The Peak of Glory / Matthew 17:1–9 / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Sunday February 19th 2023 / Transfiguration Sunday / Mount Olive Lutheran Church

Mount Olive Lutheran Church / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Sunday February 19th 2023: Transfiguration Sunday / Matthew 17:1–9 "The Peak of Glory"

And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James, and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And He was transfigured before them, and His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became white as light. And behold, there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with Him. And Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good that we are here. If You wish, I will make three tents here, one for You and one for Moses and one for Elijah.” He was still speaking when, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to Him.” When the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces and were terrified. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Rise, and have no fear.” And when they lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only.

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.”

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in Your sight O Lord. Amen.

Grace peace and mercy to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Good Christian Friends. At the end of our Gospel reading today Jesus commands Peter, James and John, “Tell no one the vision, until the Son of Man is raised from the dead.” Before taking them up on the mountain Jesus had taught them, and the rest of His disciples, about His coming death and resurrection, explaining that “He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”[1] When Peter heard this, Peter took Jesus aside and took Him to task, saying, “Far be it from You, Lord! This shall never happen to You.” [That’s when Jesus] turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are a hindrance to Me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”[2] Yet Jesus still took Peter, this hindrance, with Him up the mountainside the day of the Transfiguration. Saint Peter, for his part, didn’t walk away from being one of Jesus’ disciples when Jesus called him on his sin, and Peter did indeed follow Jesus up the mountainside with the brothers Saint James and Saint John. Keep all this in mind: remember, Peter on the day of Transfiguration was still learning, he was still being taught, still being formed, still being called and gathered and enlightened, Peter didn’t have all the answers and sometimes Peter had misguided instincts about how to go about living out his faith; hopefully this helps make sense of Peter’s comment and question to Jesus in today’s Gospel, “Lord, it is good that we are here. If You wish, I will make three tents here, one for You and one for Moses and one for Elijah.” You’ll notice that this question is interrupted by the Holy Spirit in the bright overshadowing cloud and by the voice of God the Father saying, “This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to Him.” And Peter does not make three tents, neither do the brother James and John instead after Jesus calms their fears they come down the mountain with the command, “Tell no one the vision, until the Son of Man is raised from the dead.”

There is a lot here in this Gospel reading today that a person could dig into, there is a wealth of truth available to you in these words. One of these things is that the Mount of Transfiguration — while glorious in its own right — is not the peak of the revelation of the glory of God. Yes Jesus was transfigured before them, and yes His face shone like the sun, and yes His clothes became white as light, and yes there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with Him; but this mountaintop was not the peak of Jesus’ glory for that we need to go to Mount Calvary, to Golgotha and Good Friday where Jesus was transfigured before them into the man of sorrows, despised and rejected by men, acquainted with grief, from whom men hide their faces.[3] In that place Jesus also talked with two men, not Moses and Elijah but the two criminals crucified with Him. Saint Peter, James and John where not all there at the foot of the cross on that mountain but of the three Saint John was there, and in Saint John’s Gospel He records Jesus saying, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to Myself.”[4] Repeatedly John records Jesus speaking of His glory all pointing to His crucifixion. In fact during Holy Week in the days leading up to Good Friday when some Greeks had come to see this Jesus and learn from Him, there was this moment, when while Jesus was speaking of the imminent glorification of His name at the cross, that a voice came from heaven saying “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” The crowd that stood there and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, “An angel has spoken to Him.” Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not Mine.”[5] What was it? Was it thunder? Was it an angel? No. It was God the Father. Pointing back to the Mount of Transfiguration God that Father says, “I have glorified [My beloved Son’s Name],” and pointing forward to Mount Calvary and the crucifixion God the Father says, “I will glorify [My beloved Son’s Name] again.” “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” Think of what we hear in the Gospel of Saint Matthew, on the day of the crucifixion, when after Jesus breathed His last, we are told “the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, [and] they were filled with awe and said, “Truly this was the Son of God!”[6] Is this not God the Father glorifying the name of His Son Jesus? Is Mount Calvary, Golgotha, not the Holy Mountain of Psalm 99 that we heard in our introit today? It most certainly is.  

