The Transfiguration is a story about following, trusting, and becoming – in light of our confusion and fear.
an uncommon story for an uncommon time
The Fest of the Transfiguration | Luke 9:28-36
Today we celebrate the Feast of the Transfiguration. And if you’re thinking, didn’t we just do the Transfiguration a few months ago? Well, you’re not alone.
The Transfiguration is one of the twelve great festivals in the East Orthodox calendar and they’ve been celebrating it since the 4th century. Some Catholics have been celebrating it since the 9th Century, but its adoption shortly before the Reformation led many Protestants to think it is extraneous as a feast.
The story, however, was important enough to move to the end of the Epiphany season, so it could mark the transition from Jesus’s revelation to the world to Jesus’s preparing of his disciples for life without him.
The Transfiguration itself is a pretty heavy story. It is full of meaning and is frustratingly weird. But more than anything, it has several strange elements and plot points that you have to work to wrap your head around.
Jesus picks out three disciples, walks up a mountain, prays, and then his face glows and looks all weird and then a couple of sprits(?) show up (are they real?) and Peter can tell that they are a couple of guys from the Old Testament somehow and then Peter suggests a construction project so they can chill there for awhile and then the voice of God redirects their attention to Jesus and then it all goes back to normal and they walk down the mountain in silence.
I understand if that all sounds like gobbledygook. Because it is both the most obtuse story and the most obviously symbolically rich story in the gospels. There’s so much there we don’t know what to grab hold of.
Action Learning
For us today, I want us to dwell on those opening words:
“Now about eight days after these sayings”
Because this story has a context.
Jesus was telling his disciples about his death. He’s helping them prepare for life after him. That is central in each of the Transfiguration stories in the gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke.
But Luke sandwiches this story between the two sending out stories. At the beginning of Luke 9, he sends his closest followers out in pairs. This isn’t just your typical mission trip they’re up to. They’re not digging wells. He gives his students his power. This is action learning. He’s having them do the work so they can learn the work by reflecting on it.
He’s preparing them for life without his literal presence.
Then after the Transfiguration, where God says “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” He sends the disciples out.
Now, this is the coolest thing about Luke’s gospel is that he calls the twelve closest followers The Twelve, but he as seventy disciples. So he has way more than twelve students.
Now in chapter 10 he sends the bigger group, all seventy, out to be Jesus in the world. And when they come back, they tell Jesus about all they have done.
The disciples are participating in action learning. This is central to Jesus’s message.
Confusion Remains
Also in the context of this story is massive confusion. Peter misunderstands what he is seeing. AND what he is supposed to do in that moment. That confusion remains when they come down from the mountain.
Some disciples can’t heal a child like they could a few days ago.
They argue over which of them is the greatest follower.
And they try to shut down someone healing in Jesus’s name because he’s not part of their little club.
And then, when they come to a Samaritan village that won’t listen to Jesus, they ask if they should get God to burn them all to death.
These are the guys supposedly listening to Jesus!
But this whole sequence is beautifully woven to demonstrate the conviction and the challenge of discipleship. These followers are imperfect vessels striving to be close to Jesus. This story brilliantly casts the desire of Jesus to transform the imperfect with the predictable challenges of overcoming imperfection.
I don’t know about you, but I am grateful for a story of confusion and compassion. One that speaks so clearly to our own moment, our own hopes and fears. Our struggles to know what is right. [What are we supposed to do?]
He sends his students out before they’re ready with more power than they deserve to do things they don’t fully understand. It sounds like a recipe for disaster. But not with this mission.
Go, love, transform the world. It sounds like a tall order. But it’s also precisely the one we need.