Exodus 34:29-35; Luke 9:28-36
Last Sunday before Lent
St Barbara’s; 02.03.2025
Rev Jeremy Bevan
Christ’s life showing us how to live: that’s the theme of our current sermon series. And you might be wondering: how on earth is Jeremy going to show that from our gospel passage? The transformation of Jesus, radiating God’s glory on that mountaintop, can seem far from our everyday experience. But preparing for today, I’ve caught glimpses of some important connections the passage does make with our lives. I’m going to try and illustrate them using a painting. Raphael’s picture The Transfiguration was for centuries the most famous, and considered the best, oil painting in the world, until the Mona Lisa overtook it about a century ago. It tries to capture something of the episode that Luke’s gospel describes.
It actually shows two episodes. The transfiguration of Jesus, as we heard in our reading, and the next episode Luke recounts, when a man brings his probably epileptic son to the disciples, asking them to heal him. They can’t, and take him to Jesus, who does heal him. Putting these two events together, Raphael brings the Bible vividly to life.
First, then, the transfiguration (at the top). With Jesus are Israel’s teacher Moses, to the right with the stone tablets engraved with the ten commandments, and Israel’s prophet Elijah to the left. Teacher and prophet gaze up in respect at Jesus, the greater teacher and greater prophet. Beneath them lie Peter, James and John, apparently shielding their eyes from the dazzling sight above them. The cloud beginning to envelop Jesus, Moses and Elijah is an image the Bible often uses to suggest the presence of God. Jesus, gazing upwards, perhaps sees his heavenly Father there, and with his head to one side, hears the voice saying, “This is my son, the chosen, the beloved: listen to him.”
In our gospel passage, Jesus talks with Moses and Elijah about his ‘departure’, his suffering and death in Jerusalem. But this will not be failure, for his resurrection and ascension to glory alongside God will follow. This vision, then, that Luke describes and Raphael paints, is meant to inspire Jesus’s followers: whatever lies in your path, it declares, something incomparably better lies further ahead. Peter understood this, I think. He refers to that transfiguration experience in the letters he wrote, which you can find near the end of the New Testament. He uses it to encourage his readers, suffering for faithfully following Jesus. Let’s take a moment to think about our week ahead: when, where and why might we need the encouragement that vision gives?
It’s a vision that has to be earthed, and so we move on to the lower half of the picture. In our reading, we heard how Peter wants to build tents for Jesus, Moses and Elijah so they could stay longer on the mountaintop. It’s a very human desire, isn’t it, to try and ‘freeze’ great moments where something amazing or glorious happens? We want to go on being in that moment. But as we all know only too well, there’s life to live. Work to do. People to care for. Justice, peace and the kingdom of God to strive for so the glory of God becomes more real among us. Secondly, then, alongside vision comes the need for decision: do we stay in the comfortable place, or go to where things are more gritty, where people really need to see the life of God shining out from within us?
One of the great speeches of the 20th century was Martin Luther King’s “I’ve been to the mountaintop” speech. Just as Moses had a mountaintop vision of the promised land in Deuteronomy 34, so King described his own vision of a promised land of racial justice and fairness in the USA. He told his hearers they needed to keep striving for it, even if his assassination the very next day meant he didn’t live to see it. But he knew that vision needed to be earthed in decision.
Raphael’s picture definitely earths the heavenly vision. By contrast with the pastel colours of the transfiguration, the vivid colours in the lower half emphasise the solid, concrete reality of everyday life with all its suffering and its opportunities. As C.S. Lewis put it, “the cross comes before the crown and tomorrow is a Monday morning.”
In the picture, the epileptic boy points a flailing arm upwards. Despair is written all over his father’s face, and in the impatient gestures of those standing with them. To the left, the disciples also point, mostly at the boy. They’re clueless. But the one in the vivid red cloak, thought to be the gospel-writer Matthew, looks directly at the boy while also pointing upwards to Jesus. Pointing fingers in paintings like this make a point: this one emphatically tells us that Jesus is the only one who can help.
What might happen if we make that decision to be true to Luke’s vision of Jesus? Well, life won’t be a mountaintop, or a plateau. There’ll be highs and lows, as the disciples discovered. Vision and decision led, finally, to action as Jesus’s followers sought to align their own lives more fully with his; took action to grow the kingdom where they lived and worked. It was hard work. Sometimes they suffered for it as they got their hands dirty.
But here’s the thing: as they took action, earthed that vision in decision, and went, they too were transformed. The apostle Paul described lives changed “from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18). What seems impossible, that our lives might bear the weight of God’s glory as Jesus’s did on the mountaintop, can become reality. Writing to disciples labouring for the kingdom, Peter in his first letter declared: you too, just like Jesus, are chosen, God’s own. Keep on proclaiming by your lives “the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.” (1 Peter 2:9). Will we choose to live like that? If we do, vision, decision and action might transform not just our ordinary lives but also the ordinary lives of those around us into extraordinary ones, reflecting God’s glory.
