Sunday before Lent
“This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!”
Summary
The Transfiguration
Throughout scripture, God is presented as something both holy and terrifying: no one is supposed to see God and live (which is why Jacob is so surprised after his divine encounter “I have seen the face of God, yet my life has been spared”).
In our readings today, the presence of God is still something terrifying: in both, the encounter with God takes place up a high mountain, far away from the concerns of everyday life. In Exodus 12.12-18, God’s presence is described as a dark cloud and a bright light, only Moses can approach it. Similarly, in Matthew 17.1-9, only a select few (Peter, James and John) are permitted to see Jesus transfigured with divine light.
The Transfiguration serves to strengthen the disciples (and the subsequent readers of the gospel) in the face of suffering and hardship, but it is more than this: in the Gospel when the disciples get over their fear and look again at Jesus they see “only Jesus himself”, the ordinary, everyday Jesus that they are used to sharing their ordinary, everyday lives with. The message of the transfiguration is that the glory of God can be present in an ordinary human being: the light of God can be seen in the faces of friends and strangers and the power of God can break in at any time and in any place.
FIRST READING
Exodus 12.12-18
‘On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord. The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.
‘This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord – a lasting ordinance. For seven days you are to eat bread made without yeast. On the first day remove the yeast from your houses, for whoever eats anything with yeast in it from the first day until the seventh must be cut off from Israel. On the first day hold a sacred assembly, and another one on the seventh day. Do no work at all on these days, except to prepare food for everyone to eat; that is all you may do.
‘Celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread, because it was on this very day that I brought your divisions out of Egypt. Celebrate this day as a lasting ordinance for the generations to come. In the first month you are to eat bread made without yeast, from the evening of the fourteenth day until the evening of the twenty-first day.
GOSPEL
Matthew 17.1-9
The Transfiguration
After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.
Peter said to Jesus, ‘Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters – one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.’
While he was still speaking, a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!’
When the disciples heard this, they fell face down to the ground, terrified. But Jesus came and touched them. ‘Get up,’ he said. ‘Don’t be afraid.’ When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus.
As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus instructed them, ‘Don’t tell anyone what you have seen, until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.’
