The Greatest Glory on the Mountaintop

[Below are the live stream videos of this past Sunday's worship services from Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio, along with the message prepared for them.]





Matthew 17:1-9

This is the last Sunday of the Epiphany Season. Throughout this season, we’ve looked at incidents and words from Jesus’ earthly ministry that show us the truth that the Man Jesus is also truly God, the Savior of the whole cosmos. This truth is announced to us again today in the Gospel lesson, but maybe not entirely in the way we imagine.

Six days before the incidents recounted in today’s gospel lesson, Jesus foretold it all. Then, Peter, inspired by the Holy Spirit, told Jesus, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” (Matthew 16:16) While Peter didn’t understand all the implications of his confession, he did understand that in calling Jesus the Son of the living God, he wasn’t calling Jesus a descendant of God the Father. When a Jew like Peter used this phrase, he meant what another Jewish believer, the preacher in the New Testament book of Hebrews, meant when he said of Jesus, “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word…” (Hebrews 1:3)

Peter said that Jesus was God. But Peter didn’t really understand what that meant. His lack of understanding showed when Peter was shocked as Jesus said that He, God in the flesh, was going to Jerusalem to be rejected by the religious and political leaders and by the people. There He would also suffer, be murdered on a Friday, and be raised by God the Father on a Sunday. Peter rebuked Jesus. Peter couldn’t imagine God suffering or dying. But Jesus called Peter “Satan” for standing in the way of God’s will that God the Son should take the punishment of death for sin that you and I deserve. Jesus said that all who would have life with God need to take up our crosses–that is, confess our sin and our need of God’s forgiveness–and follow Jesus. Then Jesus made this promise: “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” (Matthew 16:28)

Matthew tells us this morning that six days after this exchange between Jesus and Peter, Jesus took the same Peter, along with James and John to the top of a nearby mountain. Why did Jesus take these three guys with Him? Well, they were the inner circle of the inner circle of disciples. But another reason might be this: Peter, James, and John, by outward appearances, seemed to have the hardest time with their sin, wanting to be like God rather than following and worshiping God. Peter had tried to tell Jesus how to be the Messiah, as we’ve seen. And James and John, forgetting that the exorcisms and healings they’d done were the results of Jesus’ power working in them and not of their own power, once asked Jesus if He wanted them to call fire from heaven down on a Samaritan village that hadn’t welcomed Jesus. These men needed to be reminded that Jesus was God, not them. They also needed the forgiveness of God which comes only from Jesus.

In that, Peter, James, and John are no different from you and me. Like them, we can fall to the temptation of thinking that we are essentially good people who deserve the blessings of God. Like them, we can become upset when the plans of God don’t conform to the plans we make for ourselves. Like them, we forget that we have no right to enter the kingdom of heaven; that is a gift God gives to those who repent and believe in Jesus Christ. It is only God in Jesus Christ who makes sinners clean, justifying us, counting us innocent by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone.

You know what happened at the mount of Transfiguration. Matthew says, “There [Jesus] was transfigured [meaning His appearance was in some way altered] before [Peter, James, and John]. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light.” (Matthew 17:2) Soon, Moses, dead and buried centuries before, and Elijah, the prophet once transmitted to heaven by a chariot of fire, are there talking with Jesus. If the light that radiated from Jesus hadn’t reminded Peter, James, and John that Jesus really is God, the fact that these two Old Testament figures who talked with God on mountaintops are now talking with Jesus should have convinced them.

James would be martyred not long after Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension. So, we don’t have any record of what he thought about the Transfiguration. But John would say in the prologue to his gospel, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14) And Peter would write: “...we were eyewitnesses of [Jesus’] majesty. He received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.’ We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.” (2 Peter 1:16-18)

But Peter and his companions didn’t mainly see the glory of God in Jesus’ transfiguration that day. On seeing Moses and Elijah, Peter in essence asks Jesus for permission to break the First Commandment: “You shall have no other gods before Me.” He wants to build three shelters to honor Jesus, Moses, and Elijah equally, as though the Light of God that day came from anyone other than Jesus, as though Moses and Elijah needed to be worshiped along with Jesus. The moment this seemingly pious suggestion leaves his mouth, God the Father shuts Peter off. “​​This is my Son, whom I love,” the Father says, “with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!” (Matthew 17:5)

