2/15/2026
Last Sunday After The Epiphany
Year A. Matthew 17: 1-9
Michael C Mitchell
Jesus’ Transfiguration And Our Hope
The scripture we just read is for us known as The Transfiguration of Jesus. Matthew, Mark and Luke all tell this story, but today we’re looking at Matthew’s telling. Six days before this, Peter declared that Jesus is “the Messiah, the Son of the Living God” (Mtt. 16: 16). Now six days later, Jesus takes Peter, James and John up a high mountain “by themselves.” Right in front of them, Jesus is “transfigured” and described as his face “shining like the sun,” his clothes becoming “dazzling white.” Then they see Moses and Elijah suddenly appear with Jesus, and the three are talking together. It startles and overcomes the disciples, and Peter begins to explain that he should make three tents for Jesus, Moses and Elijah. While saying this, God interrupts. A bright cloud suddenly comes over them, and a voice from the cloud directed at the disciples says, “this is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him.” They are so filled with fear that they fall to the ground. Jesus comes over and touches them and tells them, “get up and do not be afraid.” They become aware that Moses and Elijah are gone and its only Jesus with them. On the way down the mountain, Jesus tells them not to tell anyone what happened until after his resurrection. Once down from the mountain, Jesus now turns toward Jerusalem. Until this moment, Jesus has been preaching, teaching and healing around Galilee, but now he turns toward Jerusalem. What will await him there is his death on a cross and God resurrecting him to life again.
With that about to face him, he goes up a high mountain probably with the intention of praying with God about this next phase of ministry that will end in his crucifixion and resurrection. While Matthew does not say what Jesus and the spiritual figures talk about, Luke says they discussed Jesus coming death and resurrection (Luke 9: 31). Jesus was consulting with the saints who had been tasked with God’s redemptive work until Jesus would finish it. Perhaps they were discussing strategies, perhaps Jesus was gaining moral support with God’s best. But the defining moment is Jesus’ transfiguration, the shining face and dazzling white clothes, demonstrating the enormous spiritual power being gathered here in Jesus.
Matthew wants his readers to understand that when Moses and Elijah appear with Jesus, it demonstrates that all the meaning of the law and the prophets of Jewish history are being fulfilled in Jesus’ coming, and with the addition of God’s voice in the cloud calling Jesus his Son, Jesus is in fact the Messiah, the Son of God that Jews have been waiting for who will free them. (1) Moses and Elijah are the great heroes of Jewish faith, and Jesus is here visibly seen by the three disciples talking with their Spirits. That Jesus takes the three disciples along may indicate Jesus’ desire to have additional company (he asked them to be supportive of him with their presence in the Garden before his arrest). Maybe he anticipates Moses’ and Elijah’s visit and wants the disciples to experience it.
What the disciples get, like God gave Moses in the burning bush, is God’s voice out of the brilliant shining cloud as God tells them Jesus is his Son, and they need to listen to him. It so terrifies them that they can’t stand and fall to the ground. While this is transfiguration for Jesus, it is transformation for the disciples….and for us. Jesus is going to ask the disciples to love God with everything they are and to love each other in the same way Jesus loves them. They are going to be asked to serve humanity in the same way Jesus does. But right now, serving God with such love is beyond them, as they are so terrified by God that they can’t keep their feet. They aren’t ready to put their needs, desires and lives on the line. A transformation by God’s Spirit will be necessary for their future tasks. And what is the first response by Jesus toward the disciples’ plight? He comes over and “touches” them, reassures them to not be afraid. Jesus in this moment dispenses with his own experience, and tenderly tends to the disciples. “Don’t be afraid.” And this is where our story also begins.
Yesterday, at the Arkansas Diocesan Convention, we were reminded (by The Most Reverend Melissa Skelton) that Episcopalians understand our transformation into disciples of Jesus Christ as a “slow burn.” Jesus leads us through a life of continual transformation over time from Baptism into being people of God’s love. While we begin as self-focused ego centered people, marred in pain and suffering and neediness who look for others to meet our needs, we who have trouble sacrificing ourselves even for those closest to us and most loved by us, Jesus transforms us into self-sacrificing, loving, caring, self-giving people not only to our families, and not only to our fellow Church members, but also to strangers and hurting people in our community, well even to people who don’t like us or treat us well.
Now, it’s not a smooth ride this transformation. We often get filled with anxiety trying to live in this world. And we can become terrified of life, and like the disciples on the mountain, become completely immobilized. We can hurt those we love and let each other down. But by God’s Grace surrounding us, our transformation still progresses.
We were also reminded yesterday at the Convention by Bishop Harmon that taking up our cross as Jesus asks us to do will require some hard work. We will have to face parts of ourselves that are not too pleasant, and we’ll have to ask for forgiveness from those we love and from God more than once. Working for God to follow what Jesus commands us to do— to work for peace, to end the hatred that gives life to the evils of our day and which destroys people’s lives while ourselves resisting the seductions of those evils may put us in harm’s way or cause us to sacrifice things we would rather not.
But that’s what the Church is for. Jesus gives us each other to do the hard things together, to encourage each other, to support each other, to cry together, to laugh together. Jesus says like he said to the disciples, “here, let me help you up; don’t be afraid.”