On transforming
Matthew 17:1-9 Transfiguration Sunday
Sunday Bible
On transforming
Matthew 17:1-9 Transfiguration Sunday
And he was transfigured before them,
To see someone transfigured is to see them changed in appearance—they used to look like that; now they look like this.
Transfigurations happen all the time. To see someone, after years of hard work, walk out onto a stage in an academic gown to receive a degree is to see someone changed in appearance. To see a person you only know from the grey, stale office emerging gleaming, streaming, and grinning from the surf is to see someone looking different. To watch a young person don a uniform and receive their commission as a police officer is to see someone altered.
In each of these instances, transfiguration is not transformation: the transfigured person’s essential nature is not changed. And yet in real and indefinable ways, each of these transfigured persons is different.
It would stretch the analogies too far to say that the transfiguration of the surfer, the degree-holder, and the new police officer reveals their true, hitherto hidden, natures, but perhaps in each case, their change of appearance does reflect something of the complex, contradictory beings that they are and have always been.
Sometimes transfiguration is also transformation. To watch a child, in a magical instant, go from wobbling on a bicycle held at the seat by an adult to a laughing and triumphant independent cyclist is to see a true change from who they believed they are to who they hoped and longed to be.
and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became bright as light.
Transfigurations are not easily described. The author of Matthew fails—any poetry teacher would draw a red line through shone like the sun, and bright as light. These tell us nothing—we cannot see light; we cannot look at the sun. And perhaps that is the point. Perhaps the author of Matthew is not a failed poet but a master tale-teller, inviting readers throughout the gospel to go deeper into the story. At the deepest part of the universe, the story is light—photons dancing at the edge of the Big Bang. Light is what makes good order out of chaos (Genesis 1:2-4). Creational great light fills the world andgives light to all in the house (Matthew 4:16; 5:14-15).
What other image could Matthew’s author employ to tell the story of transfiguration?
Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him.
Light is what we see by; it is not what we see. The world is lit by the light of creation: this moment of transfiguration is lit by divine light emanating from the one on whom God’s Spirit descends; the same Spirit that breathed life into the first human (Genesis 2:7).
The sudden appearance that Peter and James and his brother John see by the universal light is true reality.
To perceive—to truly see—is to experience what is seen as not an isolated, independent entity or event but the reality of its interconnectedness to all else. There are no isolated experiences. The universe is an infinite web of threads—it is the ancient Buddhist concept of Indra’s Net—at each intersection of thread hangs a jewel, each jewel reflects every other jewel in the net and reflects all the others, always, forever.
Moses and Elijah, and Jesus are all of a piece with the oneness of the universe—they represent the totality of the Hebrew story, the law (Moses) and the prophets (Elijah). The purposes of the divine—justice, kindness, humility—thread through all of history, all moments are interconnected, shining in the light (Micah 6:8). So too, readers of the gospel already know that for all whose eye is healthy—whole, sound, good—their whole body will be full of light (Matthew 6:22).
Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will set up three tents here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”
The three disciples have just glimpsed the interconnectedness of all things in the light of the primordial, in-the-beginning light of creation; of course, it is good—creationally good for us to be here!
But it is good for us to be here now—not always—just now. As is true of all experiences, all moments, this is an unrepeatable, unique experience in time—it cannot be captured, codified, controlled, or contained.
If Peter wants to set up three tents to protect and conserve this moment, he is on a fool’s errand. Curating the moment for social media doesn’t capture the moment; it takes us out of the moment and makes us observers.
While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!”
While he was still speaking, while Peter was organising construction, the moment—as moments always do—moved on. Peter might consider himself a watcher, an observer, but he is not; he is a participant. The disciples are enveloped in the moment. The cloud is the great Exodus symbol of the divine presence. In Exodus, the cloud went in front of them (Exodus 13:21). Here, they are overshadowed, enveloped by the cloud.
When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear.
Of course, they were overcome by fear; they were enveloped, enfolded, encompassed by the divine! No one can see God and live (Exodus 19:21, 33:20, Judges 13:22, Isaiah 6:5). And here they were, inside God!
But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.”
Four times, this gospel tells us that Jesus touched and healed (Matthew 8:3, 15; 9:29; 20:34). Six times, people who have good reason to fear are told not to be afraid (Matthew 1:20; 8:26; 10:31; 14:27; 28:5). Being inside God, being alive in the divinely created order of the world, being touched by, present in and to the universe in all its dynamic truth is a continual restoration and recreation. The disciples, all readers of Matthew, all divine-breathed, filled creatures, are to get up, stand up, and not be afraid: this is healing.
Of course, Jesus tells the disciples not to be afraid; they have always been inside God. The architecture of the universe is the continual interconnectedness of all things in the divine nature (Acts 17:28; Romans 11:36; Colossians 1:16–17).
And when they raised their eyes, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone. As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, “Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”
The disciples saw Jesus himself alone. They saw the reality of this moment. The great mysterious, transfiguring moment is past. The vision of the embodied Law and the Prophets (Matthew 5:17), bathed in primordial light, enveloped in the cloud of national liberation, is done. The past cannot be lived in; it should not be memorialised; it can only be remembered and recalled after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.
But that moment shaped this moment. Transfiguration is transformation. The three disciples—even, it seems, before they get up—raised their eyes and saw.
The only other times the word raised is used in Matthew’s gospel, it speaks of the dead, particularly Jesus, being resurrected (Matthew 11:5, 14:2, 16:21, 17:23, 20:19, 26:32, 27:52, 64, 28:6, 7). Here, then, is transformation, lives being raised into the true reality of the good-created world; three disciples transfigured into their true, full humanity.
Or, at least a glimpse of that universal, eternal truth.
The next verses show us what we already know: the full revelation of our divinely-animated humanity takes a lifetime—a life filled with confusion, contradictions, faithlessness, and perversity (Matthew 17:14-20).
Even so, transfigurations happen, and we will be changed (1 Corinthians 15:52).