2 Kings 2:1-12, Psalm 50:1-6, 2 Corinthians 4:3-6, Mark 9:2-9

The Word of God for us today comes via four portions of scripture, four readings which distil to one key message: however, that message might not be the one you were expecting. It might seem rather straightforward to pull a valuable word from God out of the story of the Transfiguration, but sometimes we do us well to look beyond the immediately obvious to dig into glean what lays beneath the surface.

Our story from the Jewish Traditions today comes from 2 Kings 2:1-12 and in it we hear about Elisha who refuses to be left behind when God moves in power. God is about to do something magnificent, and the young prophet wants to be there to see this thing, regardless of the personal distress it might cause him at seeing his friend and mentor taken away. The other prophets are pessimistic, but because Elisha refuses to be swayed by their winey mockery, and chooses to be present at a moment of potential sadness, he is there when Elijah is ready to give him the blessing. The companies of prophets are at a distance; however, Elisha is on the spot and is deemed worthy of seeing the complete manifestation of God. Without doubt this was inspiration to his courage, and it enabled him to dwell in this positive memory when things got tough. Elijah told Elisha that he had asked for a hard thing, but the hard thing is granted to him because Elisha is determined to see God at work.  I believe it’s not the double portion which is the hard thing, but the fact that Elisha had to watch while Elijah was taken away. The hard thing was not difficult, but it was painful: when God acted in a majestic manner only one brave man was permitted to witness it.

In Mark 9:2-10 we read the familiar story of the transfiguration of Jesus. Many of you will have heard the story before since it occurs in three places in the Jesus Traditions, once in each of Matthew (17:1-9), Mark, and Luke (9:28-36)’s gospels. Like the story of Elisha this event involves the giving of strength in preparation for a hard thing, and like that story the display of God’s glory is restricted to the chosen few. I’ll deal with the second part of that statement first.

At Mount Hermon, as reported by Mark, three men see the glory of God manifested, but they are strongly commanded not to tell anyone else until God has displayed even greater glory at a later time. This is interesting for two reasons:

In what most scholars believe to be the original form of Mark’s gospel there are no resurrection appearances of Jesus. In the final verse of the gospel, Mark 16:8, the women flee in terror from the empty tomb and the story ends there. So a particularly glorious appearance of Jesus is found only in this story in the middle of Mark’s account and not at the end. The fullest extent of the glory of Jesus in Mark’s account is found while Jesus is still alive in fully human form. I think that’s interesting, and it’s rather inspiring too: we don’t have to wait until the great and glorious End of Days, or even the end of our own days, to glorify God in our lives. Jesus gives the utmost glory to God on an otherwise random day in his life. We can do that too.
There is no story of the transfiguration in John at all. Remember I said that there’s three stories, in each of Matthew, Mark, and Luke? Three, not four, there’s no equivalent story in John. I understand this to be the case because Jesus is glorious the whole way through John’s gospel, so John didn’t need to have a specific story about the gloriousness of Jesus. The first verses of John’s gospel describe “the Word” and the majestic and universal fullness of the glory of God: how could one event in the life of Jesus ever hope to surpass that? A transfiguration is not necessary for someone so glorious and continuously gloried as Jesus.

In 2 Corinthians 4:3-6 we read of how the truth is hidden from some, and that this hidden truth consists in a personal encounter with Jesus who is the glory of God. According to 2 Corinthians 4:4 the story and the message of Jesus is hidden from unbelievers by someone referred to as the god of this world, which to follow the way Paul uses language means something akin to “the god of now”. I am sure that since all of us have friends and relatives who have not yet seen Jesus for who he is we can each attest to that. But the god of this world is not the satan, rather it is the stuff which is worshipped by the world: this god is “stuff”. So it isn’t the devil who is masking the truth from unbelievers or veiling their sight, it’s all the garbage they have put their hope in instead of putting it in Jesus. No-one really places their hope in the satan, but most people place their hope in something or someone other than Jesus. So what is our response to this? Well look at 2 Corinthians 4:5, the answer is to proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord. We don’t want to replace world’s love of stuff with a love of Christian stuff, or their incantations with Christian incantations, or their idols with Christian idols. We want to replace their false sources of hope with the true Christian source of hope, and we have only one source of hope: our hope is Jesus Christ who is the glory of God and who at the time of his death and resurrection was the light shining in the darkness.

