The Feast of the Transfiguration, Saturday, August 6, 2022

Luke 9, 28–36

Jesus took Peter, John, and James and went up a mountain to pray. While he was praying his face changed in appearance and his clothing became dazzling white. And behold, two men were conversing with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his exodus that he was going to accomplish in Jerusalem. Peter and his companions had been overcome by sleep, but becoming fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men standing with him. As they were about to part from him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good that we are here; let us make three tents, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” But he did not know what he was saying. While he was still speaking, a cloud came and cast a shadow over them, and they became frightened when they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my chosen Son; listen to him.” After the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. They fell silent and did not at that time tell anyone what they had seen.

In 1456, a short three years after the Fall of Constantinople, the Moslem armies swept through the Balkan Peninsula and threatened all of Europe.  The Hungarians and the Serbs rallied to stop them.  During the month of July of that year a great battle was fought at Belgrade in which the Christian forces were vastly outnumbered.  Despite this, and with the help of heaven, the Hungarians and Slavs put the Moslems to flight.  They would return to lay siege to Vienna in 1529 and 1683, but precious time had been purchased to forge alliances and build up defenses.  The victory over the Moslems in 1683 by the combined army of the Hungarians, Poles, Lithuanians, and the Holy Roman Empire ended their threat to Christian Europe.  News of the victory at Belgrade arrived in Rome on August 6, and in thanksgiving, the Feast of the Transfiguration, celebrated only locally at that time on that date, was decreed by the pope for the whole Church.

In celebrating the event of the Transfiguration, we read in the Gospel how the Lord Jesus revealed himself in his glory as the Son of man as prophesied by the Prophet Daniel, in various of the Psalms, and as found in the Book of Enoch, a work written in the years before the Birth of the Lord and very popular among the Jews at the time.  In his glorified state, the Lord’s chosen Apostles Peter, James, and John, see him with Moses and Elijah on either side, signifying his superiority over them.  Moses and Elijah represented the Law and the Prophets, which the Lord had come to fulfill.  They themselves had acted as signs of the Lord: Moses as the lawgiver who led his people from the place of slavery to the Promised Land; and Elijah, who warned the people to repent, and also performed many miracles.  There is also this: there was evidently a tradition among the Jews that Moses had been assumed into heaven after his death.  Deuteronomy 34, 5-6 seems to lay the foundation for this notion, stating as it does that the burial place of the body of Moses was unknown.  In the Letter of St. Jude, the author seems to quote from an apocryphal work called The Testament of Moses, written shortly before the Birth of Jesus, in which the Archangel Michael and the devil contend over the body of Moses, as though it was to be brought up to heaven.  As for Elijah, 2 Kings 2, 11 plainly tells us that the prophet was taken up to heaven in a fiery chariot.  Thus, with his position in the center of Moses and Elijah, the Lord Jesus is shown as the Lord of heaven.

It is not clear how long the Transfiguration lasted.  We are told that Jesus and Moses and Elijah “spoke of his exodus that he [Jesus] was going to accomplish in Jerusalem.”  At length, Peter regains his power to speak and babbles about making tents or shelters for the Lord and Moses and Elijah.  And then the cloud came upon them.  The event might have taken considerable time altogether, but for the Apostles it might have seemed very brief.  They were dazzled by the Lord’s glory and also that of Moses and Elijah.  Time would have meant nothing to them as their minds raced to comprehend the scene before them.  What did they hear of the heavenly conversation?  Evidently they heard enough to know the subject was that of the Lord’s “exodus” (the Greek text simply transliterates the Hebrew word, seeming to indicate that Luke was using a Hebrew language source for his account), or, perhaps, the Lord explained this to them after his Resurrection.  We know from Matthew 17, 9 that the Lord instructed Peter, James, and John, “Tell the vision to no man, till the Son of man be risen from the dead”, so he clearly had in mind to explain its meaning to the Apostles at a later time.

The Transfiguration has its significance in that here, for the first time, the Lord Jesus reveals himself both as the Son of man and as the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53: the Messiah, the Son of God, has come both to rule and to offer himself in sacrifice.  He is glorious, and in his glory he speaks with Moses and Elijah about his coming Death.  The Pharisees had mistakenly saw the Messiah solely in terms of Daniel 7, in Psalms such as Psalm 2 and Psalm 117, and in the Book of Enoch.  They were not concerned with redemption from sin but with national restoration, and they were not open to correction on this, though no Prophet had appeared to confirm them in their belief, and John the Baptist had appeared and spoken clearly of what the Messiah would do.

“This is my chosen Son.”  That is, from all eternity the Father willed the begetting of his Son.  For us humans, the circumstances of pregnancy and begetting sometimes seem random or at least unwilled.  The Father’s begetting of his Son was a fully willed work.  In this sense, the Son is “chosen”.  This announcement by the Father ties together the revelation of the identity of Jesus: he is all three: the Messiah, the Son of man, and the Son of God, who will redeem us from our sins.  The Law and the Prophets had spoken of him in fragmentary ways, but here he is revealed as he is.  It is a stupendous moment in human history, eclipsing all the battles and discoveries that had come before it.  Like Peter, James, and John, we stand in awe before the Lord Jesus and wonder.