What a memorable passage this is! – in just a few lines we have an account of a glorious moment filled with imagery, mystery, dazzling light, and fear - and at the centre of it all, Jesus - revealed in a way not experienced before.  Consider how it must have felt to witness such a privileged moment – if we had been there with Peter, James and John, what would we have said, and how would we have responded to what we had seen and heard?  We don’t know much about the reaction of the three disciples except to say that they were lost for words and frightened.  Peter’s response, outspoken as always, was to say the first thing in his head that could prolong this glory-filled moment as Elijah and Moses joined and spoke with Jesus. 

Of course it is unlikely that the disciples understood the full significance of what they had seen and heard – that would come later!  But Peter’s comments for me lend an authenticity to the moment.  They don’t appear to do justice to the momentous occasion and although he may have had in mind the shelters built at the feast of Tabernacles, I can imagine him later going over what he said and agonising over the lost opportunity to say something more significant.  Ever done that?  I have!  The fact that the disciples are portrayed so utterly as normal people gives me a great deal of encouragement – these were ordinary men, with different gifts and weaknesses, able to see, and then not to see.

We must remember that the disciples had already been on a very steep learning curve and now further urgency is displayed by Jesus as he focuses his teaching on them.  Just days before the Transfiguration we are shown that the light is beginning to dawn - Peter again being the first to speak in response to Jesus’ question ‘who do you say I am?’  He spoke for them all, Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah, the anointed one of God, and with that declaration received Jesus predicts his suffering, his rejection, death and resurrection.  No words of comfort, no explanation, just straight facts – time was running out.  And Jesus presses on to warn his followers how it must be for those who will follow him – they must lay their life aside - giving up the things of man for the things of God.    

Their whole time with Jesus was spent in grappling with who he was, what his mission was, and their part in what was to follow.  And now God had given them a sign and symbol in answer to their questions.  The experience on the mountain top was a clue that, although still shrouded in mystery and hidden by cloud, would eventually yield answers to the questions in the minds of the disciples.  Question and confusion that they were willing to hold - because to do less was to abandon their wholehearted desire to know him more deeply.   The anonymous author of ‘The Cloud of Unknowing’ wrote regarding the contemplation and understanding of God and used the term ‘darkness’ to convey ‘a lack of knowing’…

… ‘If you are to feel him or to see him in this life, it must always be in the cloud, in this darkness’…

The disciples lacked full understanding but were beginning to recognise Jesus as the Messiah. 

In Jewish terms this would have meant a person whose arrival would turn the world upside down – who would rescue Israel again from captivity – only this time from Rome - and from the mistakes of the past that had previously sent them into exile.  Things were adding up, yet confusion and lack of understanding continued to cloud their minds.  What sort of Messiah would allow himself to be killed, to suffer at the hands of those who should have been awaiting his arrival?  They were expecting a conquering King and Jesus just didn’t fit the expected image of who he was supposed to be.  And then a moment of truth on the mountain top.  A place often associated with closeness to God – one that both Moses and Elijah had already experienced.  Jesus was changed before the disciple’s eyes. 

The word transfigured literally means to change one’s form – to be transformed.  Jesus temporarily appeared changed from the normal human form to his God given glory.  A glory that was represented by dazzling brightness and accompanied by the appearance of Moses and Elijah – the first the supreme law-giver of Israel and the latter acknowledged as the greatest of the prophets.  Their combined presence was vital - symbolizing the Old Testament law and the prophetic promises that were to find completion and fulfilment in Jesus.   Jesus too, needed this confirmation.  He had set his face towards Jerusalem and the cross and needed to know if it was right to continue.   But the symbolism of this moment was still yet intensified with the descent of the cloud.  In Jewish thought the presence of God was regularly connected with a cloud and the appearance of such would have been very evocative. 

It was in the cloud that Moses met God.  It was the descent of a cloud that indicated God’s presence in the Tabernacle in the wilderness, and then later at the dedication of the Temple built by Solomon.  And it was the dream of the Jews that when the Messiah came the cloud of God’s presence would return.  The cloud on the mountain top was a way of saying that the Messiah had come.  The longed for salvation of God’s people was imminent and it was to be found in the person of Jesus.   And it was while they were enveloped in the cloud – at the point when the disciples could not rely on their own eyes for judgement – that God spoke his words of love and ownership of Jesus his Son and the command that continues to speak to us all “Listen to Him”.  Of course the disciples still had to learn what Messiahship meant.  They were actually not far from the events that would eventually empower their understanding – the cross and the resurrection – but until then they would follow loyally, yes, disturbed by their lack of understanding, yet determined to travel the road with Jesus, whatever that meant.

To follow Christ will involve seeing, and not seeing.  Some may experience ‘mountain top encounters’ whilst others at the foot of the mountain will gain understanding through serving diligently in his name, sometimes taking knocks and holding questions whilst learning to ‘listen to him’.   In both situations the result is the same – an encounter with God through following in the footsteps of Jesus.  An encounter that may surprise, be unexpected and disclosed when we least expect it.  An encounter that may be the result of obedience to his call, or through a purely grace filled moment.  And an encounter that is unpredicted, yet controlled by God’s timing and revealing, and always there for those who set their face to follow Christ and lovingly serve him in the place of his leading.

I will finish with the closing lines of ‘The Cloud of Unknowing’

… ‘Farewell, spiritual friends, with God’s blessing and mine upon you!  I pray Almighty God that true peace, sound council, and his own spiritual comfort and abundant grace may ever be with you and all his earthly lovers’

Amen.