“He was transfigured before them.”

(Mark 9:2)

“But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord,

are transformed into the same image from glory to glory,

even as from the Lord the spirit.”

(II Corinthians 3:18)

Simon Peter, James and John had a remarkable religious experience. These three, who formed the inner circle of the Twelve Disciples, Jesus took with Him high up on the mountainside. He went a little way off by Himself and began praying. The disciples dozed and fell asleep. When they awakened they were startled to see Jesus’ face and figure shining with an other-worldly light, and Moses and Elijah, two of Israel’s greatest hero-saints, dead and gone long ago, conversing with Him about the “way He must take and the end He must fulfill in Jerusalem” (Phillips Translation – King James Version —  Luke 9:31), and to cap the climax, a cloud glided up to envelope the three awe-struck disciples and from the cloud there came a voice: “This is my beloved Son: hear Him.” (King James Version — Luke 9:35) Then the mists lifted and they saw Jesus again before them, but now He was completely alone.

This scene of transfiguration, as it is called in the gospels, is unique, incomparable. There is nothing else remotely like it. Scholars have speculated much over just what took place and how. “But whatever might have been the exact nature of this transfiguration experience, the gospel writers’ interpretation of it is clear. It meant the validation of Jesus, that Jesus’ interpretation of the role of Messiah was true, that in spite of the shock which the proclamation of His own suffering and approaching death gave the disciples, He was the Lord’s anointed, His beloved Son.” (Halford Luccock — p 774-5, Volume 7, Interpreter’s Bible, Abingdon-Cokesbury — 1951)

But the significance of the transfiguration of Jesus for us does not stop with this. In Jesus Christ, God had entered our world in human form. Our nature, therefore, may be transfigured, after our own kind in Christ. Here is also the hope and promise of our transfiguration.

St. Paul seemed to see this significance in Jesus’ transfiguration, for when he wrote his second Corinthian letter he asserts that all we Christians, beholding the glory of the Lord, as in a mirror are transfigured (Paul uses the same word the gospel writers do to describe what happened to Christ on the Mount) — we are transfigured into the same image from glory to glory. St. John shared a similar conviction for he writes: “We know that when He (Christ) shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.” (King James Version — I John 3:2)

Of course, Jesus’ transfiguration does not foreshadow the fact that God will make us each one divine, to share the Eternal nature in the same measure and mode as Christ does, but it does mean that there is hope and the attainable possibility for these wretched, twisted, mortal natures of ours to be transformed, changed, transfigured into a glorified nature.

Have we weakly agreed with the popular pessimism’s belief in the impossibility of changing human personality, expressed in the ancient riddle — “Can the leopard change his spots or the Ethiopian his skin?” Who is there that does not want to be changed, transfigured? We who have grown touchy so that our touchiness has become chronic and have, as Drummond says, “self-love inflamed to the acute point; conceit with a hair-trigger” — wouldn’t we like to be changed? And the timid, sensitive soul suffering from a feeling of inferiority and wanting so much, group approval; the father who is failing as a father and wants, ere it’s too late, to know his son’s heart and make known his own father’s heart to his son; and we who have failed in other relationships just because we are the kind of folks we are and have in our hands only the broken pieces of our blasted dreams — O who, who of us is there that does not want to be changed? To be transfigured, into that better, stronger, cleaner side of us, which exists, perhaps, only in the dreams and wishes of our better moments — who does not long for that better part of us to be perfected and revealed for all the world to see?

Well, as the transfiguration of Jesus was a shining through, revealing His true nature as Son of God for the disciples to see, so the transfiguration of mortal men and women (which Paul says is not only possible, but to be expected of every Christian) is a shining through of a person’s highest nature after the fashion of Christ.

Visitors, who view Donatello’s statue of the Boy St. John, are impressed with how the statue, when lighted from below, looks like an imbecile, but when lighted from above, looks almost divine. And “at the Academy in Florence are some uncouth blocks of marble on which Michaelangelo had been at work. In each of them, dim, human forms are seen emerging from the marble but still imprisoned by it. They seem to be waiting for the touch of the Master to set them absolutely free. They are in fact called ‘the Prisoners.’ Like them we are still in part imprisoned in our lower nature and in our material conditions.” We long to be changed, transfigured, but how?

It’s just here that this gospel scene of Jesus’ transfiguration on the Mount, not only raises the hope and sounds a promise of our transfiguration from the common clay of gens humanis, from the clod that is man, to the burning, flaming spirit that is God’s child when touched to life and beauty by the finger of God, but also makes clear the method of our transfiguration.

Of course, it is God who transfigures life, and it is by the power of His spirit that the eternal beauty He has hid in the heart of every child of His is at last unfolded. Yet the transforming miracle of God is not without method. The gospel story of the transfiguration of Jesus reveals some things through which God transfigures life.

First, prayer transfigures life. Luke says that it was when Jesus prayed that His countenance was altered and He was transfigured before the wondering eyes of His disciples. The one direct thrust of the human soul into eternity, and the very presence of God, is man’s peculiar practice of prayer. It is our open door on heaven. If life here is ever to glow with celestial glory it must flood in about us through this open door. When that door is closed, what wonder that the light is gone from our faces? For our lives are transfigured by God’s power when and as we pray. “Prayer makes a good face,” said a young artist to his mother after a long absence when she told him she had prayed much for him. And so it does.

