Transfixed by Jesus on Display
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One of the hallmarks of Anglican Christianity is its sense of beauty. In fact, in this age of bordering on post-thinking, beauty and aesthetics, acknowledging that humans are more than thinking things, but experiencers, lovers of beauty, able to change by not only head knowledge but also by entering into worship with heart, soul, and strength, these are some of the gifts that Anglican Christianity has always walked with. And because of that, we’re in a unique place to remind and commend to other parts of Christendom the value of being changed by simply being in the presence of Christ, in his glorious beauty. This morning we’ll look at beauty and a right response to the presence of the Lord as we explore Jesus’ transfiguration in Matthew’s Gospel.
Part of the rich tradition of beauty that Anglican Christians embrace is the changing of the seasons of the church calendar, the Christian year. We’re about to enter into our penitential season of Lent this Wednesday afternoon. There you’ll notice some changes to the aesthetics of our worship. In Lent, we renew the use of silent contemplation in our service, something I want to invite you to make use of as you enter the sanctuary, giving space for your soul and your neighbor’s soul to quiet itself before the Lord. Silent reflection is one of the best ways to let our hearts and minds acknowledge the presence of the Lord and our need of him. That silence continues into the prelude, when the altar candles are lit, representing the presence of the Holy Spirit being with us. In Lent, we’re invited to take on a spiritual practice, like a renewed emphasis on reading Scripture or to give something up, like a meal here or there. We don’t say the word Alleluia in Lent, so say it loud today as we keep the feast of Holy Eucharist and at the end of the service. Indeed the organ, the candles, the altar, the vestments, the litany, the bread and the wine, overwhelm the senses, not only during Lent but year round. And we respond with silence, kneeling, confessing, praying, seeing, hearing, and tasting. We don’t know how to pray on our own sometimes, so the liturgy gives us the words of faithful Christians to take on our lips and into our hearts. The overwhelming presence of beauty and awe and our right response is something that characterizes Anglican services and it’s something that we see at work in our passage today as we look at the transfiguration of Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel.
Since Advent, we’ve been journeying with Jesus from Bethlehem to Jerusalem. During his three year ministry, he taught in Jerusalem and worked miracles and proclaimed the kingdom of God. And he eventually worked his way out into the northern wilderness only to make the return journey back to Jerusalem and the Cross. And out at the furthest point before the journey back to Jerusalem, on a mountain, likely Mt. Tabor, we witness the event of the Transfiguration of Jesus Christ, the Son of God—the physical change of Jesus’ appearance, revealing a glimpse of his glory to his innermost circle of disciples. This event was recorded for our benefit and kept secret at Jesus’ request, until the resurrection.
Now when I say it was recorded for our benefit, it might not be immediately apparent what the benefit is. If we treat the transfiguration as another bullet point on the list of the events of Jesus’ life and move on, what will we have missed? Well, lots of things!
The transfiguration is happening right after Jesus tells his disciples: If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. Jesus is headed to the Cross in his mind. He’s already started the journey back to Jerusalem in his mind. And in that headspace he takes Peter, James, and John, for a uniquely special moment with him. There on the mountain, Jesus is transfigured, changed in his appearance. Matthew tells us Jesus’ face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light. The veil was at least partially removed. The volume on your senses was dialed to 10! I could see Peter, James, and John pulling out the scroll of our psalm today, and speak the words: “The LORD reigns; let the peoples tremble! He sits enthroned upon the cherubim, let the earth quake!” On the ark of the covenant there are two golden angels facing each other. And the presence of the Lord is enthroned there. They make up his throne. It is a simple picture, but also a model of what is surely a sight so astounding that human senses cannot comprehend it. Like the beauty of a thousand sunsets and the terror of a thousand hurricanes with apocalyptic creatures in flight and a figure in the middle of it all, the Lord of not only that moment, of that picture, but of your life, your breath, your soul. And we get a piece of that moment at the transfiguration. But the description of the transfiguration isn’t the same thing Isaiah saw in his vision of heaven. It’s perhaps not that intense. Indeed, if the transfiguration had the amp of your senses dialed to 10, John’s description of Jesus in his Apocalypse has the amp dialed to 77, able to best any heavy metal music video in its intensity. With a sword coming out of his mouth, clothed in every color imaginable, feet of burnished bronze refined in a furnace, voice like the roar of many waters, face like the sun at full strength, with death in his train and flaming fire in his eyes. What we see in the transfiguration is not at this intensity level. It was a glimpse, a token, an icon, a glance at the deity of Jesus.
Moses and Elijah, representatives of the Law and the Prophets, appeared to bear witness to Jesus and his greatness. Each of them had experienced a miraculous moment with glimmers of this moment with Jesus, theophanies, where God showed himself to be present on a mountain. Moses at Mt. Sinai, glowed from witnessing the glory of the Lord, as he came down the mountain.
It’s worth noting that Moses never entered the Promised Land, until this event. Until he meets with Jesus there.
In this moment, seeing Jesus transfigured and Moses and Elijah appearing, you have two choices: say nothing, or fall down in worship. But Peter takes choice C. Talk logistics. Mark tells us that he was talking nonsense because he was afraid. You can see it in v. 4.
