Mountains and Hills

God’s Reaffirmation

A- God’s Reaffirmation

At the beginning of Jesus’s ministry, Christ went down to the River Jordan and submitted himself to his cousin John, to be baptized along with a number of other faithful Jews. As Jesus’s head rose from the water, the clouds parted, and the Holy Spirit of God swept down from the sky like a dove as God’s voice boomed from the heavens, “This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.”

Jesus and his disciples have come a long way since then when we find them ascending a mountain in . John is long dead, but Jesus’s ministry has surpassed him in almost every way, which is, of course, just what John knew would happen! The disciples have witnessed Jesus give sight to the blind, heal lepers, make the lame walk, cast out demons, calm storms, and walk on water. They’ve seen him debate and win against the best and brightest of Jewish rabbis and scribes from both the Pharisees and the Sadducees. And yet, as they go up the mountain, the disciples are struggling with crippling doubt about Jesus. Just six days before, Peter had declared what should have already been obvious: Jesus is the Messiah, he is the Christ who God promised to send to deliver his people!

There was only one problem: as soon as Peter boldly declared, “You are the Messiah,” Jesus responded, “Yes, Peter! And that means I must die.”

“God forbid it, Lord!” Peter shouted back. The messiah can’t die, can he? God wouldn’t do that to his chosen one, would he? As the disciples began to struggle with the things Jesus was telling them, Christ knew that they needed reaffirmation. And so God gives us that reaffirmation, and he gives it in the same kind of way that he first gave it to Jesus.

On the top of the mountain, as Jesus is transformed into glory before Peter, James, and John, God’s voice booms from heaven once again, “This is my son, the Beloved. With him I am well pleased.” Only this time, the voice is not for Jesus to hear, but for the disciples.

The disciples were just barely beginning to understand who Jesus was. “The Messiah” wasn’t nearly enough to describe all that Jesus was and is. That is what the transfiguration is all about, then: it is a clear revelation of who Jesus is. It is a reaffirmation to any would-be followers of Jesus that, yes, he is God’s chosen one. Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the one sent by God to deliver his people. But to understand what kind of Messiah Jesus is, we’ll have to pay closer attention to all that happened on the mountain that day.

Visions of Heaven: Shining

First, when the disciples and Jesus reached the mountaintop, Jesus was transformed before them. His face began to shine like the sun, and his clothes became “bright as light”. I have a feeling that, in the moment, the disciples were probably to astounded by a glowing, night-light Jesus to appreciate all the Old Testament echoes happening. Nevertheless, reflecting back on it, the disciples and early church would no doubt have recognized the similarities between what was happening with Jesus and what happened to Moses at mount Sinai.

Moses would regularly go up the mountain and talk with God. Such a close proximity to God’s holiness made his face radiate and shine. Something he apparently didn’t notice until a very good friend pointed out, “Moses, you’ve got something on your face.”

Mount Sinai is the high point of the whole Exodus story: God delivered his people from Egypt for this purpose. They were brought through the red sea so that they could receive God’s teaching on the mountain and learn how to be his people. Likewise, we have been delivered from sin and death so that we can become a holy people, people who live lives like Jesus lived. There is no clearer revelation of God’s character and will than Jesus Christ. Up on the mountaintop, Matthew is showing us how Jesus is like a new Moses, revealing God’s will to the world.

Even more than that, though, Jesus is giving the disciples a glimpse of heaven, and a glimpse of the world to come. We often mistakenly view the transfiguration as a revelation of Christ’s divinity, but this is a mistake. Certainly Jesus is divine, he is the eternal son of God. Yet, the transfiguration is really a revelation of Jesus’s humanity. On the top of the mountain, as his face and his robes begin to shine bright as the stars, Jesus is revealed to be the kind of ideal human God had always intended us to be. Jesus gives Peter, James, and John a glimpse of what God was calling them to be as well.

Earlier in , Jesus tells us that, “the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father.” Jesus is actually alluding to , where Daniel hears from God, “Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.”

God had always planned for humanity to be close to him. God had always intended humanity to reflect his own glory into the world. Jesus, who was the new Adam, who was fully human, more human, in fact, than any man had been before, reflected the full glory of God’s holiness for all the world to see right there on the mountaintop. Because when a human has that kind of proximity and nearness to God, it does transform them, they shine with all the brilliance of the stars, they radiate holy light, and all of creation looks and sees the image of a holy God reflected by a true human.

The glory of Jesus is the glory of God, a glory that God created us to take part in. As Peter, James, and John stood upon the mountaintop and looked at Jesus’s shining face, they saw a glimpse of what God had in store for them too: To be like Jesus, to be the fully human in all the ways God had always intended them to be.

Moses, Elijah, Tents, and Clouds

Then, just as their eyes began to adjust to the brightness of Jesus’s shining face, Moses and Elijah appeared.

Moses, the giver of the law, and Elijah, the greatest of the Old Testament prophets.

At this point, of course, Peter just can’t keep his mouth shut. When you’re in shock , there are some people who just stare dumbfounded with a little bit of drool coming out of the corner of their mouth, and then there’s Peter.

