Twin Peaks

Art by Patrick Connan

  

Lections: The Transfiguration of the Lord, AD 2026 A

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for you know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

On either end of Lent, there stands a mountain. Upon one of these, we see the Christ we want, the Savior we expect. Upon the other, we find the Jesus whom we need.

Tabor is an enormous dome of rock that dominates the countryside. Hard to climb, even difficult to drive, its peak reaches nearly 2000 feet, sufficient to see for miles all around. A pair of monasteries, one Catholic, one Orthodox, mark the mountain as the site of Jesus’ Transfiguration, as described in our Gospel text this morning.

This dramatic miracle functions as the hinge of Matthew’s narrative, indeed the hinge of history. Henceforth, Jesus’ face is fixed upon Jerusalem, marching inexorably to the Cross and empty Tomb. But before that, before our descent into the valley of the shadow of death, we get this glimpse of glory, which has captivated Christians ever since.

Six days after the Confession of St Peter, who proclaimed Jesus as the promised Christ at Caesarea Philippi, Jesus leads Peter and James and John up a high mountain to pray. These are the inner circle of His inner circle, His most trusted and faithful Apostles. And at the peak, they witness what heretofore they only could have dreamt of.

Jesus is transfigured before them, His face shining as the sun, His garments made of light, blazing like the Son of Man as prophesied by Daniel. And with Him stand Moses and Elijah, the greatest of the Lawgivers and Prophets from of old. How the Apostles recognize these storied holy men, we simply are not told. But that they are who they are carries massive weight.

Moses and Elijah were great miracle-workers, great leaders of God’s people, through whom He wrought a wonderful and terrible salvation. Both men lived long ago, many centuries before the Apostles. Both men famously met with God atop a mountain. Both men, in popular lore, escaped from death by rising into Heaven, taking on divine attributes, and living like the angels, like the sacred sons of God.

Thus both Moses and Elijah were eschatological figures, which means that the people of Jesus’ day expected them to return when the world would be remade: at the end of the age, and the beginning of the new. And this Transfiguration—this miraculous vision of Jesus—checks all of our apocalyptic boxes. Moses and Elijah, famous for speaking to God upon the mountaintop, are here speaking to Christ upon the mountaintop.

The divine glow, the divine garments, the divine voice all point to Jesus, in flashing neon letters, proclaiming Him the Son of God, the Word of God, Emmanuel, God-With-Us. Even the bright cloud would be familiar as the Shekinah, the tangible manifestation of God’s presence, which descended upon Moses in the Tabernacle, which filled the Temple of King Solomon, and which would later veil the Risen Christ from the Apostles’ sight.

And Peter, to his credit, gets it. Peter recognizes what is going on, because he is a good and faithful Jew. He knows the stories of Moses, of Elijah, of the Son of Man, of the Shekinah. All signs point to the end of the world, right here and now! And so Peter cries out, “Let me make you tents!” —which, admittedly, sounds a little weird to us, but makes perfect sense in his religious context.

At Sukkot, the Festival of Booths, faithful Jews in Jesus’ day, as well as in our own, would dwell in temporary shelters like tents or booths or shacks. Amongst other things, these tents recalled the Tabernacle in the wilderness, where Moses spoke face-to-face with God. Someday, in the age to come, everyone would know God in the way that Moses did, face-to-face in little tabernacles of our own. This, incidentally, is why Christians drape the elements of Holy Communion to look like a little tent.

So Peter hasn’t lost it. He knows exactly what he’s doing: welcoming the Endtimes, welcoming the Kingdom of God and the Reign of His Messiah. Yes! This is what they’ve been waiting for! This is what all of us want! At long last, the Christ has been revealed. Break out the flaming swords, boys, ‘cause it’s gonna be a hot time in the old town tonight!

But then, all of a sudden, as abruptly as it began, the Transfiguration just stops. No more Moses, no more Elijah, no more clouds, no more lights, no more voice of God upon the mountaintop. Instead, we are left with Jesus, just plain ol’ regular Jesus. And He reaches out to Peter and James and John, who have fallen prostrate upon the rock, and He says to them: “Get up, and do not be afraid.” And together they descend, back down the mountain, down into the valley of death, toward Jerusalem, toward the Cross.

What a rollercoaster. I wonder what shocked the Apostles more: the divine, apocalyptic, eschatological vision that they craved; or the sudden silence. The world was supposed to end, right? Perhaps indeed it did. And all that we are left with now is Jesus.

For the next 40 Days and change, we will follow Jesus and His disciples as they journey toward Jerusalem, and the doom that Christ predicted for Himself. At the end of this arduous Odyssey stands a very different sort of mountain, not tall and imposing as Tabor, but barren and spindly, an outcropping of rock by the side of the road, left in the midst of a quarry, with holes bored into it in order to hold up crosses.

This, of course, is Golgotha, or Calvary, the Place of the Skull. The Romans used it as a site of execution, conveniently placed just beyond the city walls, where travellers to and from Jerusalem could see the bodies on display, testaments to Rome’s cruelty and power.

Tabor was bathed in brightness, Calvary cloaked in darkness. On Tabor, Christ was clothed as angels; on Calvary, stripped by soldiers. On Tabor, His skin shone like the sun; on Calvary, it is shredded by a hooked and weighted lash. On Tabor, He spoke with Moses and Elijah, men who walked as angels; on Calvary He is mocked by crucified criminals, one on His right and His left. On Tabor, His friends were with Him, Peter, John, and James; at Calvary they’ve fled, leaving His Mother to mourn.

On Tabor Jesus’ Father spoke: “This is My Son, the beloved!” On Calvary, His executioner confesses: “This man was the son of a god.” On Tabor, we thought that He had come to end the world; we rejoiced. On Calvary, we thought the world had ended Him; we despaired.

Two revelations of Jesus, two visions on the mountaintop: one, a God who walks as a Man; the other, a corpse on a stick. And the great paradox, the sacred mystery, the holiest of terrors, is that these two are one and the same. Christ has come to save the world, to make the world anew. And He doesn’t do this with fire, division, and violence; He doesn’t slay the evil by the sword. Instead He surrenders, entirely, to the debt all men must pay. He has come to die, at our hands and for our sake.

And that love—that undying, unceasing, terrifying love—is His glory and His beauty and His divinity and the salvation of us all! We threw everything we had at Him, took everything away from Him, made Him suffer in the worst way we knew how, and still He loves us. Still He saves us. Still He brings us home. Still we see Him face-to-face within our little tents.

The Transfiguration doesn’t change who Jesus is. It shows us who He’s been for this whole time. It’s the same bloody mountain: the light and bliss and glory, beyond, beneath, beside the horror and the sacrifice that we demand of God. The Cross is the Throne. The Blood is the Life. The Tomb is the victory of Jesus Christ our Lord, such that even death itself is now the Kingdom of our God. There’s nowhere we can go He has not conquered! Behold the Lamb who stands as though slain.

Keep this vision in your hearts, my brothers and my sisters. For we come down now from Tabor. And to Calvary we go.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Pertinent Links

RDG Stout

Blog: https://rdgstout.blogspot.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RDGStout/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsqiJiPAwfNS-nVhYeXkfOA

X: https://twitter.com/RDGStout

St Peter’s Lutheran

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064841583987

Website: https://www.stpetersnymills.org/

Donation: https://secure.myvanco.com/L-Z9EG/home

Nidaros Lutheran

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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@nidaroschurch6026