This is kind of a strange text this morning. For one thing, after several weeks of slowly, meticulously working our way through the first chapter of Mark, it feels a little bit jarring to all of a sudden jump forward nine chapters to head up a mountain. Especially since next week it will be back to the first chapter of Mark again. The text also forces the whole tone our worship to stand in stark contrast to next week. Next week we begin our journey through Lent. The music slows, the colors change to purple, our worship takes on a more somber tone. But before we can do that, the Transfiguration calls for everything to be adorned in celebratory white, for the organ to explore its full range, for loud celebratory shouts of “Alleluia.” Especially since Transfiguration is a season that lasts exactly one Sunday, it can make today feel like a strange blip in what has been a very formulaic journey through the life and ministry of Jesus Christ.
We might chalk such a blip up to an over excitable lectionary committee, except the Transfiguration of Jesus plays exactly the same role in our church year as it plays in the Gospel of Mark. Mark’s Gospel is sixteen chapters long and is broken up into two distinct sections. The first section, chapters roughly one through eight, covers Jesus life and ministry, the roughly a year where Jesus was preaching, teaching, and healing in the Galilee region of northern Israel. We’ve talked before about Mark’s verbal tick with the word “immediately.” That tick is because Mark has to cover a lot of ground, his is the shortest of all the Gospel accounts. In just eight chapters, Jesus and his disciples are all over the Galilee. He heals a leper, a paralytic, a man with a withered hand, and those are just the ones that get section titles, casts out demons and spirits, they cross the sea of Galilee a couple of times, he feeds five thousand, and then he feeds four thousand, teaches and preaches, and draws crowds everywhere he goes. Every sentence is a miracle, every paragraph a different region of the country. The Gospel reads like an action flick, fast-paced and attention grabbing.
But in the second half of Mark’s Gospel the pace… slows… way… down… Chapter ten, they travel the roughly ninety miles between the Sea of Galilee and Jerusalem. About a three-day journey walking straight through, but they stopped and talked and healed some people, nowhere Jesus went was ever a straight shot, so it probably took them a little bit longer. Once they get to Jerusalem things get slower still. Chapters eleven to fourteen is slower still, covering four-five days. And then, the very end, the last less than twenty-four hours of Jesus life, the Last Supper, his betrayal, crucifixion, death, and burial, stretch out a full three chapters. Mark’s depiction of the passion slams the brakes on the rollicking adventure story, drawing the reader in to the every tightening drama that is unfolding around Jesus and this building conflict with the authorities.
And right in the middle of these two very different styles of writing sits this morning’s text. Acting as the literary hinge point of the Gospel, the break between the ministry of Jesus and the passion of Christ, Jesus left the crowds, left the twelve, and took just Peter, James, and John, his closest disciples, the three who had been with him since the beginning, up the mountain alone.
When they got up the mountain, something extraordinary occurred. Jesus was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white. The text actually translates to like offensively white, painfully white, divinely white. And just in case we somehow missed the connotation between Jesus transfiguration and the divine in-breaking of the moment, who appears on the mountain beside him but Moses and Elijah. Two other prophets of the Lord who also have mountain top experiences. Moses, you might remember, traveled up Mount Sinai to speak face-to-face with God on a regular basis, and he would return to the people of Israel with his face glowing so brightly he would have to veil himself. And we heard in the first reading about Elijah, how he was carried up into heaven in a chariot of fire born on a whirlwind with his desperate and faithful disciple Elisha running along behind shouting and gasping for a last glimpse at his teacher. There are other connections here; ancient Jewish wisdom posited that both Moses and Elijah did not die. Both are also intricately connected to the question of Jesus identity. Jesus is painted as the new Moses, sent to free God’s people from slavery under the Romans. And Elijah was of course to return to usher in the Messiah, claims we saw made about the role of John the Baptist, the “one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord.”
Whether all of these interesting theological tidbits were bouncing around in Peter’s head or if he was simply blinded by the dazzling whiteness, his response is not all that different from Elisha’s. Elisha chased, trying to hang on to the moment. Peter stared, open mouthed, before finally stammering out, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah.” But here’s where the Transfiguration story and the Elijah story differ. In the Elijah story, Elisha ran, and yelled as Elijah got further and further away. Then, once Elijah had disappeared from view, Elisha picked up his mantle, picked up the role of prophet that Elijah had left for him, and began to do his work. But for Peter, after his attempt to stay in the glory of the moment, a great cloud overshadowed them, a voice declared, “this is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” And then something happened, a crash or a flash or something that drove them to their knees because when the disciples looked around, they saw no one, only Jesus, and they went down the mountain together.
They went down the mountain together, and as they were traveling, Jesus turned to them and he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until, and this is the key part, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead. For Jesus to command not to be spoken of, that’s a common theme in Mark’s Gospel, we’ve heard him say that several times already in just the first chapter. But this is the first time Jesus gave an end date to that secrecy; don’t tell anyone until after the resurrection.
So a couple different things happen in this text. One, Jesus set an end date on the disciples suffering. He’d already told them about his death, though they hadn’t really figured out quite what he was talking about yet, and he’d tell them several more times. And they never did really pick up on it. But here he gave them the promise that as the writing on the wall became clearer that he wasn’t getting out of this one alive, they could look back at this moment on the trail and remember that they could talk about it after he’d risen from the dead. Which meant that the death they were witnessing was only part of the story. There would be a time for telling a story, and that telling would come after Jesus who was dead, was dead no longer.
Two, in the glory of the Transfiguration Jesus gave them a taste of the power of God. As they entered into Jerusalem things would get dark, really dark, and fast. The dazzling whiteness would burn on their retinas and hopefully give them a reflection to hold onto when everything seemed hopeless. The appearance of Moses and Elijah would give them comfort that the same God who led the people from slavery into freedom and from exile into prosperity would certainly be with them as well. They could look back on their history and know that what seemed like the end was always just another beginning with God.
And finally, and what is I think the most important thing to take out of this story is that Jesus went with them. That is the crucial difference between the pre-crucifixion Jesus and Moses and Elijah, the difference that prefigures all other differences, Jesus went with them off the mountain. Moses stayed on Mount Sinai as the Israelites traveled into the Promised Land, Elijah went up into heaven and Elisha took up his master’s mantle and his work. But Jesus went with the disciples into Jerusalem, to his crucifixion, died, and then rose from the dead so that we too, even though we die, have life.
And so this morning I pray that the glory of Christ transfigured among us becomes burned in your vision, shifting your focus so that no matter where you go, the glory of Christ goes before you. But more than that, I pray that you feel Christ’s presence beside you, walking with you. That when you feel alone, and you see no one, you know, even if you cannot see, that with you is only Jesus, down the mountain with you. Never to leave you, always to guide you. Because that is God’s promise. Amen.
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