Transfigured: Becoming What We Were Created to Be

Lessons: Ex 34:29-35; Ps 99; 2 Pet 1:13-21; Lk 9:28-36

The Feast of the Transfiguration is one of the great feasts of the Church. Yet for many Christians, it passes almost unnoticed.

We know Christmas. We know Easter. We know Pentecost. But the Transfiguration often feels like one more story tucked into the Gospel. Jesus goes up a mountain. His appearance changes. Moses and Elijah appear. A voice speaks from heaven.

Then everyone comes back down.

But the Church has never treated this as a minor event.

The Transfiguration reveals something essential about who Christ is. It also tells us something about Scripture, the Trinity, salvation, and ultimately who we are becoming in Christ.

This feast deserves our attention.

Christ, the Law, and the Prophets

On the mountain, Jesus is joined by Moses and Elijah.

Their presence matters.

Moses represents the Law. Elijah represents the Prophets. Together they stand for the sacred history out of which Jesus comes and within which the Church understands him.

Christianity did not begin disconnected from Israel.

Jesus was Jewish. His apostles were Jewish. The Scriptures Jesus knew, prayed, and taught were the Scriptures of Israel. The God revealed in Jesus Christ is not a different God replacing the God encountered by Abraham, Moses, the prophets, and the people of Israel.

The early Church had to defend this truth.

One of Christianity's earliest major controversies came from Marcion of Sinope. Marcion struggled with the differences he perceived between portions of the Hebrew Scriptures and the Gospel of Christ. His solution was to separate them. He rejected the God portrayed in the Hebrew Scriptures and constructed a shortened Christian canon stripped of much of its Jewish character.

The Church rejected his teaching.

The Transfiguration gives us a picture of why.

Moses and Elijah do not disappear when Christ comes. They stand beside him.

The Law and the Prophets find their fulfillment in Christ. They remain part of the sacred story into which Christians have been grafted.

This matters today because Marcion's temptation never completely disappeared.

Christians still speak as though the Old Testament belongs to a lesser religion or describes some other God. We sometimes contrast an angry "Old Testament God" with the loving Jesus of the New Testament.

The Transfiguration will not let us make that separation.

The same divine story runs through Moses, Elijah, the prophets, the apostles, and finally into the Church. We have to wrestle with difficult Scriptures rather than discard the people and traditions from which our faith came.

The God Revealed as Communion

The Transfiguration also gives us another glimpse into the mystery Christians call the Trinity.

The word Trinity does not appear in Scripture. The doctrine developed as the Church tried to faithfully describe what Scripture reveals about God.

The Transfiguration is one of those revealing moments.

Christ stands before the disciples in glory.

The voice of the Parent is heard.

"This is my Son, my Chosen. Listen to him."

And surrounding the whole biblical witness is the work of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit who spoke through the prophets and continues to reveal Christ.

Something similar happens at Jesus' baptism. The Son stands in the Jordan. The Spirit descends. The voice speaks from heaven.

The Church eventually found language for what these encounters revealed.

One God.

Three Persons.

Parent, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Distinct without division. United without confusion.

The Trinity is not theological decoration. It tells us something about the deepest reality of God.

God is communion.

God is relationship.

God is love shared eternally.

And if humanity bears the image of this God, then none of us reaches holiness through isolation. Christianity is not a private spiritual achievement. We become ourselves in communion with God and with one another.

That leads directly into one of the deepest truths revealed by the Transfiguration.

Salvation Is More Than Being Forgiven

The Eastern Church often uses the word theosis.

For many Christians formed primarily in Western traditions, the word might sound unfamiliar. The idea itself is ancient.

Theosis means participation in the life of God.

It means union with God.

It means becoming, by grace, what humanity was created to become.

Sometimes Christianity speaks about human beings almost entirely in negative terms. We are sinners. We are fallen. We fail. We need forgiveness.

All of those things matter.

We do sin. We hurt one another. We distort the image of God within ourselves. We need grace because none of us heals ourselves through effort alone.

But Christianity has something more to say about humanity.

Human beings were created in the image and likeness of God.

Sin wounds that image. It does not erase it.

The Transfiguration reminds us what humanity looks like when fully alive in communion with God.

Christ shines.

His humanity is not discarded so his divinity can appear. His humanity itself becomes radiant with divine glory.

And Christ is not merely someone we observe from a distance.

He is the firstborn among many siblings.

We are joined to him.

His path becomes our path.

Christ is baptized. We are baptized.

Christ is anointed by the Spirit. We are chrismated.

Christ dies. We will die.

Christ rises. We will rise.

Christ is transfigured.

And in Christ, we are being transfigured too.

That is theosis.

Salvation is not merely God deciding not to punish us.

Salvation is healing.

Restoration.

Union.

Transformation.

It is humanity being drawn deeper and deeper into the life of God.

The Eucharist and the Transfigured Life

This is also why the Eucharist stands at the center of Christian worship.

When we gather around the altar, we do not merely remember Jesus.

We receive Christ.

We consume the Body and Blood of Christ and enter again into communion with him.

Christ abides in us and we abide in Christ.

That encounter should change us.

Every Eucharist should leave something different in us.

Every act of worship should loosen the grip of ego.

Every encounter with Christ should deepen our capacity for love.

Every prayer should move us a little further toward mercy.

Every sacrament should draw us further into the life for which we were created.

None of this happens instantly.

There are days when we move forward and days when we fall backward.

There are seasons when faith feels alive and seasons when showing up feels like work.

Clergy know this too.

Church sometimes becomes a responsibility before it feels like worship. Habit and discipline matter. Sometimes discipline carries us when emotion does not.

But discipline is not the destination.

Transformation is.

We come because we expect to meet Christ.

In the waters of baptism.

In the anointing of the Spirit.

In Scripture.

In one another.

At the altar.

And when we encounter Christ, something within us should slowly begin to shine.

Come Down From the Mountain Shining

Peter wanted to remain on the mountain.

Most of us understand the impulse.

There are holy moments we would rather preserve than leave behind.

But Jesus comes down.

The disciples come down with him.

The glory revealed on the mountain was never meant to remain there.

Neither is ours.

A transfigured life eventually has to leave the sanctuary.

The light we receive must enter our homes, our workplaces, our relationships, and our communities.

It should change how we treat the stranger.

How we respond when someone wounds us.

How we speak about people we disagree with.

How we treat the poor.

How we welcome the excluded.

How we carry ourselves when nobody is watching.

Jesus gives us the measure.

Love God.

Love your neighbor.

Everything else grows from there.

The Church does not need more people who merely attend services.

The world needs people whose encounters with Christ have changed the way they live.

People who carry mercy into cruel places.

People who carry reconciliation into divided places.

People who carry hope into wounded places.

People whose lives reveal something of the light they have received.

So on this Feast of the Transfiguration, remember what happened on the mountain.

Christ revealed his glory.

But also remember what the feast says about you.

You were created for communion with God.

You were created for holiness.

You were created for love.

You were created to be transformed.

Live a transfigured life.

Let Christ abide in you.

And little by little, let the light of God shine through.