"And as they were coming down the mountain, Jesus commanded them, ‘Tell no one the vision, until the Son of man is raised from the dead.’" (St. Matthew 17:9).
Just three weeks ago, we celebrated the Baptism of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Jordan River by John the Baptist. It was a theophany, where the fullness of God was manifested at a particular time in a particular place. Heaven and earth came together with fullness beyond Jesus Himself being Heaven and earth come together as the Incarnate Son of God.
The Father spoke and the Holy Spirit came down in the form of a dove upon the One who was the Word become flesh, the Incarnate Son of God. As I said in my sermon three weeks ago, the three Persons of the Holy Trinity were present and active on the shore of the Jordan River.
Today on the final Sunday of the season of Epiphany, the Sunday before we begin the holy season of Lent, we are taken up to the top of Mount Hermon for another theophany, the Transfiguration of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Father’s voice from heaven is heard again with the same words stated at his Son’s Baptism, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased," but the Father adds, "Listen to him."
Jesus would descend from the mountain to begin the journey to His Passion and Death, and He would say and teach numerous things before He would offer Himself as a sacrifice for the sins of the world of which the Apostles needed very much to listen.
Moses and Elijah appeared in bodily form visible to Jesus, Peter, James, and John. The Holy Spirit did not descend as it did at the Baptism, but Moses and Elijah were certainly men, one the Lawgiver and one the greatest of prophets, who had been anointed by and filled with the Holy Spirit. So in a sense, the witness of the Holy Spirit was there.
This theophany of the Transfiguration was a gift from God the Father to Jesus, His Son. As Jesus underwent the transfiguration (literally a metamorphosis in the Greek), this dramatic change in appearance when "his face shone like the sun, and his garments became white as light," as the two pillars of the Law and the prophets flanked Him, He was being assured by His Father in Heaven that He was on the right path, that God the Father was with Him, and that future glory awaited Him if He stayed the course of submitting His human will to the divine will, as He fulfilled His heaven-sent and Heaven-directed mission. It was a supernatural act of divine encouragement at a point in our Lord’s life when all would soon intensify and try Him to the uttermost, when He would face physical and loneliness to a degree beyond our reckoning.
This theophany of the Transfiguration was also a gift from God the Father through Jesus for Peter, James, and John. They had left their fishing nets and their families to follow Him. Here was divine confirmation for them that He was indeed the Incarnate Son of God, and the promised fulfillment of law and prophecy. They had made the right choice in following Him, and this supernatural mountaintop experience was to reinforce them for what lay ahead. It was for them, not for anyone else at this point. "And as they were coming down the mountain, Jesus commanded them, ‘Tell no one the vision, until the Son of man is raised from the dead.’"
How difficult it must have been for these three chosen Apostles who had been favored with this vision not to tell it to the other nine, but they were under orders not to do so.
Why would Jesus utter such a command, when such a sharing could bolster the faith of others and give them encouragement as well?
Because for Jesus, His desire was for people to come to Him and follow Him for what He was offering – new life and the beginning of eternal life in communion with God now. He wanted people to have their hearts and consciences stirred by His teachings, and by the way He ministered to people. Yes, He performed signs and miracles; but He did so to respond to situations where change was sought and divine intervention was required. He didn’t perform signs and miracles to be a wonder-worker, or one who would wow or draw a crowd. He wanted people to know that in His presence one could know the presence of God. that one was encountering the living God, that one was facing God who so loved the world and desired its redemption that He had come on a rescue mission.
We can certainly understand the desire of Peter who offered to build three booths on the mountaintop to capture or tabernacle the theophany, to somehow hold onto it, but it was not to be. Like the signs and miracles of Jesus, the Transfiguration was not to be the ingredient or the tool to win people or convince people of who Jesus was.
We’re being taught in all of this that we are to bring others to Christ through our relationship with Him. As we give our lives to Him, and pray that we be channels for His work, He will do it through us; and what He wants people to see and know is that we carry Him, that He tabernacles in us, that we are different from the world because of Him, that we live in the world and are glad we do with all its beauty and blessings, but that we don’t live of the world, but have our eyes focused on and our hearts given to something and someone else, someone beyond us, but with and in us.
Of course, we want more people to come into this church and to this church to be transfigured by the beauty and majesty of this sacred space and our way of worship, but that is just to be a catalyst for such people to experience the other dimension as they find it in our love and care, in our spiritual joy and seriousness, and in our unity as a family of God, in our living in the world but not of the world.
Certainly, we should tell people about what goes on here, but more so about what goes on here that has led us to think and act differently, that has made us new, that has led us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling as prayer has become an integral and can’t-live-without-it reality for us.
The point for us is, as it was for Peter, James, and John, that the outward and visible (the transfiguration moments we know, value, and cherish) is really God’s gift for us to propel us forward in greater faith and confidence to do what Jesus tells us to do. We take mountaintop experiences with us as the spiritual ballast to keep us steady and balanced, to enable us to bear the Cross.
Our being here today is a coming to the well to drink deeply of living water, to be taken into heaven in a sense as our worship models and is a foretaste of the eternal worship of God by the saints where unceasingly angels and archangels cry "Holy, Holy, Holy."
We come here to re-present the sacrifice of Christ Jesus to the Father as we celebrate the Mass. We come here to offer and present ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto God. We come here to be made more into the image of Christ. We come here to feed on His Body and Blood, and to be instructed by the Word of God. We come here to be sent out to win souls for Christ because it is God’s will that all be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. This is why we offer our best to Him. This is why we all look forward to Sunday mornings.
God grant us the grace to receive so thankfully all that He gives to us so that others may taste and see His Son in and through us.
+In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.
Bishop David L. Moyer |
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