INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURE
Year B - The Transfiguration
On this last Sunday before Lent, we celebrate one of the most mysterious incidents in Jesus' ministry called the Transfiguration.
2 KINGS 2:1-12. This story of Elijah's passing his role as the leading prophet of Israel to his disciple, Elisha, has the markings of a heroic folktale preserved as oral history. The miraculous crossing of the Jordan River also recalls the story of Moses leading the Israelites across the Red Sea. The story is intended to show that the spiritual gifts Elisha inherited were the same as those of his predecessor Elijah and in the same tradition as Moses and Joshua.
PSALM 50:1-6. While these few verses do not show it, the whole of the psalm is unusual in that in seems to denounce sacrificial worship in favour of more spiritual forms. It points to Zion (i.e. the temple in Jerusalem) as replacing Mount Sinai as the place from which God delivers authentic messages about righteousness and justice.
2 CORINTHIANS 4:3-6. Paul tries to explain why some people believe and some do not. He believed that the eternal struggle between good and evil, God and Satan, was still going on. But the central claim of the gospel he preached was that Christ had already won the battle over sin and death. With Jesus' resurrection a whole new creation had begun. Those who believe have not only seen the light as at the first creation; their lives are filled with the spiritual presence of God in Jesus Christ as if created anew.
MARK 9:2-9. Mark tells of Jesus' transfiguration immediately after Peter's confession that Jesus is the Messiah/Christ to show that Jesus stands in the historic prophetic tradition of Moses and Elijah. This continuity of ancient Israel's faith and the church in Rome for which Mark was writing said to both Jew and Gentile Christians that they belong to the same faith tradition designed and now fully realized by the same God through Jesus Christ. As disciples of Jesus today, we share that same tradition.
A MORE COMPLETE ANALYSIS.
2 KINGS 2:1-12. This story of Elijah's passing his role as the leading prophet of Israel his time to his disciple, Elisha, has the markings of a heroic folktale preserved as oral history. It even has an element of an oft sung ballad about it. The story tells of the journey for Gilgal to Bethel and on to Jericho where the two prophets miraculously crossed the Jordan and Elijah ascended in a chariot of fire. Elisha’s refusal to stay at either Gilgal or Bethel ultimately gained its reward as he finally witnessed Elijah’s ascension. Elijah’s repeated rejection of Elijah’s instructions sounds very much like the refrain of a minstrel’s song. So does Elisha’s instructions to the company of prophets the two meet at each holy site.
The exact site of Gilgal is still uncertain, because several have been proposed. The most likely location is about seven miles north of Bethel, a shrine in the central mountains north of Jerusalem. Both may have early sanctuaries sacred to the Canaanites before the Israelite invasion in the 13th century BCE. Bethel, of course, was famous in Israelite religious history as the place where centuries earlier the patriarch Jacob had his dream and received a renewal of the divine covenant made with his father Isaac and grandfather Abraham (Genesis 28). By the time of Elijah and Elisha in the 9th century BCE, both Gilgal and Bethel had become the location of prophetic guilds associated with these spiritual leaders of Yahwism in their struggle against the syncretist tendencies of monarchs such as Ahab and Jezebel. It was members of these guilds who followed Elijah and Elisha on their journey.
The miraculous crossing of the Jordan River (vs. 8) also recalls the story of Moses leading the Israelites across the Red Sea. At first, Elijah divided the waters so that he and Elisha could cross over on dry ground, but eastward bound. In vs. 14, having seen Elijah ascend in a chariot of fire, Elisha repeated the same miracle crossing, returning to the west side of the river bearing Elijah’s mantle. As it stands now, the whole story shows that the spiritual gifts Elisha inherited were the same as those of his predecessor and in the same prophetic and covenantal tradition as Moses and the patriarchs.
This story had an important place at the beginning of what scholars define as “the Elisha cycle.” This series of stories has much similarity to those about Elijah, but were collected at a later date. They were intended to describe how Yahweh directed the historical events of the kingdom of Israel through a line of great prophets. In spite of his request that he receive “a double share of (Elijah’s) spirit” (vs. 9), which was granted on condition that he witness Elijah’s ascension, Elisha never quite attained the prominence of his predecessor in subsequent religious thought and biblical literature. As popular as the miracle stories of both prophets may have been in 19th and 20th century Sunday schools of the literalist tradition, this legend does not contain much preaching content. It does serve, however, as a prelude to the Transfiguration narrative in the Gospel.
PSALM 50:1-6. While these few verses do not show it, the whole of this psalm is unusual in that in seems to denounce sacrificial worship in favour of more spiritual forms. Zion (i.e. the temple in Jerusalem) has replaced Mount Sinai as the place from which God delivers authentic messages about righteousness and justice similar to those of the great prophets Isaiah, Hosea, Micah and Jeremiah.
