In our three lessons this morning for the Feast of the Transfiguration, we see a common pattern: first, an Old Testament prophecy, in this case an apocalyptic vision from the book of Daniel; then an historical account written in the present tense, in this case, Luke’s account of the event in his Gospel; and finally a later writing, looking back to the event as of great importance, in this case Peter’s second Epistle, which sees the event as of great significance in salvation history.
What is common in these three accounts – future, present, past – is that the Transfiguration is a moment of divine revelation when Jesus’ identity as Son of God and Messiah becomes clear. The Old Testament prophecy of One like a human being presented before the throne of the Ancient One is fulfilled in the Transfigured Jesus on the holy mountain. The confused and disbelieving disciples (including Peter) who accompany Jesus to the holy mountain hear and see Jesus identified by a voice from God, “This is my Son, my chosen, listen to Him!” and believe. And decades later, in his epistle, Peter thinks back to the experience to affirm the truth of Jesus’ identity as God’s Son and the Messiah: that Christ is more than a clever story or idea but divine reality. “We ourselves heard this voice from heaven, when we were with him on the holy mountain”. Therefore, Peter continues, writing to the beleaguered Christians of Asia Minor, “you will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.”
Thus, we do well to see the Transfiguration as a kind of conversion experience, a turning around, metanoia, both in the lives of the three disciples who accompanied Jesus to the holy mountain, but also in the lives of the recipients of Peter’s letter, hence his warning to them, “you do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts”.
From what and to what is the conversion? The conversion is from confusion about who Jesus is, perhaps seeing him as only a healer or miracle-worker or prophet or the result of a self-serving myth or fable, to, through a flash of divine light (and the Transfiguration account is full of brightness and light), the understanding that God is here and his Son has been revealed to us; and we are changed as a result. Jesus is transfigured so that we, like Peter, John and James, and the church after them, might believe and act faithfully on that reality.
As Anglicans, we are sometimes rather suspicious of conversion experiences, especially when they seem to be repeated without much effect in, for example, altar calls. Yet even if we are born into the faith and baptized as infants, we are encouraged to pray and reflect such that there are points along the way when we declare, “I do believe this” or at least have a kind of “ah-ha” moment when we identify ourselves with the life and teaching, the death and resurrection, of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, the Messiah. For some the moments may be more intellectual, for others, more emotional. Often, as with the Transfiguration account, light is involved: coming out of darkness and confusion, into the light.
Ours is also an age that likes to de-construct, to take things apart. I am sure we have all had the experience of taking something apart and not being able to put it back together again. (Just ask me about keyboards of computers past.) Indeed, the disciples immediately deconstruct the vision, the appearance of Moses and Elijah, and re-construct it wrongly, “let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah”. But the divine cloud overshadows them and the voice from heaven overrules their human response with the divine word: “This is my Son, my chosen, listen to him!”
In the end, in any Christian conversion experience, it is the divine that overrules the human, that catches us up short, that turns us around, that makes us think again, that re-directs and re-energizes us. We are called to be open to this conversion and re-conversion all the time, particularly as we get caught up in the controversies and problems of our time or our personal lives. I say to myself, perhaps the Transfiguration is calling me away a bit from my new addiction to CNN and following the saga of US politics in the age of Trump. (I’ll exempt Coronation Street because it is fiction but even it can become addictive.) Sometimes evil transfigurations are more interesting to follow than divine ones. But there is always the danger that evil transfigurations can draw us into themselves and make us take on some of their character.
Jesus’ Transfiguration and the faith it engenders calls us to love and compassion, to brightness and truth, to good humour and wise judgement, to mutual support and encouragement. It calls us to redeem both old and new for the sake of God’s reign: whether old scriptures and tradition or new technology such as the social media and new scientific discoveries. (We remember the ending of last week’s Gospel, the householder bringing out treasures new and old.) Transfiguration and conversion stick with us and last a lifetime. Transfiguration is an attitude that keeps us open to constant conversion from confusion and misunderstanding to truth and light.
More than once, especially in international contexts, I have been reminded that the date of Transfiguration, August 6th, is also the day the first atomic bomb was dropped in Hiroshima, Japan in 1945. For Japanese Christians, it is almost impossible to preach about the Transfiguration without contrasting it to the horrible destruction of nuclear weapons, still experienced by families. We are reminded that the conversion represented by the Transfiguration is not just individual and personal, but a call for nations to turn away from war, and especially weapons of war, such as poisonous gas, landmines, saturation bombing and nuclear weapons, that are indiscriminate in their destruction. We have numerous social situations in Canada, from homelessness and poverty, to the situation of many of our First Nations peoples, that demand conversion and transfiguration on a societal and political scale.
Was the Transfiguration also a kind of conversion experience for Jesus? Luke’s account does not give us even a hint of what Jesus experienced; he is only deep in prayer. In Luke’s account of Jesus' ministry, Jesus already understood himself and his vocation. Yet, the Transfiguration must have been an enormous moment of affirmation and giving of strength, as he prepared to descend to Jerusalem where he will be arrested and crucified. Indeed, it is a prefiguring of his Resurrection, that out of the death to come, there will be new life and redemption.
But we are with Peter, James and John, needing and seeking clarity; and through the divine light and word, moving to and continuing in the new way of Christ, Son of God, the Messiah. As we are resurrected, we pray that we may be transfigured along the way also.
For a month this summer we have been having short Bible studies on the homily after the service and I invite us to continue that this morning. I think my question for us is whether this interpretation of Transfiguration as personal conversion makes sense and can we look back to past moments of realization and conversion in our lives that have enabled, in Peter’s words, the “morning star [to] rise in [our] hearts”. And where are we in need of more conversion, more exposure to the light and glory of the Transfiguration, to let God’s grace flow through us.
Even if we may be old and nearing sunset, so to speak, and this morning we mourn the death of our dear friend and parishioner, Neil, the dawn metaphor is a powerful one and does not go away as we get older or even die. The Transfiguration of Christ, like the Resurrection of Christ that it prefigures, is “a lamp shining in a dark place” enabling that “morning star” to rise in our hearts, if only we have faith and do not despair. So let us too, with Peter, James, John and Jesus, go down to Jerusalem, to the hurly-burly and roughness of our times, to poverty, to confusion, to hatred, to suffering, to loneliness, to greed in a society that pursues wealth as a god, and let us be that light and that glory, that dawn, that morning star, that Transfigured and Resurrected Christ in our broken and violent world. Amen.
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