At the top of a high mountain, Jesus, Peter, James and John have an encounter with God that we call The Transfiguration. It is this part of Matthew's gospel that we are having this Sunday. Jesus clothes become dazzling white and his face shines like the sun: he is transfigured.

This is not dissimilar to Moses' experience. He too went up a mountain and encountered God: but whereas Moses face reflected the glory of God, Jesus' face shone like the sun. Peter, as is so often the way with Peter, tries very hard to do the right thing ... either that or, as one commentator puts it, "said perhaps the first thing that came into his mind". He wants to build three shelters: one for Jesus, the other two for Moses and Elijah who made their presence felt in this mountaintop moment. Again, it wasn't shelters that covered them but a cloud, like the cloud that filled the Tent of Meeting and Holy Place in Solomon's Temple. 

Then, from out of the cloud, just like at the baptism of Jesus 13 chapters before, the voice of God is heard saying once again: "This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!" Actually, it's not quite the same thing. God expands on the original statement. God turns it from a declaration to an instruction. From "This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased" to "This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!"

Maybe I'm reading too much into those three extra words. But in those 13 chapters we've had Jesus calling people to follow him, with some following and some not; we've had Jesus teaching and healing people; we've heard difficult questions being asked of him; some people have started to demand signs and wonders from him; John the Baptist has been put to death; and, most recently, Jesus has started talking plainly about the suffering he must endure and the death he has to face in Jerusalem. 

"Listen to him" God adds at the Transfiguration. All too often, we are keen to be grateful for the comfort that Christ brings, keen to accept the guidance of the Holy Spirit, keen to rest in the love of God. All that is there: ours for the asking and the taking. There is nothing we have to prove to know that comfort, that guidance and that love. But there is more to the Christian faith than that. 

If we "listen to him" in the fulness of the message of Christ, we know that only too well. The transfiguration of Christ, the glory of Jesus revealed on the mountain, is at least undermined if the humiliation of the cross is overlooked. The two go together. 

As that commentator concludes: "Any theology that denies that Jesus' disciples will suffer is deficient, and stands in opposition to Jesus' experience, biblical teaching and human experience".

Dan Tyndall

17 Feb 2023