Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
11^th of February, 2024

2 Corinthians 9:2-9
Mark 9:2-9

Does the light illuminate everything, or does it make the shadows darker? Does the wonder and beauty of the Transfiguration, celebrated today on the last Sunday before Lent, make Jesus’ death on a cross even more painful and ugly? Does the Transfiguration put a barrier between the glorious Beloved Son and those of us who do not shine on mountaintops? What does the Transfiguration mean for those of us who live our lives on the plain?

The Transfiguration is many things. It is a theophany, an epiphany, and an apocalyptic vision. A theophany is a revelation of God. Mark’s first readers would have recognised that in this story Mark is using elements from the Hebrew Scriptures to describe an encounter with God. The Transfiguration takes place on a mountain, the traditional site of revelations of God, the place on earth closest to heaven. It takes place ‘after six days’, referring to the six days that Moses spent on Mount Sinai in the presence of the Lord before the Lord called to him. (Exodus 24:15-16) Jesus’ clothes become ‘dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them’. They are the colour of light itself; revealing that the person wearing them is an angelic figure, a messenger from heaven. The cloud that overshadows the mountain symbolises the divine presence, and God speaks from the cloud to the disciples on this mountain as God spoke from the cloud to Moses on Mount Sinai. Mark’s first readers would have had no doubt that what he is describing here is an encounter with God at the boundary between heaven and earth. When Jesus was baptised ‘the heavens [were] torn apart’ (Mark 1:10) but there is no need for that to happen now. This mountaintop is on the outskirts of heaven.

The Transfiguration is an epiphany as well as a theophany. It reveals to Jesus’ three closest disciples who Jesus is: God’s Son, the Beloved, to whom they are to listen. We are in the very centre of Mark’s telling of the gospel, and immediately before today’s story Jesus has asked his disciples who the people say that he is. They answer, ‘John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets,’ and he asks them ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Peter answers, ‘You are the Messiah.’ In Matthew’s telling of the gospel Jesus praises Peter, ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.’ He then says that Peter is the rock on whom the church will be built. (Matthew 16:17-19) In Mark’s much sterner telling, Jesus simply orders the disciples not to tell anyone about him. In all three of the synoptic gospels Jesus then tells the disciples for the first time that his destiny is to suffer and die, and in both the gospels according to Matthew and Mark Peter objects and is called ‘Satan’. (Mark 8:27-33, Matthew 16: 13-23, Luke 9:18-27) This Messiah is the suffering, dying, and rising Son of Man. The Transfiguration that immediately follows this first prediction of the Passion reveals that the suffering, dying, and rising Son of Man is also the radiant and glorious Beloved Son of God. The gospel writers are making it extremely clear that the two, suffering and glory, cannot be separated.

The presence of Elijah and Moses, prophets to whom God had spoken on mountains in the past (Exodus 24:17, 1 Kings 19:11-13) reveals that Jesus is greater than even the greatest humans. It is only Jesus whose appearance is transfigured; only he who becomes a figure of light. One of the mistakes Peter makes is to see Moses and Elijah as Jesus’ equals in his suggestion that dwellings should be made for each of them, although admittedly he only said that because he was terrified. The voice of God coming from the cloud indicates the difference between the three. Only Jesus is God’s Son, the Beloved.

Finally, the Transfiguration is an apocalyptic revelation, although to describe it that way is tautological because apokalypsis means ‘revelation’. Not all apocalypses are terrifying, and this is a gentle one. It reveals who Jesus will be after his death, resurrection and ascension – a heavenly being of light able to talk with Elijah and Moses but greater even than them. We are being shown before Jesus’ death the glorification that will occur after his resurrection. We are being given a preview of the end of history when the Son of Man will come ‘in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.’ (Mark 8:38) While Peter, James and John are terrified, they should also be comforted; from now on, whatever happens, they know what the end of the story will be and have been shown that it will be a happy ending. But as they come down the mountain Jesus orders ‘them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead’. The glory to follow does not negate the suffering of the cross. Jesus must still walk the road to his betrayal, humiliation, suffering and death, and his three closest disciples will turn out to be unable to walk that road with him. The next time these three disciples are alone with Jesus on a mountain, they will be in the garden of Gethsemane on the night he is betrayed, and they will show themselves unable to stay awake to watch with him as he prays. (Mark 14:32-42) When the soldiers come to arrest Jesus ‘[a]ll of them deserted him and fled.’ (Mark 14:50) The revelation of the Transfiguration is not enough to enable them to maintain their faith when everything seems lost.