“Lord, if you wish, I will make three tents here!” A tent is, after all, where the glory of the Lord dwelled for Moses, and the Jews regularly celebrated the feast of booths, remembering the days when they lived in tents, and when the glory of the Lord dwelled in a tent in the middle of their tents.

But Peter probably didn’t think it out that far. And no sooner than the words came out of his mouth, a cloud descends on them. The same kind of cloud that did rest on a tent in Moses’s day. The same kind of bright cloud that sat atop Mount Sinai, and from which God’s voice thundered as he spoke to Moses.

As amazing as all of these things are, Moses, Elijah, Shining Robes, and bright clouds, they are all secondary and beside the point. Because what Jesus really brought them up the mountain for that day was the words God spoke next:

Listen to Him

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“This is my son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased. Listen to Him.”

“This is my son,” a phrase that comes right out of , a Psalm which many in Jesus’s day took to be about the Messiah.

The New Revised Standard Version God’s Promise to His Anointed

I will tell of the decree of the LORD:

He said to me, “You are my son;

today I have begotten you.

8Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,

and the ends of the earth your possession.

“In whom I am well pleased,” a quote from ,

The New Revised Standard Version The Servant, a Light to the Nations

Here is my servant, whom I uphold,

my chosen, in whom my soul delights;

I have put my spirit upon him;

my chosen, in whom my soul delights;

I have put my spirit upon him;

Yes, these words certainly show that the Father has a deep love for his son, but they are also words that affirm what the disciples had likely begun to doubt: Jesus is the Messiah. Jesus is the Christ.

The same words that were spoken to Jesus at his baptism are now repeated to the disciples on the mountain. But, perhaps you’ve noticed, God adds one more thing:

The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), .

“Listen to him.”

“Listen to him”, the exact same words that Moses had echoed so long ago, just before he died, in ,

The New Revised Standard Version A New Prophet Like Moses

The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you shall heed such a prophet.

The LORD your God will raise up for you like me from among your own people, listen to him.

Now God raised up many prophets after Moses, but none of them had quite lived up to the expectations Moses set. No one had control over the sea. No one was able to command nature. No one was able to talk with God face to face. The other prophets were good, no doubt, but they were no Moses. Not until Jesus.

Jesus had calmed the storms, he walked on water, he cast out demons, he raised the dead, he did all of the things the other prophets did and then some.

And now, here he was, face shining from the glory of God, and the voice of the Lord coming down from heaven declaring, “This is my son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.” Yes, Peter, James, and John. Jesus is the Messiah. Jesus is the Christ. So listen to him!

When all these things were said and done, the disciples fell down and trembled in fear. Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.” And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone.

The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), .

They Only Saw Jesus

“Listen to him”. And they saw no one except Jesus himself alone. This is why Jesus knew the disciples had to come up the mountain that day. “Listen to him.” And they saw only Jesus.

So often we are tempted, like the disciples, to try and tell Jesus what we want him to be.

“The Son of man is about to suffer and die.” “God forbid it, Lord!” No, Jesus, that’s not the kind of Messiah I want you to be!

What Peter had done, and what so many of us often do in creating our own ideal Christ, is idolatry. He made an image of the God he wanted, not an image of the God who is. He wanted salvation, but only on his own terms. And don’t we all?

I want a Jesus who gives me treasure in heaven, but doesn’t ask me to leave behind all my treasure on earth. I want a Jesus who tells me “you are forgiven,” but doesn’t follow it up with “now go and sin no more.” I want a Jesus who offers all grace and no truth. I want a Jesus who protects me and my family, my tribe, my people, not one who invites all to his table. I want a Jesus who forgives me of my sins, but who doesn’t ask me to forgive as I have been forgiven. I want a Jesus who rules from a throne, not a cross.

That’s my Jesus. That’s Peter’s Jesus. But that’s not the real Jesus.

The transfiguration is a reaffirmation for sinners like us that Jesus is the real deal, but it’s also a challenge to us. It is a challenge because if Jesus is the Christ, we must listen to him, not the other way around. We must see Jesus as he is, not as we want him to be. It is no coincidence, then, that both before and after the transfiguration, Jesus tells the disciples that he is the kind of Messiah who dies.

And it is also no coincidence that Transfiguration Sunday is the Last Sunday before Lent. Because the transfiguration is all about helping us to see Jesus for who he is: the crucified Messiah.

On the Mountain Jesus is revealed in glory. On the hill of Calvary, he is revealed in all the shame of humanity’s sins. On the mountain Jesus is clothed in white, on the hill of Calvary his clothes are stripped off and gambled over. On the Mountain Christ is flanked by the Moses and Elijah, the Law and the Prophets, on the hill of Calvary he is flanked by two criminals. On the Mountain a bright cloud overshadows them, on the hill at Calvary darkness covers the land. On the Mountain Peter declares “it is good!”, but on Calvary he hides in shame. On the mountain God himself declares “This is my son,” while on Calvary it is a pagan soldier who surprisingly declares, “Truly, this man was God’s son.”

The mountain explains the hill, and vis a versa. The glory of Jesus can only be understood by cross, and the cross by the glory.

What a stark reminder for his people. To live is to die, to die is to live. Glory comes in the form of a cross, not a crown.