to die as Jesus does. Such is the risk of continuing Jesus’ countercultural work of proclaiming and demonstrating God’s empire. On another level, it is a call to a life of marginalization, to identify with the nobodies like slaves, foreigners, criminals, and those understood to be cursed by God. It is also to identify with those who resist the empire’s control, who contest its version of reality and who are vulnerable to its reprisals. It is to identify with a sign of the empire’s violent and humiliating attempt to dispose of all who threaten or challenge its interest. To so identify is not to endorse the symbol but to counter and reframe its violence. As the end of the gospel shows, it is to identify with a sign that ironically indicates the empire’s limits. The empire does its worst in crucifying Jesus. But God raises Jesus from death to thwart the empire’s efforts and to reveal the limits of its power.” (Carter, Matthew and the Margins, p. 344)

    • Not self abasement or self-esteem

      • Christian call is “an orientation to one’s life that is not focused on self at all, either as self-esteem or self-abasement, as self-fulfillment or self-emptying” - M. Eugene Boring, NIB: Matthew

      • “This material does not instruct disciples to endure present injustice passively until they get to heaven. Rather, disciples resist injustice and oppression now with alternative practices, even to death. Their alternative way of life manifests in God’s empire in part now and anticipates the future full establishment of it.” (Carter, Matthew and the Margins, p. 345)

  • Six Days - only time in the Gospels something happens after “six days” (Robert Myallis)

    • Six days of creation - Genesis 1:31, “very good”, but not complete

    • Six days of Moses in God’s presence before receiving the Word from God

    • The transfiguration recalls the humanity of Jesus (humanity created on the sixth day), but it will be Jesus’ divinity that leads him to the cross (the completion of his ministry)

    • Preparation of what is to come

  • Jesus “took up” Peter, James and John to the top of the mountain - “took up” can also mean sacrificed and is used in the Septuagint when Abraham “took up” Isaac to Mount Moriah (RM)

  • “I argue that Jesus’s transformation was not an epiphany but a preview of his apotheosis or deification. That is, this transformation reveals not a divine nature that Jesus already possessed but the divine nature that would obtain inthe future when ascended to heaven.” (Delbert Burkett, Journal of Biblical Literature 138, no.2 (2019):413-432)

    • According to Burkett: Three main lines of argument regarding this story

      • Jesus changed materially on the mountain

      • Jesus revealed something that was true all along

      • Jesus revealed something that would happen in the future.

    • Burkett makes the argument that Jesus was transformed here, using genre studies and other evidence, he argues that it is here that Jesus becomes divine. 

  • Three major movements:

    • Jesus’ Transfiguration

      • Transfiguration - a rare word even in the bible (appears in Romans 12:12 and 2 Corinthians 3:18)

      • Clothed in light & shining are both evidence of being in the presence of the divine (Ex. 34:29)

      • Moses and Elijah

        • both have divine encounters on the Mountain after facing opposition from Kings (Pharaoh and Ahab respectively)

        • Represent the twin pillars of the Hebrew Bible - Law and Prophets

        • Warren Carter - “Jesus’ association with them emphasizes his similar tasks and identity: to confront Rome’s oppressive rule, reveal God’s will, experience rejection, and be vindicated by God (Matthew 16:21)”

    • God speaks

      • Second time in Matthew (first was Jesus Baptism)

      • “My son” has been used to refer to Kings (Psalm 2) and Israel (Hosea 11)

      • Son denotes being an agent of a greater power - Israel is called to be a holy nation and priestly kingdom (Ex. 19) and a light to all nations (Isaiah 42:6); Kings are called to represent God’s justice and righteousness (Psalm 72)

      • Declaration is political - Emperors were designated as sons of God (Augustus, Tiberius, Nero, Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian)

    • Listen

      • Command is to listen to him - a powerful message after we have just explored the sermon on the mount

      • Immediately preceding this passage Jesus proclaims his own death (Matthew 16:21) and the death of at least some of his followers (16:24-28)

    • Disciples respond

      • The disciples are afraid - an appropriate response when confronted with the divine

      • God has just confirmed Jesus’ disturbing proclamation

      • They continue to follow Jesus

  • Transfiguration united baptism with resurrection - the death and resurrection of Jesus is only understood in connection with Jesus’ life and ministry

    • Same words used at baptism (Matthew 3:17)

    • Adds “listen to him.”

    • Same clothing as the Easter angel (Matthew 28:3)

    • At baptism, it was ambiguous if anyone else heard God. This time it is explicit that they hear. 

  • Leaning into Lent

    • Lent will focus on Jesus’ encounters with various people - listen to what Jesus says to each of them:

      • Lent 1A - Satan, “Worship and serve only God”

      • Lent 2A - Nicodemus “[Jesus was not sent] to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him”

      • Lent 3A - Woman at the well, “I am [the Messiah]”

      • Lent 4A - Blind man, “I am the light of the world”

      • Lent 5A - Lazarus, “I am the resurrection and the life”

Thoughts and Questions

  • From listener Robert Blankenship (from Feb. 5, 2016): 

In your podcast on The Transfiguration, you asked for listeners to let you know our thoughts on the transfiguration, so here are mine. In addition to the usual themes of mountain-top and valley, I find two things intriguing about the Transfiguration. The first is that until the Transfiguration, the disciples might have wondered about eternity, about Christ’s allusions to his resurrection, etc. But now, they have to wonder no more, resurrection is real. Previously, Moses and Elijah have only been storybook figures from Israel’s history, but here they are, in the flesh, still existing. No more will the disciples have to question what happens after death. For the faithful, here is proof that they still exist.

The second thought, and the more important to me, is that the disciples are still trying to figure out how all of Christ’s story fits together. What is he talking about with all of the stuff about the cross? Where is he going and why is he talking about leaving us, etc.? The disciples have no way of knowing what their futures will hold beyond this point, but God has said, “Listen to my Son.” I think about the trek back down the mountain following this experience, of the disciples simply following Christ, putting one foot in front of the other. Isn’t that what the Christian experience is all about? The only way we find God’s will for us in the world is to listen to Christ, but to also continue putting one foot in front of the other as we follow along. It is only through taking that ‘next step’ that we will ever know what all God has in store for us and what all he has for us to do in this life. Keep taking that next step.

  • Are we willing to be “take up”/ sacrificed for the sake of God’s love and grace in Jesus? Are we willing to sacrifice the life we knew before (cf. Matthew 16)?

  • Transfiguration is both mysterious and strange and also very practical: like Moses we are called to embody the spirit of the Law and represent God’s truth and justice, and like Elijah we are called to speak truth to power and wait to hear the silent voice of God. Instead of shying away from the mystery- perhaps this Sunday is a chance to embrace it and the practical implications of being transfigured by Christ.

Year 1Eric FistlerMatthewComment