The point of the Transfiguration is not to remain on the Mount of Transfiguration but rather to be pointed by it to Mount Calvary and the glory of God manifest in Jesus’ all availing sacrifice, His willingness to be despised and rejected by the very people He came to save, to take on the darkness of their sin, and yours, and mine, even though Jesus was, is and ever shall be the Light of the world and in Him there is no darkness at all. Moses and Elijah, the combined testimony of the Law and the Prophets of the Old Testament, are with Christ Jesus at the Mount of Transfiguration to point to this New Testament, this New Covenant, which was about to be accomplished in the shedding of His holy innocent blood upon the cross for a World that esteemed Him not.

We don’t turn to the Mount of Transfiguration as the fountainhead of the forgiveness of our sins, we turn to Christ crucified, yet like Saint Peter many of us are slow to learn this truth, desiring rather to find the glory of God in everything but Christ crucified. In His passion and crucifixion Jesus demonstrates His love of the suffering; if your life is anything but glorious by the standards of the World, if you are suffering in body, mind and soul know that “Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in His steps.”[7] Remember Jesus’ promise, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” So we can confidently say, “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?”[8] Indeed what can men do to me that they have not already done to Him, and God the Father raised Jesus up from the dead on the third day, that first Easter Sunday, so “if we have been united with [Jesus] in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with [Jesus] in a resurrection like His.”[9]

And this, dear ones, leads us to another detail found in the account of the Transfiguration which is that Jesus’ transfiguration that day on the mountain top was also pointing to His Easter resurrection and to the “resurrection of the dead” which we confess in the creeds and to “the life everlasting,” “the life of the world to come.” Again, since all of this is happening before the events of Holy Week, this is but one more reason Jesus commands James and John and Peter, “Tell no one the vision, until the Son of Man is raised from the dead.” Martin Luther while teaching about this Scripture passage remark how, “marvelous [a] thing [it is] that Christ was transfigured in His body, which was still mortal and capable of suffering, [displaying] the radiance of immortality while yet in a state of mortality.” This then, in Luther’s summation, also points to the general “resurrection of the dead and the future glory or radiance even of our own bodies … [which will come to pass] once death is swallowed up and there will be nothing [left] but immortality.”[10] Moses then who Scripture records as having died centuries earlier[11] here at the Mount of Transfiguration must be numbered with the resurrected: Moses is no ghost here he is alive an emissary if you will from the world which is to come on the Last Day, a promise that That Day is in God’s Hands and He will indeed fulfill His promises of resurrection to us all, to me, to you. Elijah who did not taste death but who Scripture records as having departed from this life in a whirlwind and chariot of fire[12] likewise here at the Mount of Transfiguration must be numbered with the resurrected as one who would have been changed in the twinkling of an eye at the sound of the last trumpet on The Last Day with the living, one who until That Day was hidden away as all the faithfully departed are, one who like Moses then is an emissary at the Mount of Transfiguration to Christ Jesus from the world which is to come, and encouragement to Christ, with Moses, sent from Jesus’ heavenly Father as our Lord approached His cross and passion.  

Interestingly the people gathered around Jesus at His crucifixion hearing Jesus praying in the moments leading up to His death say, “This man is calling Elijah.” And one of them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, and put it on a reed and gave it to [Jesus] to drink. But the others said, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save Him.”[13] Perhaps they thought they would see a whirlwind and a chariot of fire swoop down to whisk Jesus away, or maybe they had somehow heard of the events of the Transfiguration, either way Moses and Elijah who lived centuries apart from each other and who departed this life in very different ways are tied up with you and I in the promised resurrection of the dead in Christ Jesus that swirls around Jesus’ death upon the cross: and here for you today they are, with Christ, a promise that you like Moses will be risen from the dead on That Day; a promise that if you are still living on The Day of Jesus’ return you like Elijah will be transformed in the twinkling of an eye at the sound of the last trumpet.[14]   

