We’re told Jesus goes up the mountain to pray (9:28).  How often we read that Jesus prayed.  Do we?  Why did Jesus, the well-beloved Son of God, God incarnate, need to pray?  Perhaps because two of the limitations he took upon himself at his Incarnation were limited Communion and limited communication with the Father.  Human nature has limits.  Jesus means for us to know that he knows.  He’s not play-acting.  God means for us to know He knows.  The humanity of Jesus was not just some cheap, disposable costume.  Prayer is our plea to have Communion and communication with our Father in heaven.  Prayer is the assurance that this is exactly what it pleases the Father to give us, in Christ.  Christ shows us, embodies for us, the supreme importance of prayer.  He models it for us, teaches us to pray, and reminds us that, as we pray, God is doing something in us.  Let us make time for prayer, daily.  Sweet hour of prayer.  Take it to the Lord in prayer.

I’m not sure why Jesus takes only three apostles with him up the mountain.  I wish he had taken all twelve, even Thomas and, yes, even Judas.  I want all of them to have that experience of the Transfiguration.  But they didn’t.  I don’t say it’s not fair.  Jesus knew why he did what he did.  You and I may not always be aware of why we are doing what we are doing, which is probably a problem and gets us into trouble more than we like to admit.  Jesus knew what he was doing and why, but he didn’t explain everything to everyone.  He couldn’t.  Even if he explained, that didn’t mean that what he said would be understood or believed.  It’s John, especially, who shares with us many instances of Jesus trying to explain.  Several times, he says that even if he did explain, that wouldn’t guarantee belief.  Belief, I especially mean faith, is not the inevitable, guaranteed result of explanation.  Not explanation but revelation.  Revelation provides us with a name for what we have experienced.  The Transfiguration has little to do with explanation and much to do with revelation: the revelation of God’s Word, of light and glory.

Word, light, and glory share the same essence, though we treat them as distinct.  The Bible often speaks of the glory of God.  What’s that?  When I say glory, do you think light, sunbeams through the clouds?  The clouds come between us and the sunlight but also focus and accentuate the radiance of the sun: oh, those glory rays!  We see the sun.  We feel the warmth.  Glory is seen, and felt.  Years after John’s experience there on the mountain, after years of meditating upon what he experienced—saw, heard, felt—he wrote: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (Jn 1:14).  Glory makes grace and truth visible, sensible.  God teaches us about reality.  If we won’t learn reality from God, our only alternatives are the fatal unrealities on offer here below.  Or is it just a bit too dramatic to say fatal unrealities?

God wants us to know, to see and, yes, feel that there is the most intimate connection between truth and love; each requires the other to be itself fully.  Love and truth live, move, and breathe together.  God makes His glory visible in Christ: listen to him.  This glorious authority is also love.  Love gives; love sacrifices.  We must learn to do without many things that the world tells us, insists—loudly and constantly insists—make life worthwhile.  We must learn that we can do without such things, that whatever sacrifice God asks us to make for Him in this life abounds for the life to come.  That doesn’t mean it’s easy for us.

I’m convinced John was remembering the Transfiguration when he wrote of seeing God’s glory in Christ.  No one has yet figured out what this term transfigured is supposed to be telling us, because there really is no word for what was a unique experience.  The apostles groped for the words to help us see.  From what we hear in each account, we understand that it had something to do with an almost blinding brilliance, “bright as a flash of lightning”: startling, fearful, almost painful to see (9:29).  I think the Fall rendered us unable to behold that radiance without pain, and not just in our eyes.  “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).  We can’t bear it.  Who can bear it?

We aren’t that good at demonstrating God’s character: dim mirrors, at best.  It hurts to see what we’ve lost and cannot regain.  Can’t go back.  We don’t regain what we’ve lost.  Faith regains what we lost.  Faith is a gift from God.  God regains for us what we lost.  This is love.  This is mercy.  This is grace.  This is also glory.  Glory isn’t primarily the visible sense of the authoritative, powerful presence of God.  Think of glory, perhaps, as the wind we feel, the press of a hand on our hand.  What is God?  Spirit, truth, love.  We see none of these in themselves as they are, but we do see these in the work they do, their effects.  John reminds us—he held onto this beautiful revelation for dear life (how he must have needed that blessed assurance!)—God’s glory is primarily, at heart, the revelation of his character, who He is, His nature, His very Self.  Christ is “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature” (Hebrews 1:3).

Jesus took the three with him up the mountain for an experience of the glory: light, wind, the love that lifts us.  Oh, they saw.  It wasn’t just the divine brilliance Jesus wanted them to see.  That would be impressive, but what did it mean?  If I take you into a totally dark room and leave you there for a while, until your eyes adjust, and then I turn on a 120-Watt light aimed right at your face, you’ll notice, but what will it mean?  God isn’t aiming His light at our faces.  He’s aiming at our hearts, our souls: that inmost part where we sit with ourselves, waiting.  “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor 4:6).  The knowledge of the glory: the true character of God.  It may be that, when Paul wrote those words, he had in mind conversations he had with Peter, James, and John.  It may be that Paul is remembering his own life-altering encounter with the light on the road to Damascus.  When did faith become something real, vital, for you: not just a word, a concept, an occasional flutter inside your ribcage?