The Transfiguration is, in the words of the Apostle Paul, a revelation of ‘the glory of Christ, who is the image of God’. What does this mean for us, human beings who have also been made in the image of God? My religious background is Scottish Presbyterian, which means that in the back of my mind lurk Calvinist ancestors who constantly tell me that I am a miserable sinner. The sixteenth-century French theologian John Calvin, whose version of Protestant Christianity was spread through Scotland by the equally terrifying John Knox, wrote in his Institutes of Christian Religion (1536) that ‘without knowledge of God there is no knowledge of self’. He went on to say:

man never attains to a true self-knowledge until he has previously contemplated the face of God, and come down after such contemplation to look into himself. For (such is our innate pride) we always seem to ourselves just, and upright, and wise, and holy, until we are convinced, by clear evidence, of our injustice, vileness, folly, and impurity … So long as we do not look beyond the earth, we are quite pleased with our own righteousness, wisdom, and virtue; we address ourselves in the most flattering terms, and seem only less than demigods. But should we once begin to raise our thoughts to God, and reflect what kind of Being he is, and how absolute the perfection of that righteousness, and wisdom, and virtue, to which, as a standard, we are bound to be conformed, what formerly delighted us by its false show of righteousness will become polluted with the greatest iniquity; what strangely imposed upon us under the name of wisdom will disgust by its extreme folly; and what presented the appearance of virtuous energy will be condemned as the most miserable impotence. So far are those qualities in us, which seem most perfect, from corresponding to the divine purity.

Various psychologists have told me how bad it is for my mental health to have Calvinism lurking in my psyche.

Is Calvin right? As we see Jesus shining with unborrowed light are our shadows made darker by the contrast? I do not think so. The Transfiguration reveals to us the beauty of God, but it reveals that beauty in the mystery of the Incarnation; the one revealed by the light is the Son of Man, the firstborn within a large family that includes us. (Romans 8:29) In the Incarnation God has become human so that we might become divine; in Jesus God has shared human nature so that we can share in the divine nature. This is what is being revealed on the mountaintop, where Jesus is acting as the bridge between heaven and earth. The Eastern Church refers to this as ‘deification;’ the Western Church is very nervous of that language and refers instead to ‘sanctification’ and ‘holiness’. We sing about it in Charles Wesley’s hymn, ‘Love Divine’ (TIS 217), a very anti-Calvinist hymn. In Wesley’s words, we ask God to ‘Finish then thy new creation, pure and spotless let us be’. We are aware that this will only fully and finally happen after our resurrection when, in the words of Paul, ‘this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality;’ when, in the words of Charles Wesley, we will be ‘changed from glory into glory’. But we can rejoice and rest in the certainty that this glory is the aim of our lives. In the Incarnation God took on our humanity; in the Transfiguration we see the revelation of what our humanity will become.

I want to end with another poem, from a living Australian poet.

From ‘Three Prayers’ by Kevin Hart (1954 – )

Master of light, my God,
Before whom stars tremble
And fall into themselves,

Who glows within each thing
Beyond reach of language
And deeper than silence,

Who passes through the dark
That draws us towards death
And makes it one with you,

Whose light is everywhere
Wherein I stand and see
My shadow disappear.

In the light of the Transfiguration, all our shadows disappear. Amen.