Transfiguration
27 February 2022
St. Luke 9. 28-36
Today the Church winds down her celebration of the season of Epiphany and begins to turn her attention to the repentance of Lent and walking with our Lord to His suffering and death on the cross. But before we do that, we today celebrate the great Epiphany of our Lord–His transfiguration: While [Jesus] was praying, the appearance of His face changed, and His clothing became dazzling white; St. Matthew put it this way: His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the light. It is that moment of glory in which He lets all of His divine majesty shine forth through His human nature. With His transfiguration, there is no doubt about who Jesus is. That’s why we celebrate at the end of the Epiphany season; it is its climax: that Baby born in Bethlehem truly is the Son of God; He is the God-man! Now, with the glorious certainty made new and afresh in our hearts and minds, we can enter the holy season of Lent.
Our text begins this way: About eight days after [Jesus] said these words… What were the words/ events that happened a week before? We read a few verses before our text: And it happened, as Jesus was alone praying that His disciples joined Him, and He asked them saying, “Who do the crowds say that I am?” And that leads into that most vital of questions that Jesus asks each one of us: But who do you say that I am? And St. Peter answering for the 12 and for every Christian says: You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. St. Peter could be wrong; we could be wrong. We are people; we can be easily deceived. But what we have in our text is God’s, the Father’s answer to Jesus’ question. And what does He say who Jesus is? He speaks at the end of our text: This is My Son, whom I love. Listen to Him. Now there is no doubt–that faith that the Holy Spirit worked in St. Peter and all our Lord’s dear Christians that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God is right and true. At His transfiguration Jesus showed His divine glory, honor and majesty; and the Father answered Jesus’ question: But who do you say that I am?, with This is My Son, whom I love. Listen to Him. There are no if’s, and’s, or but’s about it. Our faith in Jesus is right and true. And this has tremendous meaning and application for our lives: since Jesus is Who He said He is, how is that reflected in our lives? Is He truly number one in all that we think and do–or do we still live as if our lives all revolve us? How we have great cause for examination and repentance! And what wonderful opportunity we have for that in our upcoming season of Lent!
There is also another connection between the Transfiguration and Lent that we find in that phrase: About eight days after [Jesus] said these words... Another word of Jesus that week before was this: The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day. The Transfiguration makes it very clear that part and parcel of Jesus’ work was to suffer and die–and then rise from the dead. The Transfiguration–Jesus revealing in full glory His divine majesty–was meant to comfort the disciples when they saw Him being rejected, suffering and dying. Not only, then, was the Transfiguration the Father’s answer “This is My Son, whom I love. Listen to Him” but the Transfiguration, this moment of glory, also pointed forward to Jesus’ suffering and death–but also to His glorification, His resurrection.
Our text: While [Jesus] was praying, the appearance of His face changed, and His clothing became dazzling white. Just then, two men, Moses and Elijah, were talking with Him! They appeared in glory... Think of that scene: Jesus’ divine brilliance, which He normally kept concealed, was brilliantly radiating. And now here not only do we have Jesus in all of His divine glory but we have Moses and Elijah in their glorified, heavenly bodies. Remember, Elijah never died [2 Ki 1.11] but, as we read, suddenly a chariot of fire appeared with horses of fire…and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. And of Moses we read in today’s reading: So Moses, the servant of the LOrd, died there in the land of Moab as the LOrd had said. The LOrd buried him in the valley in the land of Moab. So Moses died and was buried. But that’s not the end of the story. St. Jude records [..9]: Michael the archangel [contended] with the devil when he [disputed] about the body of Moses. It seems that the devil wanted Moses’ body, so it seems the Lord then brought Moses’ body into heaven to keep it from the devil. Of course, in heaven the body was glorified and made fit for heaven and reunited with his soul. That’s why Moses and Elijah could appear bodily in glory with Jesus on the mount of Transfiguration.
This is a fantastic scene. For here we have Moses, as the representative of the Law, and Elijah, as representative of the prophets, together with Jesus. The Law of Moses with all its sacrifices and festivals pointed forward to Jesus, who would bring them to fulfillment. Think, for example, of all the animals sacrificed on the temple altar. They pointed forward to Jesus’ perfect once for all sacrifice for sin and reminded the OT faithful of the coming Savior. Think of the Passover festival. It reminded the people of the Lord rescuing them from slavery in Egypt and it pointed the faithful forward to the rescue from sin, death, devil and hell the coming Messiah would bring. All of the preaching of the OT prophets with their calls for repentance and faith pointed forward to Jesus. Jesus is the sum and substance of the entire OT. He has come and here are Moses and Elijah talking with Him: They… were talking about His departure, which He was going to bring to fulfillment in Jerusalem. This was, if you will, Jesus’ divine appointment: to go to Jerusalem to bring to fulfillment all that Moses in the Law and all that the OT prophets had said. Here again we see that all of the OT is about Jesus; that all that Jesus came to do and did do was already prophesied and foreshadowed in the OT. This means that there were no accidents or flukes; it means that with Jesus’ suffering and death, it’s not as if God’s plan had gone horribly wrong. Everything was going according to plan. Because that’s the case, we can be certain that Jesus is our Savior and our salvation is sure. The very ones–Moses and Elijah–who had foretold Jesus’ suffering and death are now repeating that message: They… were talking about His departure, which He was going to bring to fulfillment in Jerusalem.