But there is something else that transfigures life: living it with a sense of vocation. Jesus on the Mount was praying about “the way He should take and the end He should fulfill in Jerusalem” when the disciples saw Him transfigured with the glorious light of heaven. The transfiguration takes place chronologically, in the gospel narrative, just eight days after Peter’s confession, “Thou art the Christ” and following Jesus’ first statement associating the role of the Messiah with suffering and death.

Every human life is transfigured by God when lived with a high sense of commitment — of divine vocation — of laying life down, not for self, but for God, in the service of others. It is life lifted up to a higher level of glory in the midst of life, for “reverence is not only adoration, but willingness to obey.” And Ignatius on His way to Rome, chained to ten Roman soldiers, going in the expectation of suffering martyrdom for his faith, wrote to the Magnesian Christians when he reached Smyrna, “We must not only be called Christians, we must be Christians.” (Volume 4 – p. 45, Early Christian Fathers, Library of Christian Classics, Westminster Press, 1953)

I went to a wedding where everyone was saying, “Why, it was the most beautiful wedding I’ve ever seen.” Really, I couldn’t see anything very different in this particular wedding from other weddings. The traditional wedding music was played and sung. The customary protocol of procession was observed. The usual service was said. The bride and her attendants were beautiful, but aren’t all brides and bridesmaids? Yet everybody was talking about such a glorious wedding? How come? Oh, the couple being married were going as Christian missionaries to a foreign land. The bride and groom’s high sense of commitment of life, their offering of themselves on the altar of God, for peace and brotherhood of love — their dedicating their marriage to eternal things transfigured the whole service and set a celestial glow of beauty about it, so all were impressed. Yes, always, living with a serious sense of vocation will transfigure life.

This is the significant thing about an ordination and installation service — not the protocol of Presbytery — not the gathering of family and friends — not the ancient traditional words of the ecclesiastical establishment — but the dedication of young life to God.

Then too, there is something else Jesus’ transfiguration teaches us will transfigure our lives: living in the conscious company of the spiritually strong and great — this transfigures life. On the Mount, James, John, and Peter saw Jesus communing with Moses and Elijah, two of Israel’s greatest heroes, two of Judaism’s most devout saints. Moses, the inspired law-giver and brave emancipator of his people; Elijah, the fearless prophet of God and champion of national righteousness. Jesus mediated on the lives of these spiritual giants as He sought guidance from their lives in the solution of His problem — how best to serve the purposes of God. He thought of their struggles and victories. He viewed Moses’ contest of spirit with the wicked Pharaoh, inhumanly cruel in his greed; he saw Moses, grappling with a chicken-hearted horde of slaves, trying manfully to put some spirit of courage into their fainting hearts. He saw Moses self-sacrificially wrestling with an angry God, wrathful at their disobedience and praying, “Forgive their sin; and if not, I pray Thee, blot me out of Thy book of life.” (King James Version — Exodus 32:32)

One of the ways to get God’s direction, when in difficulty and indecision, as to which course is right for us to take, is to turn to the lives of His faithful servants who have served Him courageously in the past, recall their problems, remember their decisions, observe their actions, and through such communion find the direction God would give us. “It is a law of science that environment influences life. It is also a law of the spiritual realm that associations color personalities.” (McGinley — Saint Watching) “Inspiration comes of keeping company with the inspired.”

But the most transfiguring influence in all the world is living in the constant company of the Lord Jesus Christ. From his hospital office in equatorial Africa, Albert Schweitzer spoke to tell us how the constant companionship of the living Christ transfigured his life and thought: Christ comes to us as one unknown without a name, as of old He came by the lakeside to the disciples who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: “Follow thou me” and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfill for our time. He commands and, to those who obey Him, will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their experience who He is.”

But there is a final thing we see in Jesus’ transfiguration, pertinent to our little lives — that living with a sense of divine approval transfigures life. The disciples on the Mount finally saw only Jesus as the mists lifted, and from the cloud they heard a voice, “This is my beloved Son, hear Him.” “Though Jesus went up the Mount preoccupied with the thought of suffering and death that awaited Him in Jerusalem; He came down filled with reassurance of His Father’s love, and with new strength, straight from the bursting heart of God, to face death at Calvary.” (F. Mead) “So Jesus knew that eternal life is about well-chosen death, and apparent failure can be truest gain.” (George Buttrick — Interpreter’s Bible, p. 454, Volume 7, Abingdon-Cokesbury, 1951)

So, also for us, the God-given consciousness of the divine approval upon our lives which comes always when we seek His will for us and seize it as our own, transfigures life, bestowing a calm courage and a tranquil peace which lurking dangers, biting pain, or aching sorrows cannot upset, enabling us to walk steadfastly on, though our world come clattering down about us.

God can transfigure your life and mine and make each shine with a luster of eternal glory, if we will give some room in these lives of ours for those well-known and proven things which will transfigure life. But even God is helpless before a self-satisfied spirit.

And now unto Him who is able to keep us from falling and to present us faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Savior, be honor and glory, dominion and power, now and forever.