Mass readings for the 2nd Sunday of Lent:
Genesis 15.5-12, 17-18 Psalm 27.1, 7-9, 13-14 Philippians 3.17-4.1 Luke 9.28b-36
The Transfiguration is an awesome revelation. Years later, Peter himself would write of how the Transfiguration made perfectly clear something that is essential for the Church to know, and serves as a pushback against an accusation that was common in her earliest days and persists today,
“…we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty.” (2 Peter 16)
Yet if we look around this church, or for that matter any Catholic church, we don’t often see representations of this event. Its imagery does not generally inform our sacred art. Where do find the famous trio of Jesus, Moses and Elijah? Perhaps in those churches dedicated to the Transfiguration, like the one that today sits on Mt. Tabor in Israel as a pilgrimage site for those who go to see the spot on which this fantastic event transpired. But here? No.
What is commemorated commonly, in whole or in part, is another hill top scene, again with three men, but this has a very different character: our Lord hung upon a cross, flanked by two thieves. Jesus speaks of this as his glory, that where we find him in that grim scene is, nonetheless, on his throne. However, many don’t see a magnificent vision, but rather a horror. Even we Christians must look upon that sight with the eyes of faith rather than from the perspective of the world lest we turn away from it. What we Christians stake our faith on is not the revelation atop Mt. Tabor, but rather what was seen at Calvary.
Not infrequently, the homiletic concerning this day, what is preached, often focuses on Peter and his mistake. While the Transfiguration obviously primarily concerns Jesus, the gospel writer Luke, nonetheless points out to us Peter’s response in the moment: the suggestion of building shrines to each of the three heroes of our faith. This reveals his ignorance. Luke writes, “…but Peter did not know what he said.” That is, the chief apostle did not in the moment grasp the situation correctly, and therefore, he did not know the significance of what he was suggesting, how mistaken it was.
Now Luke treats Peter’s fundamental error differently from the gospel writer Matthew. He’s a little more charitable. In the story of Peter’s reply to Jesus’ question, “who do you say that I am” we know that Peter got it basically right – “you are the Christ, the son of God.” Nonetheless Peter could not accept that what was essential to Jesus’ messianic mission: his being sacrificed at the hands of evil men; to die, but also to rise again. In Matthew’s version of the story, there is then the conflict between the chief apostle and our Lord that ends with Jesus saying, “get behind me, Satan.”
Here, in Luke’s gospel, that embarrassing story is omitted. Rather, Peter’s failure to understand the necessity of Christ’s sacrifice is more subtly conveyed; and we find it here in his enthusiastic reaction to, and let’s be fair to him, an overwhelming vision that would leave any of us in a kind of ecstasy.
I think for any of us when we look back on our own stories of conversion, of deepening of our faith, there is that moment when with heart and mind, in the deepest recesses of our soul, we at last understand and fully accept that Jesus is the incarnate Son of God, he is the Christ, the Messiah, the Alpha and the Omega, the Word of God made flesh, etc. And what a beautiful moment that is, and one that I’m sure gladdens heaven to see it happen, but that is scarcely the fullness of the faith we’re called to. But in that particular moment, we might take it as our salvation when it really is only a beginning to a redemption that involves great change in our life.
Jesus here does not rebuke Peter; he doesn’t tell him to smarten up, or “to get behind me, Satan.” Rather, we hear, as we do in exceptional moments, from God the Father. And that thunderous voice says, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”
And we’re all to listen, and on the strength of what we know, that he is indeed the Christ, he is God; we’re going to have to accept what he says, in all its consequences for us; and take on faith that this is how it must be.
And so, subsequent to the great vision of Christ as the culmination of the Law and the Prophets, the very embodiment of these, is the explanation of the need for the great sacrifice of the cross.
For Christians, the fulfilment of our faith is not simply in recognizing, and believing that Christ is Lord. It’s in accepting and carrying out the sacrifice within our own lives, and so uniting ourselves through that to the one great and redeeming sacrifice of our Lord on the cross.
We don’t gain heaven by contemplating the Jesus of the Transfiguration, but through our taking up of our cross and following him. And just as Christ was crucified for our sins, we must crucify our sins, our worldly attachments, all that is not of God, on the cross as well.
But we’re going to do that fully confident in the covenant made in Christ’s blood.
That Old Testament reading we heard, the story of the making of the covenant between Abraham and God, that strange, dreamlike account in which fire passes over and through the slaughtered animals Abraham offered as the blood sacrifice. We know that is not the culmination of the story, as much as we can appreciate that this shows us something of the great Patriarch’s faith. No, we all know the true climax of Abraham’s drama comes in that heart-rending story of the other, later sacrifice. It is the demand that Abraham take his son, his only son, his future, our future, and take it to the top of another mountain, and there offer the boy Isaac’s blood as an atoning sacrifice. And yet, we know how that story turned out. Abraham’s faith was tested, but Isaac is spared, and it is God who provided the sacrifice. Abraham emerges from this a man of deeper and more profound faith, transformed if not transfigured, into the very Father of Faith. And while Abraham had to offer up what was most precious to him, the innocent Isaac, God demands that we surrender what? Nothing truly precious, just those things to which we have become unduly attached; he doesn’t ask us to offer up our hope, but rather, to put away our sins.
And so, in this Lent, we have the opportunity to offer up in sacrifice to God, what needs to be gotten rid of anyway: attachments to things, to the world, to ourselves. Do this and we will come to see something more than a glimpse of Christ in the Transfiguration, but rather behold eternally something even more splendid. As St. Cyprian put it,
“How great will your glory and happiness be, to be allowed to see God, to be honored with sharing the joy of salvation and eternal light with Christ your Lord and God… to delight in the joy of immortality in the Kingdom of Heaven with the righteous and God’s friends!”
Amen.