“THE PORTRAIT APPEARS”
Exodus 34: 29 – 35; Psalm 99; I Corinthians 12: 27 – 13: 13; Luke 9: 28 – 36
A sermon by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois, on Sunday, February 14, 2010
Ever watch someone paint a portrait? It’s especially fascinating to watch the process of the image unfold as bits and pieces of it begin to take shape on the canvas. If we cannot see the model or the person being portrayed in the painting, the process becomes particularly fascinating. Then, we get glimpses, here and there, of the image as it begins to take shape. We guess about the person’s identity, features and personality as the artist recreates these things. Salient features of the portrait catch our attention, and serve as markers in our growing understanding of the person whose likeness is being captured in still life. Eventually, with painstaking, patient work, the full image appears.
Today, Jesus serves as the master artist. He begins to shape the image of Himself that the disciples are beginning to see and understand as He reveals Himself on the mountain top, as we hear it today in Luke’s account of what has come to be known as the Transfiguration.
Surely this event served to mark a major advance in the understanding of the Lord’s identity for those early disciples who witnessed it, Peter, James and John. They remembered this event with vivid clarity.
Before we consider how this image is being constructed, and what the significance is of this emerging portrait of the Lord, we would do well to remember that we hear this text each year on the Last Sunday after the Epiphany. But, in fact, the Transfiguration itself is so important an event as a marker in our Lord’s earthly ministry that we hear the account of it not only once each year, but twice. For, in addition to hearing it today, the Last Sunday after the Epiphany each year, we also hear it on the Feast of the Transfiguration, which is August 6th.
So, what is at work here?
What does God want us to understand about Jesus’ identity, and about the importance of that identity not only for us, but for the first disciples?
For clues, we might look at two aspects of the event:
- The glorious transformation of His appearance
- The appearance of Moses and Elijah
We turn first to the transformation of Jesus’ appearance. Luke tells us that Jesus’ face changed, and His clothes became dazzling white. Notice that the three disciples who witnessed this event saw Jesus’ glory. The use of this word is significant, for it, along with the presence of the cloud, evoke the images we hear and read today in the passage from Exodus, chapter 34. There, we read that Moses’ face shone as he came down from the holy mountain, for the glory of God was reflected in Moses’ face, so much so that he had to cover it with a veil. But as we consider the events that surrounded Moses as God gave the Law to him, we also recall that the mountain where all of this took place was also surrounded by a cloud (see Exodus 19: 16).
These things, the dazzling white clothing, the change in appearance of Jesus’ face, and the coming of the cloud, all indicate God’s presence, both in the Exodus events and in the Transfiguration. What is experienced in both instances is the glory of God. The Hebrew language has a special word for this glory: shekinah.
With the presence of God on the mountain at Sinai, and on the mount of Transfiguration, time collapses. No longer are we located in the time of Moses, or of Jesus. Instead, we catch a glimpse of eternity, and we are given a glimpse of God’s glory, that same glory that Jesus had with His Father before all time and place. The portrait begins to emerge.
Now, we should turn our attention to the meaning of the presence of Moses and Elijah.
We’ve already mentioned Moses in our recollection of the events which surrounded the giving of the Law in Exodus 34. Moses is the Lawgiver, the one through whom the Old Covenant came.
But what about Elijah? What is the significance of his appearing? For an answer to that, we must do some digging in the Old Testament, and then we must recall some of the questions which were posed to John the Baptist and to Jesus at the beginning of the Lord’s ministry to come to a conclusion about Elijah’s role in all of this.
We begin with the Old Testament, turning to the book of the prophet Malachi. In chapter 4: 5 – 6, we read this: “Lo, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the hearts of children to their parents, so that I will not come and strike the land with a curse.”
By the time of Jesus, many in Judaism took these verses to mean that the great prophet Elijah would come just before the Messiah was to come. Elijah would herald the coming of the great Messianic age. As confirmation of this conviction, we need only to recall the questions that were posed to John the Baptist. Recall that he was asked by the priests and Levites who were sent by the Jews (John 1: 19 – 21), “ ‘Who are you?’ He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, ‘I am not the Messiah.’ And they asked him, ‘What then? Are you Elijah?’ He said, ‘I am not.’ ‘Are you the prophet?’ He answered, ‘No.’ ”
At its root, the questions these priests and Levites posed to John the Baptist have everything to do with the coming of the Messiah. Notice that they want to know if John the Baptist is Elijah, the herald of the messianic age.
So, the presence of Moses and Elijah seems to signify that a new covenant is about to be ushered in, and that the Messiah has, indeed, come.
And, as we noted with the change in Jesus’ appearance, the dazzling appearance of His garments, and the presence of the cloud, all tending to collapse our sense of time, so, too, does the appearance of Moses and Elijah collapse time. Now, these two timeless figures appear, erasing our sense of the passage of years. We are now in God’s time, often called kairos time.
We are caught up in the eternal purposes and plan of God.
As God had called a people to Himself in the giving of the Law of Moses, so now does God call a new people to Himself in the new covenant, which will be given through the death and resurrection of Jesus. (Notice that Luke tells us that Moses and Elijah discussed with Jesus His coming departure, that is, His death in Jerusalem.)
The Messiah has come, and the voice which comes from the cloud confirms the one-ness of Jesus with the Father. It is the voice which was heard at the baptism of the Lord, “This is my Son, my Chosen, listen to him.”
The portrait begins to appear with clarity and with force of meaning.
Now, we are the ones who witness the Lord in all His glory, the glory He possessed before time and place.
Now, time collapses for us as we renew our own citizenship in God’s kingdom.
Now, we catch a glimpse of the shekinah of God, as we ponder the brightness of the Lord’s image as it burns in our hearts.
We are drawn into God’s eternal purposes for us and for all humankind.
We are the people of the New Covenant, the inheritors of the messianic age which Jesus ushered in with His death, resurrection, ascension into heaven, and His eventual coming again.
But how are we drawn into God’s eternal purposes?
We are drawn by God’s holy word, which confirms Jesus’ identity for us just as it did for Peter, James and John. God’s holy word begs us to learn that Jesus is “My Son, the Chosen, listen to him.”
We are drawn by the Holy Communion, for time collapses as we commune with the Lord, and with all those across time and space who commune with Him in the Sacrament. For the Lord’s table prefigures the heavenly altar around which the Church Triumphant now gathers, and around which we will also gather in due course.
The portrait emerges with clarity and with force, erasing all sense of time and place.
Thanks be to God!
