the transfiguration

We were studying the Transfiguration in Wednesday night class a couple of years ago, the passage in Matthew 17.  Jesus takes the three in his inner circle up to the top of a mountain. 

An odd thing happened there.  Moses and Elijah appeared and began talking to Jesus.  Jesus begins to appear like the other two, radiant and transfigured.  The apostles were frightened and Peter suggests in his moment of fear and awe that maybe they could build some little portable altars, booths, tabernacles to commemorate the event and worship those present. 

At that point Moses and Elijah disappear and a voice from heaven rings out with This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.  Hear him.  Jesus then does something he does on occasion:  he tells them not to tell anyone else what happened.

The study on Wednesday nights was about Peter specifically, and his reactions and growth through these happenings.  It was Peter who spoke up about worshipping everybody. 

I am convinced that Peter did this simply because he thought it would make Jesus happy to be placed with Moses and Elijah on an equal plane.  After all, it was Peter who said that Jesus was the Son of God back in Chapter 16. 

What he didn’t understand was what Jesus was going to do as the Son of God?  How would he act?  What would they as his apostles do?  Was the appearance of Moses and Elijah maybe heralding the beginning of his kingdom? 

It was both exhilarating and scary for all three of the men as they saw this. But Peter, as he did so often, spoke through his fear; and as so often was the case, he said the wrong thing.

He didn’t do this because he was stupid or petty or short-sighted, necessarily.  He was short-sighted, of course, all of them were.  They didn’t have the perspective that we have today in being able to look at the entire plan laid out in outline form.

But it was short-sightedness born of ignorance, and not stupidity.  He thought he was doing something good and honorable.  “We’ll honor all three great prophets of God,” he said.

However, God didn‘t want all three great prophets honored.  He wanted Jesus honored.  Not that Moses and Elijah were any slackers, but that Jesus was the fulfillment of the plan that Moses and Elijah were merely part of.

What was the point of this narrative?  The point was that you cannot place other things, things that are temporary and impermanent next the permanent.  You can’t equate stuff with Jesus, no matter how important or earth-shakingly significant the stuff.  Jesus is the Son of God and we will hear him, not other stuff.
Jesus is above all else. 

There is nothing more important than him and God’s plan through him.  Anyone who reduces the phenomenal grace of God and his matchless mercy to a religion that they pursue on Sundays misses the whole point.  Jesus is all or nothing. 

He says, “You either gather with me or you scatter abroad” (Matthew 12:30).  We either worship him as Lord and Master of all or we don’t.  He is everything or he is nothing.

In a church sense, we cannot equate Jesus with programs or anything else that helps to build up the body.  He is the head and we are body and all we do is to serve him, not ourselves. 

When we begin to place our own desires above him, we are with Peter offering to build multiple altars  Churches that place their own theology or worship style or buildings or anything above Jesus are wrong. 

We worship Jesus, not the way we sing, or our opinions on baptism or the Holy Spirit’s active intervention in our lives.  We have those opinions, sure, and they are alright to have; but we have to remember that it is Jesus we serve, not theology, or buildings or programs or ministries.