And he was transfigured before them,
and his clothes became dazzling white,
such as no fuller on earth could bleach them.
We sometimes imagine that if we lived in the time of Jesus and beheld his miraculous deeds we would be motivated to follow him more wholeheartedly. Surely if we behalf the Trinitarian revelation of the identity of Jesus a the Son of God that happened in the Transfiguration we would then discover a firm and unshakable resolve to be his disciples?
Then Peter said to Jesus in reply,
"Rabbi, it is good that we are here!
Let us make three tents:
one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah."
He hardly knew what to say, they were so terrified.
Peter, James, and John were allowed to witness the Transfiguration of Jesus in order that they, by virtue of what the saw, would open themselves to the deeper and still unseen reality of the divinity of Jesus. It was in fact meant to prepare them for the time when the divinity of Jesus would be almost completely obscured during the hour of his Passion. The Transfiguration was in fact only a piece of the puzzle that explained Jesus, one that could not be fully understood without also experiencing the darkness of the his Passion.
As they were coming down from the mountain,
he charged them not to relate what they had seen to anyone,
except when the Son of Man had risen from the dead.
The three apostles were given this consolation in order that the desolation of the cross would not destroy them entirely. But it did not necessarily make what Jesus would go through easy to understand. In fact, if anything, at first it would have been harder to understand. Why would the glorious one allow himself to suffer in that way, and why would his heavenly Father permit it? They likely faced the temptation to dismiss the memories of the Transfiguration as distortions when they saw Jesus crucified, with no cloud of glory, no prophetic witness, and no dazzling brightness.
So they kept the matter to themselves,
questioning what rising from the dead meant.
On its own the experience of the Transfiguration was insufficient to keep the Peter's faith from crumbling. But it was like a seed waiting to be watered by the resurrection, or like a coal waiting to be enkindled by the news that Jesus lived. Jesus was indeed glorious, but not with a kind of glory easily imagined by human ways of thinking, not a kind that eschewed suffering and death. It was rather a glory that was demonstrated even more definitively precisely by his willing obedience even unto death.
And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name (see Philippians 2:8-9).
The glory that they beheld during the Transfiguration was a glory Jesus possessed most perfectly on the cross. But the apostles would need to become witnesses of the resurrection before they could put all the pieces together. From the resurrection onward their faith in Jesus took on a new solidity that no worldly circumstance could hinder. They finally came to understand the meaning of Jesus when he said, "In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world" (see John 16:33).
This faith in the risen Christ is one in which we share. It is functions like a map and compass showing us the way to our true destiny, to the glory that awaits us, and which gives us confidence even when that glory is entirely hidden from our present view. Faith teaches us to keep sailing, even through the storms of life, even when the shore of our destination remains unseen, because of the promised reward. And that reward is no mere possession or subjective experience, but is rather God himself, the fullness of the vision of glory of which the transfiguration was only the vaguest hint.
Great is the LORD and highly to be praised;
his greatness is unsearchable.
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