We don’t really know what to do with the Transfiguration. But it does remind us that sometimes we ought to shut up.
The Transfiguration and how Jesus defies expectations
Epiphany Last B | Mark 9:2-9
What did they expect?
This is the question that comes to mind every time we read this story we call the Transfiguration.
Mark’s telling is predictably sparse. Just that Jesus took three disciples (just three) up a mountain with him. Mark highlights this minority of the inner circle. These three of the twelve. And Jesus “led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves.“
Mark highlights the smallness of this group and how they are separated from the rest.
Without any interior monologue, we can’t be sure what these three were thinking, but it is probably safe to say that they felt special. Set apart for exclusive time.
I doubt they were too focused on what they would experience. Just that they were luck to be picked to experience it.
And I think that is a huge part of this story.
Because they felt special, they were unprepared for what was to come.
What Happens
The story is hard to process, even as we hear it at least once a year in church.
They go up a mountain, there’s a bright light, Jesus looks different, two people join them, the disciples somehow recognize the strangers as the long-dead leaders Moses and Elijah, Peter announces this is good and offers to build a memorial-slash-dwelling, God talks to them like at the Baptism, telling them to listen to Jesus. Then everything goes away, they walk down the mountain, and Jesus tells them not to talk about it yet.
And because of the way Mark writes, the recap is about as long as the original. It is full, rich, and over deceptively quickly. Almost like an epiphany or a flash of insight. You get it, are overwhelmed by it, and then it’s gone. Over just as quickly.
So I think we can be excused if we need to slow it down, unpack the story, catch our breath. We might feel like those three disciples who are probably achy and sore, maybe a little winded from the climb, trying to catch their breath, and all this floods over them. We’re like OK, what part do I hold onto? or maybe Let’s slow it down, here!
But that speed and overwhelm is revealing, too.
Remember that they were set apart; invited to this special teaching. And this is what they got. A blinding light and rushing wind; a transfiguration and a divine directive: listen! And then—gone!
The loud voice: listen! and then silence. And a quiet walk back with only a single instruction: “tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.”
Of course, there’s more to the story than we read here.
While Jesus, Peter, James, and John are gone, the remaining disciples are approached by a father whose son is tormented by a demon. And even though all of the disciples had exorcized demons previously, they are unable to do so now.
When Jesus returns, he intervenes.
The lesson of the last two weeks should be present with us: that the demons know Jesus better than anybody. Demons who hate the goodness in him, the divine love he is sharing. Their hope to despoil the goodness of the kin-dom is broken by the one who would return God’s order to the cosmos with an ancient Way of Love.
We must remember that Jesus is the scourge of every demon, not because he is the source of an ambivalent destruction, but the source of the goodness they want to consume. He is a threat to them because they wish to be a threat to all of creation.
But we also must remember that Jesus, as the source of goodness, had, just a chapter earlier, provided them with that same goodness. They were, as Paul wrote, the hands and feet of Christ.
And now they aren’t.
It parallels with the ego-distraction of the three who are treated to the special teaching.
The text doesn’t say they are jealous. Nor does it say the three were distracted by their supposed specialness. But it does show both groups screwing up and missing opportunities right after being set apart.
It’s not about us.
As much as the gospel we attribute to Mark demonstrates the constant fallibility of the the disciples, it isn’t supposed to be a story of their ineptitude. This isn’t the good news of Simon Peter, the disciple of Christ.
This is about Jesus. And as long as the disciples made it about Jesus, they could do miraculous things. They could put the fear of Jesus into those demons.
We might therefore find ourselves blaming Jesus for this moment. Because it seems that Jesus has divided his own people. Tempting as it is, we should know better.
I’m reminded of the parable of the shepherd from Luke who goes after the one while leaving the 99 in the wilderness. The underlying point was that the 99 were in no danger because they had each other. Their shepherd was still with them through each other.
These disciples were trusted to be Jesus while he was gone. Because they could.
And this flips our reading of the story on its head. Because maybe Jesus took Peter, James, and John up the mountain, not because they were special, but because they alone needed the teaching. Maybe they are like lost sheep.
But we make it about us.
This story reads like a sibling rivalry or a teacher dealing with a diverse classroom. But it is always us who puts performative evaluations on the table. It is we who think some of us deserve more attention. Or that the teacher will pick favorites and bestow special blessings.
We put that on Jesus. But he never acts like that.
This isn’t about specialness! In fact, it is that worry, that fear of being special or not that derails all of them. The disciples at the base of the mountain are distracted. As are the three at the top! They missed what was happening in the moment.
Because it isn’t about them. These three following Jesus up the mountain aren’t super special. Jesus needed them to see the Transfiguration and hear God speak to them. And God reminded them to listen.
Listen Up!
As difficult as this story may be, God’s command resonates throughout.
“This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”
We are to focus on him! Everything else is a distraction. The stuff that expands our egos to make us feel special or superior. Unique. When we tell ourselves that we alone do God stuff right. That puffery makes it about us.
However, the ego-busting character of serving the poor, the homeless, the incarcerated, the weak, the abused, the widowed, the possessed…to serve Christ through them means we find Christ within them. And it means we aren’t only doing the will of Christ or the work of Christ, but are encountering Christ in our world. We are in the Kin-dom.
Listening means turning our heads to hear. Lifting our eyes to see the brutality we’d rather ignore.
We’re not supposed to be perfect. But we are supposed to listen to Jesus. Listen as students desperate to learn. As a father desperate to save his son.
And listen, as he commands the evil spirits (who always listen) to come out of the boy and torment him no more.
Listen, for the kin-dom is here. With us.