Sermon: Transfiguration – 2022

6 February 2022

Text: Matt 17:1-9 (Ex 34:29-35, 2 Pet 1:16-21)

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

As we have learned all too well, it’s difficult to have proper communication while wearing a mask.  You cannot see facial expressions, it’s hard to hear what is being said, and there is just something about a barrier that is dehumanizing.

When Moses came down from the mountain, after speaking face to face with God, “the skin of his face shone.”  The energy radiating from the face of God was somehow embedded in Moses’s very flesh.  This glowing from his face was disturbing to the Israelites.  It was distracting and frightening to the point where Moses had to “put a veil over his face.”

Even the reflected glory of God is too much to bear for us poor, miserable sinners.  Like men who live in caves, the light became painful to our fallen eyes. 

In a sense, our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the light of the world, who “shines in the darkness” of our sins and our separation from God, and whom the “darkness has not overcome,” wears a veil as well.  The New and Greater Moses doesn’t merely talk face to face with God, rather His face is the face of God.  And yet, in mercy to us, our Lord tones down His glory.  He veils Himself in our mortal flesh, and He speaks to us face to face, in a way that neither overwhelms us nor hides His face from us.

In centuries past, God was separated from us by a screen, but now in these last days, the “Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” And, as St. John adds, “we have seen His glory.”

For St. John was there on the mountain with Jesus.  He and his brother James and their colleague Peter were there when our Lord removed the figurative veil, and let His light shine before others, “and His face shone like the sun.”  The glory of His divinity, normally veiled behind His completely human form, was permitted to be glimpsed by our Lord’s leaders of the disciples.  They saw this beaming light at its source, not merely reflected from the face of a prophet – but from the face of God Himself.

And indeed, we poor sinners cannot stand this glory, and even as the Father’s voice spoke to them audibly, “This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased; listen to Him,” these three men, who would soon preach the Gospel to the nations, “fell on their faces and were terrified.” 

Something else happened on the mountain.  It was as if time and space were bent, as Moses and Elijah appeared in visible form, and Elijah the prophet and Moses the lawgiver were both speaking to Jesus.  And here we see what caused Moses’s face to glow: he had been speaking with God face to face, in God’s full glory.  St. John would later write, concerning Jesus: “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, He has made Him known.” 

But Jesus does not come to overwhelm us with His divine glory, dear friends.  For His glory is made manifest not by what terrifies us, but rather in what comforts us.  He does not come to destroy us with His mighty power, but to save us by His mighty love.  His greatest glory will be at the cross.  Instead of light radiating from His face in the glory of God, we will see His face battered and bloody, with the sky darkened even at high noon.  Instead of conversing with Moses and Elijah and hearing the voice of the Father claiming the Son as His own, we will hear the Son cry out to the Father from the cross, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?”  We will see the light of His eyes dim as He surrenders His spirit.  Instead of being arrayed in gleaming white clothes, He will be covered in blood and gore.  And yet, dear friends, this is His true glory: saving the world by His sacrificial blood, atoning for our transgressions, and reconciling mankind to God – and this indeed is why the Father is “well pleased” and why we should “listen to Him.”  For as Peter confessed, Jesus has “the words of eternal life.”  Indeed, to whom shall we go?  John told us that Jesus is the very Word of God made flesh.  And so, to Him we go for forgiveness, life, and salvation! 

And the light of the world will return to the very body offered to the Father as a sacrifice for us.  And the very blood that was stilled in the heart that stopped beating in obedience to the Father and in love for us will once again course through His veins.  The spirit that He yielded up will re-enter His body, and with what must have been a blast of light like no other in history, our Lord rose again in glory, glory blasting from the tomb.

He appeared in His glorious resurrection to Peter, James, John, to the rest of the eleven, to His disciples, and to hundreds of others as well.  He veiled His glory so that even Mary Magdalene did not recognize Him at first, nor did the disciples who walked to Emmaus.  But when our Lord showed Thomas what the hymnist calls “those dear tokens of His passion,” and “those glorious scars,” St. Thomas confessed, “My Lord, and my God!”

And this, dear friends, is why St. Peter would also later write, “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.”  St. Peter was there when “the voice was borne to Him by the Majestic Glory, ‘This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.’”

Peter, James, and John “heard this very voice borne from heaven.”  And in spite of this experience, seeing the light of Christ outshining the sun and hearing the Word of God explain who Jesus is, St. Peter says something stunning, dear brothers and sisters.  He says, “And we have something more sure.”  More sure than being there on the mountain with the transfigured Christ, with James and John, with Moses and Elijah.  And that “something more sure” is “the prophetic Word, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place.”  The apostle explains why the Scripture is indeed in the words of the Psalmist: “A lamp to my feet and a light to my path,” because “men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”

Peter, James, and John, and even Moses and Elijah had the enlightenment of the glowing face of our Lord, the voice of the Father, and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, but we have the enlightenment of their inspired words: the Law, the Prophets, the Psalms, the Gospels, the Epistles, the entire revelation of Holy Scripture, “something more sure” than personal experience, than visions, than extraordinary hilltop experiences.  We have the Word: the Word of Holy Scripture and the Word made flesh: the flesh and blood of Christ.  This altar is the Mountain of Sinai where God’s Law does its work.  It is the Mountain of Transfiguration where the Body and Blood of Jesus are veiled under the forms of bread and wine, and yet are truly present.  This altar is the hill known as Golgotha, where the cross stands, where Christ’s body and blood are waiting to be distributed to you, even as the Father’s voice is spoken to you in absolution, declaring that He is well pleased with you, by virtue of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

That prophetic word that St. Peter speaks of is called the Gospel, the Good News that God does not mask away His face from our view, but rather takes human flesh and speaks to us, face to face.  He has torn the veil that separates us from the Most Holy Trinity, ripping it off, and inviting us to join Him on the mountain – with Moses and Elijah, with Peter, James, and John, with prophets and apostles and martyrs, with saints and angels, and with all the company of heaven, basking in the glow of our Lord’s glory, no longer a terror to us, because He has cleansed us and made us worthy to stand in His presence.

For remember what happened at the end of the Transfiguration, as Peter, James, and John hid from God’s glory.  “Jesus came and touched them, saying, ‘Rise and have no fear.’  And when they lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only.”

And on the great day of the resurrection, we will hear our Lord say to each one of us: “Rise.”  So let us indeed have no fear.  Let us listen to Him.  Let us partake of His glorious body and blood.  Let us hear the prophetic Word!  Let us look to no one but Jesus only “as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts,” even unto eternity.

Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen