Just What Are We Seeing?
Sermon preached by the Reverend Patricia Farris
February 06, 2005

The story of the Transfiguration of Jesus has got to be one of the stranger stories in the Bible. Coming at the end of the season of Epiphany, it is the last big hurrah before the quieter, introspective season of Lent begins. It seems quite fortuitous this year for the Transfiguration to land on Super Bowl Sunday, an event whose half-time extravaganza will also attempt to dazzle us, no doubt, with a music and light show of some sort, although, we have been assured, without any sort of wardrobe malfunction this year.

The Transfiguration is a light show, too, complete with a wardrobe change and a cast of special guest stars. It becomes a critical point in Jesus’ life, a point of major transition as he shifts from his active ministry to turn his face toward Jerusalem, the place of his death and resurrection. You might say that we’re getting to the play-offs now, as Jesus will soon be facing a showdown with Pontius Pilate and King Herod.

Before all that heats us, Jesus desperately wants his disciples to understand what’s at stake and what it means. That’s what brings us to the drama of this day. He summons the select insider group of Peter and brothers James and John, those two sons of Zebedee, those fishermen he had called from fishing for fish to fish for the souls of men and women. In this incredible experience that we call “The Transfiguration,” he calls them apart to experience something more, something even more profound than all he had been saying and doing. There on the mountaintop he gives them an opportunity to see more than his words, his ministry, his teaching, his healing, his preaching, his popularity, his friendships and his prayer. Jesus wants them to see through and beyond all that to something that could be apprehended most accurately not by ear or eye, but by heart and soul. Jesus wants them to know who he really is—not just a teacher, a prophet, a healer--but the Messiah, the Son of God.

Up on the mountaintop the three disciples enter into the presence of God and they see what they can barely yet believe. Their beloved friend and teacher, the very human Jesus, undergoes a metamorphosis, a change in form. He is transfigured before them. The appearance of his face changes, taking on the radiance usually reserved for heavenly beings. His clothes become dazzling white. They sense the presence of Moses and Elijah, the great law-giver and prophet of their Jewish faith. They hear God speaking to them,
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"Just What Are We Seeing?" Sermon by Rev. Patricia Farris, Feb. 6, 2005

saying: “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!”

This is a scene any Super Bowl half-time producer could be proud of. You can imagine the sound effects and the special effects. But Jesus does this not to entertain, but rather to evangelize his own disciples. He is leading them into deeper and deeper faith, so that they might be prepared to not only endure the suffering that will come, but rise above it and carry on.

The Transfiguration is another one of God's ways of trying to help us open our eyes. To see in that instant that indeed, all that Jesus has said is true. "I am the Messiah and I am the Christ. I will suffer and I will be raised up. God's kingdom is already in within you. It is already real. Therefore--no matter what, you don't ever need to be afraid."

The story of the Transfiguration of Christ points beyond the text to the true reality of Christ, the light of the world. It offers access through the gate of the visible to the mystery of the invisible. Its aim is to help us see beyond Jesus of Nazareth, the Galilean, to see him radically transformed, that we might see him as the Son of God, the fulfillment of the law and the prophets and to glimpse the foreshadowing of his resurrection and future glory. This knowledge will change forever how we live, how we face death, and how we begin to see beyond the grave.

Here we come face to face with the identity we took on in our baptism. We stare into our vocation as disciples of this Christ. For a moment up there on the top of Mount Tabor with Jesus and Moses and Elijah and Peter and James and John we're given the power to live as disciples of Christ and to share in the promise. The Transfiguration not only closes the Season of Epiphany, it turns us around and points us into the Season of Lent, the forty days of preparation for the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Now remember, this notion that “Messiahship” would include suffering and death was so at odds with contemporary understandings of the Messiah that it would have been exceedingly difficult for even Jesus' closest friends to comprehend. They were being asked to embrace, for him and for themselves, a future that surely would be terrible before it would be glorious.

No wonder the disciples fell to their knees in fear. It was not just because of the light show, but of what it revealed: his future and theirs as well. They fell to their knees in fear. But Jesus draws near and touches them and says: “Get up and do not be afraid.” Get up and do not be afraid.

What a word for us, when we fall in fear or sorrow before the things of this life that sometimes seem almost too much to bear. “Get up,” says Jesus, “and do not be afraid.”
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