Friends, life with God will not be ours if we worship any god other than the One revealed to us in Jesus Christ. To those inclined to say, “My family is the most important thing,” or personal fulfillment, or health, or happiness, or lower taxes, or leading a good life, God says, “This is My Son…Listen to Him.” We human beings are intrinsically religious creatures. Anthropologists tell us that in every culture ever studied, people have had all sorts of gods they’ve worshiped: sex, fertility, money, possessions, the sun, the moon, the stars, animal, vegetable, and mineral. Our sinful human nature makes us want to worship something, anything that we think will give the god we’re born worshiping from birth–ourselves–what we want when we want it. We’ll glorify anyone and anything that will glorify us, explaining why we make the terrible choices we sometimes make in life, from the cars we buy to the political lies we fall for. 

You can imagine how guilty and small Peter (and the others) must have felt at that moment, prostrating in fear in the face of this condemnation of sinful idolatry. But this is the moment when the glory of God was fully revealed to Peter, James, and John. Matthew 17:7 says, “Jesus came and touched them. ‘Get up,’ he said. ‘Don’t be afraid.’”

That is Jesus’ message for you today too. You and I have been idolaters and sinners. We’ve been prone to go our own way, to ignore god, to glorify the shiny objects this world dangles before us. Our idolatrous natures cause us to metaphorically erect booths to what we deem to be holy things, godly values. But forgiveness of sin, freedom from death, and life with God, the things we most need for this life and the next, come from Jesus Christ alone. It was in seeing Jesus as the forgiving, saving God of all that Peter, James, and John saw the true glory of God at the Transfiguration.

This is the glory of God: Jesus, the way and the truth and the life, through whom we have life with God. He’s the Savior Who overcomes the sin, suffering, and death we all experience in this life to give us everlasting life with God. Along the way, He allows us to be touched by His glory and His glorious love for us. He’s doing it again today in His Word, in the fellowship of the saints, and in the gift of His body and blood. He does it when water is splashed on her head in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. By these means, Jesus assures us that beyond the days of our Lents, the horrors of our Good Fridays, and the griefs of our silent, Holy Saturdays, glory, eternal glory, with God awaits all who daily turn to Christ in repentance and faith. Our Savior Jesus comes to forgive our sins and give us life in God’s glorious kingdom. Dear friends in Christ, you can trust in Him!

Light in the Darkness!

[This is the worship service and message from worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, on February 27, 2022.]

Luke 9:28-36

Years ago, Ann and I listened to a young person talk about an election campaign then happening. “It doesn’t matter who we vote for,” she told us. “Nothing will ever get better again.” I have to say that, at one level, I share that young person’s assessment of whether the election of any person significantly changes our world for the better. 

Only a spiritual renewal, one in which people respond to the Word of the Gospel, turn from sin, and follow Jesus Christ each day will cause us, as individuals and societies, to act differently toward one another. The fact that we human beings still haven’t figured out to live together in love under the reign of God is discouraging. Even for people who claim no belief in God. We all are born with God’s Law on our hearts, meaning that we know that sin, selfishness, and death aren’t the way God intended us to live. Ultimately, it was discouragement over the gap between God’s goodness and our evil to which that young person gave expression. 

And she isn’t alone, though some try, on their own, to make the best of it. Like people who say, “The world is going to hell. But I’m going to get what I can for me and my family.” Not, “The world is going to hell and I’m going to trust in Christ and share Him with whoever I can.” Not, “The world is bad, so I’m going to love my family and forgive those who sin against me.” Not, “I’m going to pray that God’s kingdom will come.” No, these people think, “Things are bad and I’m going to get as much good as I can, other people be hanged. Then I'll die." It’s statements and attitudes like these that can, if we’re honest, point us to the fact that it isn’t just the politicians preventing the world from getting better. It’s us too!