There on the mountain, the apostles see Jesus in conversation.  Jesus wants them to see this, get a sense of what the three are discussing.  We aren’t told how the apostles know it’s Moses and Elijah “in glorious splendor” with whom Jesus is talking (9:30).  Their souls knew.  Faith told them.  God had taken Elijah alive into heaven.  There was no doubt that Moses had died in the wilderness, though his grave never had been found (Dt 34:6).  Though our bodies do rest in their graves, our souls are with the Lord.

Elijah and Moses are often spoken of, respectively, as the epitome of the Prophets and the Law, like the two arms of God’s Word.  Moses, though, is also regarded as a prophet.  He led the people in the wilderness, the long march out of Egypt, but Moses isn’t the Liberator.  God is the Liberator.  Both Moses and Elijah continually called the people to obedience and love of God.  Both men continually called the people to remember covenant faithfulness.  Love the Lord.  Serve the Lord, heart, soul, mind, strength.

God makes a covenant with His people.  The covenant was not just for blessing in this life: it is a covenant of salvation; salvation is a restoration-plus.  The salvation God offers is a restoration to the relationship mankind had with God before the Fall.  The plus is eternity: God gives us eternity with Him as we entrust ourselves to Him and direct our living towards Him to broadcast His glory to the praise of His name.  God wants to be better known among mankind.  He invites us to be part of that, invites us each to be little transfigurations—clearing a way for others to have an experience of God’s true character, His very Self.  “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.  For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Cor 3:18).  This transformation is not for our blessing only.

Helping others see God’s true image can only happen in Christ who reveals God’s very Self for us.  That can only happen through the Spirit.  Why didn’t Jesus take all twelve up the mountain?  If he did, none of them would then have been able to say with full conviction that they knew God’s glory, that is, His character, through the Spirit.  They would have seen with their eyes, heard with their ears.  A physical, material manifestation.  Wonderful, yes, of course!  But not the essence of faith.  Faith is “confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1).  “Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed” (John 20:29).

With the three apostles, we overhear there is a fulfillment to be accomplished at Jerusalem (9:31).  Our translation tells us Moses and Elijah were speaking with Jesus “about his departure” (9:31): just there, Luke uses the Greek word exodos, which ought to sound familiar.  The red sea of blood that Peter and the rest did not yet see and did not want to see: this was God’s dreadful, awful, holy way of leading His people out of slavery into freedom, covenant freedom, life in covenant service to God.  Through the blood, God makes the way.  If we go, we can only go through Christ’s blood.  And that is supposed to make an impression, get our attention.

We, also, must awake to our freedom in covenant service.  Like in Gethsemane, each telling of the Transfiguration makes a point of how sleepy the disciples were.  They weren’t fully awake.  They don’t understand it; they feel confused by it, ashamed, dismayed.  Beloved, there is that in us, in each of us, that remains spiritually asleep.  We haven’t the power or knowledge to awaken ourselves.  We must be awakened, as by a sudden sound in the night, a sudden light: the Spirit at work in us through the Word.  We hear the Word and, as the old saying goes, we see the light.  It isn’t entirely all at once.  Through the prophet, God calls all of us, believers and those who may yet be, saying, “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you” (Is 60:1).  When our light comes to us—Christ by the Spirit, the Living Word now alive in us—we arise, ready for action, for movement; we shine as we reflect the radiance of the glory: God wishes His character to be reflected in our lives.

There is the glory we may see.  There is also that glory which we, as yet, may not see.  Peter, James, and John are reminded as “a cloud appeared and covered them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud” (9:34).  Note that—the cloud covered them; it’s the cloud that acts, here.  They were afraid as they entered the cloud.  The cloud overtook them, overshadowed them.  I have a memory of when I was quite young: my mother, driving home at night with my sister and me.  There was fog, not some thin, misty haze but dense.  The headlights reached barely six feet out.  Such is the fog that can cause us to feel fear.  How we rely upon sight!  And, when we can’t see, as in a dark place, as in a dense fog, what sense do we rely upon?

“A voice came from the cloud, saying, ‘This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him’” (9:35).  Jews knew whose voice spoke from the cloud.  They could hear but could not yet see.  Ah, beloved!  Such is our lot, just as it was theirs.  The disciples heard all Jesus had been telling them, all he wanted them to receive, consider, and apply.  In the little time he had with them on earth, they could only begin to receive, accept, and do these things.  As for seeing?  That could only come later, as they prayed, considered, applied, and waited.  Faith is for growing.  We walk by faith.

Chosen, the voice tells them.  Chosen for what?  Chosen to be God’s Son?  No.  The Son has always been, as Christ’s revealed glory light there on the mountain reminds us.  Chosen, already chosen, chosen long before for something, to do something.  Christmas was for this.  The baptism of Jesus was for this.  You and I know, Jesus knows, but the apostles as yet don’t know, and when Jesus shortly after tries to tell them, it becomes clear that the apostles really don’t want to know.  Not that!  Not like that!  Not that way!  Anything but that!  And so we can find matters with ourselves in our walk, too.  We love when Jesus talks to us about love, but when Jesus shows us the depth, the breadth, the height of love?  Jesus wants us to receive a truth, consider and apply it.  We’d rather not.  Not that!  Not like that!  Not that way!  Anything but that!  Why can’t Jesus just see things our way?  Why won’t he just bless what we want to do, bless our truth, our loves, our interests and goals?  Then we convince ourselves, degree by degree, that he does.

Still the glory continues to shine, calling us, always, to arise, follow, learn, see.  God is quite clear: listen, listen to the one God has chosen.  Listen to him who shows us God.