Exodus 24: 12–18; Psalm 2; II Peter 1: 16–21; Matthew
17: 1–9
The is the written version of a homily given by Fr.
Gene Tucker at St. John’s in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania on Sunday,
February 26, 2017.
“UNWRAPPING
THE LORD’S IDENTITY”
(Homily texts: Exodus
24: 12–18, II Peter 1: 16–21 & Matthew 17: 1–9)
Some
years ago, I gave a present to one of my daughters on her birthday. But it was
a present with a twist: Instead of getting the present and wrapping it in a
normal way, I wrapped the present in several lays of wrapping paper and boxes.
So, when the appointed day came, and the present was given, I got to watch with
some degree of glee as my daughter opened the first layer, only to come upon
another layer, and so forth. And along the way, as each layer was encountered,
there was a note of encouragement to continue pressing on through the various
layers of wrapping paper and boxes until the actual gift itself was discovered.
(OK,
I will admit it was a bit of a mischievous thing to do to my daughter. I do
think, given the history of our relating to one another since that time, that
she’s forgiven her father for this bit of devious behavior.)
The
multi-layered example I’ve just described seems to fit the pattern of
self-revelation that God is undertaking in the person and the work of Jesus
Christ: Layer after layer of discovery awaits the original twelve disciples and
those who gathered around Jesus to hear His teaching and to witness His
miracles. That self-disclosure, self-revelation, reached a climax on the event
which is known as the Transfiguration, when the glory of God that Jesus the
Christ possessed before all time, a glory that He shares with God the Father,
was seen by Peter, James and John on the mountaintop.
But I
am getting ahead of myself.
Let’s
back up and retrace the revealing acts of God as we see them in Jesus Christ,
tracing them from the beginning of Jesus’ earthly ministry, and concluding with
the Transfiguration itself and to the Easter event which it foreshadows.
Here,
it seems to me, are the significant events as God reveals Himself in the person
and work of Jesus Christ:
The
Lord’s baptism: The first time we
hear the Father’s voice declaring, “You are my Son, my beloved, with whom I am
well pleased.”[1]
is at Jesus’ baptism in the River Jordan.
The
call of the disciples: There must have been something that was very
compelling in the Lord’s call to the likes of Peter, Andrew, James, John and
the others. We get the impression that when the Lord said, “Follow me,” that
these men simply got up, bade farewell to their families, and followed the
Lord.[2] The same
can be said of the tax collector Matthew, who seems to have simply left his
tax-collecting booth and followed Jesus.[3]
Teaching
and healing: Matthew (and the other Gospel writers) tells
us that Jesus went throughout the region of Galilee, teaching and healing
people. As a result of these things, Jesus’ popularity began to grow, and His
reputation spread. But there is a dimension to His healing that it would be
easy for us, as contemporary Christian believers, to miss: In Jesus’ day, the
ability to heal also carried with it an implication that the healer was able to
conquer sin, for disease and illness were often regarded as being the direct
result of some grievous sin. Likewise, the Lord’s teaching was “with
authority”, we are told, a teaching that was not like that of the scribes.[4]
Jesus
as the Christ, the Messiah: Now, we move
into a sequence of events that immediately preceded the Transfiguration event
itself: As Jesus was making His way with His disciples to the region of Caesarea
Philippi, He asked His disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”
(Matthew 16: 13) The disciples offer various answers from among the responses
they have heard. Then, Jesus narrows the question, saying, “But who do you say
that I am?” (Matthew 16: 15 Peter responds by saying that Jesus is the “Christ,
the son of the living God.” (Matthew 16: 16)
At
this point, it would be easy for us to pack into Peter’s confession the
understandings that the Church, which – as a result of prolonged reflection and
deliberation – had come to believe about the meaning of Jesus as Messiah or
Christ.[5] The
Church has come to the understanding that Jesus is the “only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, begotten, not
made, of one Being with the Father…” as the Nicene Creed states the reality of
Jesus’ nature as being one with God the Father, God’s anointed, God’s Messiah,
God’s Christ. But the Nicene Creed dates from the fourth century (it was
originally formulated at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, and was revised into
the version we use today at the Council of Constantinople in 381 AD).
It’s
likely that Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ, meant
something quite different from our post-Nicene understandings. Perhaps, for
Peter, the Messiah was to be a glorious figure, a liberator of God’s people
from the oppressive yoke of Roman occupation, a figure of the sort of King
David, who, a thousand years before, had led God’s people into the most
glorious segment of their history.
We
can’t be certain, but perhaps for Peter, as it was for many Jews in that day
and time, the Messiah had nothing to do with being divine. The Messiah in that
age long ago was simply an extraordinary human being.
But
now the tables begin to turn.
Jesus’
death and resurrection: Notice how Jesus
begins to piggy back on Peter’s confession by telling the disciples what was to
happen to Him once He reached Jerusalem: We read Peter’s confession in Matthew
16: 13–20. But then, Matthew tells that “from that time”, Jesus began to teach
the disciples that He would die in Jerusalem, but that He would be raised from
the dead. (See Matthew 16: 21.) It’s likely that Peter missed the second part
of Jesus’ statement, the part that talked about being raised from the dead on
the third day. (It’s my guess that Peter was simply so shocked by Jesus’
prediction that he was unable to hear the other, good part of Jesus’
statement.)