The first followers of Jesus Christ had observed many epiphanies--many manifestations of His deity--over the course of His ministry. We’ve seen many recounted by the gospel writers this Epiphany season. Because of Jesus’ epiphanies, the first disciples pinned their hopes for a better world on Jesus. 

For five hundred years, God’s people--the Jews--had suffered from discouragement. It had been that long since God had spoken through the prophets, through whom God had promised a Messiah, a Christ, an anointed King. Through those centuries, they endured injustice, foreign domination, the enslavement of a grace-less religion, and punishement for  their own sin, idolatry, and self-righteousnss. Many had given up hope that God would ever act. But now, with the advent of Jesus, the veil of despair began to lift. Was God’s kingdom close at hand, after all? Was Jesus the Messiah, the Christ, God’s anointed king, come to make things right?

Eight days before the events recounted in this morning’s Gospel lesson, one disciple, the apostle Peter, was moved by the Holy Spirit to claim Jesus as “God’s Messiah.” [Luke 9:20] Jesus told Peter and the other apostles, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.” [Luke 9:22] The disciples must have felt that the small embers of hope just being brought to flame by Jesus were being doused by His cold wet blanket. 

Popular thought said that the Messiah--the Christ--would conquer foreign foes and ensure an era of financial prosperity. (The very things we expect of politicians, by the way.) The Christ, they thought, would govern justly and everyone would live happily ever after. But Jesus understood that the people of His homeland--the people of the world, including you and me--are oppressed by much more than foreign threats or economic challenges, more than poverty or terrorism. All of those ills and many more come from a deeper human problem, the problem that Jesus came to conquer. That problem is sin, our inborn alienation from God, and death, the common enemy of every human being, that springs from sin. “The wages of sin is death,” the Bible tells us.

Jesus was telling Peter: “You’re right. I am the Messiah. And this is what the Messiah does. He bears the weight of Your sin and death on the cross, taking the punishment you deserve, so that as you daily you repent and believe in Me, you have eternal life in the kingdom of God.”  The kingdom of God exists for all eternity, starting here in the hearts and wills of people who follow Jesus. Being a member of this kingdom today won’t erase the sins or tragedies of this fallen world. It’s still poisoned by sin and death. But being a member of this kingdom today will give us the faith and courage to live the Christian life: to love God, to love neighbor, to serve others with no expectation of return payment, to call others to follow Jesus with no expectation that they will say yes, to pray in Jesus’ name for both those we love and for those who hate us. 

When the risen Jesus lives in us by faith, we can take a world going to hell in our arms and love it with the love of Christ. When you know that the story ends beyond the gates of death with eternal life with God, it changes how you do today! But when you’ve lived for five centuries with discouragement like Jesus’ people had and you’re told that your favorite myth about the Messiah is false, that He will conquer our enemies by death and not warfare before He rises from the dead, you need encouragement. 

And so, our lesson tells us that God the Father supplied it! Our lesson tells us that Jesus’ entire visage was changed, transfigured, and that the blazing light of His deity was on full display! What a sight it must have been for the discouraged eyes of Peter, John, and James! The holiness, grandeur, and light of God emanating from every pore of Jesus’ earthly body. Throughout His life up to this point, Jesus had concealed the grandeur of His deity and now, for just a moment, let these three apostles see Him for Who He really is, God the Son, so that later, they could encourage others weighed down by discouragement or a sense of defeat in the face of our sin and death. God was assuring the three disciples (and us) that despite the cross that awaited Jesus--that awaits everyone of us who confesses our sin and follows Jesus, that He’s still God and that the Messiah, after claiming His throne, will reign eternally over all who, by His grace, endure the discouragements of this world, by believing in Him.

Later, Peter wanted to build three booths or tabernacles, one each for Jesus and Moses and Elijah, who were talking with Jesus. Peter wanted to capture this moment and live up on that mountain while the dying, discouraged world went on down below. But God, who Peter was looking at in Jesus, is bigger than all the boxes we try to put Him in. And so God the Father tells Peter, John, and James: “This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him.” (Luke 9:35) Here, God is telling us all: “Jesus is all you have been looking for. This is the one to whom Moses and Elijah were pointing in Old Testament times. This is your king, God in the flesh.” Jesus was and is the Messiah toward whom all of human history had been moving. And Jesus was and is the death of our discouragement and the Author of all lasting hope!

