“Being Near God”
March 2, 2025
Rev. Rebecca Migliore
Transfiguration Sunday (even without a baptism) is a banner Sunday. It marks the end of the Epiphany season--a time of getting to know Jesus (having Jesus revealed to us) once again. Transfiguration is a mountain-top experience which looks down into the valley that we know will encompass Ash Wednesday, 40 days of Lent, Palm Sunday, Passion Week, and finally Easter. Immediately preceding our reading, Jesus has foretold his suffering, rejection, death and resurrection. We all need a little good news here!
Let’s go through the experience as Luke tells it (and know that Luke provides quite a few details that are found only in the story in that gospel). We have heard from Luke that Jesus often went off by himself to pray. This time, (eight days after his grim pronouncement), he invites Peter, John and James to come with him. As one commentator jokingly put it, “here is the first worship service.” Luke is the only one of the gospels to suggest that what happened on that mountain happened during prayer.
Now Peter and James and John are “weighed down with sleep.” Maybe this was because Jesus seemed to be able to stay in prayer a long time (remember they will also be unable to stay awake in the garden of gethsemane)—or maybe it is just Luke’s way of saying that they were feeling kind of down. This whirlwind discipleship had started with a miraculous haul of fish, and then they had seen exorcisms and healings and heard Jesus talk about the coming reign of God. Peter had just declared that Jesus is “The Messiah of God.” Yes, now things would really get started. The former glory of Israel would be brought back, led by God’s chosen one. And they were along for the ride. What a high.
And right away Jesus tries to reorient them. He knows that there is this idea that the Messiah will be a victorious warrior, God’s ruling agent in the world.
But that’s not how Jesus sees what God wants him to do. He hears his call in the suffering servant (that Isaiah had also heard God talking about). And so he foretells what he imagines is going to happen—a tussle with authorities civil and religious, suffering, and finally death, but on the third day he would be raised. Maybe Jesus thought this was a reality check, with a happy ending. I can only imagine that the disciples felt like he had just doused them with a tub of very cold water.
So they were tired from climbing this mountain, they were exhausted from the work they had been doing, and the terrible prediction Jesus had of its outcome. They were weighed down in body, weighed down in mind, weighed down in spirit. And then Jesus went off on one of his prayer marathons. And while they are nodding off, something happens—“the appearance of Jesus’ face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lighting.” Maybe it was that flash that startled the disciples into wakefulness because they saw his glory and suddenly Moses and Elijah were there as well, talking to this changed Jesus.
Just so we remember, Moses is the one who went down to Egypt and brought the Hebrew people out in exodus. He also was the one who spoke with God on another mountain and received the law, the ten commandments. Elijah was the great prophet, speaking for God to the people. You might remember that Elijah also had a meeting with God, but God spoke to Elijah not in wind or earthquake, but in a small still voice. And many Jews felt that the return of Elijah would begin the coming of God’s reign. So here is Jesus speaking with the two icons of God’s history with God’s people, “the law and the prophets”—speaking as if they were all just colleagues having a chat.
Only Luke tells us what they were discussing, “they were speaking about his exodus, which he was about to fulfill in Jerusalem.” Exodus—meaning, liberation, freedom, escape from bondage, all those other things exodus had come to mean.
A new liberation, a new freedom, a new life—but Luke ties this (as Jesus does as well) with what was going to happen to him in Jerusalem. Maybe Elijah was there to help remind us that God’s ways are not always our ways. That we expect the storm, the earthquake, the avenging warrior, the triumphant king. What is the small still voice? Can it be seen in patient suffering, in forgiveness past understanding, in faithfulness to what seems the end? This is liberation? This is freedom? This is new life? The disciples do not get this at all.
