Catching a glimpse of the divine

This Sunday’s first reading from Genesis narrates the call of Abram. God summons this great Hebrew patriarch to leave his land, family, and culture and to take up life in a land he does not know. Grounded in a divine promise, Abram embarks upon a transformed life where his new identity will be that of father to a great nation and where he will be a blessing to all people. Such a story paves the way to this Sunday’s Gospel where Matthew recounts Jesus’ own transformed state. Known as the Transfiguration, a word derived from the Greek referring to a change of form, this wonder reveals who Jesus is and how he is known by the three disciples who are with him on the mountain, and will disclose another dimension of his identity, namely, his divinity.

Throughout the Gospels, we often hear how difficult it was for the disciples to grasp who Jesus was. These followers of Christ were expecting a Messiah, but Jesus was not the political liberator they had imagined. To deepen their comprehension, Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up a mountain and is transfigured before them. The seeming appearance of Moses and Elijah during this experience aligned Jesus and his teachings with the Law and the Prophets and helped the disciples to understand. And when they tried to grasp their experience of Jesus’ Transfiguration, they may have recognized similarities to the account of God’s self-revelation to Moses on a mountain, a narrative with which they would have been familiar. Just as Scripture describes Moses’ face as shining after he encountered God (Ex 34:29-30), the disciples evidently thought that Jesus’ divine encounter caused his own face to shine “like the sun and his clothes became white as light” (Mt 17:2). Yet, despite the similarities between the experience of Moses and Jesus, the difference is revelatory.  Moses’ face was shining because he had looked upon God. In his transfigured state, Jesus’ face was like the sun because he himself was the revelation of God.  

Peter’s determination to build tents for Jesus and the two Old Testament visitors revealed the disciple’s utter incomprehension of what they were experiencing. Further, the sound of a voice from the clouds, a characteristic Old Testament sign of the very presence of God, was more than they could bear. They prostrated themselves in terror. Indeed, the experience of God is both awesome as well as terrifying. No words can adequately narrate such an encounter. The fact that Jesus was now transfigured as the manifestation of the divine must have seemed incomprehensible, frightening, perhaps even bewildering. Yet, Jesus does not insist the disciples grasp and understand everything that day.  No, instead he reaches out and touches them, a gesture that conveys compassion and healing of their confoundedness and confusion.  As he often does, Jesus follows up by offering comfort, urging them not to be afraid.     

This transfigured Jesus who was made available to these apostles in all his glory is also available to us. We, too, are offered a glimpse of Jesus as the divine one, as the Son of God. But our flawed selves, riddled with disappointments, insecurities, addictions, and failures often get in the way. Yet, as he did with his disciples, so Jesus does with us. He will reach out, touch us and offer the same assurance that he offered his disciples, urging us to let go of our fears. All we have to do is make ourselves available to him in concrete ways during this Lenten season. Seeking Jesus and being in relationship with him takes time to grasp what has been revealed, to behold his transfigured self. The author of 2 Timothy, possibly Paul or one of his scribes, describes it well when he calls us to live “a holy life . . . according to his own design and the grace bestowed on us in Christ Jesus” (2 Tm 1:9). Then we, too, can begin to behold gradually this human brother Jesus also as the Son of God, the one with God, the one “who destroyed death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Tm 1:10). Amen!