For people discouraged by life, the events of the first Transfiguration Sunday give hope. They must have helped Peter, John, and James and the disciples they led through the pain of Good Friday and Holy Saturday. “Yes,” they could have said, “Jesus has died, but we saw Him on the mountaintop. We know that He is God. But hold on. Hold on!”

Both Peter and John would speak of the Transfiguration years after it happened. “For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty,” Peter would say in 1 Peter 1:16-18. “He received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.’ We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.” And John says of Jesus at the beginning of his gospel, “We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)

And when they saw the risen Jesus, the Holy Spirit would help them to put the pieces of the mystery together. They would understand that the sinless Messiah had to die so that when He rose, He could offer discouraged and otherwise hopeless sinners like you and me an everlasting kingdom filled with the righteousness and peace and presence and love of God. 

Take courage in the midst of this world’s darkness, hold on tightly to Jesus, and listen to Him. It’s in Him that encouragement, forgiveness, life, and hope are found. In Jesus alone. Amen

Get Up; Don't Be Afraid!

[This message was shared yesterday morning during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Matthew 17:1-9

Ann and I had lived in the house we rented from our home church in Columbus for only a short time when, early one Friday evening, an emergency squad went to the house across the street. 

Later, I saw EMS personnel pack up their things and leave. 

I had just returned to faith in Christ. As I saw the squad pull away without taking anyone from the home on a stretcher, I prayed, “Lord, what should I do?” My thought was that someone was ill and that maybe I could run to a drug store and pick up a prescription for them. I didn't want to be a busybody, but God kept impressing on me the need to cross the street and find out what I could do.

Within seconds, I found myself crossing the street to the house of neighbors I hadn’t yet met. 

The elderly man who answered the knock on my door looked dazed, in a state of shock. 

“I’m sorry to bother you,” I said. “But I saw the squad and wondered if I could do anything to help.” 

At that, the man flung open the front door with his left hand and waved his right hand, gesturing to the figure of an elderly woman on the floor. 

“My wife just died. We were having dinner. She didn’t feel well. I brought her into the living room. She collapsed. I called the squad. She had a heart attack. They couldn’t do anything.” 

It was, at that moment, the last place I wanted to be. I had always been terrified of death. I even avoided funerals whenever I could. 

I prayed as I spoke next. “Why did they leave your wife here?” I asked, trying to make some sense of the situation. “The police have to come to certify her death before they can take her,” he told me.

The next forty minutes or so, I called my neighbor’s adult children, his priest, and the funeral home. After that, I sat with him as we waited for the police and the others to arrive. 

Once people got there, I  walked back across the street, thanking God that I had listened to what He had told me to do (you know, “Love your neighbor”) and thanked Him for banishing my fear. 

God had moved me from cowering in fear to being emboldened by His grace. That seemed like a miracle to me. It still does.

Our gospel lesson for this morning, Matthew 17:1-9, tells the familiar story of the Transfiguration. 

In it, the trio of Peter, James, and John, three of Jesus’ disciples, go to the top of an unidentified mountain with Jesus. 

There Jesus’ appearance is transfigured, His face shining like the sun, His clothing as white as the light. Then, Jesus is visited by Moses, Israel’s great giver of God’s Law, and Elijah, Israel’s greatest prophet.

But what exactly does the Transfiguration mean? What is the Goe we know in Jesus telling us in this incident? 

Above all, I think, in the Transfiguration, God demonstrates that in Christ, He can move all of us who cower in fear before the realities of life, be they the reality of death and that of the infinite perfection--the holiness--of God, Who has every right to condemn us for our sin, to a place of assurance and peace and life through faith in Jesus. 

Jesus shows us that, despite what we may deserve as sinners who have violated God’s holiness, God wants to save us not condemn us. God wants to comfort us, strengthen us, give us life with Him that never ends.

