Feast of the Transfiguration

Exodus 34:29-35
2 Peter 1:13-21
Luke 9:28-36

At its heart, the Feast of the Transfiguration is about the revelation of who God is in and through Jesus Christ – and in and through his followers as we are transfigured by this experiential knowledge.

At first, this innermost identity is like a “shared secret” among Jesus’ early followers: it participates in the elusive quality of light, something that cannot be directly named. But after the resurrection, the light of Christ is made manifest in word and deed by those baptized into Christ’s body.

In this way, the transfiguration of Christ is about who we are at our secret core; and about who we claim to be when we tell our full story in broad daylight. On this side of Easter, the Transfiguration is always a foretaste of Resurrection glory; silence dissolves into proclamation, with or without words.

There are two scriptural keys in the New Testament that illuminate our participation in Christ’s deepest identity as God’s Beloved Son.

The first is in the twelfth chapter of Romans, where St. Paul writes: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

The second is St. Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, where he comments directly on the passage from Exodus we just heard: “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another, for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.”

What is most significant in these passages is that the word “transformed” in English is metaphorphe in Greek, the word translated as “transfigured” in the gospel accounts of this miraculous event in the life of Jesus. In Romans and 2 Corinthians, Paul applies this verb to a gradual but dramatic change that happens in us through the grace of Jesus Christ.

What is the nature of this change?

Commenting on the gospel transfiguration accounts, Orthodox scholar Andreas Andreapoulos writes: “Jesus did not change who he was; he was God before, during, and after his transfiguration, as he was during his entire ministry, fully divine and fully human. What changed was the perceptive capability of the apostles. Each of them was given the grace to see and hear differently, and because of that they were able to see Jesus in a different way” (14, This Is My Beloved Son).

This fundamental shift in our perception changes everything.

Our life of faithful practice as we follow the Way yields transfiguring effects. To use just come of the gospels’ other images for this process, good trees bear good fruit; good soil yields abundant wheat; branches that abide in the vine bear much fruit. Like light from a lamp placed on a lampstand, which gives light to all in the house, the good works of those following the Way give glory to their Father in heaven.

No facet of our identity is left untouched by this gradual transfiguration, our progress in holiness in cooperation with God’s grace. Some facets of who we are become relativized; they are no less characteristic of our individuality, but they are no longer ultimate in the way that our baptismal identity is ultimate. Our belonging to Christ is the one identity at the center of all the others we might truthfully claim. “When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone.”

The best stories have the living energy of a “shared secret.” When someone tells you such a story from their heart, there is little room left for agreement or disagreement – there is only another heart’s truth to honor, and the respect and admiration that usually arise in the wake of such vulnerability and risk.

When you tell the story of who you are, how often do you point to Jesus at its center?

Our public conversation around Christian identity in this country has become both two-dimensional and deeply polarizing. There are many words, but the living story that animates what we call the Gospel seems tragically absent in its most visible forms.

What if more of us told the personal story of our faith as part of our public identity – in thoughtful, disarming, and three-dimensional ways?

What would such a story reveal about the storyteller we follow: transfigured on the mountain, hanging from the cross, and risen in glory?