Introduction
Last Sunday we celebrated Candlemas, which in the Churches calendar markes the end of the celebration of Christmas and the turn towards Lent, Holy Week and Easter. We have turned from looking back to the manger to looking forward to the cross and beyond it the empty tomb. Because Easter is very early this year we have only this one Sunday before Lent begins this coming Wednesday, Ash Wednesday.
Every year the readings set for this the Sunday before Lent point us to that mysterious and startling event recorded in the first three Gospels which we call the transfiguration. Jesus, accompanied by the inner circle of his disciples (Peter, James and John) climbs a high mountain in the north of Galilee and there something happens. In his disciples eyes he appears to shine with a dazzling light and a voice like the voice which was heard at Jesus baptism declares “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him.”
Exposition
So what is happening here? One of the dangers of the way we read the Bible in church is that we can read isolated passages and miss out on the important insights we can gain by knowing what happened just before the event we are looking at and what happens afterwards. To properly understand what is going on in this passage we need to know what happened before it. In each of the Gospels in which the story of Jesus transfiguration appears it is immediately preceded by a conversation which Jesus has with his disciples. He asks them who people say he is, and they come up with a number of answers reporting what other people have said about Jesus. Then Jesus turns the question on them, “But you,” he said, “who do you say I am?” It is Peter who answers, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus praises Peter for his insight, but then goes on to explain that what that means may not be quite what the disciples are expecting. “From then onwards Jesus began to make it clear to his disciples that he was destined to go to Jerusalem and suffer grievously … and to be put to death and to be raised up on the third day.” From this point forward in the gospels every step that Jesus takes will be a step nearer the cross as he journeys towards the great confrontation which lead to the crucifixion.
So at this point it has just become clear to the disciples exactly who Jesus is. He is the Son of God, the long awaited Messiah, he is the one who will suffer and through whose suffering the world will be saved. Now, up on the mountain top, that which the disciples have come to believe in there hearts becomes visible to their eyes. They look on Jesus and they see in him God’s glory shining out.
Take good note of the order in which this happens. First they believe and then they see. Most people say “Seeing is believing” but often in the Christian faith you cannot see until you believe. There is an old Christian slogan which goes ‘Fact, Faith, Feeling’. It means that when we come to God we accept the facts about him, we build our faith by trusting in those facts, not in how we feel. We may or may not feel any different because we are trying to follow Jesus, that doesn’t make any difference to the facts.
So what can we learn from this story?
For me this story teaches me the importance not just of looking at things but of looking through them. The hymn writer George Herbert wrote:
Teach me, my God and King,
in all things thee to see;
and what I do in anything
to do it as for thee.
A man that looks on glass,
on it may stay his eye;
or, if he pleaseth, through it pass,
and then the heaven espy.
In other words, you can look at something and see it simply as it is externally or look through it and see the spiritual reality which it holds. Another poet, Gerald Manley Hopkins, wrote this:
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs --
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
Hopkins was able to look through a world seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil to find it still charged with the grandeur of God.
Application
At the time of the transfiguration Peter, James and John saw through the outward appearance of the human Jesus to see the glory of his divinity. As Christians we must become people who don’t just look at the things we see but through them to spiritual realities which lay within them.
Let me give you some examples.
Let’s start with Jesus. He can be just a figure from history, a character in the pages of a book or we can see through that to the living Lord who fills life with meaning and significance.
Then there’s our church. A group of largely elderly people who meet together once a week, or an outpost of heaven, agents of Gods love and signs of his presence.
Or our worship. A boring ritual consisting of some repetitive prayers and some poorly sung hymns or a sacrifice of praise made in presence of Angels and Archangels and all the company of heaven. The most important act that a human being can carry out.
Or our neighbor. An irritation and a nuisance or a beloved child of a heavenly Father.
Or ourselves. Poor specimens of fallible humanity or Children of the heavenly Father who loves us and is well pleased with us.
The answer is, of course, both. It depends on whether you just look on the surface or look through to the reality beyond.