4 And Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.”
Perhaps in shock, Peter kicks into autopilot. He almost comes across as unfazed when, if he was thinking clearly, he would have been rethinking his entire life and its meaning.
I’m not sure from our modern context we would have acted much differently from Peter. We are unceasingly concerning ourselves with the question: What works? The question’s always relevant. We make decisions based on practicalities. There’s no way to reach the right decision without thinking through what works. It’s the best criterion for moving forward or not. But the question of what’s practical has no place at the transfiguration. When the Son of God reveals a glimpse of his glory to you on a mountaintop with Moses and Elijah, you close your laptop. If unlike Peter, you are in your right mind, in that moment, you ask questions that are actually important, questions like: What does this mean? What does this moment say about who I am? What does this moment tell me about God? Does my view of reality need to change because of this moment? But we often deceive ourselves and intentionally keep ourselves from asking real questions, and we do so by asking worse questions, trivial questions, practical questions. When we choose to ask lesser questions of the moment, the moment becomes lesser, at least for us. When we ask trivial questions of the moment, we make the moment trivial. When we ask practical questions we impose our limited value system on a moment that is meant to re-form it.
Peter’s response would only have been worse if he would have asked if anyone had any food with them. Or what their plans were for Passover. Though, I have to say, I wouldn’t mind hearing each person there answer that question. Again Peter was in shock, but asking any random question in a significant moment isn’t good enough. It isn’t valid. It’s kind of a lie. It’s labeling it as less important than it really is. Just asking about lodging plans during a monumental moment isn’t appropriate, it isn’t good enough. To really live, you have to ask the RIGHT question, especially in those moments when time and eternity open up before you, when the person who made you out of dust reveals his deity to you. That is not the time to talk logistics.
Fortunately for Peter, and for all of us, Peter was interrupted.
5 He was still speaking when, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” 6 When the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces and were terrified.
Since the presence of Elijah, the presence of Moses, and the miraculous changed appearance of Jesus didn’t elicit the correct response, God the Father made it abundantly clear. The disciples needed to recalibrate their hearts and minds to what was important, and they didn’t do it. So God did it for them. It makes me think of the Scripture where it says that every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Every knee, even the realists’, the pragmatists’, those skilled at obscuring the important with the trivial, EVERY knee will bow and tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. The lesson here is Don’t be in the position of being surprised to find yourself doing it. We can bow and confess now. We can start rehearsing the dance of heaven now and avoid the need to bow and confess out of shock and terror and regret on the last day. Those who declare war and plot insurrection against Christ will have a whole different experience of bowing and confessing before Christ than those who Jesus recognizes when they do it. When we see Jesus, accurately, clearly, let us bow our knee and confess with our tongue that, You, Jesus Christ are Lord, and bow before him, in continuity with the way we treated him in our time here in this earthly experience. And when we do, we’ll hear similar words from Jesus to what he said to his disciples on that mountain. You can see them in verse 7.
7 But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Rise, and have no fear.”
8 And when they lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only.
9 And as they were coming down the mountain, Jesus commanded them, “Tell no one the vision, until the Son of Man is raised from the dead.”
In a special gift, long after the resurrection, we actually get to see Peter freed up to tell people what happened on the mountain that day. It’s recorded in his second epistle, chapter 1, verses 16 through 18. He says this:
16 For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. 17 For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” 18 we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain.
In his letter Peter goes on, using the privilege of being included in this moment to defend the church, by rightly establishing his superior authority over and against false prophets.
At the transfiguration, Jesus gave Peter, James, and John the special gift of sight. He had revealed his secret identity to them, in more than words, more than actions, more than healings, but he revealed his secret to them in his person. He had peeled back the curtain that obscured them from truly seeing. The transfiguration puts Jesus in his glory on display to be wondered at, to draw our awe and our worship to him. To reevaluate our hearts and our lives, transfixed in his presence.
And notice that he doesn’t leave them bewildered and disoriented, but helps them up and calms their fears. Even with the display of his glory, the goal isn’t to dominate, but to the give the gift of spiritual sight, knowledge and experience. And only after living in the light of that moment, absorbing the gift of that moment, the moment later gets its practical use in defending and building up the church.
After it was all over, at the farthest point away from Jerusalem, they would start the journey back to Jerusalem, for the final point in Jesus’ earthly ministry, where the eternal Son of God would put himself on display again, this time in another apocalyptic moment, a grotesque statement of his hatred for sin and his love for sinners, nailed to a Roman cross, determined to resolve our doubts and our enmity with God, and our lack of concern for what is really important. In both scenes, at the transfiguration and at the cross, his presence, the way he presents himself to us, reorders us. It destroys us and puts us back together again, reorienting us in the way we were meant to be. May we be brave enough to see him as he presents himself to us, to see him as he truly is, to ask for that gift, to be confronted with reality. And let us endure in his presence, with knees bowed and worship on our lips and be changed into who we were meant to be, for his glory and our great joy.