So as Moses and Elijah are leaving, Peter suggests that they set up three tents. To worship the three? To make a shrine? To remember as one makes a booth at Sukkot (remembering the 40 years wandering in the wilderness)? Whatever Peter had in mind, a cloud overshadows them, and stops his babbling. (Remember that Mary is overshadowed by God in Luke as well!) Peter and James and John were terrified. And the voice says to them (what we the audience have heard before at Jesus’ baptism) “This is my Son, my Chosen, listen to him.” And then, they blink and the cloud had disappeared, they were left with just Jesus, the way they had always known him. And they kept silent in those days and told no one.
Every year we read this story from one gospel or another. This year, what struck me was the idea of Jesus’ face changing. Maybe it is because I was thinking about Jesus praying his heart out on the top of that mountain. Maybe it was remembering how Moses’ face also changed whenever he talked with God. I started to think, is that what happens to us when we get near to God? Do our faces shine?
And that led me to ask, when do I remember seeing other people’s faces shine? When do I imagine my own face shining? Is it when we are happy? Is it when we are in awe? Is it when we coo at a baby? Is it when we look at a beloved? Is it when we are in the midst of great beauty? I know that I love singing, and I hope that my face shines whenever I am lost in uplifting melodies.
And then I thought about the disciples. Their faces weren’t shining, they were terrified. Is that how many of us think of God? As so other that we turn away, we avert our eyes (as do the cherubim and seraphim in Isaiah’s vision of the throne room of God.)
That was the prevailing wisdom of God in Jesus’ time—an awesome God, a God of unbelievable power, a God of cloud and fire, a God who leads, a God who chooses, a God who is faithful—Yes, but also a God who can punish, a God who demands much from us. This was a God who one wanted to know from afar. This was a God that one sacrificed to at the temple, that one was glad that it was the priests who had to go into the Holy of Holies, a God that one tried to appease by following the multitudinous rules, and praying that God didn’t look too closely at you!
But this was not all of the God Jesus knew and was trying to reveal to his disciples. Maybe this is why God tells the disciples to listen to Jesus. Listen to him talk about what God has said in the past and how God is speaking to us now. Listen to him talk about how we all should live—faithfully, even if that means healing on the sabbath (and Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law, one of the first acts we hear about in detail on the sabbath!). Maybe listen to him means that in this new exodus, this new liberation, the new life, there will be a new interpretation of what the law and the prophets had to say.
Certainly, in the weeks to come as we come down from the mountain and Jesus starts telling parables, a vision of God and of those who follow after God appears. Think of the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and what we have called the “Prodigal Son.” Here is a vision of a Father who runs to welcome the lost son home—who searches diligently for the lost, and celebrates when they are found. Think of the parable of the Good Samaritan. It is not the religious, (the scribe and the priest) who are in the right—even though they were following the laws about not touching a bleeding person.
No, it is the one who helps the stranger in need, who is the faithful one—even though he is a Samaritan and thus not seen to be “in the right.”
Maybe this transfiguration moment is meant to shake us from our weighed down-ness. Maybe this transfiguration moment is meant to have us hear again God’s message to those disciples, “Listen to him—Listen to Jesus. He is my Son, my Beloved, my Chosen One.” Maybe we need to hear about transfiguration each and every year because we need to open our eyes and unblock our ears and melt our hearts to who Jesus says God truly is and what Jesus tells us God truly wants from us. Maybe transfiguration is a “pick me up” or even a ”deep breath before” all the messiness of real life in the valley. A deep breath (a God breath) that will sustain all of us for whatever lies ahead.
But I think we need to alter the ending of the story. You see, the disciples didn’t understand, they were still living pre-easter. But we are an easter people. And we know that God’s still, small voice can crack open the tomb. We know that God’s new life is more powerful than anything else in all of creation. And we know that we are invited to be called children of God, heirs of the kin[g]dom. So we should not be silent. We should stand with our heads held high, with our faces shining.
--Shining as we reflect out to the world the love and mercy and grace that has been showered on all of us.
--Shining as we exude the joy that comes from being near our loving, awesome God.
--Shining as we go about the work that God has called us to do in this needy world.
--Shining for all to see.
May it be so. Alleluia, Amen.