Frances Flatman writes on the Readings for the Feast of the Transfiguration :-
By now we are half way through Matthew’s Gospel and anyone who has followed the course of Jesus’ Galilean ministry is forced to the conclusion that even at this point any hope of a Jewish-Christian revision of the Jewish faith is doomed to disaster. Despite his successes, his great feeding and healing outreach to the needy, scribes and Pharisees question and reject him and his way at every turn. Even the disciples appear to have only a fair weather grasp of what Jesus is doing and reject any possibility of rejection or the suffering and death Jesus assured them was going to happen. Most of us simply can’t cope with threats of doom and disaster, as we see with the response to Global warming, or the many other difficulties which beset us. It takes those of rare and determined courage to persist under persecution for the faith, as we see with Christians in Pakistan. Yet over the weeks we have explored the way in which God is in ultimate control of his creation, a promise of hope for all sufferers. This week’s readings all come from this willingness to accept God’s overall power amidst the chaos and caprice of the world around us.
Anyone at all familiar with Jewish history and the Old Testament knows that it is the story not of faithful Jews rewarded for perseverance but rather the exact opposite; a story of a wilful people doing their own thing despite the continual care and succour of God. Here again this week we enter Inter-testamental Wisdom writings, so those that fill in the gap between Old and New Testaments for Christians. Daniel (7:9-10.13-14) probably comes from Egypt in the late 3rd-early 2nd centuries BCE, incidentally when Egypt occupied Palestine. The Book is all about persecution and suffering, as it does a retrospective into earlier times of Hebrew suffering with the certainty that, as with the Exodus, God would rescue and care for his chosen. In our vision a ‘son of man’, a human being, enters the court of God and is rewarded with universal kingship over the entire humanity – and forever. We can see therefore that the author has shifted a long way from the familiar ‘chosen’ people of Israel, the remnant ;and moved out to a much greater God-bestowed vision of the immensity of God and his power to a universalist vision never before encompassed by Judaism, and with huge consequences for the whole creation.
Our Second Reading, (2 Peter 1:16-19), and not the work of St Peter, though his name is borrowed for authenticity as was common in the early church, comes from Turkey: Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia; so parts of the world not Christianised by the time of the death of Peter in 63 CE, but which certainly was by the end of the century as we know from the Letters exchanged between Pliny the Governor of Bithynia C100 and Trajan his Emperor, specifically on the problem of the thriving Christian presence which was upsetting meat markets and the sale of silver idols, and disrupting the social order in cities, towns, and villages. The upshot was a carefully managed persecution of avowed Christians. Significantly in our portion of the Petrine Letters the writer(s) distinguish between ‘invented myths’, and the ‘knowledge of the power and the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ’. Here he is described as the one recognised by God as ‘My Son, the Beloved’, and following the tradition of the Apostles the authors speak of their witness to the Transfiguration because they with the Church are possessors of this truth. They distinguish this real encounter with the divine from the myths of pagan religion, with its plethora of stories about the lives and actions of the pagan gods, making clear that faith in Jesus was of an entirely different order; and remember they are doing so during periods of persecution of the faith, here spoken of as ‘the dark until the dawn comes and the morning star rises,’ that is with the hope of Jesus’ Second Coming and the resurrection of the dead in Christ. Clearly then they were full of confidence that despite the deaths, tortures and persecution their members were suffering, a different and better future ultimately awaited believers. No pagan god ever died for the salvation of his followers, indeed most are shown as warlike and self indulgent.
Matthew’s placing of the Transfiguration midway in his Gospel at 17:1-9 is significant. Just prior to this, we have Jesus’ first prediction of his passion and death and the horrified response of Peter. As I said earlier, even the disciples really had little understanding of Jesus and his mission at this point, indeed all would desert him at his arrest. But despite this Jesus perseveres, continually teaching the crowds and disciples with miracles and parables which make clear what he is about, they observe how he deals with opposition, not with magic bolts but with reasoned arguments. Yet as the mission develops Jesus become increasingly aware that the Jewish mission is doomed, opposition from conformist Jews still awaiting a messiah of military power and expecting god-given victory over enemies prevails, and even seems to dominate the thought of the disciples. Jesus indicates precisely how things will change with missions to Tyre and Sidon and the Decapolis, pagan parts; and continually we find that his ministry is centred in Galilee that place of syncretism in belief from centuries back. He only visits Jerusalem once in Matthew, for his passion, though spies from there continually dog his ministry.
Yet Matthew, as right from the start of his Gospel has demonstrated, shows Jesus as rooted in Judaism and sent to take it to its fulfilment in himself. In our passage the Moses links, seen in the Infancy Narratives, return. Jesus’ face like Moses shines; he meets Moses and Elijah, representing the law and the prophets; Peter offers tents for all three, and we meet the bright cloud of the Exodus experience. Jesus is taking Judaism to its true end where it becomes an outreach to the entire humanity and not about Jewish power and triumph, but about a disclosure of the very nature of God himself, self-sacrificial, sharing whose whole being is focussed on his love for his creation, even to the entire loss of self in the person of the Son. We see this with the divine voice, previously heard at Jesus’ baptism (3:17), proclaiming him ‘My Son, the Beloved; he enjoys my favour.’ Yet this is all given in the midst of the promise of great suffering, that of the messiah himself, and in the frequent warnings Jesus gives to the disciples. Jesus, aware of their incomprehension, tells the disciples to keep this experience of his glory secret until he has risen from the dead. Only then will they understand and be able to act as true disciples, able and willing to sacrifice themselves for the faith. So the Transfiguration is both a present reality for Jesus and the disciples and a sign of the future glory of Jesus and of his community; but only later, after terrible suffering will the disciples really understand. We, like them, have to go with Christ on this journey, facing its implications; but be assured, the transfigured life is there, promised and
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