In Psalm 50:1-6 we read of another spectacular activity of God, but this time an action to which the whole world is invited to witness. God comes and does not keep silence we read in Psalm 50:3; nothing is secret or kept only for the inner circle anymore. Everyone must come, and everyone can come to worship the one God who is righteous. Now the glory of God is displayed to all, and those who don’t wish to see it will see it, nonetheless. The glory shown first to one man (Elisha), and then to three (Peter, James, John), and then in the darkness to all who believed (the Corinthians), now shines as the brightest light shining through a background of lesser light and no-one is exempt from seeing it.

Well that’s all good, the coming of light to ever more people as the generations roll on, but what is the point of that light? Well, there are three points:

The light displays God: God is glorious, and no one can deny it.
The light displays us: by the light of God’s glory and by our interaction with God within the light we are transformed.
The light displays God’s grace in the time of the Hard Thing.

So here is the obvious yet somewhat unexpected conclusion from a close reading of the stories of the Transfiguration. No doubt you have heard before that the light of God makes God’s presence plain, and the same light makes all humankind’s attributes plain. But it’s not often that we heard how God’s displayed glory reveals God’s grace in the time of the Hard Thing.

One of the commentators I read in preparation for this week entitles his paragraph on Matthew 17 “Peter, James and John Have an Assuring Vision”. This suggest to me that the transfiguration of Jesus was like the miraculous assumption of Elijah because it was strength for the witnesses for the hard thing. By way of explanation let me ask you, have you ever wondered why only three of the twelve were invited to accompany Jesus to the mountain top? Have you ever wondered why anyone at all was invited? After all, Jesus often went off alone to pray, and I would not be surprised at all if “transfiguration” was a regular event for Jesus such that his gloriousness shone from him every time he went off alone to pray. But on this occasion Jesus invites three men, and only this three, knowing that what they will see will blow their minds. So why these three, and why now?

Like me you’ve probably been told that Peter, James and John were Jesus’ favourites and that they comprised a sort of “inner three” within the twelve. As the closest and most trusted friends of Jesus they were his strongest allies and most devoted disciples. Well that might be true, and I’m not here to say that it isn’t, but I want to suggest an alternative. Some of the best-known stories about these men involve them failing. Peter denies Jesus three times in the pre-dawn darkness of Good Friday, and he is called “satan” by Jesus and told to get out of the way of the purposes of God in another story. James and John take Jesus aside at one point and ask for the cushy places next to him when he comes in glory as ruler in Heaven, sort of his right-hand and left-hand guys. These are the same three, and only these three, who Jesus takes further into Gethsemane on the Thursday night to be near him while he pours his desperate guts out before God. And what happens? Zzzzzz.

We don’t hear of these sorts of colossal failures regarding the other nine, (except perhaps for Judas but according to John Judas was a lost cause all along and doomed by prophecy to be so). So I wonder whether Peter, James and John were the weakest of the twelve, and rather than being a sort of Special Branch they were more like the Special Needs kids who require extra tuition to keep up with their classmates. As had been the case when Elisha saw the glory of God manifested right before his eyes and ears, which encouraged him to utilise the double portion of blessing and outdo his mentor by a score of two to one, so these three “slow kids” were given special booster classes in practicing the presence of God to get them up to speed for when the crucifixion and the persecution came. And even in special class Peter still puts his foot in it and offers to build shelters.

So the take home message from today’s reflection on the Transfiguration of Jesus is found in the developing narrative of all our stories. The glory of God is patient and longsuffering, the glory of God is kind, the glory of God does not hold a grudge but instead works to bring healing and strength to those brave enough to pursue God. What started with one man, then three, then the many who believed in the testimony of the saints, is experienced ultimately as the source of comfort and elevation of everyone alive. No one is left behind by the glory of God because no one is ever left behind by the God of glory.

In the transfigured Jesus we see God in the fullest expression available to humankind. Beyond the transfigured Jesus is the glory of God which is observable only by those who no longer belong to the Earth; those like Moses and Elijah who appear on the mountain with Jesus. But what we also see is a man transfigured by God in the fullest way that God can while that man lives. Jesus was never seen so glorious again until he was resurrected: the promise for us is the same. In the words of a great leader of the early centuries Church, Irenaeus, “the glory of God is a man most fully alive”. In the image of the transfigured Jesus we see God at God’s most God-ness, and we see ourselves at our most godlikeness this side of Heaven. In the stories of those who have seen God’s glory we see the mercy of God as the revelation of that seeing.

Glory be to God.

Amen.