Despite this initial appearance of dependence on prophetic oracles of the pre-exilic period, the influence of the post-exilic priesthood in the reconstructed temple can be detected in the later verses. Emphasis on the close relationship between sacrificial worship and faithful obedience to the covenant takes the psalm beyond the prophetic message. It asserts that the sacrifices of the insincere are to be condemned no less severely than in the oracles of the prophets. The mere performance of ritual is not sufficient.
This introductory selection sets the stage for the theophany which follows. The scene takes the form of an assize in which Yahweh appears as judge. Yahweh enters in the midst of a great storm (vs. 3), quite possibly a real phenomenon witnessed by the psalmist at some time. Ancient temples would not necessarily have been weatherproof. The noise of a violent thunderstorm would echo through the temple courts and strike fear into the hearts of the most attentive worshippers. “Faithful ones” (i.e. those who have kept the covenant) receive a summons to Yahweh’s presence (vs. 5) and the heavens declare the divine judgment (vs. 6). Could the “devouring fire” (vs. 3) and “the heavens declare...” (vs. 6) refer to lightening and thunder?
The passage recalls similar theophanies at Sinai found in Exodus 19:16 and before the death of Moses recorded in Deuteronomy 33:2 with which the psalmist must surely have been familiar. Is there also some similarity to the opening assize found in the Book of Job? In essence, the psalm strikes a genuine compromise between the traditional message of the great prophets and the temple rituals of sacrifice, praise and thanksgiving.
2 CORINTHIANS 4:3-6. In this brief excerpt Paul tries to explain why some people believe and some do not. He obviously believed that the eternal struggle between good and evil, God and Satan, was still going on. But the gospel he preached proclaimed that Christ had already won the battle over sin, death and all the powers of evil present in the world. With Jesus a whole new creation had begun. Those who believe have not only seen the light as at the first creation; their lives are filled with the spiritual presence of God in Jesus Christ as if created anew. On them the light of the Gospel had dawned as Second Isaiah had prophesied and the apostolic church fervently believed (Isaiah 60:1-3; Matthew 5:14-16; John 9:5).
This text provides an excellent opportunity to discuss several aspects of the problem of evil and the way Jesus Christ has overcome it. In our post-enlightenment and post-Christendom age, we still need to make a credible interpretation of biblical terms, metaphors and mythology. We may no longer believe in a personal Satan, but as a wise professor of mine who had been a stretcher bearer in the brutal trench warfare in World War I once said, “It looks mighty like it.”
Evil is still very much present in the world. This has been very evident throughout the past century. We need look not further back than the past decade. Belief in the inevitability of progress toward a peaceful world of good neighbourliness has proven to be a credulous vanity. We need to explain something about the “already, but not yet” aspect of our faith in terms that can be understood by contemporary worshippers. The redemption happened long ago; our reconciliation to God and to one another it is still going on. We also need to provide everyone to whom we make our witness with the opportunity to decide for themselves where they stand in relation to the new order instituted by God through Jesus Christ.
A colleague, a native of Vienna, Austria, who lost members of his family in the Holocaust has told me that he has seen Satan. Our television screens have vividly portrayed for us the horrors of the Gulf Wars, genocide, the expulsion of many ethnic peoples from their historic homelands and the indiscriminate bombing of innocent victims in many parts of the world. In the corporate business circles where lower taxes, faster growth, devious manipulations of financial instruments and the thirst for ever greater profits are all that count, no one is immune to the winner-take-all syndrome.
On the other hand, Archbishop Desmond Tutu has said that only the Spirit of God could have brought about the degree of forgiveness and reconciliation evident in South Africa since the end of apartheid. Since his retirement as South Africa’s first black president, Nelson Mandela has become a roving ambassador of reconciliation and peace among African nations in the throes of civil war. In every Canadian city and many smaller towns, food banks and second hand clothes shops struggle to supply essentials to those with insufficient incomes to meet their basic needs. On cold winter nights, Good Samaritan patrols make rounds of the hideouts of street people handing out sandwiches, hot soup and sleeping bags to those who are unable or refuse to seek more adequate shelter. Is Christ not there among those whose need is greatest for whatever reason?
Is this not “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”? The God of creation is the God who redeems the world from evil through Christ. Paul repeatedly told of the brilliant light he saw at his conversion on the Damascus Road. Perhaps he also had heard from Peter himself the tradition of the Transfiguration. Was his epiphany a vision of the face of the risen Lord as Floyd V. Filson suggested in his exegesis of this passage? (The Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 10, p. 317) He wrote: “(Paul) evidently thinks of a visible brightness, for he saw the face of Christ, but it was more than external light; it also suffused his whole life and was a spiritual presence and power, not a merely physical occurrence.”
