The Transfiguration

Peter, James and John went up the mountain with Jesus and there they saw something – something great. Someone might reply, "Well, so what? They saw something. No matter how amazing what they saw was, what difference does it make? Seeing is a passive condition. I can see something great, but it doesn't make me great! I can see the Eiffel Tower in Paris, but it doesn't mean I built it myself. Even if I see the greatest possible thing that can be seen, it's still something outside of me. On the inside, I'm still the same person I always was, with the same needs, problems, faults. All the same I have to eat, to sleep, I can get sick, suffer grief, and no matter what I'll die. The plain fact that I saw something doesn't change any of that. I can't even say that I accomplished anything myself just because I saw something." People all over the world are spending more and more money to travel all over the world, to see many different things. They take millions of photographs as mementos. But then they come home and find that all life's fundamental issues have been waiting for them there and haven't changed one bit. And these issues of life aren't in the least bit impressed by what they saw. If I get home and discover that my child is sick, and say to him, "I saw the Kremlin", my child's sickness will say to me, "So what?" However, God arranged for these disciples to see something. It seems clear that God considered it sufficiently important and necessary for them. Despite the fact that the whole world around us might tell us that what's important is what you've studied, what you've built, what you've achieved, or how many people have heard of you, or how much money you have, or land, or houses, or friends, or influence in society – despite all of that, God gave the disciples something to see. To see... what? To see the Kingdom of God. (Read Luke 9:23-27) It's no accident that immediately after these words we read about the transfiguration, a transfiguration that took place in front of precisely those few who were not to die without having seen the Kingdom of God. They saw it and its glory in the face of Jesus Christ there on the mountain. In this case it turns out that seeing is everything. The very meaning of life is found in what we see. Because what we see flows from exactly what we are before God, who we are becoming spiritually, what we're capable of perceiving by God's grace. Jesus brought His closest friends along to where He intended to unveil incomprehensible glory to human eyes. But even if these three disciples were the closest, they could barely sort out what they were seeing. Only with time, only upon the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ and the descent of the Holy Spirit could they penetrate more deeply into the import of that heavenly vision. But limited human capacity didn't hinder God from giving the vision in this place and time, before all those other events. Let the vision push them to contemplate more deeply. It won't hurt! Especially if they are already headed in the right direction spiritually. When I was putting this sermon together, I was staying at the home of some Ukrainian friends in California. Just as I was working on this, my friends' four-year-old boy started crying because he didn't want to take his nap; he wanted to play. And that got me to thinking, "Isn't this interesting: here I am rather fretting over a sermon about spiritual issues, while he frets about not wanting to take a nap. For him the most important, the most essential thing at this moment in the whole world is that he doesn't want to take a nap and, moreover, whether he can find some way to argue his parents into seeing things his way." And that was amazing to me. Because, once upon a time, my hugest worries in life were the same as that poor little boy's. And that led me to the further meditation, "Lord, how is it that you reveal, even entrust, the vision of heavenly glory to such creatures as us? Us, who agonize over questions like taking a nap, or that some friend didn't say 'hi' to us, or said 'hi' but we're not sure we like the way he said it?" Now, I'm not going to say that God answered me in definite words, but for some reason I did start pondering how, for that little boy, the question of whether or not to obey his parents at that moment was no trivial thing but vitally important for his development. And the very same human spirit, his inner being, that at the moment wrestled with the question "To nap or not to nap?" would in the future wrestle with issues of eternity, of divine glory, of life and death and salvation. And God knows all about that, even at the moment when the four-year-old is shouting that he doesn't want to go to bed. And God treasures every stage of the development of our human character. It happens that God introduces into our lives experiences that seem to utterly exceed every attempt at understanding. Like, for example, the transfiguration of Jesus Christ. The text says that the disciples were petrified when they were enveloped by the cloud. In our lives, too, events overtake us that are beyond our comprehension. We get totally disoriented. An event might not fit, might not correspond to our worldview, might require us to make a profound change in our way of thinking. When something like that happens, in all likelihood God is pushing us on to yet another stage of development as people and as His children. Ultimately, what does it mean to develop as a person? It doesn't mean anything more or less than growing into the likeness of Jesus Christ. But how can we grow into His likeness without a certain vision that lets us see what we're aiming at? And here we come back to where we began. God gave them something to see. And He will give us something to see. Because seeing is knowing, and knowing means seeing even more. Ultimately, to know and see God is the very thing He created us for. Ultimately, this is all His gift to us. After all, Peter, James and John weren't expecting what they saw on the mountaintop. They hadn't placed an order for this vision in advance. On the contrary, they were stunned by it. God's majesty is unfathomable. But though we can't fathom it, it is given to us to contemplate with wonder and awe and forever penetrate further into the vision. There are some standing here, Jesus said, who will not taste death without having seen the Kingdom of God. To these three it was given, in a unique, visible way, to taste of the heavenly glory on earth. A vision like that changes everything, creates a new orientation, a direction, a base and assurance in life. Of course, we cannot expect to see in this life a vision like what the disciples saw on the mountain. But the apostle Paul says to the Corinthian church: "We all with unveiled faces looking, as in a mirror, upon the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, by the Spirit of the Lord." With the eyes of the heart, the eyes of faith, we see the un-see-able, we feel the intangible, and it gives us strength to press on the attainment of the goal about which the apostle John writes: "It has not yet been revealed what we shall be. But we know that when He is revealed, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is." That hope is our vision. We can see it with the eyes of our heart. And it makes us who we are. And the seeing cannot be separated from the fulfilling of what Jesus said, as a matter of fact, just before His transfiguration: "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me."