Giovanni Bellini, Transfiguration (c. 1455-60):
‘I just
want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve
looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised
Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to
know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.’
The words are those of Martin Luther
King, uttered on 3 April 1968, the eve of his assassination, at Memphis,
Tennessee. In what seems in retrospect to have been a premonition of his
imminent murder, King alludes to Deuteronomy 34, where Moses climbs Mount Nebo
so as to be able to see the promised land, but is told by God that he will not
cross over into it.
The Bible is replete with mountaintop
experiences, some of which have a
marked effect on the individual concerned as well as those who encounter him. ‘When
Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, the skin of his face was shining, and
they were afraid to come near him’ (Exodus 34:30). The skin of
Moses’ face shone because it was a reflection of the Glory which he had seen
when he was with God. It was the result of that partly-answered prayer, ‘I beseech
You, show me Your Glory’ (Exodus 33:18). God could not, at that time, grant the
prayer in its fullness for Moses was not capable of such vision – God had told
him, ‘You cannot see My face and live’ (Exodus 33:20). Nevertheless, the brilliantly
shining face of Moses was the result of fellowship with God.
This communion with God included intense intercession for the people. Moses
had to intercede vigorously for the Israelites. ‘Although this is a stiff-necked people’, he
recognized, ‘forgive our wickedness and our sin, and take us as your
inheritance’ (Exodus 34:9) he pleaded.
In the gospel accounts by Matthew, Mark and Luke, only Luke states that
Jesus and the three disciples went up the mountain to pray. On this outdoor mountain experience the three
disciples receive a revelation of Jesus’ Glory. Jesus is made to shine bright
as lightening as He stands near Moses and Elijah, representing the early and
later periods of Old Testament history. The two great men appear
in glory and speak of Jesus’ departure, which he is about to accomplish at
Jerusalem. The three disciples also receive proof that Jesus really is the Son of God. A booming deep voice comes
from Heaven saying that Jesus is indeed God’s very own Son. So the disciples
additionally learn that our God is indeed a God who speaks. The third thing
which the disciples gain is spiritual strength: they almost miss this, however,
because of their somnolence and their fear (though Luke does not specifically
mention fear or awe as do the other evangelists).
The gospel of the transfiguration brings us face
to face with two apparently conflicting attributes of God: his transcendence
and his immanence. By this we mean that God is both above the created order yet
fully part of it. When Jesus is revealed as the son of God at the top of the
mountain we have a vision of the transcendent God. When he and the disciples
come down from the mountain, we see once more Jesus as man though we know him
to be the son of God incarnate. The disciples did not know what to do with the
information they had received: ‘And they kept silent and in
those days told no one any of the things they had seen.’ (Matthew and Mark
specify that Jesus told them to tell no-one what they had seen ‘until the Son
of Man is raised from the dead’, an expression which they did not understand.)
The Gospel of the Transfigurations tells us two things which are
particularly relevant for us during Lent which approaches shortly. The first
concerns the location of the Kingdom of Heaven. The second concerns the need to
transfigure ourselves and our own hearts.
Where is the Kingdom of Heaven to be found? The kingdom of God is not
just to be expected in the age to come, but has already been manifested,
potentially at least, in the person and work of Jesus (what C. H. Dodd referred
to as ‘realized eschatology’) and in the work of his disciples and the rebirth
of faith that they brought about. In other words, if we follow not just the
teachings but the actions of Jesus and his disciples we will be on the way to
building the kingdom of heaven here on earth. In Luke’s
Gospel, at Luke 17:21, we learn that ‘the kingdom of God is within [or: among]
you’. The Greek term entos means ‘in the midst of’. So it really should be understood as
Jesus saying the Kingdom of God is within your midst, or among you: it is
wherever Jesus is, it accompanies him.
The kingdom of God is also somewhere else, however. It is also in our
hearts, or at least potentially – but for this to happen, we have to believe in
Christ’s transfiguration and be transfigured ourselves. Paul has several expressions which seek to give a sense of what this
transformation brings about. ‘For our sake he made him to be sin
who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God’ (2 Cor. 5:21); ‘…it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me’
(Gal. 2:20); and ‘…now to him who by the power at work within us is able to
accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine’ (Eph. 3:20). ‘The spirit is what lives in you’, Leo Tolstoy tells us in his
remarkable but not entirely orthodox Gospel
in Brief, ‘living freely and intelligently and of which you can know no end
and no beginning.’