Remember Peter didn’t have all the answers and sometimes Peter had misguided instincts about how to go about living out his faith, sometimes the very things he wanted to do when it came to his faith he failed at: for instance, as I said, Peter was not present like John was at the peak of Christ Jesus’ glory at Mount Calvary, at Golgotha, at Jesus’ crucifixion, even though Peter was determined to be there, in fact before Jesus was arrested and taken away to be crucified Peter had made the bold declaration, “Though they all fall away because of You, I will never fall away.” [To which] Jesus said to him, “Truly, I tell you, this very night, before the rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.” Peter said to [Jesus], “Even if I must die with You, I will not deny You!”[15] For their part all the disciples said the same as Peter did, after Peter said it, and we too desire to have such conviction in our faith, but Peter who was an eye witness to Jesus’ Transfiguration when push came to shove caved and failed to live up to his convictions, he lashes out in violence,[16] he runs away,[17] he denies Jesus three times,[18] yet by the grace of God Peter is called back to Christ, he remembered Jesus’ words and wept bitterly,[19] he marveled at the empty tomb Easter morning,[20] he waited for the Lord and the risen Lord Jesus restored Peter and forgave him of his sins by the Sea of Galilee.[21] This is as much for you as it is for Saint Peter, this forgiveness is as much for you as it’s for Peter.[22]

The forgiven, restored, more mature-in-his-faith Saint Peter is the one who writes to you in our epistle today saying, “For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For when He received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to Him by the Majestic Glory, “This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with Him on the holy mountain.”[23] As Matthew records the Father’s words, “This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to Him.” The two things Jesus said to Peter after everything he saw at the Mount of Transfiguration where both hard to hear and hard to accomplish, “Rise, and have no fear,” Peter was terrified! And, “Tell no one the vision, until the Son of Man is raised from the dead,” they had just witnessed something extraordinary, and Peter must have wanted to share this far and wide from mountain top to mountain top! You yourself will find hard things to “listen to” in Scripture, many of them said directly from the mouth of Jesus, for your part endeavour to listen to them in good faith, trusting that Jesus is faithful even when we, like Saint Peter, struggle and fail to listen and live out or faith in perfect faithfulness. Yes, “The LORD is faithful in all His words and kind in all His works.”[24] Amen.    

Let us pray:

Lord have mercy on us, Christ have mercy on us, Lord have mercy on us, “take our minds and think through them, take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire; for the sake of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Amen.

[1] Matthew 16:21
[2] Matthew 16:22–23
[3] Isaiah 53:3
[4] John 12:32
[5] John 12:28–30
[6] Matthew 27:54
[7] 1 Peter 2:21
[8] Hebrews 13:5–6
[9] Romans 6:5
[10] Annotations on Matthew Chapters 1-18, Luther’s Works Volume 67 American Edition, Concordia Publishing House 2015, Page 308.
[11] Deuteronomy 34:1-8
[12] 2 Kings 2:1-14
[13] Matthew 27:47–49
[14] 1 Corinthians 15:52
[15] Matthew 26:33–35
[16] Matthew 26:51-54; Mark 14:47; John 18:10-11
[17] Mark 14:50
[18] John 18:15-27; Matt. 26:69–74
[19] Matt. 26:75
[20] Luke 24:12
[21] John 21:15-19
[22] Romans 5:8-11
[23] 2 Peter 1:16–18
[24] Psalm 145:13

Photo Credit: Main Photo of Christ Crucified Light and Clouds from pixabay; first three pictures are details of a stained glass window of Jesus' transfiguration from pixabay; detail of stained glass window of angels blowing trumpet from pixabay; detail of stained glass window of Jesus flogged from pixabay; detail of stained glass window of Jesus carrying His cross from pixabay; detail of stained glass window of Jesus crucified from pixabay.