Six days before the events recounted in today’s gospel lesson, Jesus tells His disciples: “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” (Matthew 16:28)

In today’s lesson about the Transfiguration, surrounded by the light of eternity itself, Jesus’ promise comes true. 

In Jesus, the kingdom of heaven comes into the world and Peter, James, and John know that it’s true, even if they don’t understand exactly what Jesus means when He speaks, as He often does, of suffering, dying, and rising, or when He tells us of our need to take up our crosses--to own our sin and morality and need of Him for life--and follow Him.

Imagine being those three disciples with Jesus on that mountain, especially after they heard the Voice from heaven tell them: “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!” 

Matthew says that the three fell on their faces, terrified. 

What happens when human beings, mortal and marred by the imperfection of their sin, come into the presence of God? 

Well, if they have any sense, they do what we do when we begin our worship each Sunday: They recognize that they “fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). 

Hebrews 10:31 tells us that, “It is a dreadful thing [a dread-filled thing] to fall into the hands of the living God.”

Friends, it is a dreadful thing, unless, hear me now, your sins and imperfections are covered over by God’s grace through your faith in Jesus. 

And it’s precisely at the moment that the moment the disciples realize how imperfect they are and how perfect Jesus is, how Jesus is God and they need Him for life and forgiveness, that the grace of God comes to Peter, James, and John. It comes to loud-mouthed, impulsive, know-it-all Peter and it comes to the two other disciples who, just like us, were mortal, imperfect, and sinners.

After the Voice spoke heaven’s affirmation of Jesus as the Messiah Who would suffer, the sinless God Who would die for His sinful children, Matthew says--in a beautiful passage of Scripture--that “Jesus came and touched them. ‘Get up,’ he said. ‘Don’t be afraid.’ When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus.” (Matthew 17:8)

For God to banish our fear, to give us the power to live each day, to give us the certainty that God has us in the palm of His hand for all eternity, we need to look to Jesus and no one except Jesus. 

That’s because no one but Jesus can overcome the terror we feel in the face of this world’s realites: The realities of death, suffering, adversity, relational discord, self-doubt, prejudice, fear, our own inadequacies, our pride, our ego, and all the other horrors wrought by human sin, by our sin. 

We may try to cover our fears over with bravado or false notions that if we’re good enough or work hard enough that death and suffering won’t touch us or that God will owe us a place in His kingdom. But listen: God owes us nothing. On our own, we can never be good enough and we will forever live or die in our fear or our bravado. 

But when we listen to God’s Word about Jesus--”This is My Son...listen to Him,” God creates within us a faith in Jesus that vetoes, overpowers, and negates our fears. 

He gives us the capacity to trust in the resurrected life Jesus promises to all who trust in Him. 

That isn’t to say that we never feel fear as human beings; as long as we live on this earth, we will know fear, especially in the face of death. We will be like the guy who said, “I don’t fear dying. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”

But when Jesus comes to us--as He does today in His Word, in the fellowship of believers, and in His body and blood in the sacrament, He touches us again and He says, “Get up. Don’t be afraid.” 

And when we respond to that call, we will find that wherever we look, we will see Jesus. I saw Him that night long ago in the dazed and grieving features of a neighbor who had just lost His wife. 

Jesus, Who touches us and calls us to get up and follow Him, empowers us, as He did Peter, James, and John, to go into the places where life and death, birth and suffering, joy and sorrow intermingle. 

With Jesus, we can face anything: Readied by His gracious forgiveness to look our Lord face to face, to face life and death, to love God and love neighbor, to share the good news of new life through faith in Jesus even with skeptical friends. 

When you turn to Jesus each day, He will move you from being one who cowers in fear before life’s realities to one emboldened to live--fully live--in the kingdom of heaven, now and always. 

Today..and tomorrow too...don’t be afraid, friends. Follow Jesus. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Notes on Luke 9:28-36

Luke 9:28-36 is the gospel lesson for tomorrow, Transfiguration Sunday. If these help you with your thoughts in preparation for worship, that's great. (I don't claim to be a scholar, by the way.)