The
significance of Jesus’ resurrection is this: God alone has the power of life.
God alone has the power to create life and to recreate it. So, the disciples
should have figured out that – if Jesus was to be raised from the dead on the
third day – then it would be an act of God that would carry out this event.
Seen
in this way, then, Jesus’ resurrection would fit the pattern of Jesus’
healings, for God’s hand is seen in Jesus’ miraculous healings….Jesus’ healing
are – in their most basic sense – the power over life and over death.
But
the disciples couldn’t see the chain of events that was to unfold in the time
that lay ahead in Jerusalem during Holy Week. We shouldn’t be too hard on them,
for these events, as spectacular as they are, were unprecedented occurrences in
the course of human experience. (Hindsight, it is said, is usually 20/20.)
The
Transfiguration:[6] Now we
come to the event we consider today: Jesus’ marvelous transfiguration on a
mountaintop,[7]
an event that is connected to the Lord’s teaching about His coming death and
resurrection, for Matthew tells us that it was “six days later” that the Lord
took the three disciples, Peter, James and John up the mountain.
It is
as if God is taking this inner circle of the disciples to the next step in
disclosing to them the glory that Jesus Christ possessed from before time and
in eternity. For that marvelous light of God[8] was
reflected in the Lord’s face, and His clothing became white as light.
Here,
we encounter the words that were first heard at Jesus’ baptism, as the Father
declares, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased…listen to him.”
(Matthew 17: 5b)
The
implications of this event are many:
For
one thing, God’s purposes from the days of old are connected to the ministry
and work of Jesus, as Moses (the giver of the Law) and Elijah (who was to be
the forerunner of the coming of the Messiah)[9] appear
with Jesus.
For
another, The Father now identifies with the Son. Here again, we should be careful
not to weigh down this reality with the understandings that the Church would
come to much later on with regard to the relationship between the Father and
the Son, as we’ve outlined earlier.
For
yet another, God’s unmistakable light shines powerfully, in much the same way
as it did when Moses went up onto the mountain to meet with God, and to receive
the Law. (See Exodus 24: 12–18.) So, too, does God clothe Himself in a cloud in
the Exodus event and on the mount of Transfiguration.
Though
they most likely did not know it at the time, these three disciples were being
given a foretaste of the awesome power of God that would result in the raising
of Jesus Christ on Easter Sunday morning. That invincible power of God over
life, over death, over any and all adversaries and enemies, would confirm that
God is at work in the person of Jesus Christ.
Looking
back after a period of many years, St. Peter’s words are recorded for us to
benefit from as he recalls the event that took place at Jesus’ transfiguration.
Peter tells us that he (and the others) were “eyewitnesses”[10] of the
glory that was revealed.
What
does this event mean for us who live, now, so many years after the Lord’s
transfiguration? Perhaps simply this: Just as God’s power, made known in the
transformation of the Lord’s appearance, is the power to grant and re-grant
life to all who come to God in faith, so, too, will this same power sustain us
throughout this earthly life and into the life of the world which is to come.
As St. Paul so eloquently states in Romans 8: 39b that nothing will be able to
separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Our
last and greatest enemy, death, has been defeated, and so have all the other,
lesser enemies, for we are Christ’s in baptism and in faith, and all who are in
Christ are God’s, as well. We are called, therefore, to go out and proclaim
that we, too, are eyewitnesses of God’s power to create, sustain and protect.
AMEN.
[1] Matthew 3: 17b
[2] Matthew 4: 18 – 22 contains the account of
these first four disciples’ response to the Lord’s invitation. It’s noteworthy
that Matthew uses the word “immediately” (verses 20 and 22) to characterize
their response to Jesus.
[3] See Matthew 9: 9.
[4] See Matthew 7: 29.
[5] The two titles, Messiah and Christ, mean the
same thing. Messiah comes to us from the Hebrew, while Christ comes to us from
the Greek. Both mean “anointed one”.
[6] The Transfiguration is an event we consider
in our cycle of readings for the Church Year twice: It is always a part of our
worship on the Last Sunday After the Epiphany, but it is also observed on its
own feast, on August 6th every year.
[7] The traditional site of this event is Mount
Tabor, which is located in the Galilee region, and which is just to the north
side of the Jezreel Valley and to the southwest of the Sea of Galilee. But some
scholars think the site may have been Mount Hermon, which is located further
north, nearer to Caesarea Philippi, in modern-day Lebanon.
[8] The Hebrew word which is reserved for
describing God’s light is shekinah.
[9] Many Jews in Jesus’ day connected the
prophet Malachi’s prediction (found in Malachi 4: 5) of the return of Elijah to
the coming of the Messiah.
[10] Being an eyewitness to the Lord’s ministry
and to His death and resurrection were essential qualifications for a person to
be an Apostle.
