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S. Transfiguration.25 Luke 9:28-36

About 8 days after these words, he took Peter, John, and James up on the mountain and was… transfigured.

And it’s only when we recall these words Jesus spoke, 8 days before, that we get the transfiguration, the point of it, the takeaway for us. These words are spoken right after Peter’s great confession that Jesus is the Christ (and not-so great pooh-poohing of the cross and death thing Jesus speaks of immediately afterwards 😉 and the words of our LORD are these:

“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it,” and Jesus ends with promising some of them won’t taste death until they see the kingdom of God come with… power.

It seems paradoxical—this theology of the cross: unless you deny yourself and take up the cross daily, you can’t follow Jesus? Whoever would save his life will lose it but whoever loses his life for Christ’s sake will save it? Luther rightly recognizes this is the very heart of the Xn faith and people accuse Luther of mysticism and an absurdist love of paradox.

But it’s actually quite straightforward—this self-denial as true self-discovery, this dying to live cross thing. There are many mysteries in the holy scriptures; but the theology of the cross as Luther rediscovered it from scriptures is not one of those mysterious things!

It’s made plain from the first pages of Genesis, after Adam and Eve sinned, that they simply could not stand God’s company anymore. Before the eating of the forbidden fruit, their great delight was to walk and talk with God in the Garden, in the cool of the evening breeze. But once they sinned, when they heard the sound of his voice and footsteps they were terrified; they ran and hid…

When Moses on Mt. Sinai asks to see God’s glory, God tells him, “It would kill you! But; I’ll put you in the cleft of a rock, cover you with my hand and let my glory pass by and you can see my backside.” Even that made Moses’ face shine with such a bright and unearthly light the children of Israel made him put a bag on his head until the glory faded… 😉

Isaiah saw the un-bagged glory of God in the temple, heaven come down to earth, and it literally undid him, his atoms were flying apart at the quantum level. Extremely… unpleasant! and would have quickly killed him, unless… his sin gets burned off by fire from the altar, jammed in his mouth, which left him shaken not stirred and volunteering to go and be a prophet—something that’ll get him killed in a highly unpleasant way… 🙂

Quite simply, this is why Jesus said we must deny ourselves, take up the cross daily and follow him: ’cause it’s only by losing this old sinful life of ours that we gain the life of heaven and find the unveiled glory of God no longer a terror and a burning fire that quickly consumes us, but see instead a blissful, glorious light renewing us in that very image by perfect communion with God—which is the chief τελος—end or goal of human life, the great joy we were all made for but sin has made us unable to handle.

Jesus alone can handle that perfect dying that burns the sin off and restores us to that original image of his Adam and Eve shared in Eden—before the unfortunate eating of the forbidden fruit. This is why Jesus came into our flesh: to do that perfect dying and rising, to restore the image of God for us.

Peter likes hearing about the divine glory. He baulks at the whole death thing. He says it will never happen to Jesus! And so Jesus says Peter goes from rock on which the church is built to Satan himself—that unless we all share that DYING with Jesus on the cross, we cannot see his kingdom, cannot love and share his glorious Image as we were made to do… 🙁

So, 8 days after the cross talk (the 8th day is often seen by Christian theologians as the first day of the New Age, the perfect reign of God over his restored creatures, and—for Christian theologians of a certain stripe—the resurrection is not on the 1st day but the 8th day of the week, the first and endless day of the New Creation). So, the transfiguration happens on the 8th day to make a fairly simple point: that the glory of God is what we are drawn to like moths to a flame, and like moths it will kill us (!) but; unlike moths, Pegasus-like, we will rise from the ashes new and reborn in the Image of Christ 😉

Jesus spent nearly his entire public ministry—except for these short few moments on the mountain of the transfiguration—in disguise, like Moses, concealing his glory, like Strider in Lord of the Rings until Sauron is defeated and he is crowned Aragorn, true King of Gondor. And Peter, James, and John get to see the reason why that had to be, why even after the Resurrection, Jesus’s still concealing his glory from them, appearing in ordinary form, mistaken for a gardener 😉

Because we can’t handle God’s glory. Just the beginning of the veil being dropped, his face changing, his clothing becoming dazzling white, drops us to our faces in terror. As we’re going down, we catch a glimpse of Moses and Elijah—also in glory, shining like gods themselves—talking with Jesus of his… Exodus.

Why Moses and Elijah? Because each had a similarly spectacular Exodus from this world to the next. Moses asked on Sinai to see God’s glory and was told: “No!”. But on Mt. Nebo, God told Moses it was time for him to die; and I figure he said, “Remember how you wanted to see my glory? Well… here comes! Be careful what you wish for!” I think the full blast of God’s unveiled glory was the real cause of Moses’ death. He went out with a bang not a whimper 😉

Elijah, after some ups and downs, got into a good grove at the end, calling down fire from heaven, slaying scores of bad guys—a mix of Thor and Odin 😉 and God whisked him straight to heaven on a fiery chariot, skipping the death thing… unless: it was the fire of the chariot that burned the last vestige of sin off as he ascended? 😉

Everyone always wondered whatever happened to those two guys? Did they survive those last wild rides, or not? Lutheran “YES!” Their earthly end is a new beginning… 😉

Peter suggests making a tent, full body bags for the 3 to hide the glory, and when peeks, sees Jesus alone, as usual, he is… relieved.

But now they see why they need to die with Jesus, why losing their old lives is the beginning of a new and glorious one. And we see it too— a Great Epiphany! It’s not an entirely benign procedure—the whole cross thing faith grants us by Word and Sacrament—but it’s AWESOME!, glorious. Granting Peace, surpassing all understanding, guarding our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.