Is it not those of us who by faith have this same light “suffusing our whole life” who carry on the seemingly endless, redemptive struggle against evil wherever it may be found?
MARK 9:2-9. Immediately after Peter's confession that Jesus is the Messiah/Christ, Mark tells of Jesus' transfiguration to show that Jesus stands in the historic prophetic tradition of Moses and Elijah. This continuity of ancient Israel's faith and the church in Rome for which Mark was writing said to both Jew and Gentile Christians that they belong to the same faith tradition. The same God who had covenanted with Israel and inspired the prophets had now fully realized through Jesus Christ God’s magnificent purpose of salvation designed before the creation of the universe.
About 140 CE, Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis, reported that Mark had committed to writing what he remembered of Peter’s recollections of Jesus. This pericope could well have been one of those recollections. While it does have the sense of immediacy found in an eyewitness account, it also has literary qualities in that it fulfills the intent of Mark’s gospel of identifying exactly who Jesus is.
There is, however, an unmistakable difference from Peter’s confession. The voice from the cloud not only confirmed Peter’s confession but recalled the voice of Yahweh speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai in Exodus 19:7-25. Mark undoubtedly wanted his audience to make that connection.
Jesus being transfigured and having his clothes become dazzling white also made another significant connection with the Jewish tradition. The shekinah of Yahweh, a word used in rabbinic writings but not in the Old Testament, expressed divine imminence or universal presence. The word literally meant “that which dwells” and clearly designated Yahweh’s dwelling on earth as in heaven. This spiritual manifestation of the divine presence had a close association with the OT term “the glory of the Lord” represented by dazzling light. Accordingly, the temple in Jerusalem had been built facing eastward so that the brilliance of the rising sun would filled the holy precincts at the hour of the morning sacrifice. In the Corinthians reference above, Paul also saw “a light from heaven, brighter than the sun” (Acts 26:12-18; cf. 9:3-9; 22:6-11). So also did the shepherds in Luke 2:9. Wherever it appeared in the apostolic record, this phenomenon reiterated both divine presence and the element of continuity between the Old and New Testaments.
Bruce Chilton reiterated an interesting if unusual interpretation of the Transfiguration experience in his new imprint, Mary Magdalene: A Biography. (Doubleday, 2005. 77-80). He claimed that before the 1st century CE the chariot/throne had become “the master symbol of Jewish mysticism.” He interpreted the Transfiguration in a similar vein. He understood it as Jesus teaching the three disciples the techniques of mystical vision which had been the significant feature of Jesus’ mysticism, a meditative system he had learned from John the Baptist.
Chilton drew a parallel with the experience of Moses, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu seeing Yahweh, God of Israel, on Mount Sinai as told in Exodus 24:1-11. In his previous work, Rabbi Jesus, (Doubleday, 2000) Chilton had discussed the chariot vision of Ezekiel (Heb. merkavah Ezek: 1:4-28), symbol of the universally mobile throne of God. He also linked the chariot experience with Elijah being transported from Elisha’s sight in a chariot of fire swept heavenward by a whirlwind. The chariot symbolized “the source of God’s energy and intelligence, the origin of his power to create and destroy. By meditating on the Chariot, John and his disciples aspired to become one with God’s Throne.” (Chilton, 2000. 50-51. Note: He capitalized both Chariot and Throne throughout both works.) The point of Jesus’ teaching the disciples how to enter into this mystical experience was that each of them could also become a “son of God” as he had known himself to be since his baptism by John and once again experienced in the Transfiguration.
This lectionary selection moves the gospel narrative forward toward its climax in Jerusalem. That is the significance of Jesus’ order to the three disciples not to say anything to anyone about what they had seen until after his resurrection. Breathless as his narrative had been thus far, Mark still had much more to tell. It would not be finished until the resurrection had taken place. That was to be to ultimate manifestation of the divine purpose and glory.
Before he began that central incident in his narrative, he set before his audience the elemental truth that as the Christ/Messiah, Jesus was both the continuation of the ancient Israelite tradition and the inauguration of the new era of the reign of God’s love on earth.
As disciples of Jesus today, we share that same tradition as the Christian community in Rome in the 60s CE and the Israelites of the 13th, 9th and 6th centuries BCE. When we read and study this passage about the Transfiguration, the covenanting, reconciling God again speaks to us in Jesus Christ confirming our faith that we too are children of God and reaffirming our commitment to follow him.
Peter’s desire to build three tabernacles to commemorate the occasion leaves us with a question too: How shall we express our devotion? And as for the disciples, it would have to be carried out, not on the mountain of mystical experience, but in the plain where there was suffering and danger and evil that would prohibit the gospel from reaching those who need it most. And so it still is.
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