28 About eight days after Jesus said this, he took Peter, John and James with him and went up onto a mountain to pray.

Matthew and Mark say that it was “six days” after. Augustine and other church fathers said that this resulted from rendering the count differently. “Eight days” seems to carry a theological point.

Nonetheless, it signals that what follows should be read in light of three things: Peter’s confession of Jesus (9;18-20); Jesus foretelling His death (9:21-22); and Jesus’ discussion of cross-bearing by disciples (9:23-27). Death (or departure or exodus) and how it can be squared with messiahship and glory constitute the theme.

Peter, James, and John: the inner circle of the inner circle.

Jesus goes to the mountain to pray. In Luke, major new events in Jesus’ ministry always are introduced in prayer.

29 As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning.

Several commentators have pointed out that Luke, probably writing to Gentile Christians, did not use metamorphoo, because of its use in Hellenistic mystery religions.

While the three sleep, the full glory of Jesus’ radiance is seen in His communion with the Father (Hebrews 1:3; John 12:45).

30 Two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendor, talking with Jesus.

I believe that the "glorious splendor" that envelops Moses and Elijah comes from Jesus.

They’re talking with Jesus.

31 They spoke about his departure,[a] which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem.

Of course, departure here in the Greek is exodos. The original exodus involved passing through the wilderness and the waters into the promised land. Jesus’ departure will be similar: cross and resurrection. This term is used, I believe, only four times in the New Testament: three times in the gospels and once, significantly, by Peter of his own death (2 Peter 1:15). Jesus’ departure is His baptism (Luke 12:50).

“he was going to bring to fulfillment”: Jesus, in His sovereignty as God, was going to accomplish His exodus at Jerusalem. No matter the pretensions of human beings, Jesus was always in control of His mission. It’s what He had His face set to do (Luke 9:51).

32 Peter and his companions were very sleepy, but when they became fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men standing with him.

It’s hard here not to think of the disciples asleep in the garden of Gethsemane. A lack of wakefulness always threatens their lives with God.

The three saw “his glory,” Jesus’ glory, “and the two men standing with him.”

33 As the men were leaving Jesus, Peter said to him, “Master, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” (He did not know what he was saying.)

Peter turns to religion. He wants to capture the holiness, rather than be swept up into the holy. It sounds so pious. But God’s glory can’t be contained.

Nor are Moses and Elijah to be put on par with Jesus.

34 While he was speaking, a cloud appeared and covered them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud.

The cloud (the nephele) brings the presence of God, as in the Old Testament. The three are afraid to enter this realm of God, though Peter had thought to capture it. This surfaces the difference between religion (Peter’s booth proposal) and faith (God sweeping us into His kingdom).


35 A voice came from the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him.”

This reminds the reader/hearer of Jesus’ baptism and the voice that only He heard at the time. The voice then effectively announced the start of Jesus’ public ministry. Now, the voice prefaces Jesus’ movement toward Jerusalem (9:51) and His identity as the Messiah Who suffers (Luke 9:18-22). This is a word of assurance to be recalled after Jesus’ death and resurrection.

36 When the voice had spoken, they found that Jesus was alone. The disciples kept this to themselves and did not tell anyone at that time what they had seen.

In Luke, there is no admonition from Jesus to not speak of the incident. At present, the three apostles have no bucket or category into which to place it; that won’t happen until Jesus’ death and resurrection show them what Jesus’ exodus entails.

Besides, there is such a thing as numinous awe, the overwhelming sense of being in the presence of God. Words fail. At the moment when Peter saw Jesus in His full glory, he blubbered the first thing that came into his head. It was both inadequate and heretical. He still didn’t understand Jesus’ deity. Silence was the appropriate response.

How little the three and the entire twelve understand is made clear in their argument over which one of them was the greatest in 9:46-48. No one who has come to understand Who Jesus is could possibly consider themselves “the greatest.” The transfiguration then, is like a time-released bomb that will detonate again and again in the lives of those who follow Jesus. His departure--cross and resurrection--were always part of the plan, for Him (9:22) and for those who follow Him (9:24). The path of glory goes through the cross, not around it.

[I'm pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]