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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
With the Transfiguration of Our Lord today—and Ash Wednesday’s beginning Lent later this week—we come to the last Sunday of the Epiphany season, which season of the Church Year began eight weeks ago with the Epiphany of Our Lord, when, to wise men from the east, Jesus was revealed as God in human flesh (Matthew 2:1-12). The following Sunday marked the Baptism of Our Lord, when the heavens were opened and the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus in bodily form, like a dove, and the Father’s voice identified Jesus as His Beloved Son, with Whom the Father was well pleased (Luke 3:21-22). And, on each successive Sunday since, Jesus’s own words and deeds showed forth His divine nature from His human flesh, leading up to what we mark today, His Transfiguration, what is, prior to His resurrection and all that follows it, the greatest revelation of His true divine glory from His human flesh.
In St. Luke’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account, Jesus’s Transfiguration comes about eight days after Jesus, praying alone but with His disciples there, asked them who they said that He was, and Peter answered, “the Christ of God” (Luke 9:18-20). Then Jesus strictly charged and commanded them to tell that to no one, saying that He must suffer many things, be rejected by the chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised (Luke 9:21-22). Jesus also called His followers to deny themselves and take up their crosses daily, promising that whoever might lose their lives for His sake would save it, and, finally, Jesus said that some standing there would not taste death until they saw the Kingdom of God (Luke 9:23-27). And, some arguably saw the Kingdom of God about eight days later when Jesus was transfigured!
So, Jesus’s Transfiguration comes in the Church Year as a mountain-top experience of a sort before the valley of Lent, and Jesus’s Transfiguration comes in St. Luke’s Gospel account at nearly the end of Jesus’s Galilean ministry just before His setting His face to go to Jerusalem for His Passion (Luke 9:51). As important as those Church Year and Gospel account contexts are, however, more important and more relevant to us is that “Jesus’s Transfiguration reveals both His glory and our glory”.
Certainly we need that revelation, as Peter and John and James needed that revelation. In telling of Jesus’s Transfiguration, St. Luke uniquely reports that Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep. Commentators speculate that it was night-time and that Jesus prayed a long time—not to mention that the group may have just hiked up a 10‑thousand foot mountain! Sleepiness hardly explains Peter’s not knowing what he said about making three tents, since St. Luke says at that point they were fully awake, but Peter’s not knowing what he said perhaps should make us reluctant to read too much into his suggestion. At least initially, the disciples not only were physically sleepy, but apparently they also were spiritually sleepy, asleep to the truth of faith (Balz, TDNT 8:554). Similarly, later on the Mount of Olives, when Jesus told them to pray that they might not enter into temptation, the disciples, St. Luke uniquely reports, slept for sorrow (Luke 22:39-46; confer Matthew 26:43; Mark 14:26). A sleep, we might say, of spiritual death, spiritual death due to trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1, 5), theirs, as well as ours.
At the Transfiguration, the alteration in Jesus’s face and clothing and Moses and Elijah’s appearing in glory and speaking with Jesus of His departure (or “exodus”) apparently made the disciples at least physically fully awake, and, by Divine inspiration, St. Paul called the Romans and calls us to wake up from our spiritual sleep, our “sinful stupor in relation to salvation” (Romans 13:11; Balz, TDNT 8:554-555).Such calls to repentance and faith enable us to turn in sorrow from our sin that otherwise warrants both death here in time and eternal torment in hell. And, such calls to repentance and faith enable us to trust God to forgive our sinful natures and all our actual sin, whatever our sin might be. When we so repent, then God so forgives us, for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ.
Aside from words and deeds’ revealing Jesus to be God in human flesh, one otherwise would never know or have known, especially during what we call His state of humiliation, when the man Jesus did not always or fully use His abilities as God. But, at the Transfiguration the glory that belonged to the only Son from the Father (John 1:14) was given to and shown forth from the man Jesus. The necessary two witnesses of Moses and Elijah, both of whom had unusual departures from this world (as, in the case of Moses, we heard in today’s Old Testament Reading [Deuteronomy 34:1-12]), and their representing the Law and the Prophets and so arguably the whole of the Old Testament Scriptures—their testimony, as today’s Collect put it, confirmed the mysteries of the faith, specifically the “exodus” that Jesus was about to accomplish in and around Jerusalem, the conclusion of His life and work (Michaelis, TDNT 5:107), the consummation of His ministry (Kretzmann, ad loc Luke 9:28-32, p.317): His suffering many things and being rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, His being killed, and on the third day His being raised—all of which He was appointed and chosen to do (Isaiah 42:1), and, all of which, when the time came, He did do, for us, in our place. That Jesus was both true God and man and yet humbled Himself to die on the cross (Philippians 2:8) means that His death was sufficient for the sins of the whole world, including your sins and my sins. Thus, God can be, as today’s Psalm described Him (Psalm 99; antiphon: v.9), a forgiving God to us! Our exodus from slavery to sin that God accomplished through Jesus is greater than the Israelites’ exodus from slavery in Egypt that God accomplished through Moses (Stephenson, CLD XII:134; XIII:14). As great as Moses was, Jesus is greater; Jesus is a prophet like Moses (Deuteronomy 18:15-22) but counted worthy of more glory than Moses, as we heard in today’s Epistle Reading (Hebrews 3:1-6), as a Son faithful over God’s house, which is what we are, the Divinely‑inspired author of Hebrews said, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.
Right after the Transfiguration, the disciples, as commanded (Matthew 17:9; Mark 9:9), kept silent and told no one anything of what they had seen, but later, as today’s Proper Preface will describe, strengthened by that revelation of His glory, they proclaimed Jesus’s cross and resurrection (confer 2 Peter 1:13-21). Through their records we are able to “listen to” Jesus and ourselves preach. Then as now, words and deeds reveal Jesus to us and grant us His forgiveness, especially in Holy Baptism, individual Holy Absolution, and the Sacrament of the Altar. Whether or not on our eighth day, in Holy Baptism we are re-created, adopted by grace, as today’s Collect described, and mercifully made co-heirs with the King in His glory. As the Israelites were circumcised and ate of the Passover in order to receive the benefits of Moses’s exodus, so we are baptized and eat of the Sacrament of the Altar in order to receive the benefits of Jesus’s exodus. His Body and Blood strengthen and preserve us through this life, including the suffering that we face.
The close connection between Jesus’s sayings about His own and His disciples suffering and the Transfiguration’s glimpse of His and our glory shows us well that, as with Jesus, so also with us, the path to glory is through suffering. No matter what suffering God in His wisdom and for our benefit permits us to experience—at school or work, in our church, in our families, or in our own bodies—such suffering serves God’s good purposes for us, and such suffering, St. Paul says, is not even worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed to us (Romans 8:18). “Jesus’s Transfiguration reveals both His glory and our glory”. God has welcomed us who repent and believe in Jesus, and we likewise welcome all who repent and believe in Jesus. With all the faithful we are strengthened, as the Proper Preface will put it, to look forward to the glory of life everlasting, and we know that God hears and will answer affirmatively today’s Collect’s petition to bring us to the fullness of our inheritance in heaven.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +