Jesus Creed 27 – On the Mountain with Jesus

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
Love the Lord you God with all your heart,
with all your soul,
with all your mind, and with all your strength.
The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself.
There is no commandment greater than these.

This is a series of reflections on Scot McKnight’s book, The Jesus Creed: Loving God, Loving Others. It’s a book I unequivocally recommend for anyone. Each chapter opens with recommended Gospel readings. The reading for this chapter is: Luke 9:28-36.

Why is Jesus transfigured? He needs no experience for assurance in the face of his coming death. So why the transfiguration, complete with Moses (Torah) and Elijah (Prophets) speaking about his coming death?

Jesus is transfigured to reveal to Peter, John, and James life’s deepest mystery.

He is demonstrating what lies beyond that valley of suffering and death.

The Transfiguration is one of those moments when a full disclosure of life’s mystery bursts open, brushes up against us, and reminds us that ‘all is elsewhere.’

What we see in Jesus’ transfiguration is not so much his deity, but the glorification of his humanity — what all humans really and potentially are. C.S. Lewis calls this the ‘weight of glory.’ He reminds us in a long sentence:

‘It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.’

There (Lewis continues), consequently, ‘no ordinary people’ even if our fallen framework for life prohibits us from seeing humans for what they really are.

The Transfiguration is our hope.  As St. Athanasius wrote, “For He was made man that we might be made God.” But it’s also a warning. It is God’s will that we be conformed (and transformed) to the image of his Son. All too often, though, it is our will that we be conformed to the image of death — that we make ourselves into monsters.