Not only were they repeating it here on the Mount of Transfiguration, but the importance of His suffering is confirmed. Jesus’ suffering, death, and resurrection is not just something that could happen as well as not happen. It is the crucial event in the history of the world. What Jesus had said about a week earlier is confirmed: The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day. What is important when our text says: They… were talking about His departure, which He was going to bring to fulfillment in Jerusalem, is that word “departure.” It is literally the word “exodus”! Think of that rich OT imagery of the exodus from slavery to Egypt. What Jesus was doing was giving the fulfillment of the OT Passover–by His life, suffering, and death He would be the true exodus from enslavement to sin, to death, to devil and hell. In Jesus, by His death and resurrection, we have rescue/ deliverance from these our greatest enemies.
What/ who do we see bringing about our rescue and leading us to heaven? The very God Himself! Isn’t that what we see when He lets His divine glory shine through? Isn’t that what we see when the appearance of His face changed, and His clothing became dazzling white? Isn’t that what we hear when we hear the voice of the Father, “This is My Son, whom I love. Listen to Him”? The importance of Jesus’ suffering and death? –Not only is it long foretold in the OT but it is the suffering and death of the very God Himself. “This is My Son”– the divine glory belongs to Jesus by nature. That God Himself had to die for our sins shows both the seriousness of our sin–that only the death of God could pay their price–and the great love of God for us–that He died for our sin. That’s what the Transfiguration shows us: the appearance of [Jesus’] face changed, and His clothing became dazzling white.
And the very fact that we see here that Jesus is God, that He reveals His divinity and power shows that Jesus willingly went to the cross for us; His was a voluntary offering of love. He willingly laid down His life as the perfect once for all sacrifice for all our sin; His life wasn’t taken from Him–He’s God almighty after all! But He did all this in love for us sinners. We can never doubt His love for us in any way. Nor can we doubt our forgiveness and salvation–God almighty brought it about for us.
But just because Jesus is the true almighty God Himself, the Son, the Second Person of the Trinity doesn’t mean it was easy for Him to go the way of the cross and to suffer there for the sins of the world. He was also true man, after all! And as God He knew exactly what was ahead of Him. Our text: Jesus took Peter, John and James and went up on the mountain to pray. Certainly it was a prayer for wisdom and strength for His upcoming difficult work. Jesus went up on that mountain for a vigil of meditation and prayer far above the misery and toil of the world and prepared for His suffering and death. When Jesus prayed here, it wasn’t to escape the work that He had come to do but to take it on; He was trusting in His Father’s faithfulness and love; He prayed to unite His will to that of His Father in heaven, just like when He prayed in Gethsemane [Lk. 22.42]: Not My will, but Yours, be done. That’s why we pray, too–not to evade what the Lord wants us to do but for strength to do the Lord’s will, to unite our will with His. And how wonderfully Jesus’ struggle was lightened when He prayed and Moses and Elijah came to Him from heaven; and how wonderfully the disciples were strengthened for the trials they would soon endure as they now saw Jesus in His glory with Moses and Elijah.
The appearance of His face changed, and His clothing became dazzling white. Jesus, shining in all His divine radiance, was a promise to Him and a prophecy that He would successfully carry out His saving work; that He would be glorified. Yes, Jesus would carry out His work–He would suffer and die for the sins of the world but He would rise again victorious. His glory radiating from Him–even as man–was a preaching and comfort to Him. And how that must have been an answer to His prayer to unite His will to the Father’s. Just as Jesus said about a week before, would be done: The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day. Jesus would carry out His saving work; He would be victorious and glorified; His transfiguration was a taste and pledge of His glorification after His suffering.
On top of that, when the disciples saw Moses and Elijah, that was a comfort to them–and it is a comfort to us. Moses and Elijah appeared in glory. Here were people who had lived here on earth and now are glorified in heaven. They had believed in/ trusted in the coming Savior and through that faith they were saved. Their faith was not in vain. They stand before us as examples of what it will be like for all the Christians come the Last Day–we will be in heaven in soul and glorified body for all eternity. Now, with a view of what glory awaits us, we, too, can go out strengthened for whatever is ahead of us. Jesus won the victory for us. INJ Amen.