Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen!
Who remembers playing peek-a-boo with the kids or the grandkids? Sure you do! You hold your hands up over your face and then you quickly pull them away and say peek-a-boo! with gusto! It’s all to get a rise out of the baby, coupling both surprise and expectation together into a single game that makes the adults look totally bonkers! But its for the kids and as long as they are not screaming and crying, silliness knoweth no limits!
Today we have a peek-a-boo of sorts. Our Lord’s Transfiguration. It marks the end of the Christmas season in the church year. Advent, Christmas and Epiphany get all the loose ends tied up today atop the mountain. When we talk about the incarnation of our Lord at Christmas, its all about the baby. Baby Jesus in the manger, born the King of the Jews. The word made flesh. God incarnate. The glory and splendor of the eternal God is shrouded by a veil of humanity. Jesus our Lord is both fully God and fully Man at the same time. But the glory we usually associate with divinity is ‘hidden’ under a veil of humanity. And this veil has been lifted a little bit, from time to time, during our Lord’s life and ministry. That’s what the season of Epiphany has been all about, this revealing of the glory of God. We saw it through our Lord’s incarnation and His many miracles, signs and wonders. His teaching and preaching about the Kingdom of God. All of this has been our focus during Epiphany. And now today, the veil gets completely lifted as the disciples behold the intense glory of God face to face!
What a sight to behold! St. Luke tells us that our Lord takes His inner circle of disciples up the mountain. Peter, John and James. Up the hill they go to pray. All through the Bible, splendid stuff seems to happen on mountain tops. Our Lord Jesus had His own Sermon on the Mount. The 10 Commandments were given to Moses on Mount Sinai. The prophet Elijah defeated the false prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. Solomon builds the Temple on Mount Moriah - the same place that Abraham went to sacrifice Isaac if you recall. And now today, on yet another mountain, we have the Transfiguration. The Church Fathers believed it was Mount Tabor others have speculated it was Mount Hermon. But St. Luke doesn’t name this one. He just calls it “the mountain” (9:28). Up they go to pray. And deep in prayer, this grand Theophany occurs.
And our other readings this morning do a great job showing us how this all connects. Immediately we are taken back to Moses as we heard in our Exodus reading. He spoke to God and his face shone, reflecting the splendid glory of the eternal God. And other places in the scriptures God is portrayed this way. The man on the throne in Ezekiel’s vision (1:26-28) was glowing like metal and fire. The Ancient of Days in Daniel (7:9) was super white like snow and pure wool. Psalm 104:2 tells us that God covers Himself with light like a robe. And then when Angels show up throughout the Bible (Acts 1:10, MK 16:5) they have this same kind of dazzling appearance, glowing white. In Revelation we see the armies of Heaven wearing white and pure linen and even their war horses are white! (19:14). It’s a huge signifier of the glory and divinity of God. Jesus’ Divine nature is being revealed in glorious splendor. And unlike Moses, He isn’t reflecting it. He is radiating it! He is the source of the light, for just as St. John tells us “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1JN1:5).
So the other wild and crazy thing that happens is that somehow, Moses and Elijah show up! They represent the Law and the Prophets of the Old Testament, both bearing witness to the Messiah. And that glorious Messiah is right there, in their midst along with His disciples on the mountain top. St. Ephrem the Syrian, a Church Father, made the amazing connection. He said Moses and Elijah “rejoiced because they had seen Christ’s humanity, which they had not known. And the Apostles rejoiced because they had seen the glory of His Divinity, which they had not known.”
St. Luke alone tells us what they were doing there though. They were talking to Jesus about His Bitcoin investments! … Nope! Rather, they were talking about our Lord’s “departure” as it is translated in the ESV Bible. This is a lacking translation. The word St. Luke actually uses there is “exodus.” They were talking about our Lord Jesus’ exodus, literally “the way out.” From the Old Testament, we know ‘the’ Exodus was the way out for God’s people from slavery and oppression in Egypt. But Jesus’ exodus will take place at Jerusalem. St. Luke tells right after this that our Lord “set His face to go to Jerusalem” (9:51). He’s going there to the cross. This will be the exodus for the entire world! The lost, banished and enslaved children of Adam and Eve will find the way out to the promised land of forgiveness, life and salvation through the cross of Christ. He literally goes through the valley of the shadow of death and right out the other side in the promise of Easter morning. The tomb is empty, the stone is rolled away to lead the redeemed from the darkness of death into the light of life, a promise for all who will believe it.
To all this incredible glory and splendour, St. Peter gives his now famous “Tent Talk!” Firstly, we are told that the disciples were heavy with sleep. Tired from the walk up the mountain? Maybe they had just eaten a Turkey dinner. Perhaps it was night time when this took place. Regardless, St. Peter wakes up and beholds this majestic sight and immediately starts talking about the booths, the tents. Three of them. And the tent talk is connected to the Old Testament yet again. There was that harvest festival, the feast of booths, commemorating God’s people wandering in the desert after the Exodus. But there was also the Tabernacle, the tent of meeting, the mobile temple. And the language used to talk about that tent and what happens here on the Mount of Transfiguration is the same. Moses was prevented from entering the Tabernacle because a cloud of glory had descended upon it and overshadowed it (Ex 40:29 LXX). It’s the same thing that happens at our Lord’s Transfiguration. St. Luke tells us “a cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud” (9:34).
And clouds, like the dazzling bright white light, are all through the scriptures as well. God led His people Israel with a pillar of cloud (Ex 13:21), God’s glory appeared in a cloud (Ex 16:10), God descended on Mount Sinai in a thick cloud (Ex 19:9), and on an on and on. The point is, God is present here in this cloud. And, the other point is that they don’t need any tents. Because Jesus is the tent. He is the one who “tabernacles” with us in His flesh (JN 1:14). And then, the voice from the midst of the cloud speaks. And what does it say? It’s a conglomeration of Old Testament scriptures. Like a delicious jello mold of carrots and cottage cheese and pickled herring suspended in a gelatinous lime coloured blob, all rolled into one for your potluck enjoyment! “This is my Son, my Chosen One; listen to Him!” (LK 9:35).”My Son” is from Psalm 2:7. “Chosen one” is from Isaiah 42:1. “Listen to Him” is a direct quote from Deuteronomy 18:15 talking precisely about the New Prophet who will be like Moses. The Son of God. The chosen one of God. To Him, listen.
The mountain, the light, the cloud, Moses, Elijah, the voice, they all point to one thing, the person of Jesus Christ our Lord. Like a flashing neon sign saying “Look Here!” this is what we do too. We look to Jesus alone. At Christmas we learned that God has become man. At the Transfiguration we learn that this same man is also God. The God-Man born to set us free and lead us out of death to life. He is the one we look to for forgiveness, life and salvation. The Transfiguration is like a Divine window into heaven to behold our Savior and the salvation He brings. “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2Cor 3:18). Thanks be to God now and forever more! Amen!
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